In 1993 my friend Tony Aylwin, a teacher and storyteller, founded Storytelling in Hope, a club based in Eltham, south-east London, which he ran for 20 years and which continues to this day.
Tony, who has died aged 83, believed that telling stories from the past would create a better future. Thanks to him, everyone learned a huge amount about world mythology and heard the best old stories delivered by the best performers.
He once told me: “I’ve found a good story. It’s about the wise old man and the loon – that’s a waterfowl. Time and again, the loon would go outside and call into the empty darkness. Then she would return to the fire. At last the old man asked: ‘Why do you keep calling into the dark?’ The loon replied: ‘It’s not for my sake I call. There are spirits lost out there and there is nowhere for them to live.’ The old man said: ‘I’ll make a place for them to live. I’ll make stories.’”
Always playful, Tony added: “I thought you and I could tell it together. I could be the old man and you could be the loon.”
Born in Farnham, Surrey, he was the youngest of four children of the architect Guy Aylwin and his wife, Connie (nee Crook). Tony went to Farnham grammar school, where he excelled at cricket; he was a good slow bowler and famous for his googlies. He played tennis from the age of 14 to the end of his life, with a fast serve that could be returned by very few people.
After studying for an arts degree at Nottingham University in the early 1950s, and a year at Carnegie College of Physical Education (now part of City of Leeds Training College), he taught sports, and later English, at Swanage grammar school, in Dorset, where he met Mimi Heitz, whom he married in 1963. Together they moved to London, and Tony taught at Northbrook school and then the College of St Mark and St John until its relocation to Plymouth in the early 70s.
From 1972 until 1995 he lectured in education, including storytelling, at Avery Hill College, which became part of Greenwich University. I was one of his students there on an evening diploma course in the teaching of reading and writing to primary teachers. Around the time of his retirement, he gathered a community of storytellers and founded Storytelling in Hope, which began meeting regularly in the Bob Hope theatre, Eltham.
Tony had many qualities, including wisdom, kindness, insight and dogged determination. He was self-effacing, but willing to stand up for the things in which he believed.
He is survived by Mimi, their children, Anne and Thomas, and grandson, Joshua.
