Canadian, Dr.John Watts, Chair of Pediatric and Neo Natal Ethics at MacMaster University, Hamilton wrote of some delightful memories which particularly pleased me when he refers to a coffee table he made in my room.

Many thanks for your persistence in getting in touch and for your phone call today. I looked at your web-site and was fascinated ., even though I am not the "watts" in the photograph. I was in shell W in 1955 and I think "Larry" Lanham was form master. Actually there were two of us in the class, known in time-honoured fashion as J.L. and S.J.
On the other hand , I do remember you in woodwork and until very recently still had the two layer coffee table that I made under your tutelage. As a schoolboy I was a forgettable and totally unremarkable student, with mediocre marks. I still to this day do not know how or why I was selected to captain the under-14 rugby team, but I remained team captain to my final year. That and the freedom enjoyed in an upper 6th biology class, provided by J.K. Irons were the two major legacies
of the school.
I left the UK to escape the suffocating class system that I found at medical school and as a junior doctor - far worse than anything at Bablake, and my memories of the school are generally good. My mandatory Seaborne story is that in form 4L the previous years o-level results had been so bad that EAOS himself decided to teach English to our class. His disgust at a text-book Bowdlerisation of Shakespeare which defined "mammets" as toys rather than breasts was a pleasure. However I also remember being asked what was meant by a virgin by the great man and like most 13 yr olds of the era being far too repressed to give the correct answer which I knew only too well) could only stammer "a woman who has not had children, sir",
I certainly recognise the fear that his entrance could generate, even as a prefect standing on the stage for morning assembly and opening and closing the red velvet curtain at appropriate moments. I got the impression the fear extended to at least some staff members as well!
I'm a poor correspondent, especially given the current pressures of
being a department chair at McMaster. however please keep me on your list of
recipients.
Thank you again for your persistence.
John Watts

Looking at this I can see the influence of my training in design at Loughborough College. Charles Cook