A tribute to John Steane - Merchant Taylors' School

A tribute to John Steane 

2012 

Page Excellence, 1 Merchant integrity Taylors’ School and distinction since 1561 A tribute 

For 

to 

boys 

John 

11 

Steane 

– 18

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Tributes 

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Mark Thompson 3 

David Andrews 7 

Brian Rees 10 

John Karran 13 

John Wright 16 

Sandy Macnab 17 

Anthony C. Payne 18 

Michael Moxon 19 

G.J. Field 20 

David Winch 21 

Michael Cuthbertson 22 

Charles Watkins 23 

Andrew Fenning 25 

The Executors of John Steane’s estate kindly arranged an evening of celebration of John 

Steane’s life held at the OMT clubhouse on Sunday 18th March 2012. 

During the evening John’s sister, June Meacock, Brian Rees and John Karran (neighbour and 

friend) said a few words. 

Page 2 Merchant Taylors’ School A tribute to John Steane

____________________________________________________ 

Mark Thompson 

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Thank you, Henry. Above all, thank you June, for inviting me to say 

something about your brother. 

Let me start with a memory of John on the playing fields, of all places. I 

was trooping out for rugby one autumn afternoon, and there on the first 

pitch to the right, beyond the tennis courts, saw John refereeing the Third 

Form, wearing sock suspenders below his baggy shorts. 

I remember being surprised that he knew the rules. (And perhaps he 

didn’t, there were plenty of us bluffing.) But there was something very 

determined about him, striding around, unmistakably the commander, 

making much use of his whistle. 

The sight was certainly comic, but the comedy was of his devising, to 

make a gently subversive and corrective point. That’s my theory, anyway. 

Chris Poppe, one of my contemporaries at MTS, who wishes he could be 

here today, told me last week that the sight of JBS kitted for the sports 

field always reassured him that it was fine to be rubbish at games. That 

was the corrective element in the Steane display. He had a rich and ready 

sense of the absurd, and he wore those funny things to cheer the 

unhearty majority; no question about it. 

For he put the sock garters on specially for games. I know this, because his shins were a familiar sight in the 

classroom. I had forgotten how he habitually perched on an empty desk, with his feet on the seat, until I saw 

Martin Rowson’s cartoon in The Guardian a year ago. 

But there was one detail missing in Martin’s cartoon: when John sat on the desk, his drainpipes rode up until 

their hems were many inches above the tops of his shoes, and indeed of his socks. 

So now we have reached the classroom, John’s natural habitat as far as we were concerned. Let me try to 

describe the general impression or aggregate memory of his classes, compressed over time from all those 

scores or hundreds of classes. 

First, there was the nature of the relationships that he formed with each of us. I mean a sort of amiable and 

exemplary decorum. He was considerate, reasonable, and good-tempered, but to say ‘friendly’ would be a 

misnomer: his approach did not involve the presumption of friendliness, or its suggestion that the parameters 

of the teacher-pupil contract could be set aside. He was individual without being personal. There was no 

favouritism, and there were no moods: these aspects of Steane seemed important at the time, and may 

explain why he was spared our brilliant shafts of wit ” or at least, spared anything that he himself would not 

have been able to enjoy. 


I remember only one occasion when he spoke in anger. Someone complained that the work we were doing, 

whatever it was, was boring. The great teenage whine, of course, but we were taken aback by John’s 

reaction. His chin sank into his neck, and there was a quiver around the jowls as he denounced this dismal 

complaint, at length, before concluding that only boring people are bored. I have borrowed this epigram with 

my own children, and cheapened it with overuse ” something John never did. 

I don’t know if that episode made such an impression on anyone else, but it silenced us. And it did not come 

across as a personal criticism of the poor chap who uttered the fatal word; rather, John was denouncing an 

attitude, a state of mind. 

And I say exemplary because John worked by example, he taught by showing, presenting us with a model of 

how to read, how to think about literature, exploring literature with us, and making us feel that our lessons were 

a joint endeavour. 

I suppose he was Socratic in the true sense, imparting wisdom by never dispensing it. I think we recognised 

his innate fitness and authority for this task; recognised him as one of those rare individuals with pride but no 

vanity, whose company is always a relief. 

For my part, I was dogged by a stammer in my teens ” a horrible thing, stammering, that fills you with fear of 

speaking in class. When we first read a play (something by Arnold Wesker: Chicken Soup with Barley, 

perhaps?), I asked John not to give me a part; or rather, I silently handed him a note before class, expressing 

this desperate wish. He folded the note away, said nothing much, probably harrumphed, and duly gave me a 

part. And I didn’t stammer, ever, with him. 

This sense of joint endeavour was strongest when we studied The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot’s epic of personal 

misery and modern alienation. ‚Doing The Wasteland‛ was a big deal: its rumble was heard at least a term 

ahead, like approaching rapids from a canoe. 

John helped make the poem memorable even though he himself did not like it, even disliked it. There is much 

in Eliot’s poem that speaks eloquently to teen anguish, and John let that communication flourish. 

What I see now is that John was himself too rooted ” in ways that June has reminded us ” to feel much 

sympathy with literary modernism as such. I think he thought it was a rude way to treat the reader. But he 

showed us that it was fine and even proper to be baffled by difficult stuff that wants to be difficult. His face was 

a picture when he finished declaiming Wallace Stevens’s little poem called ‚The Emperor of Ice Cream‛ (which 

begins, as we all know, ‚Call the roller of big cigars, / The muscular one, and bid him whip / in kitchen cups 

concupiscent curds…‛) He looked up and said wearily, ‚Now, what do we make of that?‛ You could hear a 

pin drop. 

When he scoffed at Ezra Pound, though, I felt, for once, that he had short-changed us, and summoned the 

courage to tell him so, one to one, after a lesson. He was instantly sympathetic, and urged me to explain in a 

future lesson what was good about Pound. The invitation looked too much like a challenge, and I didn’t take 

him up. I still wish I had. 

John’s lessons opened doors in the imagination. I don’t have time to go into much detail here, though I wish I 

could. One day he read us D.H. Lawrence’s poem, ‚Piano‛: the one that starts ‚Softly, in the dusk, a woman 

in singing to me; / Taking me back down the vista of years…‛. He wanted to discuss the difference between 

sentimentality and emotion. As hardboiled adolescents, we crowed that this was sentimental stuff. John 


probed: was it, really? After half an hour, we saw the poem quite differently; its story of adult helplessness to 

resist the tug of formative emotion seemed brave, not soppy. 

Another time, John read us Macbeth’s soliloquy when he is steeling himself to murder Banquo. You know the 

lines, where Macbeth says: ‚Light thickens, and the crow / Makes wing to th’ rookie wood….‛ He followed this 

directly with some famous remarks on that passage by the critic William Empson.[1] At that age, we were not 

used to reading critics at all, and Empson made the hair stand up on my neck. I’d had no idea criticism could 

do that, could be like that: so close to its object, so thrilling and evocative. This lesson changed the way I read. 

Martin has just reminded me that John read us lots of Ray Bradbury ” his science fiction stories ” and I 

remember when he read ‚Of This Time, Of That Place‛, an extraordinary story by the critic Lionel Trilling about a 

professor of literature trying to deal with a brilliant but wayward, indeed half-mad pupil. We were covering a lot 

of ground, as you can see. 

Lastly, John’s classes were fun, and I came to see much later that they were fun above all because he was a 

happy man. Teaching was not the sole highest aim in his life, not even in his working life. 

Of course, as his pupils, we did not suspect his great hinterland of musical appreciation and expertise, and he 

never alluded to it. I now think we were the beneficiaries of the balance he achieved between teaching and 

music. The relaxed and collaborative nature of his classes owed much to this. 

When I read his memoirs, I realised that the other enabling condition of that happiness in the classroom was 

his ease with boys and teenagers, because he never stopped being one himself. He was, a psychotherapist 

would say, on good terms with the ‘child within’. 

To visit him in his later years in the house which had been his family home in the 40s was to see the lifelong 

continuity of man and boy that was, I’m sure, a wellspring of his resilience and humour. 

The last time I saw him, not two years ago, with Martin, he gave a very good impression of a zombie lurching 

around his dining room ” he was remembering, no, re-enacting a film that he had seen some sixty-five years 

before. 

Well, time passed, and long after leaving Merchant Taylors, maybe sixteen years after my last class with John, 

it gave me a jolt to hear that voice on the World Service. I was living in Yugoslavia, trying to make sense of a 

war so that I could write journalism about it; and hearing JBS trying to make sense of new recordings was a 

reminder of an earlier life that I had supposed ” in the complete way that is only possible before middle age ” 

was wholly past, beyond thought of recovery. For I felt changed utterly; it seemed incredible that he was so 

much the same. 

That incredulity turned into a determination to tell him what a glorious teacher he had been. This led to lunch in 

Coventry, where I said my piece, in as natural a way as I could manage. We stayed in touch, I sent him my 

books and other things, certainly wanting his admiration; and we corresponded. 

‚It strikes me that you have a taste for complications,‛ he wrote a few years ago. ‚[The Balkans before Italy, 

and Empson before the Balkans.] The fascination of what’s difficult, as Yeats knew. Do I have that taste? I 

don’t like it too easy, that’s for sure, but there are limits.‛ 


The reproachful comedy of that phrase, ‚there are limits‛: was this not the teacher’s voice, thirty years on? 

How good it was to hear, and how glad I was that he wanted to share this warm reflection ” and self-reflection. 

The next time I sent him some writing I was proud of, he replied ‚I have to admit it, your thinking and terms of 

reference [, on Empson certainly but even on Larkin,] leave me way behind. Somebody said that teachers 

existed to be outgrown, and I used to think that was a bit hard: I’m much more willing now to subscribe.‛ 

You can imagine that I read this with mixed emotions. I did not want to think, and don’t think, that I had left him 

behind; I don’t expect ever to think that; but, again, I was glad that he thought of us as connected, and was 

moved ” beyond power of reply, I’m sorry to say ” that he wanted to describe our connection in this way. The 

generosity of that gesture was the teacher’s ultimate gift, wholly in character and beyond compare, as he was. 

Thank you. 

[1] ‚there is a suggestion of witches’ broth, or curdling blood, about thickens, while the vowel sound of light, 

coming next to it, with the movement of stirring treacle, and the cluck of the k-sounds, intensify; a suggestion, 

too, of harsh, limpid echo, and, under careful feet of poachers, an abrupt crackling of sticks.‛ ” From Seven 

Types of Ambiguity. 


____________________________________________________ 

David Andrews 

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John’s Contribution to English Literature. 

Looked at from afar, what John published in the mid to late 1960s 

seems to me now pretty extraordinary. 

Pride of place should certainly go to his Marlowe: a Critical Study, but 

he also wrote an excellent introductory study of Tennyson in 1966. 

This was written for a series called Literature in Perspective, which 

required its authors to be above all ‚lucid‛, and to write without 

‚jargon‛ or ‚pretentiousness‛. John was an obvious choice, and duly 

delivered an excellent account of Tennyson’s oeuvre, packed with 

elegant, judicious, and sometimes surprising, critical readings. He 

says he wrote it ‚with relish‛, and it shows. The TLS judged it to be 

much the best of the first four volumes (which included Margaret 

Drabble on Hardy), describing it as ‚brilliant, informative and admirably 

written.‛ And it remains the only critical text I can recall that contains 

the noun ‚shermozzle‛! 

He also edited four major Elizabethan texts, each with a full, and 

excellent, introduction, bibliography and substantial notes. These 

were Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday (in 1965), Ben Jonson’s 

The Alchemist (1967), both for C.U.P; while for Penguin he edited the Complete Plays of Marlowe in 1969, 

which remained the standard paperback edition until the 1990s, and in 1972, Thomas Nashe’s, The 

Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works, still the edition Amazon advertises. Even if it’s been a while since The 

Shoemaker’s Holiday was a West End smash, this is all significant literature emerging in a comparatively short 

time from a cell in Death Row! 

John’s great gift was to present each freshly, lovingly I would say, with a strong sense of how they worked for 

an Elizabethan audience, and how they might be received by a modern one. In short, he brought this writing 

very much to life. 

The crucible in which this work was formed was his time at Cambridge. In his ‘Memoir’, John writes of his 

teachers, ‚…in so far as I myself have written critical work, whether in literature or music, these Cambridge 

influences have been behind it.‛ He identifies three in particular, starting with his supervisor at Jesus, 

A.P.Rossiter, whom he credits with being ‚the most potent stimulus.‛ Rossiter wrote relatively little, but was a 

brilliant lecturer and a challenging thinker. John refers to his ‚infinitely complicated mind…inexhaustibly rich in 

its resources‛, and Edwyn Crowle, John’s fellow de-mobbed undergraduate, and lifelong friend, writes simply: 

‚We idolized him.‛ His specialist field was Renaissance Drama ” the field in which John was to produce almost 

all of his own work. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that Rossiter was the intellectual spark that led to the 

Marlowe book. 


The idea of John’s first book seems to have been formulated during his teaching practice at King’s, 

Canterbury, Marlowe’s school. It took nearly a decade to research and write, and was effectively finished by 

1961, though only published to coincide with Marlowe’s Quarter-centenary 3 years later. He revised it for 

reprinting in 1970. 

It was for the most part very well received. ‘The Times’ called it ‚creative criticism of the highest quality‛, while 

the academic ‘Review of English Studies’ captured the essence of John’s dramatic insight. ‚Mr Steane’s book 

is invigorating rather as a good performance of the plays would be. He has an ear constantly alert for nuances 

of tone, and an eye to catch the accompanying appropriate gesture.‛ Reading it through chapter by chapter, 

work by work (probably not as is usually done by hard-pressed students in search of illumination for their 

essays on Faustus), one follows John’s unfolding engagement with Marlowe’s writing, and recognizes the 

intensity of that engagement, and its penetrating intelligence. No wonder the TLS felt it to be the product of ‚an 

acute and sensitive mind‛. 

Crucially, John was gifted with an unusually attractive prose style. Here, he acknowledges the second of those 

Cambridge men, the formidable F.L.Lucas. Editor of Webster and writer of an influential book on ‘Style’ (1955), 

Lucas espoused the ‘fine writing’ school of criticism, as John says in the Memoir, and we may pick up an 

echo of this in the obituary in the Jesus College Report for 2011 where we learn that while his tutors always 

found his undergraduate essays ‚delightful to read‛, they were also concerned that his results might suffer 

because they exhibited ‚too much tickle and not enough slap‛! 

He writes, as we all know, with great fluency and elegance and reading John it is strikingly easy to recapture 

his actual speaking voice. That voice could be censorious when he felt the imposition of a constricting theory 

or poor performance, scrupulous and tough-minded when assessing verse, but is overwhelmingly generous in 

spirit. Defending Ovid’s love poetry against a recent critical work that charged the poet with being entertaining 

and witty, but not deeply personal and serious, John writes: ‚…to speak of the limitations of such an enterprise 

seems pompous ” why not take what is offered and be thankful? Personally I believe the best of both worlds 

to be the desirable end, and, noting with some severity the limitations, pass on with cheerfulness to the 

entertainment.‛ 

Sharp and shrewd one-liners are found on almost every page: 

Try: 

“ ‚The last line offers the actor a tone somewhere between pouting child and outraged dowager‛ 

Or: 

“ ‚A picture of the man begins to emerge with the strange, patchy vividness of a crackly phonograph cylinder 

through which we can just hear some great singer….‛ 

Or: 

“ ‚But it is an entertainment none the less, and if, as critics, we look only at the exposure of the enormities and 

miss the fun of the feast, we are missing a good deal in Ben Jonson.‛ 

And the very beautiful: 

“ ‚Gaveston’s first speeches stand out in retrospect, like a butterfly hovering near the blind cave of night‛ 


His longer assessments are equally savvy. Finding The Shoemaker’s Holiday described by one critic as a 

‚jocular back-slapping patriotic piece‛ John was moved to reply: ‚there could hardly be a description less 

designed to whet the appetite of most modern readers, old or young. For they are unlikely to go to literature as 

a kind of substitute for a scout camp-fire.‛ There is here the slight hint of bitter personal experience, rather 

confirmed by a reference in John’s ‘Taylorian’ tribute to Robert Hunter, his predecessor as Head of 

Department. Both men were ‚conscripted‛ into the Scouts at about the same time, and neither found it 

‚particularly congenial‛. As John goes on to say, ‚In fact the only thing that cheered me up at camp-time was 

the sight of poor old Robert with his head in his hands at Camp Fire flinching from a repetition of the guillotine 

yell or ‚Hold him down, ye swazzie wallahs.‛ 

In his preface to the 1970 reprint of ‘Marlowe’, he admitted to regretting some of the modern allusions he 

made, but part of John’s appeal is his accessibility, even when dealing with complex interpretation of text, and 

this is often the consequence of the apparently effortless range of surprising but apt reference he offers to help 

clinch his points. In one passage on the temptation of Faustus he references in quick succession: the Ancient 

Mariner; an irate schoolmaster; Winston Smith (from 1984); a Gaulieter; the Admirable Crichton ” and the Marx 

Brothers! This is never done purely for effect: we learn something about the play even as we smile, because 

we have come to trust John’s judgment. 

The core of his approach to Marlowe is the centrality of the poetry in his reading of the drama ” a child of his 

Cambridge time, with its emphasis on Practical Criticism, yes, but it does so often take us to the heart of the 

play. Thus we come to the third of those Cambridge inspirations, Dr.F.R.Leavis, ‚who … influenced me as he 

did so many generations of Cambridge men‛. By the 1950s, particularly in his lectures, which John attended 

avidly, Leavis was synonymous with the close reading approach to literature that we later find in ‘Marlowe: a 

critical study’. Interestingly, I recently came across the material John used in presenting an introduction to 

Leavis as critic to the Spenser Society in 1962; several pages of representative extracts, all produced on that 

familiar typewriter. Much later, he clearly acknowledged Leavis’ continuing importance to him by naming ‘The 

Grand Tradition’ after Leavis’ famous account of the English novel, ‘The Great Tradition’. 

That he is a subtly responsive reader of Marlowe’s poetry there is no doubt; ‘The Review of English Studies’ 

suggested that ‚The chapter on ‘Hero & Leander’ is possibly the finest criticism this poem has received.‛ But 

he is equally good on the poetry of the plays, on how the dramatic verse creates character, situation and idea, 

as virtually any page of ‘Marlowe: A critical Study’ will demonstrate. 

John was fully aware that the approach he was adopting was under fire from both old and New Historicists, 

and he was duly criticised by some of them ” Harry Levin for one ” for what they saw as a lack of historical 

scholarship. Levin’s charge seems to me largely unfounded: there is an astute historical awareness in John’s 

presentation and analysis of the verse. As he says in his introduction to ‘The Alchemist’: by studying and 

responding to the drama ‚we come to know the London of James and Elizabeth a good deal more intimately 

than we might after working through volumes of history books.‛ 

And, true to his Cambridge English roots, he was defiant in his assertion (strongly stated in the 1970 Preface) 

that he was offering something different ” and important ” by placing Marlowe’s poetry at the forefront of his 

concerns. In his preface to ‘Marlowe: a critical study’ he says that he wanted to offer ‚criticism that has the 

poetry at its centre of interest, looking inwards to the art as something to be apprehended with enjoyment and 

judgment, rather than outwards to the life, times, background and abstracted thought.‛ 

Poetry. Art. Enjoyment. Judgment. That’s a pretty good summary of what lies at the heart of the literary 

achievement of J.B.Steane ” and it will do for me. 


____________________________________________________ 

Brian Rees 

____________________________________________________ 

I must apologise for not addressing you from a well-mannered 

standing position but arthritis has done hard things to these legs, 

on which I used to whisk potential parents around the long 

corridors of that impressive building nearby long years ago. 

My being seated reminds me of the story of King James VI of 

Scotland, who when he was subjected to an endless and fiery 

Calvinist Sermon by a preacher of the John Knox school 

eventually told the man ‚either talk sense or sit down‛. This so 

enraged the Scottish ranter that he declared wildly ‚I tell thee Man; 

I will neither talk sense NOR will I sit down‛. This story illustrates 

also one of the reasons why, when he became King James 1st of 

England, he found those polite and well educated Old Merchant 

Taylor Bishops so wise and congenial. They were men well known 

for threading their middle way between extremes in religion. When 

the King was embroiled in his Anglo-Scottish problems they could, 

for instance, be relied upon to pray for both sides in ‚Ye Calcutta 

Cup‛. Having learned Greek and Latin Literature at Merchant 

Taylors they helped create English Literature through the 

Authorized Version as we reflected upon on its 400th Anniversary 

last year, An achievement shared with Edmund Spenser and ” let 

us be broadminded ” Shakespeare. 

And when English Literature came to overtake Latin and Greek in extent and splendour there had to be English 

Departments in Schools and Universities, then A levels and O levels, all of which in turn brought John to 

Sandy Lodge. Having had experience of several great Schools I can affirm that in Robert Hunter, John Steane 

and Bruce Ritchie, Merchant Taylors had one of the finest English Departments in the country. And John was 

a driving force not only through his teaching, but through the Spenser Society and his wide-ranging play 

productions. 

Through a happy quirk of Fate Juliet and I came to know him more closely in retirement than during his active 

career. Coventry where he retired is not far from our home in Flore. And although John had ‚walked with Kings‛ 

at least with Kings of Opera (Luciano Pavarotti among them ” and Queens of Opera such as Elisabeth 

Schwarzkopf, a great friend) he had not ‚lost the common touch‛. We paid regular visits to one another over 

the years. Juliet and I would drive over to Woodland Avenue and would sit in John’s front room while from the 

” what was obviously not ” a designer kitchen would come the sounds of many bubbling pots and pans, 

scrapings and choppings. As we sat we could look at the volumes of John’s books on the Golden Age of 

Singers and Great Singers of Today etc. and on the table contemplate immense and disordered piles of CDs 

awaiting Reviews for ‚The Gramophone‛ and publications such as ‚Opera Now‛. Then we would move to the 

dining room, always a four course lunch, beneath the portraits of great singers of the past, more CDs on the 


shelves and on the floor, while we reminisced about the School , John did his imitations of Harris Thorning , 

Paul Grundy and others and gave news of the remarkably large numbers of ex-pupils with whom he was in 

touch. Then we would return to the sitting room and be given selections of the latest recordings, and through 

an odd mixture of turntables and needles great voices from the past. These were interspersed with happy 

conversations about the old war-time Carl Rosa Opera Company and Sadlers Wells Opera, remembered 

from our schooldays 

For his part he would visit us by train. His first journey by bus involved his stepping off at the wrong stop so that 

he had traversed almost the entire village before being guided to the correct address. He would take the 

Coventry-Northampton line and alight at a very minor station, Long Buckby, which is way out in the fields at a 

distance from the village which gives it its name. Some time after the train had moved on, there would appear, 

at the top of a steep and rickety stair case the familiar smiling figure, bearing a plastic bag which contained a 

bottle of wine and a carefully chosen CD or DVD as gifts to chime in with our tastes. He wrote a full and 

perspicacious Introduction to a Volume of Juliet’s Poetry. My elder son, after reading John’s comments 

remarked that he now felt he had at last found the confidence to study poetry. 

For a short time we had a lodger, a young man, who, because he felt he lacked confidence took up elocution 

lessons. It happened that he was at home when John paid one of these visits and he produced his set 

homework. Andrew Marvell’s ‚To a Coy Mistress‛. John asked him to read, indeed declaim it which he did, 

bravely but embarrassed, rather in the voice of the BBCs Robert Peston announcing a Devaluation of the 

Pound. John seized the Book and then from his experience of coaching nervous teen-agers on stage, turned 

such lines as ‚amorous birds of prey‛ and the like into an ecstatic rhapsody, a performance much nearer to 

what might have been a quotation from the ‚Erotica Review‛. His Mark Antony in John’s Production of ‚Antony 

and Cleopatra‛ reminded me that he was perhaps a little apprehensive about making passionate love to his 

Cleopatra, a charming importee from Northwood Girls’ College, in front (as he tactfully expressed it) of ‚his 

Headmaster‛ but told by John with a waive of the hand ‚Oh. just close your eyes, put your arms round her 

and she’ll do the rest‛. 

Quite apart from his English teaching, John was a highly professional schoolmaster and was not just a literary 

presence. My predecessor as headmaster, Hugh Elder, had always coached the Third Form Rugby teams. 

Then, alas, came a new Headmaster, who not only had spent his boyhood in a house virtually under the 

shadow of Sunderland Football Ground, but was a little inclined to the view of P.G.Wodehouse who said that 

‚Individuals who indulged in these activities, away from the confines of the Rugby Pitch would be hauled 

before the Bench and given six months without the option‛. 

John nobly took on this coaching assignment, and while I am not sure that he converted many demonstration 

tries, it is certainly true that some Third Form Parents who attended their first Parents’ Evenings would ask for 

Mr Steane, ‚the Rugby Master.‛ 

He helped to run the Scout Troop and as a Housemaster generally affable as he was, he could be as strict as 

any. As is well-known, in the Sixties all Public Schools were subject to all manner of rumours and speculation 

over totally new drug problems. One youth, often in trouble in John’s House had been the subject of some 

accusations and I recall the three of us in my Study; ” - the long winded tale of a group of boys and girls he 

did not know on the railway station, had never known , would never dream of knowing but they had been 

talking about drugs perhaps etc .Whereupon John broke out into a rage, which certainly frightened me ” 

whatever it did to the culprit. He thumped the desk. ‚You should have walked right away, you should have had 

nothing to do with it, you should have gone to the other end of the platform, left the station, jumped on the 


nearest train„„ As a Housemaster I am sure he was very good with the lost sheep; when harm was done, 

he had little sympathy with the black sheep, especially those trying to use bottles of bleach. 

On a different occasion he stood up very decisively against a rather pompous Member of the Merchant 

Taylors’ Court, when we were giving a Master/Governor lunch who said that the problems of juvenile 

delinquency were due to our having had no major wars recently, with the inference that it was rather time we 

had one. 

I must conclude. But there is one story, and I am most grateful to the Old Merchant Taylor who heard John tell 

it in class and handed it on to me. It concerns John’s National Service in the Education Corps, an arm of the 

Military that was not known for its excellence in parade ground drill. At the end of one unhappy drill session the 

sergeant, among many other words, shouted the word ‚Disobedience„‚. John’s literary mind floated away to 

‚Paradise Lost‛ and its opening lines: ‚Of Disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree„whose mortal taste 

brought death in to the world and woe„-‚.‛WHO said that?‛ barked the Sergeant ‚Milton.Sergeant‛ said John. 

‚Milton You’re on a Charge‛ 

Whatever his allegiances to Literature and Music, and a life-time of loyalty to Merchant Taylors’ his family, his 

sister June, brother in law Ralph, and his three nephews who so frequently came up in conversations at 

Woodland Avenue were his principal sources of family life and personal happiness. June and Ralph were able 

to look after him and make his final weeks a time of comfort and quiet peace. We thank them for that time and 

also for helping along with John’s many friends to give us all this opportunity to remember John as a unique 

schoolmaster and an extremely memorable friend. 


____________________________________________________ 

John Karran 

____________________________________________________ 

You have heard this evening about John Steane’s many 

accomplishments: respected teacher and producer of the annual 

school production; author of books on music and literature; much 

respected reviewer for magazines such as Gramophone and 

Opera Now for which he also wrote regular articles; broadcaster 

on what was the Third Programme (later Radio 3) and World 

Service. The list seems endless. 

At John’s sister June’s request, I will try to give you a view of 

John as a person rather than an iconic figure, which he 

undoubtedly was; that of a friend and neighbour for some twenty 

years and a close associate in the production of many of his 

articles and books. 

I’m not sure when I first became aware of John. I can remember 

seeing this somewhat furtive figure shuffling along Woodland 

Avenue, on which we both lived, on his way to the post box. This 

only occurred in vacation time so even Sherlock Holmes would 

have deduced that John was a teacher. This must have been 

shortly before his retirement, because I became aware of his 

presence on a more frequent basis. Even Dr Watson would have 

guessed that John had retired. (John was a great fan of Sherlock 

Holmes, as am I) 

The first time I can remember having a conversation with John was in the garden of one of our local pubs. I 

had noticed this scholarly figure before, writing in a notebook as he enjoyed a glass of what turned out to be 

his favourite beer, draught Bass, usually in the garden, unless it was raining when it was a case of ‘inside if 

wet’ so well remembered by all of us as the instructions for church anniversaries and garden parties. On this 

particular occasion I found myself relegated to the garden, probably in charge of a dog, and approached John, 

introduced myself as a neighbour and there began a wonderful friendship and a productive period in both our 

lives. 

It transpired during our conversation, and elaborated in later ones, that John’s modus operandi was to make 

notes of his next article, or whatever, type it out on an old portable typewriter and send the ‘finished’ product to 

the appropriate publisher. I suggested to John that there were more modern ways of accomplishing this, giving 

him the ability to proof-read and correct his copy before delivery. Those of you who knew John well will 

appreciate the effort required to change John’s habits of a lifetime. Word Processors? We don’t need those, 

surely. But I persevered and we eventually established a routine whereby John would type out his copy, I 

would then scan it onto my computer, put it through an Optical Character Recognition program and then 

correct the misinterpretations on the screen. Because of the age of John’s typewriter and the rather primitive 


OCR software available, this took rather a long time, not to mention the eye-strain involved. There were, 

however, some lighter moments; Sir Thomas Allen always came out as Sir Thomas Alien; this always amused 

John greatly. 

Before moving on to the next stage of the ‘dragging John into the 20th century’ process, let me digress into 

the area of one of John’s most endearing characteristics; his bonhomie, whether he was entertaining, being 

entertained or just sharing lunch. Our sessions producing copy were almost always from lunchtime to late 

afternoon, frequently ending in an evening meal of whatever was in the fridge. Lunch usually involved a filled 

baguette from the local deli and a bottle of red wine. These were working lunches so we thought that took the 

curse off drinking while in charge of a computer! These were some of the most enjoyable times of my life; 

there was usually some music playing, mainly orchestral or chamber. On one occasion I put on a CD of 

Schubert Lieder I had just bought and John said ‚Oh no John, it’s too much like work; play some 

Rachmaninov‛. 

After a particularly trying session of untangling garbled text, I suggested to John that we could simplify the 

process if he bought a simple laptop computer and typed on that rather than on his typewriter. I could then 

copy his output onto a memory stick (which he always referred to as ‘the lighter’) and then onto my computer, 

missing out the scanning process and its associated problems. Well, you can imagine the response; 

‚Computer, why do I need a computer, that typewriter has stood me in good stead for 30 years!‛ or words to 

that effect. Anyway I persevered and one day we went off to the local PC World and John bought the most 

basic computer we could find. From then on our production rate increased dramatically and John’s wish-list of 

books he would like to have published became a reality. We produced Singers of the Century, vols. 2&3; The 

Gramophone and the Voice; a limited edition book commemorating Elisabeth Schwarzkopf’s 90th birthday 

(this had to be reprinted with minor corrections, as her copy had been stolen from her home by a visiting 

American! Who can you trust these days?) And a collection of poems by Ted Greenfield intended for his 80th 

birthday but overshooting somewhat, nevertheless making it a wonderful Christmas present. 

His last published book was his Memoirs. This is in two parts; one mainly devoted to his personal life and one 

to his musical, professional life. It was written at great speed; John would phone me up several times a week 

asking if we could put another chapter to bed. At last it was done, a publisher, Warwick Print agreed to publish 

the book and did a wonderful job. You will see from the posters around the room that it is possible to buy a 

copy from Warwick Print; details on the posters. When John held the first printed copy in his hand he beamed 

a wonderful smile and said ‚John, we did it!‛ He knew at this time that he did not have long to live and the 

publication of his memoirs was a full stop in his life, or at least a semi-colon. There was one more book he 

wanted to produce, but time ran out. It was to be based a long-running series (50 articles) he wrote for Opera 

Now called Aria and the book was to have the same title. But it was not to be and the musical world is the 

poorer for it. 

There is so much more I could say about John and the wonderful friendship I shared with him: visits to 

concerts; organ recitals in Birmingham Town Hall followed by a late lunch in John’s favourite Italian restaurant; 

plays at our local rep, accompanied by a dinner in 2 parts, a before starter and main, and an afterperformance 

sweet, cheese and biscuits. Some memories are still painful and I mention them to illustrate 

John’s strength of character and his indomitable spirit. When his cancer was first diagnosed he asked me to 

go to the hospital with him. The facts of his illness and treatment were explained, which John took very calmly. 

After a course of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, John had an operation and recovered quite quickly, bursting 

with enthusiasm to get back to work. There followed a very productive 5 years but unfortunately the cancer 

returned but this time there was no magic bullet. Again he asked me to go with him to see the consultant 

where it was explained that this time the only treatment that they could offer was palliative. John’s response 

was typical; ‚Well, I am 82‛. On the way home he wanted to stop at a hostelry for a beer and to discuss the 


events of the morning. He was very matter-of-fact about the news he had been given (I felt that it was no great 

surprise to him) and wanted to discuss how he should ‘get his affairs in order’. 

Well, it wasn’t long before he was in hospital where he expressed his wish that he should end his days with 

June and Ralph in ‘Garden Cottage’, in his usual bed overlooking their beautiful garden. My last memory of 

John is talking to him at June and Ralph’s by phone and asking him how he was. His response was ‚John, I’m 

in Paradise‛. He died soon after and I hope that Paradise is where he is. 


____________________________________________________ 

John Wright (1967-74) 

____________________________________________________ 

I am privileged to have known John Steane in the late 60s and early 70s both as an outstanding, inspirational 

English teacher, and as a gifted, astute musician. He typified those long lost qualities of the jovial bachelor 

schoolmaster, living on site and devoting almost every moment of his time to the school, a true Renaissance 

Man. He taught me English when I came to MTS in the Third Form and we soon appreciated why his 

nickname was ‘Mr Pickwick’! Later on he guided me gently through A Level English Literature, expertly 

demystifying T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and making it all very palatable. He did have to come and remove me 

from the Great Hall one day, when I was so busy practising the organ that I hadn’t noticed it was time for his 

English lesson. It really didn’t matter because organ playing was another of JBS’s lifelong interests. The 

distinguished organist Peter Hurford had been a contemporary of his at Jesus College, Cambridge and at MTS 

John played regularly for Prayers, always to a high standard and often choosing a repertoire that allowed his 

ebullient character to shine through. He gave me much support and encouragement when I gained my organ 

scholarship at Cambridge, and I still have my final English report in which he wrote: ‚I hope to hear from him 

again ” on record‛.I was a contemporary with Bob Chilcott (now well known as a composer and choral 

conductor) and Bob composed the incidental music for a school play (Indians by Arthur Kopit), unfortunately 

going down with appendicitis just before the performance. JBS took all this in his stride and the play went 

ahead with all its usual panache. Bob (who is now writing an anthem for the St Paul’s Triennial Service) kept in 

touch with JBS over the years, going to visit him in Coventry on several occasions. 

In my last year at MTS John invited a group of us to form a choir to sing at the marriage of one of his former 

pupils to Carol Whitelaw, daughter of the politician Willie Whitelaw. This took place in the splendid setting of the 

Crypt Chapel in the House of Commons and JBS was on top form, not only playing the organ but also 

composing an anthem specially for the occasion. Memories of the reception afterwards are not so clear, as in 

the company of JBS the alcohol always flowed freely, and several choristers made their way into Westminster 

tube station that day rather the worse for wear! 

In spite of his huge devotion to MTS, John Steane certainly did have a life outside as well, and he was 

regarded as a leading authority on opera and the recording of the human voice. He frequently broadcast on 

Radio 3’s ‘Record Review’ and continued to write for The Gramophone until shortly before his death. His book 

‘The Grand Tradition’ was published during my time at MTS, and some years later I discovered and bought a 

signed copy from an antiquarian bookshop in Arundel. JBS and MTS were inseparable, and for me he 

represented all the positive and enjoyable aspects of my time there. 


____________________________________________________ 

Sandy Macnab (1949-53) 

____________________________________________________ 

John Steane arrived at the school in 1952 as a young English teacher. In the winter term he was thrown - like 

a Christain to the lions - to the tender mercies of Science VI B, to which I had been demoted from the 'A' 

stream. He was naturally apprehensive, (with good reason)as we were an intimidating bunch, but even in those 

early days, he was enthusiastic and inspirational. He always was able to pick out the positive aspects of any 

boy's work. For some inexplicable reason, he was given the nickname 'Yasha'. I don't know why, but I believe 

one of my contemporaries who is still (very much) alive, may be able to explain. During my time with him, he 

immediately recognised that I was on the wrong side. Science, despite the sterling efforts of my various 

mentors, still remained a closed book. I enjoyed reading, writing, acting and long words. One of his reports 

commented on the fact I spent too long wrestling with the true meaning of words and thus tended to lose the 

thread of my arguments. One of my poems about the Bastard Faulconbridge so impressed him that he 

promised to put it in his first book, but I am sure it never got there. After a couple of terms, he told me that I 

should go to Oxford and study English. It was like a revelation to me. I had spent so long in my school career 

doing subjects that did not interest me that I seized on the suggestion with enthusiasm. Alas, poor JBS went 

to the head of the Science side, Mr. Rowbotham, with the suggestion that he should let me change to the 

Modern Side, but I believe he was sent away with a flea in his ear. Despite the fact that Rosie thought I was a 

waste of space, he was not prepared to let any of his charges escape, no matter how useless they were. I did 

not keep contact with JBS after I left, but many of my contemporaries did, and every single one of them had 

nothing but praise for his talents as a master and motivator. 


____________________________________________________ 

Anthony C. Payne (1952-59) 

____________________________________________________ 

Although I was never in his English set and therefore never encountered him in the classroom, I feel I owe John 

Steane, a.k.a. Pickwick, an enormous debt of gratitude, as it was through him that I got into singing. He and 

ECAP (Arnold Pilkington) were among those who organised lunch-time concerts in the Exam Hall, and when I 

was in the Modern Sixth they laid on a programme of German student songs - ‚Es, es, es und es, es ist ein 

harter Schluss‛ etc.: it was clear that the linguists of the Modern Sixth, of whom I was one, should perform 

them! This went down so well that they laid on another programme, this time of Latin church music, and we 

performed these as well, processing round the Hall with ECAP at the front. This led on for me to a part in the 

Chorus of ‚Ruddigore‛, and subsequently to the University Choirs at Nottingham and afterwards Exeter in my 

PGCE year. I then went on to sing in the School Choir at St Bees School, where I taught for 34 years, and 

also sang bass in an a cappella quartet, the ‚Deo Gratias‛ Quartet, formed by four of us in the St Bees 

Common Room. 

John Steane was also a Scoutmaster, and I remember his routes for the First and Second Class hikes, written 

out in neat note form on the back of detention cards! Scouting was possibly not entirely at the top of his list of 

priorities, as he managed to combine it with other things: at one Camp a group of us were practising our 

stalking techniques, trying to reach him from a distant start line, while he sat up in the branches of a tree 

singing some operatic aria while he waited for us, and writing - possibly an opera review. 

I wrote to him some years ago - I cannot remember why - and alluded to Scout Camp, to which he wrote in 

his reply that what had enjoyed least at Camp were the Lats! 

One of my personal highlights from Scout Camp was the song that he and GLJ (Mr Lloyd Jones, known 

illogically as ‚Jock‛ - he was Welsh) wrote each year, poking gentle fun at some of the events and 

personalities at Camp, including, of course, themselves. The chorus went: 

‚GSMs 

Never sleep a wink, 

SMs too. 

ASMs and TLs lie awake at night 

And think about you‛. 

I can also remember hearing him sing from his study window on the floor above the Lun overlooking the Quad 

on one fine summer’s day when all the windows were open. 

His figure could have been described as ‚short and portly‛, and according to local legend, this was because of 

the fact that he Drank Beer! 

He will be much missed. 


____________________________________________________ 

Michael Moxon (1955-60) 

____________________________________________________ 

I was saddened to read of the death of John Steane and much appreciated reading his obituary in The Times. 

My memory was stirred afresh by the notice in the summer edition of Concordia inviting reminiscences. 

I was never taught on a regular basis by John (known by everyone as ‚Pickwick‛ for reasons I cannot now 

remember) but he conducted occasional English lessons for my class no doubt covering staff absences. 

Those lessons were always urbane, witty and interesting and their content usually totally unpredictable. They 

were refreshing and very enjoyable. 

I was much involved in the musical life of the school and it was in that context that I saw a great deal more of 

John and became aware of his love for and knowledge about music which helped me enormously. But a very 

personal memory is of being in Pinner with a few friends (I think in my last year at school) when unexpectedly 

we bumped into John. He immediately suggested that as we were outside a pub (it could have been the Red 

Lion) we should go inside for a drink. Having never been inside a pub before on my own , I was initially rather 

hesitant, but with the others I was swept into the bar where John bought us all a drink. A convivial, amusing 

and entertaining conversation followed not so much between a teacher and pupils as among friends; a very 

happy memory which has remained with me for over fifty years. 


____________________________________________________ 

G.J. Field (1952-60) 

____________________________________________________ 

Anthony Payne and I have been emailing re John Steane. I have happy memories from English lessons. I 

remember also an episode when he was assembly relief organist. As we exited the Great Hall everyone was 

stopped in their tracks by his playing. I stand to be corrected but I recall it might be the Trumpet voluntary. All 

stopped leaving, until the end, when he was given a rousing ovation.I seem to remember there was some sort 

of retribution for the school from Hugh Elder! I also remember from the scouts, that there was a song made up, 

referring to Pickwick, aka JS. to the tune of the Happy Wanderer with our rucksacks on our backs. 


____________________________________________________ 

David Winch (1962”69) 

____________________________________________________ 

From my first day in the Third Form, John ‚Pickwick‛ Steane was our games Master for the entire term, 

initiating us soccer types into the joys of playing a contact sport with a ball that didn't bounce where you 

expected it to, and at the same time gently introducing us to the behaviour and manners expected of pupils at 

that time. 

Later on he was my English teacher, at times despairing of me ever passing 'O' Level English, but I surprised 

him (and "Harry" Hunter) and scraped through with a mark or two to spare. On one occasion, two of the boys 

in our form had bought themselves walkie-talkie radios - the nearest one could get in those days to the 

elementary functionality of a simple mobile phone - and hid one of them in the Master's desk before Pickwick 

came into the form-room. When a mysterious voice came from the desk, the first question JBS asked of it 

was, "What sex are you?" which so convulsed the 'operator' that he gave himself away with his giggles. 

It was around this time that his book on Marlowe was published and I remember going into a bookshop and 

asking if they'd got a copy, just so I could say, "I know the author, you know." Philistine that I was back then, 

the contents failed to grab my attention in any way at all. 

In the last few years of my time at MTS, my involvement with Pickwick was in his role as the producer of the 

School Play, along with Bruce Ritchie on many occasions, and in what would today be termed 'General 

Studies' classes. 

Although I did get as far as the last handful in class elocution competitions once or twice, I was no thespian, 

preferring instead to be part of the lighting team for school plays. If I remember correctly the plays in question 

were 'Once In Prussia' by OMT Ian Sharpe, and Shakespeare's 'Anthony and Cleopatra'. For the latter a 

temporary stage was built in the middle of the Great Hall with a sort of suspended proscenium arch above it, 

and we had to light both sides of this, as well as organising house lights for the whole Great Hall as the ceiling 

mounted illumination was just not in keeping with the mood of this set. 

In the 'general studies' sessions JBS was trying to share with us his love of music but was also willing to 

accept other genres, such as the time he allowed one of the pupils to present an entire period on the music of 

rock group 'Cream'. At one point we were played the same number twice, one recording from early in 

Cream's career and one from their farewell concert. Pickwick soon leapt to the defence of the Cream fan 

when another boy criticised the two tracks for sounding identical, pointing out two or three instances of clear 

musical difference. 

Ah, happy days! 


____________________________________________________ 

Michael Cuthbertson (1961-67) 

____________________________________________________ 

I was very sorry indeed to read of the recent death of John Steane. He was a truly inspirational A Level English 

teacher. Perched slightly uncertainly on a desk at the front of the class, fractionally chaotic but consistently 

enthusiastic, chuckling with a distinctive throatiness, he quite simply made poetry and prose come alive. 

I can still remember his superbly rendered reading of one of Robert Browning's dramatic monologues: "That's 

my last Duchess painted on the wall...": he took us, by verbal and presentational artistry, straight from the 

respectable edge of the London suburbs into the shady and ruthless world of an Italian Renaissance aristocrat. 

And like that aristocrat, John Steane knew exactly where to insert the knife - but into an A Level text rather than 

a dispensable Duchess. I had struggled through one holiday with Henry James' lengthy and, to me at least, 

fairly impenetrable "Portrait of a Lady", one of our A Level set texts that year. At the beginning of the following 

term, John explained that the key to the whole book lay in Chapters 38 (or was it 39?) and 42 - and 

miraculously everything fell into place. 

It was also enormous fun to have parts in John's school plays. I remember just one disagreement with him: he 

respected my position without, as he said, understanding it. However, much more important, he was a 

producer of vitality, energy, passion and utter commitment, giving up endless hours to make it all work. 

He always lost his temper with the whole cast on the Sunday before the final week, telling us we were the 

worst cast he had ever had. I was quite worried until an old hand explained that this happened every year at 

the same time! Maybe, but the tactic was effective - and we all gave it our best shot in that final week. 

Truly inspirational teachers are rare in my experience; John was certainly one, and I am most grateful to him. 


____________________________________________________ 

Charles Watkins 

OMT 1967-1971 Staff 1978-1985 

____________________________________________________ 

‚At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow / Your trumpets, angels and arise, arise / From death, you 

numberless infinities / Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,....‛. The voice still rings in my ears ” not, as 

you might imagine some incongruous memory of a particularly fervent reading in morning prayers or ” even 

more incongruous ” Manor chapel, but John Steane still declaiming Donne’s Divine Meditations in my head, or 

so it seems. In fact, it was in Room 33 and 1971: I was in the Sixth Form and struggling with English A-Level 

which I had elected to do in a year so as to be able to change classes in French, which I was aiming to read at 

university, and for which I was receiving excellent preparation at the hands of Mssrs Ogan and Higginson. 

English, I was assured, was ‚doable in a year‛ ” which indeed it turned out to be, but I was finding Donne 

considerably more opaque than Racine and Molière. JBS was patience itself: I remember eagerly taking 

analyses of the poems and essay plans down for him to look at as he supervised Meadow cricket, sleepily 

stretched out in the sun ” how tedious such an interruption must have been, but he never showed it: despite 

lunch and his enormous erudition he never made the schoolboy feel either importunate or inferior. 

Similarly, his fine musicianship and great sensitivity of ear did not prevent him from coming to the aid of the 

Manor, when in 1969 or so Brian Rees introduced the house music competition. Rugby we could cope with ” 

and did. But a music competition?? Suddenly we were told to report to the Great Hall one Sunday evening (no 

day-boys around...), where we might learn something to our advantage, and there was Pickwick at the piano 

with just the thing ” a kind of Neapolitan sea shanty, ‚Santa Lucia‛: in Italian, which sounded suitably operatic 

and so at any rate middle brow, and a tune as easy to belt out as any rugby song ”, which we did with 

genuine enthusiasm ” almost, but never quite, drowning the fine tenor voice that egged us on: Jerusalem at 

morning assembly in the last week of term was never louder. 

A great teacher as well as performer both as a singer and a pianist but also a wonderful raconteur: he was 

Common Room President at the first Common Room dinner I attended as a member of staff, and all of us who 

were there will remember his account of turning up to school in Coventry after an air-raid (maybe even THE airraid 

” he was capable of making light of anything with an extraordinary deftness of touch) and realizing the 

dreaded gymnasium had taken a direct hit (‚I couldn’t have done it better myself‛): indeed it was clearly a 

favorite story of his as it reappeared in his Memoirs in Opera Now. As a colleague, he was above all enormous 

fun ” since I was a linguist, my boss was Denis Ogan, whose sock-drawer was never incriminated for lost 

agendas for departmental meetings at The Jet in Oxhey, so my memories of John are more social than 

professional. In a common room of colorful characters he was not only one of them, but a master-mimic of all 

the others, and sometimes even of himself, one thought ” but his mimicry was without cruelty, indeed he was 

one of the mildest and most courteous colleagues I have known (indeed I never heard him speak in anger): 

when in 1981 the incumbent very young French assistante found herself living in a bungalow by the 

Headmaster’s house and dining in the Rec Room with the ‚Death Row‛ inmates, John was one of few 

denizens who seemed at all approachable to her. She made a propitiating tarte aux pommes normande one 

night, and John was most appreciative; he still remembered the occasion 30 years on. 

But even when I left the school to settle in France in 1985, John was still to surface very much into my present. 

After a chequered career, I finally found myself in 1998 teaching English literature to first and second year 


undergraduates, for which my qualifications were A-Level and very half-hearted attendance at a First Year 

English course at St. Andrews. Brains of MTS friends and ex-colleagues got picked (David Andrews and 

Andrew Grant particularly) and from further back not only Donne, but Joyce, Shakespeare, Hopkins, Eliot … 

got dusted off ” and that voice surfaced again. As do others from Merchant Taylors’: ‚Ogan, Hull and Steane ” 

my appointments!‛ Hugh Elder would proudly proclaim ” ‚and not the only ones, I feel sure, Hugo‛ my father, 

who taught Modern Languages at Sherborne, would gloomily observe. ‚Artistic temperament, mind you‛, H.E. 

would always add à propos of ‚Steane‛, a monosyllable he had a unique way of pronouncing. Legend has it 

that back in the 1950s, JBS once failed to turn up on the first day of term. He had quite simply forgotten, and 

disarmingly said so: he was immediately forgiven. However, he was apparently even in his young years a 

benchmark for acceptable behavior in colleagues: ‚even STEANE wouldn’t get away with this!‛ was heard 

resonating at least once down that corridor with the three steps leading, scaffold-like, up to that ominous door. 

Knowing him to be ill, and realizing my debt to him, I wrote him a letter out of the blue in the summer of 2010 ” 

that voice had become ever more present as I had been reading the photocopies of Opera Now my operabuff 

brother had been sending me (both my much older brothers had told me about the legendary Steane 

before I joined the school as a boy in 1967). I posted it without expecting any reply and not without hesitation ” 

gushing fan-mail at that time of life must be worse than essay plans in the middle of peaceful Meadow cricket. 

I needn’t have worried: I got the most delightful letter back full of questions that actually seemed to require an 

answer ” an all-too-brief correspondence ensued, which ended with a ring on the doorbell last Christmas: in 

one of the most wintry weeks France has seen in recent years, which completely paralysed postal services, a 

Fedex man had fought his way up our snow-bound road. It was a bound copy of John’s Memoirs with his best 

wishes inscribed. 

Donne will very much remain in my much smaller repertoire. 


____________________________________________________ 

Andrew Fenning (1963-69) 

____________________________________________________ 

I am a member of what I suspect to be a rather large club - OMTs who had their life changed by John Steane. 

I was at the school from 1963 to early 1969 and would have passed reasonably unnoticed through those 5 

1/2 years - until Steane made me love theatre. 

Steane for some reason believed I could act, and - more importantly - encouraged me to get on stage and be 

someone else. All of us need someone to tell us to go beyond the usual, to be the unexpected, to believe in 

and surprise ourselves. Few of us are lucky enough to find that someone. I found John Steane. 

Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra was a huge production for the school - not just because for the first 

time real girls (from Northwood College) were asked to join the cast. It was the set, and the costumes and the 

complexity of the script and making it "suitable" for school. 

The biggest risk of all was having me play Anthony - but it never seemed to bother Steane. 

He believed in me and convinced me I could do it. I suppose it would make for a better story if I could go on to 

say that after Merchant Taylors' I became a renowned, or at least regularly working, actor. No such luck. I did 

spend 3 subsequent years at Cambridge doing fringe theatre and little else. And after that a 30 year career in 

Advertising - commercial theatre if you like. But no household name. 

However, John gave me a remarkable gift: a belief in myself and my ability to surmount any obstacle. I am very 

proud to be able to say I was taught how to live my life by John Steane. 


A tribute to John Steane 

Excellence, integrity and distinction since 1561 For boys 11 – 18

A tribute to John Steane - Merchant Taylors' School

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