downing text 2012_Layout 1 - Downing College - University of ...

DOWNING COLLEGE 2011–2012Letters from David to his Tutor Bill Cuttle provide impressions of his timeas a soldier. But he fortunately saw fit to depict his wartime experiences inanother ‘Paul Grimmer’ novel called Flesh Wounds. It was not published until1966, by which time it seemed appropriate to David that the story should betold. There are those who rate the book as one of the most sensitive and crediblenovels to emerge from the Second World War. As the title suggests, David waswounded early in the Normandy Campaign; he was evacuated back to Britain,but returned to active service in time to be involved in the Ardennes Campaignand the Rhine Crossing. In a later letter to Cuttle from July 1945, Daviddescribed the boredom of ‘policing 434,000 ex-Wehrmacht’, passing the timein ‘serious reading’, but finding it ‘very difficult to reconcile Milton’s prose orElizabethan plays with the conversation at a Regimental dinner.’David returned to Downing in 1945 and graduated in 1947. Leavis’supervision reports noted the improved impression his pupil made on him afterhis return from the War, but observed with apparent disquiet his increasedinvolvement in politics. (David never concealed his early membership of theCommunist Party; like many others, he quit after the Soviet suppression of theHungarian Uprising in 1956). Letters to Cuttle and Leavis requestingtestimonials suggest David’s restlessness in the post-War years. He workedinitially for Edgell Rickword, literary critic and poet of the Great War, asassistant editor of Rickword’s magazine, Our Time. After spells with the Bureauof Current Affairs and the Workers’ Educational Association, he went in 1954as a Tutor to Bassingbourn Village College. This proved the basis for the next,decisive phase of David’s life as teacher and educationalist.The Village College movement was intended by its founder, Henry Morris,to be comprehensive in the broadest sense, providing a focus for the wholeof the local community. Fittingly, David’s experiences at Bassingbournsupplied the material and inspiration for pathbreaking books on the teachingof English, beginning with English for Maturity (1961). In English for the Rejected(1964), he memorably demonstrated that children sidelined as failures (‘DStreamers’) could both benefit from and contribute towards the experience ofEnglish teaching. Along with The Exploring Word (1967) and The Secret Places(1972), these books established David as one of the most influential writers formore than a generation of teachers. Their pupils were directly influencedthrough David’s best-selling anthologies: Thieves and Angels (1962), People andDiamonds (1962) and Iron, Honey, Gold: the uses of verse (1965). It remains acommon experience, on mentioning David’s name to those of a certain age, toreceive the response: ‘You mean the David Holbrook?’ His contribution toteaching and learning is eloquently set out by his pupil Tom Deveson in theGuardian obituary (1.9.11).194