Marjoribanks, Roger
History teacher Sep 1972 to Jun 1978
Date of Death: 28/02/2013
From The Gazette 57.
It is with great sadness that we have to record his death on 28 February 2013. He was a stalwart of the staff for six years, before returning to teach at Emanuel School just before the closure of Ottershaw in 1980. Prior to that decision, Roger was a prime mover in the campaign to save the school, using his skills as an historian and a polemicist to help marshal the arguments in favour of its continuance – a task he undertook with the publication of a comprehensive report entitled ‘The Case against Closure’. He rehearsed these arguments in ‘The Beginning Of The End’, chapter 16 of Run Like A Stag, where he reflected on how the school was caught in the vice between the Labour government, which had savagely reduced the rate support grant, and Surrey County Council, which declined to consider seriously any of the powerful arguments put forward by the Headmaster, parents, pupils (current and former) and (too) few councillors led by Tony Blowers. In fact, as Roger comments, ‘Many of the Conservative majority [on SCC] went to sleep during the debate but woke up to vote – in favour of closure.’ He recalls that a strong supporter of the school was Geoffrey Pattie, MP, whose argument in the House of Commons was to conclude poignantly: ‘The decision to allow the closure of Ottershaw School is as myopic as the decision to open it was imaginative. The decision is nothing less than a tragedy and it has made me profoundly sad.’ So say all of us.
Roger was a true polymath, equally as well holding his own in staffroom debate, coaching the Ist XI cricket (with some highly successful seasons), directing the naval section of the CCF and easily adding the teaching of Tudor history to his already wide portfolio whilst Jonathan Hughes was away on exchange in the USA for a year. Oh – and, of course, he was also running East House after Denys Hall had completed his stint there. He and his wife Sue oversaw the pastoral needs of their charges with a guiding hand that was in tune with the more liberal spirit of the age.
Many past pupils and members of staff will remember him as a schoolmaster of wit, inventiveness and erudition. Readers of Acorn, for example, were treated to a short story chronicling the fate of C19 ‘Eliza’, a consideration of the origin of pupils’ surnames and thoughtful play reviews. Having been lost for a while, his memorable Otterwocky – a pastiche of Edward Lear’s original, complete with clever glossary based on the names of current pupils – was finally published in Run Like a Stag.
We recall playing many games of Bridge with Sue and Roger – although he never really inherited Hugh Gregor’s mantle as Bridge guru on Thursday afternoons. It is as a contributor to the school’s drama that Roger will also be well remembered. He had two towering performances: the first in Hadrian VII as an aged cardinal with a palsied hand (and also, after a quick change, a bailiff) whilst the second was the formidable role of the Inquisitor in Saint Joan, truly dominating the stage for the whole hour of the trial scene.
After initially returning to Emanuel School – just before the closure of Ottershaw – Roger subsequently was closely involved in the politics of his home town, Guildford, becoming – in the words of a colleague – the best mayor that Guildford did not have! He was an Alderman of the city and was appointed as the Remembrancer – a quaint title that required the acquisition of an encyclopaedic knowledge of, and contribution to, the city’s history. His research also encompassed the history of his family – the Scottish Clan Marjoribanks – and the history of Freemasonry.
In summary, we picture an irreverent but conventional polymath – an intriguing combination of the orthodox and the unorthodox - whom we remember fondly, as we are sure those pupils of his era also do. In many ways he was a gentleman scholar of an earlier age, the sort of schoolmaster that we see so rarely in the classroom these days.