We called him 'Scruff because he had a large bushy beard and always wore baggy cord trousers, shapeless Harris Tweed jackets and large brown brogues. On the occasions when he wore a gown it appeared to be largely holes held together with bits of black material turned green with age. He wasn't quite like any of the other masters on the staff and though we knew that he had written a book in which it was rumoured that Bishop's appeared none of us then in A division (later Third Form and later still Year Nine) had ever read it. It was only later that we learned that boys in the divisions above us had had bits of Lord of the Flies read to them during its gestation period but the world was not yet ready for it to be an O Level set text.
I think we must have been the lowest form that he taught and our English lessons with him were in (Old) Room M in Bishopgate. He spent much of the lesson pacing the room, hands clasp behind his back throwing profound thoughts about whatever we were studying for us to catch. I cannot recall if we did much written work for him but I do remember being fascinated by his explanations of some of the lines of the poetry or play we were reading. To this day I remember in great detail the Edward Thomas poem Adlestrop and, whilst teaching in Wolverhampton turned off the main road on my way back to the Midlands on one occasion to visit that village in Oxfordshire. Gone was the station which was the subject of the poem but a well-preserved GWR seat on the village green had the lines inscribed upon it. There is no obvious reason why this poem should have made such an impact on one small boy but I do believe it may have had something to do with the way in which he read it to us.
I have a 1938 programme for the Salisbury Musical and Orchestral Society Concert conducted by Sir Adrian Boult in which Mr W.G. Golding's name appears in the list of 'cellists and I do know that his love of music was second only to his love of words and the sea.
Shortly after the publication of this I shall read Adlestrop at the Bishop's School's own commemoration of Sir William Golding. It will give me much pleasure.
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