It was late in a long career teaching in an international school in the western United States when a colleague introduced me to the Guardian Weekly. He had spent years teaching in Edinburgh, and brought his subscription to the GW with him.
At first I suspected a British affectation; he was also almost alone among the male faculty in insisting on a coat and tie. However, when he lent me several articles he guessed would interest me, I realised that this compact weekly, remarkably free of advertisements, satisfied a need that had not been well-served in my reading. The writing, research and analyses were consistently at a very high level, and the breadth of coverage of the world was unique among the weeklies I had sampled. I soon realised that in my teaching of social and cultural anthropology, the Guardian Weekly would be invaluable in raising issues concerning social and cultural change, especially the processes of globalisation.
Our school consistently served students from over 75 nations, and I soon found the paper something to rely on. The bulletin boards outside my classroom gradually filled with clippings from the Guardian relating to our course work.
Affectation, indeed! While I am now retired from teaching, the Guardian Weekly never ceases to feed my appetite for sane and urbane coverage of a bewildering world.
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