A.O.S.A. 2006 ANNUAL REPORT

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Peter Rushforth, who taught English exceptionally well at The Friends’ School Great Ayton for over 20 years, died while out walking with Friends on the North Yorkshire Moors on Sunday 25th September 2005. He was barely 60 years old and on the cusp of a great literary career. A career both inspired and postponed by his association with The Friends’ School. Inspired because it was the discovery of a correspondence relating to the pre-War placement of refugee Jewish children in Quaker schools that led to his first novel, Kindergarten, published in 1979. This first attempt won Peter the Hawthornden Prize for the best first novel of that year. Postponement followed. During a quarter of a century, while a great story - and four remarkable novels - took shape in Peter’s mind, Literature’s loss was the gain of a generation of students. Among them was my own deeply grateful daughter Robina Rendall, who met this exemplar of good teaching, intellectual rigour and uncommon sense in the classroom. Only when Peter had laid down his craft was he able to employ his gift. Tragically his death will almost certainly deny us two of the four books Peter had in mind (and remarkably, in draft) but two survive him. The first of these, Pinkerton’s Sister was published to critical acclaim last year. The second, A Dead Language, will be published, I trust to even greater acclaim, next Spring.

I was asked to speak at Peter’s funeral on October 3rd. I include the address I gave then in this appreciation. In the least part it explains my connection with Peter. And for the greater part it tries to describe, in some small measure, the sense of loss which Peter’s wretchedly premature death has caused.

I and my family first ran across Peter in Great Ayton. Lately we have seen each other often in Melkridge and Castleton and henceforth we shall be bound to meet often in New York a hundred years ago. It has been our great good fortune to know Peter as a loyal and caring friend, a truly inspirational teacher and as an extraordinary man of letters.

I shall never be sure what was the firm basis of my own friendship with Peter for we seemed to have so little in common. I suspect he may have regarded me as a regular source of mirth and an occasional source of useful information. For my part I could never get over the fact that Peter could be so clever and well informed when his library shared so few titles with my own! What is more Peter would insist on thinking for himself rather than receiving ready-made opinions, freely given, from my shelves! And of course Peter was an infuriatingly inventive and mischievous Master of Mirth.

As a teacher, Peter’s preparation and attention to detail matched his learning and are become the stuff of legend. My daughter Robina’s admirable moral compass, was I believe, in the main, set in Peter’s classes. Through fiction and the theatre Robina would learn to choke with grief and despair at all our shortcomings and worse then bubble with joy and laughter when the sky lightened and hope returned.

Posterity judges writers but the Rendall family have had the foresight to anticipate its verdict. Just as Kindergarten established Peter’s iron grip on authenticity of time and place and atmosphere so the New York trilogy (as I dearly hope it will become) added humour, dark and light by turns, to sparkling scholarship. No better memory serves us on a day of such great sadness than that of sitting at our home in Melkridge with Peter looking on, while I read through passages of his next book. Vivienne sat below us in the kitchen reading a different set of passages. With monotonous frequency, in admiration, I would think but would not say “How does he know that, how does he do that ? “ From below came gales of laughter, enough to blow a house down, which prompted Peter to remark in mock seriousness “ She must be getting the wrong end of the stick.” But there was no mistake.

While we live, we, one and all, have the kindest memories of Peter. When we are gone his unique, compassionate voice will still deserve to be heard.

Colin Rendall

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