In 1962 I was in my last year at the Perse school, Cambridge, trying inadequately to get into university to study classics, when Eddie O’Hara came to teach there, his first job. His Liverpudlian accent and his love of rock’n’roll were exciting and exotic, but more important for me was his ability to help us change our attitudes to learning and to surprise us by respecting us. He made the difference. I still quote his immaculate (and rhyming) Latin translations of lines from hit songs of the day such as “Only ever has to give me/Love forever and forever” – Nil habet quod mihi det quam/Caritatem sempiternam – from She’s a Woman by the Beatles.
