Britain says "Farewell" its last remaining ‘SAS Rogue Hero’, Mike Sadler

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Mike, who has died at the age of 103, was born, Willis Michael Sadler, early in 1920, in Kensington, London. He was nineteen when the Second World War broke out in September 1939 and working on a farm in Rhodesia and downed tools and signed up to 4 the Rhodesian Anti-Tank Battery and later said : "I didn't want to miss anything. And some people are like that at that age. I certainly was".

In 1940 he was back in Britain and transferred to the Royal Artillery. In North Africa Italy, which had declared war on Britain in June 1940 had a huge army in Libya which threatened the Suez Canal in British-occupied Egypt and Britain's communication with British-controlled India. The Libyan Desert protected Italian forces and posed a challenge to both sides with its vast sand dunes making it all but impossible for large forces to penetrate inland. 

It was now that Major Ralph Bagnold of the Royal Signals, who had spent much of the 1920s and 1930s exploring the desert, suggested to General Sir Archibald Wavell, 'Commander-in-Chief Middle East', that he formed a desert scouting force, a small body of motor  commandos, never more than 350 strong, known as the 'Long Range Desert Group'. Wavell readily agreed, and the LRDG began operations in September with Mike on board as one of the recruits.

There was no shortage of volunteers, but what Bagnold wanted first and foremost, were navigators and it was Mike 'Lofty' Carr who fulfilled that role. They were told by Captain Pat McCraith that all men in the Group were : "Bagnold's blue-eyed boys" and they should "forget everything we had learnt up to now because we were no longer regular army". They then signed a document which as 'Lofty' said : "Was our oath that we would never, for the whole of our lives, reveal what we had been up to in the LRDG". 

For navigation in the desert by day, Bagnold had invented a 'sun compass', which was a reliable, but rough indicator which was of no use by night. The theodolite, with its astral fixes, reduced the chance of error dramatically and 'Lofty' said that, in terms of accuracy : “In the desert I was down to 200m".

When Lieutenant David Stirling formed the SAS to launch night-time raids against Axis airfields in Libya the LRDG loaned him Mike as a navigator and would have taken Lofty, but he declined to join and instead taught his navigation skills to the Unit. Lofty later recalled that he had taught Mike : "The rudiments of astro-navigation and how to use a theodolite" and that Mike had proved to be a quick learner. Like the LRDG, the SAS was a secretive unit, which also went deep behind enemy lines and, as to his role, Mike would have agreed with 'Lofty' when he said : “Being a navigator was extremely challenging. One minor fault or miscalculation could have tragic consequences".

Steven Knight was the writer of the 2022 BBC TV series, 'SAS 'Rogue Heroes'. Based on the book by journalist Ben Macintyre, it tells the story of how the SAS was formed and operated during the Second World War. He said : "When I started to research the true story, it was so amazing, so compelling, so it’s sort of unbelievable. I just thought, this story has to be told". (link) 

He praised the men who were part of the SAS for being "self-motivated" and people who "broke the rules" with "initiative", given that their lives were in constant jeopardy and they "depended on each other" to survive. 

Of Mike, the last surviving member of that band of warriors he said : "He had what others thought of as a supernatural ability to actually navigate his way through the desert, to know where he was, where he was going. He used the stars, he used a lot of equipment but, a lot of the time, apparently, he just used instinct". He also said that without him, the men in the SAS would have gone in somewhere and not been able to find their way out and it was Mike’s ability to "think on his feet" that saw them through. 

The actor Tom Glynn-Carney, who played Mike in the series and was filmed for 'The One Show', in Mike's living room told him what a "privilege" it was to be sitting with him and said afterwards : "Mike is blind now, but his memories are sharp". He told Mike : "Having played your role and having to look like I was an expert navigator through the desert, now no matter how hard I tried, I could not do it. How do you do that?" To which Mike replied with a laugh : "I think you just have to learn it. I expect you could, if you really tried. It’s not that difficult". (link)

Within the context of the War, these were desperate times. With the exception of Britain, Europe had fallen to the Germans and in North Africa, General Rommel's Afrika Korps was on the move from Libya to Egypt where it would threaten Britain's vital control of the Suez Canal. Clearly, something different had to be tried to break the enemy's momentum in the desert or the Allies would face inevitable defeat. What Stirling, along with fellow SAS pioneer Jock Lewes proposed, was to accept that the Germans were masters of Libya's Mediterranean coastline and all attempts from the sea to disrupt and dislodge them had failed. So why not come at them from the rear, from where they least expected it. Across the Great Sand Sea, 30,000 square miles of desolate desert dunes?

The first SAS mission, carried out in a ferocious desert storm, was a disaster. One plane was shot down, and several parachutists were killed on landing. Of the sixty-six men in the raiding party, only twenty-two returned. It was then that Stirling turned to the LRDG, which, nicknamed “the desert taxi service”, agreed to transport the SAS at night to specific targets by Jeep and truck, and pick them up after they had planted time-bombs on parked planes.

In 2014 Lieutenant-General Sir Cedric Delves, President of the SAS Regimental Association, said : “The Long Range Desert Group is very dear to the SAS. It goes back to the beginning, when David Stirling turned to them for help. They showed us how to work in the desert. They got us going. They were there for us at the outset, and I am deeply proud that the regiment can acknowledge what is owed”.

In December 1941, Mike, now on loan from the LRDG, took part in the first successful SAS raid, led by Lieutenant Blair “Paddy” Mayne, a former Irish rugby international who would go on to become one of Britain’s most decorated soldiers. Mike dropped Mayne and five men three miles south of Wadi Tamet airfield and in the space of 15 minutes, the team destroyed 24 planes and a fuel dump. Mike, awaiting the returning raiders, watched the explosions light up the desert and recalled : “We saw the flashes in the sky. It was quite dramatic”.

Mike later reflected on his role as a navigator and said : "One of the essential things was not to let doubt creep into your mind. You had to be confident because it was awfully easy, especially at night, to start to feel you were going wrong and you should be further to left or right. It was rather easy to give way to that feeling if you weren’t confident. It was a challenge, navigating, but I liked the challenge. I was young and you don’t really think about pressure at twenty-one". 

With Mayne and his men on board, Mike drove back into the desert, but as the sun came up they came under attack from Italian bombers. He said : “We were dodging across the desert. I was navigating and they were flying over. You could see the bombs leaving the planes, and we would get out of the way by making an immediate right turn. I suppose it was quite alarming”. He led the convoy back to Jalo Oasis, where the salty waters seemed the height of luxury after that more than a week in the parched desert.

The following year, on the night of July 26, 1942, Mike, without headlights or a map, guided 18 jeeps filled with twin Vickers K machine guns, along 70 miles of desert to within 200 feet of Sidi Haneish Airfield. "Where are we now ?" demanded Stirling as he peered into the gloom to which Mike replied : "By my reckoning we're less than a mile short of the field. It's right in front of us". The SAS then opened fire as they drove between planes, wrecking at least 37 aircraft. (link)

In the raid the Germans struck the two-jeep convoy with Mike returning fire, allowing the other jeep to flee before escaping himself and as 'Corporal Willis Sadler' was later awarded the 'Military Medal'. One of the jeep drivers was shot through the head during the attack and buried in the sand. Still on loan from the LRDG, Mike was to be considered an 'Honorary' member of the SAS by 'The Originals'. 

Mike, now a 'lieutenant', was also one of the officers to follow Stirling on the last SAS operation in January 1943. He recalled that Stirling : "Intended to get into southern Tunisia and do an operation, possibly on the way to joining up with the First Army and the second SAS, which had both landed there. So we then planned this operation, which involved a long desert journey along the inside of Libya to the south of Tunisia". Mike recalled The SAS team hid during the day and travelled at night. One afternoon, hidden in a dried out riverbed or wadi, Mike said : "Johnny Cooper and I were in sleeping bags and, first thing I knew, I was being kicked by somebody. I looked up and there was an Afrika Korps fellow poking me with his Schmeisser". (link)

A German armoured personnel carrier was blocking the entrance to the wadi and the SAS team was trapped. Mike believed that spies had tipped off the Germans. He concluded :  “The only thing to do was to leg it”. Along with Johnny Cooper and an Arabic-speaking Frenchman called Freddie Taxis, they ran for about 400 yards up the steep side of the wadi and hurled themselves into a small gully. The Germans combed the area but, by good fortune, an Arab herder arrived with a herd of goats, which milled around helping to conceal them. The rest of the contingent was captured, including David Stirling, who spent the rest of the war in captivity.

That night, the three men agreed they would try to reach the 1st Army, still more than 100 miles away, on foot. Mike recalled : “I knew the lay of the land. I had no compass or maps, but I knew that to the west along the edge of the salt lakes there was Tozeur, which ought to have been in the hands of the Allies, with any luck. So we set off”. A group of Berbers gave them some dates and a goatskin, which they sewed together with bootlaces to create a makeshift water container.

After walking further they were surrounded by menacing Arabs who began hurling rocks. Taxis translated : “They are saying we should give them our clothes because they are going to kill us anyway.” Johnny Cooper was struck on the head and temporarily blinded by pouring blood and Mike and Freddie, taking one arm each, dragged him across a wide expanse of loose rock, which the barefoot Arabs could not cross. 

After four days and nearing collapse, Freddie asked to be left behind, but was persuaded by Mike and Johnny to struggle on. Mike said : “It turned out he had six toes on each foot, which made walking painful”. "We walked more than 100 miles and, of course, our shoes fell to bits. We arrived, staggering the last few steps towards the palm trees, and some  African native troops came out and captured us". They were in fact Nearing Tozeur, and the soldiers were Free French forces, part of the 1st Army. Mike said : “The French gave us a great reception. They had jerrycans full of Algerian wine, which was pretty popular.” They then were handed over to the Americans, who promptly put them under guard. 

From the American press, the New Yorker's celebrated war correspondent A J Liebling, who had been hanging around Gafsa for days waiting for a scoop, saw Mike as he arrived from the desert said Mike looked like Robinson Crusoe when he arrived and wrote : ‘The eyes of this fellow were round and sky blue and his hair and whiskers were very fair. His beard began well under his chin, giving him the air of an emaciated and slightly dotty Paul Verlaine'. Mike told Liebling that the odyssey had been : “Very interesting . . . some of it was a lot of fun”.

Liebling wrote : 'Mr Stirling is convinced that units run 'traditionally' are ineffective and so creates a plan that goes against every accepted rule of modern warfare. He fights to recruit the best, toughest, and strongest soldiers as the show goes on, to make a small undercover unit. It is set to create pandemonium behind enemy lines and he creates a team who are both reckless and brave'.

As to Stirling, Mike said : "David was captured, but managed to escape. I think he escaped in the early days. We were always told that the best chance of escaping was as soon as possible after you’ve been captured. Unfortunately, having escaped, he was recaptured. I think he then spent time in a prison camp in Italy before eventually ending up in Colditz".

When Mike was asked : "What did you think of David Stirling as a man?" He said : "He was a first-class man, highly intelligent, highly motivated, and in many ways the founder of the SAS. David was the one who perceived the possibilities and was determined to make the SAS a reality. He managed to recruit about 80 chaps who had, he thought, the requirements he needed. He wanted people who could get on with each other and him in difficult circumstances. He was more interested in that than their qualifications".

Mike, now a fully paid-up member of the SAS, now fought in Italy and France following his time in the Desert War. On August 7, 1944, he was dropped by parachute into the Loire as part of 'Operation Houndsworth'. The aim was to reach SAS squadrons behind the lines and help destroy fuel depots, encourage local resistance and prevent Panzer divisions heading north. In March 1945 he was awarded the 'Military Cross' for 'Exemplary gallantry against the enemy'. 

Ben Macintyre interviewed Mike when he was ninety-six, seven years ago (link)

Mike went on to set up the 'SAS Intelligence Unit'. Reflecting on his time in Africa he said : "Overall, I loved the desert, I thought it was perfect. I was very sorry to leave at the end of the Desert War. It was like being on the sea in a way. You could go in any direction. There was a great sort of freedom attached to being in the desert. There was so much variety – beautiful smooth surfaces, sand, and impassable great sand dunes hundreds of feet high –slowly moving across the desert with the prevailing wind, the sand dunes moving very, very slowly, perhaps a foot every year, but altering their arrangements quite considerably". (link)

"Oh yes, I thought the desert was a wonderful place".

In 2018, at the age of ninety-eight, Mike was awarded the 'Legion D'honneur

' for parachuting into a German-occupied France, where Hitler had given instructions for any captured parachutists to be executed. 

The French Defence Attaché, Colonel Antoine de Loustal, who presented the red-ribboned medal and paid tribute to Mike's dedication and determination during the liberation of France : “For which you were prepared to risk your life”.

"We shall not forget. We will never forget".

Mike said : 

"I do remember the people who didn’t survive and who didn’t have  the chance to receive this great honour". 

* * * * * * * * * 

(link)

Britain in 2023 said "Goodbye" to thirteen remarkable old men and women

 January 2023

Tom Karen

Britain says "Farewell" to Tom Karen its 20th century Giant of Industrial Design and Gentle Genius Toymaker (link)

Ronald Blythe

Britain says "Farewell" to its Writer, Ronald Blythe, best remembered for his masterly evocation of English rural life in a village called of Akenfield (link)

February

Kit Hesketh-Harvey

Britain says "Farewell" to Kit Hesketh-Harvey, its Master where Words meet Music and  joyous Renaissance Man (link)

March 

Rory Young

Time for Britain to honour and pay tribute to its Master Stone Carver, Rory Young (link)

Mik Critchlow

Britain says "Farewell" to Mik Critchlow, much-loved Photographer of the life and people of a Town called Ashington (link)

Dorothy Bohm 

Britain was once a welcoming country which adopted and has now lost a German-Jewish refugee who became its brilliant photographer, Dorothy Bohm (link)

April

Harold Riley

Britain says "Farewell' to the painter and much-loved son of Salford, Harold Riley (link)

May

Rosemary Cramp

Britain says "Farewell" to the brilliant Rosemary Cramp who, more than any other Archaeologist, opened its eyes to the Anglo Saxons (link)

July

Beatty Orwell

Britain says "Goodbye" to the redoubtable Beatty Orwell, protestor against the British Union of Fascists at the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 (link)

Derek Malcolm

Britain says "Farewell" to our old and revered, Prince of Film Critics, Derek Malcolm (link)

September

Michael Leonard

Why has Britain failed to say "Farewell" to Michael Leonard, its once revered and now forgotten, Prince of Photorealist Painters ? (link)

October

Terence Davies

Britain says "Goodbye" to its Son of Liverpool, Film Director and Prince of Lyricism, Terence Davies (link) 

December

Tim Brighouse

Britain's teachers say "Farewell" to their towering beacon of light, the brilliant, charismatic educationalist, Tim Brighouse (link)

Britain's teachers say "Farewell" to their towering beacon of light, the brilliant, charismatic educationalist, Tim Brighouse

Page views: 1778

Tim, who has died at the age of eighty-three, was recognised, in his fifty year career, as a giant among 20th century educationalists said in 2005 :

"There's a two-fold purpose to education. One is, kind of, are we going to make life better economically whether, as an individual or collectively as a society ? And the second and in my book the far more important purpose of education - it's a moral one. If you don't have an educated people they can't be free. There's a form of mental slavery which is as real as any economic one. We're pledged to destroy it. Educationalists have to do that and they do it by unlocking kids' minds".(link)

 * * * * * * * * * 

Born  in the market town of Loughborough in Leicestershire in the first full year of the Second World War on a day in January 1940, when it was -4 degrees c, in the coldest month on record for almost 50 years. The son of Mary and Denison, he recalled that he was : "Influenced by an event at the age of ten. I went to a pretty prestigious boys grammar school in the Midlands and was a school phobic". The school in question was Loughborough Grammar School and he said that he became a phobic : "Because smiling just wasn't part of the curriculum". "I would weep at night, I would be physically sick in the morning – this lasted for half a term until my dad lost his job, he sold televisions and we moved to Lowestoft”.(link)

In the coastal town in East Suffolk where, on the first day at his new school, his eldest brother agreed to check on him at break time, Tim recalled : “But when I met him I said, "You can push off, I’m perfectly happy here, I like this place". "I remember the first school in black and white, the second in colour”. He described it as a : "Sleepy country kind of school with no prep at all, but amazing interpersonal relationships". He might have added that it wasn't single sex. Tim said : "There was a relaxed expectation, and I went from being miserable, to loving school". At the first school he was tested each week. Students sat in rank order and were treated that way too. The second did none of this: “They made everybody feel they were special. They were fantastic teachers”.

At Lowestoft County Grammar School his favourite teacher, Mr Spalding, taught history and inspired him to study it further. “He was a terrific person. He was the archetypal after-the-War, been-in-the-War, rode a sit-up-and-beg bike, smoked a pipe, you never knew quite where he was coming from; he would argue one thing one lesson then come in the following lesson and argue the exact opposite; made you do this and that; ran the school debating society, collected stamps, was a fisherman as well, an angler. I kept in touch with him until… well maybe probably a year or two before he died. I thought he was a fantastic guy”.

Although Tim didn't know it at the time, this experience of school was to determine what he did for then rest of his life. He said : "I'm sure that at that very early age I was thinking 'eh, eh, eh ?' What is the difference between schools that work well and schools that don't work well ? Is it about individuals, group or whatever ?" 

After taking his 'A' levels in 1958 he gained and thanks to Mr Spalding and after several attempts, a place to read Modern History at St. Catherine's College, Oxford and thoroughly enjoyed his time there, though initially he felt out of his depth. He recalled : “Nobody went from my school to Oxford. I remember being horrified, rolling into an Oxford college to find these hundreds of public schoolboys, all of whom read everything that you could ever read, and I’d only ever read about two or three books”.

As graduation approached he said : "I really wanted to be a journalist, but my parents said it was too hazardous" and "I suppose I decided : 'Well I'd like to be a teacher and I might do a bit of History as well and that turned out to be true". He stayed on in Oxford as a post graduate in the Department of Education and gained his certificate in teaching in 1961 and taught history in grammar and secondary modern schools, winding up in Monmouthsire. He aspired to be a headteacher because he thought they : "Can shape schools and make them different". With his ability and potential clearly manifest, he moved into his first post in school management as a twenty-six year old Deputy Head Teacher at Kingsmark Secondary Modern (now Chepstow School). 

He said however, that he got knocked off course when : "The guy in the school down the road from me said : "Why don't you apply for this job in Monmouthshire ?" which was to be an administrative assistant looking after sites and buildings. I said : "That's just the exciting thing I'd love to do. It was an opportunity to shape how Monmouthshire went comprehensive". Tim got the job and effervesced with enthusiasm and said : “Educational administrators after the War, there was a number of them and they were amazing. I wanted to do that sort of thing. It looked fun!” He said of the leader of the administrative team that from him he : "Learnt a tremendous amount. You've got certain people you measure yourself against" and asked himself the question : "Can I be that sort of administrator who is creative and makes a difference and gives the professional lead ? And I was really lucky that I've had job opportunities that have given me that". 

In the early 1970s moved to Buckinghamshire County Council's Education Department and teamed up with the equally charismatic, Geoff Cooksey. Their joint project was the creation of Stantonbury Campus, the first purpose-built comprehensive school for Milton Keynes New Town where Geoff was to be its first director. Together they designed state-of-the-art buildings focused on a magnificent resource area and theatre with the arts central in school life and as a community school, it was carpeted throughout. Like some other secondary schools built at that time, Stantonbury espoused unashamedly progressive ideas and the curriculum featured interdisciplinary work. For some, most radically, uniform was rejected and teachers and pupils were on first-name terms as a sign that they were all in it together.

In 1993 he took his post as Chief Education Officer in Birmingham and later said that it was : "The best time of my life. It was a job I prayed I would get, because I was over fifty and I thought I was finished". When he was scheduled to start work he turned up to the office a week late. He had, he told amazed officials, spent the week visiting schools there to find out what was going on. Birmingham at that time was at such a low ebb that thirteen schools had opted out of the local authority in the year before Tim started and joined the Tories' new grant-maintained sector. He said : "They wanted to write targets into my contract. They asked me what would be a reasonable number of schools opting out in my first year. I said: what about none?" Needless to say, Tim met his self-imposed goal.

Tim went visiting schools and held workshops - eleven of them in his first year - in which all the city's headteachers participated. His aim was simple : School improvement. He wanted to examine the processes and practices that made the huge differences in schools with teachers and share what worked with everyone. He said : "I wanted to find good practice in Birmingham and open the window and say 'My goodness, look at this. Are we not energy creators in this place?'"

He had been only been in the job for a short time when John Patten, the Government's Education Secretary, launched an extraordinary attack at a Tory party conference fringe meeting and said of Tim : "I fear for Birmingham, with this madman let loose, wandering the streets, frightening the children".  Tim recalled : “He made it within three weeks of my arriving in Birmingham and don’t forget, I was going back into local authority administration, so within three weeks, that was all over the press”. 

Tim felt he had no choice but to pursue a complaint in court. In the event it did him a bit of good because he said : “The fact that I won it and gave the settlement money to inner city education and the fact that during the ten months of the case, the politicians in Birmingham said : "You don’t want to tangle with him, he takes on Secretaries of State, so if he says something – listen". He said : "It did mean that I could take lots and lots of risks and I knew the politicians wouldn’t try anything”. It was typical of Tim that he used some of it to set up the University of the First Age, to encourage out of hours activities to enrich school children's learning.

During his time, Birmingham school results constantly increased and he became renowned for kindnesses, sending perhaps as many as 10,000 letters of congratulations and thankyou to teachers, and even turning up with champagne to one school after a tough Ofsted inspection after the ordeal was over. All was evidence of his belief that people work well when they are happy and engaged and he would do his bit to enhance that and said : “Blooming hell…that’s about being human! It isn’t that I won’t confront difficult situations where people have made a balls-up of something, because I have, and I do, and I would. But I do think they deserve dignity. And if somebody has not made a success of a particular school, they may have made a success of it earlier on. They may have been a very good head in another place or they may have been a fantastic deputy or they may be fantastic with difficult kids”.

During his tenure in Birmingham in 1999, he clashed with the Chief Inspector of Schools in England, Chris Woodhead who was infuriated after Tim gave evidence to the Government's Education Select Committee's inquiry into Ofsted that questioned the accuracy of its inspections. Tim was tired of being caricatured as championing 'trendy' teaching methods, while Woodhead was represented as the guardian of traditional values. He said : "I do believe in inspection, though I think we should have a better inspection system. I do believe in raising standards". Tim was thought to have been angered by an anonymous article in the Mail on Sunday written by an 'education insider' which parroted the views of Woodhead and attacked Tim with large parts of the article were very similar to speeches made by Woodhead.

It is not an exaggeration to say that his achievements in what had, by general consent, been the worst education authority in England, changed the debate on big-city schooling. As Ofsted put it in an almost lyrical report in 2002, two years after Woodhead left his post, Birmingham was : "An example to all others of what can be done, even in the most demanding urban environment". Tim's role was recognised when it said its success was attributable above all, to : "The energising and inspirational example set by the Chief Education Officer".

Education expert, Professor Ted Wragg said : "He is outstanding. He works with people rather than against them. He gives teachers a great sense of belonging rather than making them feel they are victims of policies. Birmingham teachers are much more positive than teachers elsewhere, they are not beleaguered. They see themselves as part of a great crusade. When I did my inquiry a damn good city was being badly let down on its education. Now it's a model for the nation. If I was asked to do an education commission anywhere else, I would not bother with taking evidence. I would produce a three-word report which would say: 'Appoint Tim Brighouse'".

In his book 'How Successful Headteachers Survive and Thrive' Tim suggested that Heads should greet children and teachers as they enter school. They should go on a daily walk, talking to kitchen staff and cleaners as well as teachers, and sometimes follow a pupil through a day's lessons. They should be not 'scolds' but 'skalds' - a Scandinavian word for poets who inspire warriors before battle - recalling great deeds and anticipating further triumphs. They should say "we", not "I". And they should spend two hours a week doing "acts of unexpected kindness", remembering birthdays and writing appreciative notes.

Tim's next move was to London in 2002 where he was the Government-appointed London Schools Commissioner or "Tsar". Stephen Twigg who, as an Education Minister, worked with Tim in his role said :  "He exceeded expectations. He brought incredible energy".Tim himself said at the time : "I've been deliberately not visible in London. I've made an impact on schools, but not on the public. I didn't think the London media, particularly the Evening Standard, would give me a fair crack of the whip. It would have been a time and energy trap".

He instituted the 'London Challenge', a scheme to make the capital 'A  world leader in education" by offering extra support to 70 disadvantaged schools and five low-performing boroughs. He was asked, in a meeting, by the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, if there was anything he wanted to add to the London Challenge prospectus ?  Tim said his suggestion that they should include something about the chaotic state of secondary school admissions in the capital was : “Greeted with an audible silence”, after which, he admits, he backed off the subject. He reflected : “I have no idea how often I spoke truth to power; I am not sure I did enough. I didn’t fight hard enough over admissions and I am conscious now that I should have done more". He was pleased with what he had achieved but this nagged at him and he said : "Because we didn’t address admissions or exclusions and you see the results of that now in the children who are effectively forgotten by the system”.

Interviewed in 2015 when he was seventy-five, Tim said : "I keep in touch with teaching because I always hankered after being a head teacher and I really, really, really wanted to be a head teacher, That's my greatest regret and the headteachers I've worked with and there have been many, have always said to me : "That's your problem really - frustrated head teacher".

Inspiring young teachers in a meeting in Northern Ireland he deployed George Bernard Shaw with his : 

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations”. (link)

His son, Harry Brighouse, who works as political philosopher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the U.S.A said : “He was a loving husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather and a towering figure in the word of education. He never wavered in his belief that teachers and schools change children’s lives for the better”.

In the final chapter of his last book, 'About Our Schools', published last year, he expressed the same hope that had ­sustained him throughout his career, looking forward to the dawn of :

“A new educational age — a time of hope, ambition and collaboration”.   

(link) 

x x x x x x x x x 

What you said about my post : 

Harry Brighouse : 'This is a very nice and accurate account of Tim Brighouse's life : lots of detail and some pictures !'

Tony Gallagher : 'Many thanks for this wide-ranging tribute to one of the greatest educators of our time. Anyone who met with Tim Brighouse will recognise his qualities and inspiration in this tribute'. 

Helen Salmon : 'Wonderful inspirational man. He inspired so many of us. We need more like him in education now'. 

Seb Schmoller : 'I enjoyed reading that. One of the greats : tremendous presence, easy to take risks with, uncompromising, committed, convincing'.

Colin Pettigrew : 'That's marvelous, thank you for sharing John and I will certainly hope that 2024 and one of Tim's many legacies will be : "A new educational age - a time of hope, ambition and collaboration "'.

Dr Karamat Iqbal : 'Thank you. Added to my reading list between Christmas and new year; will be useful in my own writing about Tim'.

Carol Atherton : 'This is a lovely tribute. Such an important figure and a genuinely inspiring man'.

Primary Head : 'A lovely article!'

David Jones : 'That was a great read'.

Sonya Lanckham : 'What a beautiful tribute. May you rest in peace, Sir Tim'.

Juliet Robinson : 'A lovely tribute'.

Dr Jill Berry : 'Loved it. Thanks for sharing John'.

Mel Ainscow : 'Don't miss this splendid account of Tim's journey'. 

Juliet Robinson : 'Thank you for sharing ! A lovely tribute'.

Matthew Crawford : 'This is a wonderful tribute, thank you for sharing'.

Walkerdine : 'Thanks John. That's excellent'.

Tidbury Green School : 'Thank you. A wonderful read'.

Maureen Hunt : 'That's amazing - well done'.

Dr Kenny Frederick : 'A fabulous tribute. No more that he deserved ! Thank you !'

Brian Lightman :  'A wonderful tribute to a great educationalist'.