Charles Sprawson

Visions of boyhood

Among the many photographs in this comprehensive history is one of a master in a clerical collar.

Among the many photographs in this comprehensive history is one of a master in a clerical collar. He stares at the camera with a startled expression and looks out of place, devoid of the self-assurance of others alongside him. His name is J. W. Coke Norris, and it dawned on me slowly that this was the man on whom Rattigan had based the character of Crocker Harris, the dessicated classics master in The Browning Version, played in the film by Michael Redgrave, a play so close to Rattigan’s heart that he never had to make an alteration or change a line.

Like Crocker Harris, Coke Norris taught only the lower forms Latin and Greek, and was principally in charge of the school timetable. He took early retirement at 40. His occasional sermons would always open with the words: ‘As Thucydides tells us …’

Rattigan himself played in the 1929 Harrow cricket team. The following season, his last, he was mysteriously dropped from the XI, a failure that was to haunt him for the rest of his life. He had opened the batting with Victor Rothschild — an odd couple, though not as exotic as H. Boralessa and M. B. de Souza Girao, who opened for Harrow about 20 years ago, a Sri Lankan and a Portuguese. It may have been Boralessa who, after being caught brilliantly on the boundary at Lords, made a long detour on his way back to the pavilion in order to shake the hand of the Etonian who caught him.

Cricket and classics dominated the school for years. It was founded in 1572 by a local landowner, John Lyon, to provide a classical education for the poor boys of the parish and bring them up as gentlemen. Up until 1874 the statutes declared that all the boys must always talk to each other in Latin, never in English, even when playing games outside.

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