My Brother & I

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and recently retired from its Advisory Council. He was a Bogliasco Fellow in 2007, a Fellow at the Macdowell Colony in New Hampshire, USA, in the Fall of 2009, and a Fellow at the Hawthornden The cookie is set by Krux Digital under the domain krxd.net. The cookie stores a unique ID to identify a returning user for the purpose of targeted advertising. Driver was as of November 2019 [update] an honorary senior lecturer at the School of Literature and Creative Writing, University of East Anglia, [7] a post he held since 2007. [ citation needed] Novelist, poet, and educationalist Jonty Driver died at the age of 83 in Bristol, England on 21 May. Charles Jonathan ‘Jonty’ Driver was born in Cape Town in 1939 and attended St. Andrews College in Makhanda (where his father served as chaplain). His sister, Dorothy Driver, JM Coetzee’s partner, worked at the then National English Literary Museum (Amazwi’s former name), with their mother working at Rhodes University.

Jonty restructured Common Room by developing a Senior Management Team; he reintroduced the notion of compulsory Chapel attendance; he espoused the use of IT; he set out to make the school more international; he aligned Wellington with the Round Square network of schools; he established the democratic election of prefects and introduced leadership training for staff and pupils; he developed a sense of corporate Identity; he founded the WCA which saw a much greater involvement of parents in the day to day life of College; he brought in the Basic Courtesies as a blueprint for well-mannered behaviour, and he began the process, by transforming the Quads, of making Wellington more beautiful. In July 2019, as part of the JAM (John Armitage Memorial) Festival in the Romney Marshes, and again in July 2022, Jonty read some of the poems to an audience in the church of St Mary the Virgin, Forbidden for more than 25 years to return to his beloved South Africa, and rendered stateless, Driver turned increasingly to his writing, for which he had a natural gift. A stint at Trinity College, Oxford, provided him with the time to focus on this, bearing fruit in his first book, Elegy for a Revolutionary, published by Penguin in 1969, which brilliantly captured the zeitgeist, drawing heavily upon his own experiences. It used to be said that all of us think we know about education because we have all been to school; Some Schools, very attractively produced (a handful of misprints) by John Catt Educational, should enthral any reader for that reason; it will convey to anyone what teaching is really like with its difficulties and its joys. The strongest impression I had from it is that any parents reading it would be truly delighted to have someone with the qualities of Jonty Driver overseeing the education of their children. My favourite story, for now, involves Jonty and the late Archishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu at an event at Westminster Abbey on 3 March 2014. It resonates with another event at Umso Senior Secondary School in Colesberg, many years earlier. And both events revolve around Nelson Mandela as well as William Shakespeare. But let me start at the beginning …

In my teaching days, Mr Williams, then principal of Colesberg Primary school, invariably greeted me with: ‘Not too dusty, thank you Maeder. And how are you?’ I wished he had been my primary school principal for his sense of humour alone. He was also feted for engineering breaks in the sun in mid-winter at sombre education department meetings, so he could enjoy a puff or two at one of his endless cigarettes. He is still on the go, I am told, in Adelaide in the eastern Cape. I miss him sorely. Jonty is survived by his wife Ann, his children Dominic, Dax and Tamlyn, and his grandchildren. My thoughts are with them and his many loved ones at this time.

At the time, Mandela had retired in some triumph after serving a single term as president of the supposed ’new South Africa’ – which I found hugely ironic, seeing that, not too long before, at a stage-managed provincial and local farmers’ union meeting, ostensibly about farm labour, I was singled out as a farmer in league with ‘the devil’. But I digress …Despite his demanding career as a teacher, Jonty remained a prolific writer, publishing 10 books of poems (most recently Still Further: New Poems ), five poetry booklets (the most recent one, A Winter’s Day at Westonbirt ), five novels (four still in print from Faber), five books of biography and memoir, and a book of verse for children. During and after his studies at Oxford he taught at several schools in England, including Sevenoaks School and Mathew Humberstone Comprehensive school. He then became principal of Island School in Hong Kong, Headmaster of Berkhamsted School, and Master of Wellington College. He was also a noted poet and writer, and held honorary teaching posts in literature and creative writing, as well as fellowships associated with writing programmes. Among the heroes of the struggle to defeat apartheid, many stood tall but none perhaps physically taller than CJ Driver, known to many as Jonty.

Schoolmastering, as it would then have been called, was an obvious choice for Driver. His father had been a much-loved chaplain at St Andrew‘s College. Jonty had all the qualities that would make for a great teacher. Initially Sevenoaks was but a springboard however to Trinity College, Oxford where Driver undertook the degree of Master of Philosophy. But if he thought of pursuing a career in academia, this thought soon gave way to a consistent call to the classroom and to the shaping of institutions that in turn make possible the shaping of citizens with a strong sense of service and social justice. The cover of this is from a water-colour painting by Jonty and includes one previously unpublished poem. The fifth is A WINTER'S DAY AT WESTONBIRT & OTHER POEMS; all the illustrations Schooling at St Andrew’s College Grahamstown, with its traditional combination of muscular Anglicanism and Scottish-style military marching band, would one day find obvious fulfilment and echo in his leadership of Wellington College, where the sons and more recently daughters of the military continue to be shaped by the same vigorously Anglican spirit of self-sacrifice and service. Jonty eventually made the decision to stay in England permanently, becoming a British citizen, and building a family and professional life there. In 1976 he became a research fellow at the University of York, and for twenty-three years he was a headmaster in Hong Kong, at Berkhamsted School and, most notably, Wellington College. In sum he published ten collections of poems, (most recently Still Further: New Poems, published by uHlanga), five novels (four of which are still in print from Faber), and numerous works of non-fiction and essay.Earlier this year, Jonty published a short (15,000 words) memoir called ROBERT BIRLEY, MAINLY IN SOUTH AFRICA (No. 3 in the Booklet Series). Birley was Hedmaster of Charterhouse and, later, Head After his time at Oxford, Driver taught at Sevenoaks School and then at Matthew Humberstone Comprehensive School in South Humberside. In 1976 he was a Research Fellow at the University of York, and for twenty-three years he was a headmaster (Principal, Island School, Hong Kong, 1978-1983. Jonty’s first teaching job was at Sevenoaks School, where he eventually became housemaster of the International Centre. After posts at a comprehensive school in Lincolnshire and as a research fellow at York University he held the post of headmaster of the Island School, Hong Kong, for 6 years. From 1983-1989 he was headmaster of Berkhamstead School and from 1989-2000 he was master of Wellington College. Charles Jonathan Driver was born on August 19 1939 at Mowbray, a suburb of Cape Town, to Phyllis, née Gould, and Kingsley (“Jos”) Driver. He was born into schools. His father, after time as a prisoner of war, having been captured at Tobruk in North Africa, became chaplain at St Andrew’s College in Grahamstown, which his son would later describe as “the Eton of South Africa“.