One Hand Clapping

be a bit more nice and not be so serious and stern. Then, while he was waiting for the question, Howard suddenly winked at me, and, like a fool, I winked back. ‘#8216;For four pounds,’#8217; said Laddie. ‘#8216;This is in three parts and you’#8217;ve got to get them all right. Name the authors of the following three seventeenth-century books. Hesperides. Religio Medici. Tetrachordon.’#8217; I can’#8217;t show you how he pronounced these names, but he stuttered at them and stumbled over them and tried to make a bit of a joke of them with the audience. But Howard put him right on the way to pronounce them, and said: ‘#8216;Hesperides was the secular poems of Robert Herrick, 1591 to 1674. Religio Medici or A Doctor’#8217;s Religion was by Sir Thomas Browne, 1605 to 1682. Tetrachordon was a book on divorce written by John Milton.’#8217; He smiled in a thin-lipped way, then he said, ‘#8216;Sorry. 1608 to 1674.’#8217; Now, you could see the audience wasn’#8217;t too sure how to take all this, Howard

Eventually he was discharged from hospital, but his consultant warned him that, for the sake of his health, he should never return to the East. It was evident from this point that his overseas teaching career was at an end.

years working in the tropical heat as a schoolmaster, he had collapsed in his classroom and been stretchered off to hospital with a mysterious illness.