Jonathan Clegg1 March 1930 - 18 January 2006 Jonny was Headmaster of Arnold House from 1977 to 1994, and was loved by pupils and staff alike. On retiring from Arnold House, he founded the Phoenix Nursery School, which he and his wife, Gillie, ran until 2003. He died peacefully in hospital on Wednesday 18 January. A public memorial service was held on Monday 6 February at St John's Wood Parish Church with a reception at Arnold House. The church was packed with around 700 people for what was a truly fitting service. Order of Service -+-+-+-+-+-+- You can shed tears that he is gone
You cam close your eyes and pray that he'll come back
Your heart can be empty because you can't see him
You can turn your back on tomorrow and life yesterday
You can remember him and only that he's gone
You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back,
-+-+-+-+-+-+- Family Tribute - Phil Clegg It is a wonderful tribute in its own right that so many of you have come along today to join us in celebrating my father’s life… and what a life! 75 years fully lived, an innings extremely well played or, perhaps more appropriately, a stunning match where he never gave less than 110%. As you all well know Jonny Clegg was a legendary headmaster for Holmwood, Arnold House and The Phoenix. He was also a wonderful husband, an inspirational father, a faithful and supportive brother, a loving and giving father-in-law and a very special Grandpa Jonny. At Holmwood he was ‘Super Sporting Dad’ with his blue tracksuit and whistle hanging behind the bathroom door always ready for use at any time of day or night. His energy knew no bounds – taking early morning swims, then afternoon swims and finally, just in case anyone wasn’t completely exhausted, evening swims. However, for all the laughter and energy he still had to do the hard bit of parenting: from his creative stories featuring the magical bunny Hoppety, Hoppety to get Sam off to sleep, to sitting for two hours with T in the dining room because she would not eat her blancmange (a clash of wills that would have made Kasparov vs Karpov look like a comedy routine). Holidays were spent in Cartmel, Daddy using his very own mechanism for picking the winner at the Cartmel races, and Scotland, where he imbued a love of wildlife in me that lives on today. With a terrible three under my Ma and Pa turning into a seismic six when Daddy married Gilly, you can imagine the liveliness of our household. When not being stressed by one of six children, one dog, one cat, one hamster, from two to six rabbits and a whole host of tropical fish, his joy of life filled what little space was left in the house. Daddy and Gilly operated a rotation system Jose Mourinho would have been proud of: kids came and went, sometimes the odd one even lived there, but all arrived eagerly and left looking forward to the next visit. Daddy held an open door, heart and, when necessary, bottle of wine to one and all. He was the father, who when Gilly was away, took Sam out to Panzer to search for Northern delicacies such as tripe and onion or pickled anything. After all ‘you can take a man out of the North, but not the North out of the man’. He was the father who couldn’t speak for the rest of the day after an early morning 10 minute driving lesson with T. He was the father who retrieved Mark’s thrown golf clubs in the father and son golf competition at Formby – every year. He was the father who took Shaun up to his old Oxford college – Brasenose – to meet his old tutors. The rumour that Shaun ended up in Cambridge because the tutors were terrified what a Jonny Clegg son may do to their wine cellar is completely unfounded. He was the father, who under Gilly’s instruction, regularly took Sarah into the sitting room for a telling off after she was naughty (which was quite often!). She came out suitably upset a few minutes later - little did Gilly know that Daddy had, in fact, been lovely but only on the condition Sarah looked as if she had had a stern ticking off on exit. He was the rock, but with a soft centre who would cry at any movie’s happy ending. He was the love that ensured no battle ever turned into a war. He was the strength that pulled us together. He never commented adversely on his kids’ current boyfriend or girlfriend (unlike the rest of us who could make Heat and OK look mild-mannered!). When we did eventually find ‘the one’, his welcoming into the family of Ian, Mittu, Fleur, Amber and Catherine was unreserved – I know he always looked on his sons and daughters-in-law with immense pride (whilst quietly not quite understanding what they saw in any of us!). The arrival of the grandchildren: Olivia, Miranda, Thomas and Alexandra caused him immense happiness – I will never forget the mutual joy in both Daddy’s and Olivia’s eyes as she sat on his lap and he read her stories. Of Daddy’s teaching life Rid will speak more shortly but it is only down to the Clegg stubborn streak that he joined the profession at all. When he decided to leave K Shoes, where he’d started out making the shoes themselves, and decided to join the teaching profession his father didn’t approve. However through several arguments Daddy, with brother Jeremy’s support, stuck to his guns displaying an admirable level of conviction to his vocation. Soon after, he was on the Holmwood staff. I know his father later took great pride in Daddy’s achievements and no doubt he will be sitting alongside him wherever he is (with George Best and a large gin on the other side) looking down on us with delight. Sadly many of us never saw the ‘great footballer Clegg’ in his prime but as a pacey winger with skill he was the Giggs of his day. He had his trial at Man U, was offered terms at Wolves, played in front of a 100,000 for Pegasus but, showing his natural financial acumen, chose instead to teach. He was a superb amateur golfer and a pretty handy cricketer also. I’m not quite sure how many blues he racked up but probably even more than the number of marks gained in his Classics degree exam! His love of sport formed part of his philosophy that education should encompass all aspects of life – from sport to the three C’s: Compassion, Courtesy and Kindness (yes, I know) in addition to the more traditional curriculum material. Politicians and current educationalists take note: any child (or parent!) who went through Clegg’s system would never need an ASBO. The only league table Daddy cared about it was the one with Manchester United at the top of it! So, finally, I’d like to take you back in time: picture, if you will, the scene. You and I are standing outside the Headmaster’s office. (I can already sense most of you sitting a little straighter and tightening your ties!) You go in and come out shortly afterwards with a handful of sweets – he never checks that you’ve only taken one. You wish me luck. As I go in I wish Mrs Barclay had never sent me here to recite my poem. More importantly I hope that he won’t notice I’ve copied a couple of the verses – after all, whoever’s heard of Rudyard Kipling? I arrive in front of his desk and look up. His half moon specs are, as ever, halfway down his nose and he is looking over them at me. He smiles encouragingly and I sense the kindness of this wise old man. I open my exercise book and read my [cough] poem: 'If' If you can keep your head when all about you
If you can listen whilst a 5-year-old has his say,
If you can put fashion-sense aside
If you can say that Kindness starts with a ‘C’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
He looks at me, smiles and says “Well done, what a wonderful poem”. He is not the sort of man to upset me by telling me ‘If’ is his favourite poem. He offers the jar, I grab a handful (he knows, but says nothing). As I leave his office I turn one last time to say thank you. We look at each other, smile and say goodbye. -+-+-+-+-+-+- Hymn - Love Divine -+-+-+-+-+-+- Reading A quotation attributed to Robert Louis Stephenson
He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much;
-+-+-+-+-+-+- Address - Rhidian Llewellyn I feel it is a great honour as well as an awesome responsibility to have been asked by Gillie to say something about Johnny – for 44 years a great headmaster – to those of his family and friends who have come here to celebrate his life. There are others whose memories of Johnny go back a lot further – to Shrewsbury, National Service, Brasenose and Holmwood. The current Provost of Eton, for example, whom Johnny took to his first race meeting. And here is the late Sir Robin Day at Arnold House Speech Day in 1990: “I congratulate the Headmaster on his leadership and guidance, which has been as firm and wise and far-sighted as ever, or so he tells me.” We are fortunate if in the course of our lives we come to know more than a very few men or women of the highest human nature: furnished with integrity, courage, humour and compassion. Of these rare people, Johnny Clegg was one. Looking back it took an extraordinary co-incidence for us to have met. It was August 1980 when I answered an advertisement in The Guardian for a teacher of middle-school Latin and French at Arnold House. What he was doing advertising in The Guardian I cannot think: perhaps he felt some residual loyalty to its Manchester roots. I had an O Level in Latin and an A Level in French. So what I was doing answering such an advertisement I cannot think. For that matter, what on earth was I doing reading The Guardian? It soon transpired, however, that he was really looking for someone to take the Football and the Cricket. Well, that was half good: I could at least answer to the description of flannelled fool though I had never donned a pair of shiny shorts in my life. “Are you interested in football?” he asked. “I watch Match of the Day”, I replied. Little did I know that I was talking to the legendary footballer who sped down the wing in his plimsolls at Shrewsbury School, won a soccer blue in his second year at Oxford and was a trialist for his beloved Man U. He then took me to the playground where strategically placed were a bat and a ball: “You bat and I’ll bowl”. And that was my interview. Fortunately, there were no questions about Latin or French and we promptly sealed the deal over pizza and the first of many gin and tonics at The Rossetti. It was as well to have verbal confirmation as my letter of appointment was written in his own hand. Thus began a 25-year friendship. Those years at Arnold House in the early 80s were the last of a golden age in which Johnny taught us to take school mastering, though not ourselves, seriously; an age before a combination of exorbitant fees and government legislation conspired to make a once enviable lifestyle less fun. I cannot imagine Johnny’s drawers stuffed full of risk assessments. In fact the only thing I can remember seeing in Johnny’s drawers was the world’s largest collection of unpaid parking tickets. And with Johnny at the helm what fun it was. Happy days at Briardale Gardens, apart from the odd pet-burying ceremony where tears would roll uncontrollably down his cheeks. Johnny and Gillie created such a happy house for Sam, Tamsin, Philip, Mark, Shaun and Sarah. It was not, however, the most organized. I vividly recall having to stay the night after a particularly good party and being given Philip’s bed. Where poor Philip was relegated to I have no idea. At six o’clock in the morning in came the 15-year old Tamsin, about to leave for a school trip to Moscow, jumped into bed with me and gave me a huge kiss. Today, I would be put on some terrible list at the DfES… or perhaps not. Johnny was always at heart a boarding school man and at Arnold House he achieved nothing short of a cultural revolution: more competition on the games field, less competition among the children…. not to mention their parents. “There is nothing worse than blue funk on the games field”, he told me; yet this did not extend to the boxing ring at Arnold House, where he would insist on being timekeeper… and where 10 second rounds were not unusual. He loved Saturday morning school for the Common Entrance candidates, preferably with a sporting fixture in the afternoon. We played Heatherdown once and Kendal Aitken, a wizard on the left wing, rang me up on the Friday night regretting that he couldn’t play because he was going to a party. Johnny was unfazed; he slipped in his stepson Mark instead. The fact that he was on exeat from The Dragon School at the time mattered not a jot. And then there was a memorable weekend in Wales. By then I was Head of History and the weekend was ostensibly a History trip to study castles. We borrowed The Hall’s minibus – those were the days: The Hall always was a bit more progressive than Arnold House – with a dire warning from Paddy Heazell that if the light came on the dashboard we were driving too fast. Johnny and I proceeded to have a competition to see who could illuminate the dashboard for the greatest length of time. We began our tour at The Welsh Folk Museum at St. Fagan’s. Our guide was the Chief Education Officer for Wales no less and over lunch he said to Russell Burns, aged 12, “Now, what would you do if you inherited a castle?” “I’d sell it”, Russell replied without a moment’s hesitation. Johnny was still weeping with laughter when recounting the tale to his friend and fellow Old Salopian, Henry Gethyn Lewis, over a nightcap that evening. I even became his chauffeur for a while… for reasons lost in the mists of time. We nearly fell out once. It was the final day of term. The telephone rang in the Common Room. It was JC: “I hear you are going to impersonate me at tonight’s Entertainment.” I said something lame about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. “Well, all I can say”, he replied, “it had better be funny.” The truth is I impersonated him because I aspired to be him. And, together with Mary Kinnear and others, he put us on the right path. “You must go to The Dragon School which, “in my humble opinion” – a characteristically Johnny phrase – “is the finest preparatory school in the world.” And with mentors such as Johnny and Keith Ingram no man would have any excuse to be a total failure. And when I became a headmaster he wrote: “As someone who has seen most of the absurdities that can befall a Headmaster, please remember that I am only at the end of a telephone.” And when I did call him, I could always be assured of wise words and sound judgement. Only when it came to the subject of his beloved Man U was my belief in the infallibility of his judgement suspended. The morning after Eric Cantona’s notorious flying vertical kick aimed at a fan in the crowd at Crystal Palace, Stephen Brook telephoned Cleggie at The Phoenix and expected even Johnny to concede that Cantona had been a naughty boy. “It may just be me”, Johnny reflected, “but I could have sworn that he slipped.” Johnny saw the best in everyone. I recall an interview with a prospective parent at Papplewick, Mike Bussey. He was looking at a fifth possible prep school for his son Thomas. “And tell me about your background, Mr Llewellyn”. “I started out under Johnny Clegg at Arnold House.” “But he was my headmaster at Holmwood. I won’t be needing a tour of the school. If you’re a protégé of Johnny Clegg, that’s good enough for me.” When I told Johnny this, he said: “Mike Bussey was the nicest boy I ever taught.” Knowing Johnny, I should imagine hundreds of his pupils qualified for that particular accolade. A Schoolmaster for fifty years, Johnny knew what the job was about. It’s about, and can only be about, the children we looked after, the children we served. And he looked after his staff as he looked after his pupils: with those legendary 5 C’s: Compassion, Courtesy, Care, Consideration and Kindness. How then did he teach these virtues? Only partly by homily (his Phoenix newsletters contain many a classic Cleggism), never by lecture, least of all by sermon. The simplest and most compelling answer was, by living them. He never cared for meetings much, least of all Governors’ meetings and you were wise to avoid him the week leading up to them. Johnny was the most trusting of men. And the Phoenix arouse from the ashes of an earlier attempt to establish a school which sadly ended in litigation. Brook Martin acted on behalf of the Cleggs and a senior barrister was instructed to represent them. When he saw how trusting they had been in signing anything put in front of them he described them as “a danger to shipping”. When he met Cleggie Counsel was impressed to learn that he was a Brasenose man and he asked him what he had read at Oxford. To Counsel’s astonishment Johnny replied, “jurisprudence”. And who other than Johnny could make a cup of tea for a man in the process of robbing the Phoenix of its computers? When the Phoenix was established Johnny continued his practice at Arnold House of pupil oversubscription. He found it so hard to say ‘no’. Following threats of mass walk-outs by the staff and a severe ticking-off from Gillie, Richard Harrington suggested that Johnny should operate a star system. The best applicants should be given 3 stars, average applicants 2 and non-starters 1. Johnny thought that this was “an awfully good idea and eminently sensible”. When it came to the next intake the usual chaos prevailed with Johnny frightened to turn up on the first day of the September term for fear of being lynched. Richard asked Johnny if he has been operating the star system. Johnny assured him that he had. Richard asked to see the system with his own eyes. To Richard’s astonishment, each and every applicant had been given 3 stars. For as long as we ourselves live, holding these memories in common, Johnny lives. To Gillie – a very special wife for 29 years, Sam and Ian, Tamsin and Mittu, Philip and Fleur, Mark and Amber, Shaun and Catherine, and Sarah, to his grandchildren Olivia, Miranda, Thomas and Alexandra, to his brother Jeremy, to his pupils and his protégés, and all his countless friends, to us his memory is his monument and his death is swallowed up in thankfulness for his life. One final thought. Johnny appointed a formidable staff at Arnold House in the late 1970s early 1980s: Gill Stern, Jane Scott, Kathy Adams, Ken Stobbs, Annie O’Donnell and Leslie Ralphs among others were recruited to join the estimable Roddy Williams whom Johnny had inherited from John Pepys. At the end of term entertainment he had us all “on his little list..and none of us would be missed… and none of us would be missed.” In truth we were all missed. Johnny was an emotional man who disliked goodbyes. And if this is goodbye to you my friend and there is no tomorrow as some say, still will your spirit cheer us to the end and we’ll all be together come what may. -+-+-+-+-+-+- Hymn - The Lord's My Shepherd -+-+-+-+-+-+- Thanks giving prayers -+-+-+-+-+-+- Nunc Dimitis The Chamber Choir of Arnold House School
-+-+-+-+-+-+- Hymn - Jerusalem -+-+-+-+-+-+- Anthem The Chamber Choir of Arnold House School
-+-+-+-+-+-+- Blessing The Reverend Gregory Platten -+-+-+-+-+-+- Organ Music March number 2 from "Pomp and Circumstance" (E Elgar) -+-+-+-+-+-+- |