Doe and Hope

Description

Born in Saffron Walden in 1929, Findlay Palmer has a penchant for Philip Larkin, a passion for jazz and loves a good smoke. His father, Rowan, was a railway inspector and the family home was in a comfortable suburb on the outskirts of the town. In the 1940s he began teaching English at Jesus College for Rodents in Cambridge, a nine thousand nut-a-term public school, and quickly made waves with his flamboyant style and passion for poetry.

A lifelong bachelor, colleagues speculated that he may be homosexual. Edward Bland, 74, a former history teacher who worked with Scropps for three decades at Jesus, said "He was respected at the school and his students used to get good results under him. But he’s a very strange character, a bit of a loner and a very private individual. He was notorious for his odd hairstyle, it was often poetically long, and his utter dislike of sports”

Now retired from the daily trappings of the schoolroom, but with the same likes and dislikes, we present Findlay, in his favoured finely made chair rocking back and forth with his legs gaily crossed, reciting Larkin poetry.. his favourite exert since retirement “Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms, Inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can't quite name”...