Frank Miles, the teacher who changed lives

I was on a school trip to America, staying with a terribly kind couple in a Boston suburb for a week (he was a postman) with a fellow pupil when, one night, our hostess, serving us the biggest steaks I had ever seen, said she hoped they weren’t too rare for us. I heard myself reply, “On the contrary -  I’m sure this will satisfy our atavistic predilections.” Obviously, they looked mystified, and I hastily added, “It’s just the way I like it.”

Now, why would a 17 year old say anything so bizarre, without consciously intending to impress, confuse or irritate? (Apart from being a pompous, insensitive prat, of course). The answer is “Frank Miles”. 

I was looking at clips from the film, Goodbye Mr. Chips for my previous post, when it struck me that I’d only mentioned my old English teacher once during my year of blogging, and then only in passing – and not even by name.  I’ve written about my strange lack of feeling for the academic institutions which did so much for me – but that certainly isn’t my attitude to Frank Miles, who civilsed many young dolts at KCS in the 1960s and 1970s. (I’m not sure exactly when he retired to the country – in fact I’m ashamed to admit I don’t know whether he’s still alive: he must be a ripe old age if he is! )

I was writing something for my old college magazine about what Cambridge had ever done for me a while back, and, wondering how people went about these things, I did some digging online and came up with this from Country Life Editor-at-Large, Clive Aslet: 

“I went to Peterhouse because it was ordained by a charismatic English teacher at King’s College School, Wimbledon. Frank Miles treated us like adults, to the extent of lending one of his pupils his car. He said ‘You must go to Peterhouse because you want to study History of Art.’ …I did English for my first two years. I was completely hopeless. Having had this incredibly inspiring English teacher at school, I found myself cast adrift in the English Faculty without a rudder.” 

I entered Frank Miles’s English class at 13, and he remained my main English teacher until the end of Scholarship term four and a half years later, by which stage I’d managed – quite miraculously - to get a place at Cambridge.

There are few things I’m certain of – I generally avoid “what if” scenarios, given the utterly contingent nature of existence – but I do know that if Frank hadn’t been my teacher, I would never have got into Cambridge. (Or even Oxford, which I would have preferred to attend, as I don’t like light blue.) I suspect many others feel the same way about whichever academic institution they went on to after having their sensibilities expertly rewired by this pedagogical Svengali. 

So how did he manage to get me in? (To this day, I genuinely don’t feel it had much to do with me.) I flatter myself that he must have seen a glimmer of potential in me (not sure how), and, after that, it seems to have been largely a matter of him simply willing me into the damned place. Just before “O” levels, I told him I was intending to do English, History and Art at “A” level. We had a long discussion about my choices. 

Well, no, actually, the whole discussion consisted of the following exchange:

“No, you will not do Art – you will do French.” 

“But I’m not very good at French.”

“You will do French.”

“Why?”

“Because in order to go to Cambridge, you must have a language. You will do French.”

First I’d heard of it!

Part of me still resents having to spend two years doing a subject I loathed, with an amiable if useless teacher whose personal life was spiraling out of control due to alcoholism, rather than Art, which I was keen on. Frank’s tactics almost failed in any case: I only managed an “E” (one very good Peterhouse-bound friend in my set actually failed, and didn’t go to University at all as a result – there but for one or two accents in the right place…). But somehow Frank’s will prevailed, and I was offered a place to do English. (To this day, I remember opening the offer letter – like the fathers in “The Whitsun Weddings”, I had “never known/success so huge and wholly farcical”.)

For the last two and a half years, Kings was more like the Frank Miles Finishing School for Clueless Young Oafs. I learned how to drink in a civilised fashion at gatherings in Frank’s flat (it took a while – I vomited red wine all over my bedroom carpet after the first do). I was taught to maintain academic standards (“Gronmark, that was the worst essay I have ever read by a Sixth Former”). I was taught the importance of personal grooming when a hirsute friend, sporting a weekend’s beard growth was ordered to go home immediately and shave. I learned not to be overly matey with Teach when a class-mate who had written “21 days to D-Day” three weeks before some exam or other at the bottom of an essay was asked, witheringly, “Is this supposed to be funny?” And I almost chewed through my cheek trying not to laugh at double entendres in poems – the very thought of Frank’s likely reaction to smutty sniggers still turns my bowels to liquid.

But, most important of all, I learned three key life lessons. First, that when someone who knows stuff is sharing their knowledge with you, you bloody well shut up and listen. Second, that the opinions formed by immature minds mustn’t be crushed – but, at the same time, mustn’t be accorded a level of respect they don’t deserve. (Frank didn’t really treat us like adults – he treated us like clever boys in need of firm intellectual guidance.) Third, literature – in fact, all forms of art – matter. Enormously.    

My fondest memories of Frank don’t involve the classroom. I remember what an incongruous figure he cut when refereeing Rugby matches (he thought the bullet-headed PE instructor in the film Kes was the funniest thing he’d ever seen). There was the time several of us were treated to a lunch of beer and pork-chops in a pub garden one sunny day on the way to Cambridge in Frank’s Rover for our initial interviews. Him phoning me up to invite me round for a celebratory dinner on the day I heard I’d got in – I was touched by how excited and pleased he was at my (his?) triumph. How he did that silent, breathy laugh when he told us that Christ’s Senior Tutor had written a book entitled Henry James: Literature of the Heart (as far as we could tell, Frank was a fundamentalist Leavisite). And, many years’ later, going round to his flat in Gothic Lodge (which, coincidentally, he’d taken over from my mother when she moved into London) for another dinner after I’d sent him my third novel, which was dedicated to him. 

About three months before I was due to go up, I panicked about my choice of subject. I think I had an inkling of what Clive Aslet – and, I suspect, many others - were to discover: that studying literature without Frank just wouldn’t be the same. (A bizarre interview with my college’s Head of English in a room so bereft of light it was like holding a conversation with a disembodied entity had given me a glimpse of what the future might hold.) I switched to Philosophy.

We speculated madly about Frank’s life, of course (he was not the confiding sort). Why wasn’t he married? Had he been married and divorced? Was he gay? Had he initially been a weak, ineffectual teacher whom a nervous breakdown had turned into a superb one? Now, I’m pleased we never found out – none of our business, in any case. All we really need to know is that our inner lives were immeasurably enriched because we were lucky enough to fall under the stern but benevolent sway of the greatest natural teacher I have ever encountered.

The dedication in my novel read: “For Frank Miles, to whom I owe a great deal”. As I grow older, I become increasingly aware of the scale of that debt - and I still worry whether “to whom” is grammatically correct.