Being Rector

Abstract

We have reached the Orwellian year of 1984. This chapter will be autobiographical: it necessitates a change of focus as I was involved in the events described, but also because it is worth looking at a school through the eyes of the person appointed to lead it. But the focus when examining more recent years must be adjusted anyway; ‘contemporary history’ requires a change in the rules of engagement. Most of the people who feature in subsequent chapters (and indeed many in the previous chapters) are still alive – some indeed still at Peterhouse. And again, the closer we move to the school’s golden jubilee, the less certain are the outcomes of events and decisions, and this is particularly the case in Zimbabwe in the early 21st century.

The film director is an autocrat because, in the words of the great French director Francois Truffaut, ‘he is the only one with the whole thing in his mind’. He, too, presides over a guerrilla band, a motley of experts, with even less sense of structure than a group of teachers. His vision of what the film is to become is the one unifying force. He cannot govern by consensus or committee. The headmaster is also the only one who can see how the pieces fit together. Even the best of his colleagues only have a partial vision.

John Rae, Letters from School (London 1987), p 216