Few teachers these days give their lives completely to one school, but one who did was my former history master John King, who has died aged 84. When he retired from St Bartholomew’s school in Newbury, Berkshire, in 2012, he had taught there for 48 years and had never taken a day off sick. He was awarded the British Empire Medal for his dedication.
John started at the school when it was a boys’ grammar; it later became a co-educational comprehensive, one with a larger sixth form than Eton college at the other end of the county. In the history department he was able to make his subject both vivid and challenging to generations of pupils, among them the future historian Lucy Worsley, and he helped many of us to get into leading universities.
