Wednesday, 6 May 2009

Butterfly Oscar


BELATED congratulations to National Trust nature conservation adviser Matthew Oates (Th B 63-72) on receiving the Marsh Lepidoptera Award for Lifetime Achievement from the charity Butterfly Conservation in November 2007.

There's more about his life and work in this 2006 interview:
At the age of ten I got sent to school in butterfly-rich West Sussex. There was an elderly housemaster - a gentle giant - who had been teaching maths without humour for several centuries to the uninterested. But, on Tuesday afternoons in the summer, he ran a butterfly and moth collecting group. He never knew my name but nonetheless he fired me up - he was the catalyst, and I owe him everything.
Can anyone put a name to him?

2 comments:

Mid A 15 said...

I think Matthew was in Prep and Leigh Hunt B prior to Thornton B so my best guess would be Mr MH Jones. He taught various subjects including maths if I remember correctly.

TRONGON CHARSLEY said...

Thanks for that suggestion. You may be right, although to those of us who know of MH Jones only from his posthumous reputation (e.g. Dickie Dawe's description: "a very big man, frightening both to boys and inexperienced house tutors alike") it feels odd to hear him called a gentle giant.