Hislop, Iain

OT 31 - West

Date of Death: 19/09/1992

Taken from The Gazette No 16 where there are many more tributes to Iain. (members can click here to download a copy)

The Ottershaw Schoolboy - For those ot you who may not know. Ottershaw School opened in September. 1948 under the headmastership of Arthur Foot, lain was one of its 70 first inhabitants. At 14½ and with a grammar school  background from Oxted, he was one of the oldest boys. Like 13 others, lain had no father. This fact influenced greatly his schoolboy years. Mr. Foot was a rare judge of character. It must have been the imp in him, therefore, that asembled for the first year as diverse a scruffiness of schoolboys as one could wish to meet.

I first met lain when I arrived at Ottershaw a year later. He was waiting to greet and assess the new boys. At 4ft. 10". and squeaky voiced. I could not help but be impressed by this goliath whose voice grumbled from somewhere below his knees. And I had good reason to be impressed, for lain seemed to do everything. He played a leading role in all the school teams, became Captain of rugby, and disappeared quietly one weekend to win the Surrey Schools long jump. (Team work and practice were important to him, because he hated to let others down). Academically bright, a fine mathematician, a leading member of ihe choir, an active dramatist, a prominent member of the Debating Society, and a school prefect. We were in the same House and soon became close friends. It was then that I became aware of his real talent, and the importance he attached to friendship.

In those early days Ottershaw School was a jungle. Only those quick of wit and action survived. Mr. Foot officiated during normal hours. Outside those times, an awesome organisation calling itself the Fourth Power assumed the mantle of judge and executioner - if you got my meaning. Its four founder members in order of school number were Robbins. HisJop, Marsden and Glucksmann. Authority was exercised from tho sports store where, contrary to widely-held belief in the Masters' Common Room, all sports teams were selected. The Fourth Power had wholesale meat and trading interests. It poached rabbits, dozens of them, and sold them illegally in the village, lain, being good with figures, was the accountant.

But to return to lain as an individual, for that is surely what he was;  independent, sometimes lonely, generous, a fine judge of a situation, a logical thinker, humorous, a man of few words, perhaps shy, certainly modest. How I envied his ability to talk on equal terms to masters, often using his keen sense of logic to outwit them. And I shall always remember that willingness to help others, and often me - calculus, English, in the cricket nets, doing a service for an elderly person in the village or constructing the cricket pavilion during the holidays. Occasionally his judgement waivered, for who would have persevered with trying to teach algebra to Roger Holroyd? In all. lain was a team man, the epitome of the caring person which Mr. Foot strove to make out of each of us.

When I spoke at Mr. Foot's Memorial Service 24 years ago, I said that he ran like a stag*,   lain, too. ran like a stag through those happy five school years.