I was 16 in October 1940 when I first started reading the Manchester Guardian in the library of North Manchester municipal high school. My introduction to the paper was the inadvertent consequence of a decision made by the dour and strict Scottish headmaster, James Crawford Burnett, who finally agreed to allow sixth-form pupils unsupervised use of the library for private study. Otherwise this very elderly correspondent might not have become a daily reader of your paper. On leaving school I entered Sheffield University to read chemistry and in late 1944 emerged with a modest degree. After service in the Royal Navy as an instructor officer, followed by some three years industrial research, I embarked upon a full-time teaching career.
I have taught chemistry and occasionally physics in just about every type of secondary school at all levels. Most of my appointments were at schools in rock-solid Lancashire towns such as Accrington, Oldham and Ashton-under-Lyne. After retirement I held part-time lecturing posts in FE colleges.
Since my late eighties I have given some 40 talks with experiments on scientific topics and great 20th century scientists throughout the Greater Manchester region. At the age of 91, I am still engaged in this activity, addressing clubs and groups of senior citizens. I donate my fees/expenses to medical charities and local hospices. I attend extramural classes on history, politics and current affairs. They reinforce my radical leftwing outlook, first installed when I came across my father’s volumes of Gollancz’s Left Book Club of the 1930s. Sometimes your paper’s editorials, along with Polly Toynbee’s articles, help to maintain the flame… not always so, but thank you.
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