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A lifetime<br />
dedicated to<br />
<strong>Bishops</strong><br />
Paul Dobson looks back fondly on<br />
the life of the legendary Tim Hamilton-<br />
Smith, a friend and colleague for more<br />
than 50 years.<br />
Tim and Carolyn<br />
THE WINDSOR CASTLE<br />
steamed into Cape Town on<br />
27 December 1967, onboard two<br />
young people from Oxford, five<br />
months married – Tim Hamilton-<br />
Smith and his wife Carolyn, who<br />
had had her 21st birthday a day<br />
out from Southampton.<br />
The ship docked and down on<br />
the wharf there was Vivienne<br />
Mallett who, after all the<br />
formalities were done, took them<br />
home to the principal’s house at<br />
<strong>Bishops</strong>, into an energetic family<br />
that included four children and<br />
some dogs.<br />
Tim and Carolyn had come<br />
home. <strong>Bishops</strong> was much more<br />
to Tim than his 41 years of<br />
teaching at the school. It was<br />
more than his achievements<br />
– head of the geography<br />
department after Denis Hunt,<br />
housemaster of Founders for 12<br />
years, vice-principal for five<br />
years till he retired in 2007, after<br />
which he became the creative<br />
OD Secretary for six years. It was<br />
home, the home of his being, the<br />
delight of his soul.<br />
He genuinely did not<br />
understand a comment such as:<br />
“I’m looking forward to the<br />
holidays.” Tim would say: “Why?<br />
Don’t you like your job?”<br />
He cared for the place,<br />
spending hours on the<br />
woodwork in Founders and on<br />
the organ in the Brooke Chapel.<br />
The saying goes that those<br />
who can, do; those who can’t,<br />
teach. Tim could do many things.<br />
He coached and played rugby,<br />
cricket, and badminton, played<br />
golf off a single handicap, played<br />
nimble squash and, not often<br />
known, played the trumpet. He<br />
started the Geographical Society<br />
and was the founder of the<br />
<strong>Bishops</strong> Society and its first<br />
director. He was also graduate of<br />
the Silwood Cookery School and<br />
specialized in curries.<br />
Like Apollo, he was a man of<br />
many parts, a man of thought<br />
and a man of action, but with a<br />
relaxed way of going about<br />
things, seeming to do nothing,<br />
and, unlike Apollo, he had a<br />
great sense of humour. On the<br />
Windsor Castle, on Carolyn’s<br />
21st birthday, Tim went to the<br />
purser and said: “Could you<br />
do something for my wife’s<br />
21st birthday – at the least<br />
possible expense?”<br />
Tim joined in in staff<br />
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