N o .123
T he T rusty S ervant
James Sabben-Clare
(Coll, 54-60; Co Ro, 68-00; Headmaster, 85-00)
Tommy Cookson (I, 55-60; Co Ro, 64-65,
67-72, 74-90; Headmaster, 03-05) writes:
James Sabben-Clare, who died
on March 8 th aged 75, was one of the
most widely gifted schoolmasters of his
generation. Outwardly reserved and
afflicted in his youth with a stammer
so pronounced that his dons hesitated
to question him, he shone as classical
scholar, author, actor, sportsman,
carpenter and cabaret artiste.
His appointment to the headship
after several years on the staff was never
likely to be easy. But he established
himself through quiet intellectual
authority, personal integrity and
reliability. It was said that he could put
more good sense onto a single sheet of
A4 than anyone since Tacitus.
He ran the school with a light
touch. Although unflappably in control,
he recognised the quality, power and
independent-mindedness of his staff
and allowed them free range. In an age
of increasing academic competition, he
maintained the school’s place near the
top of the league tables although – or
because – a quarter of the timetable
was devoted to Div and so free of
exam teaching. His own wide interests
maintained the example of educational
breadth and culture set by his
predecessor, John Thorn.
His cool mind was matched by a
warm heart. As an affectionate family
man, he always had time for his two
children, of whom he was enormously
proud. He was also unostentatiously
generous both to his staff and to
outsiders. The Head of a special school
a dozen miles away was astonished one
day to receive a knock on his study
door and to recognise the headmaster
of Winchester, who had dropped in to
deliver a cheque for £750.
He was firmly against corporal
punishment and was quick to abolish
it as Headmaster. In schools sometimes
referred to by their opponents as
secular monasteries, he recognised
the contribution of women, appointed
a number of women to the staff and
encouraged cooperation in drama and
music with St Swithun’s.
The son of Ernest Sabben-Clare
(Coll, 19-24), himself a distinguished
headmaster of Leeds Grammar School,
James won the top scholarship to
Winchester, where he became Aulae
Prae, Captain of College VI and a
member of Soccer X1, as well as winning
school prizes for Latin and Greek Prose
and Greek Verse. After winning a
scholarship to New College, he gained a
double first in Mods and Greats and was
elected a Visiting Fellow of All Souls.
With the world at his feet, he decided
to become a schoolmaster, first at
Marlborough and then from the age of
3
27 at Win Coll. He spent the rest of his
career here as head of Classics, Second
Master and then Headmaster. He wrote
a textbook on Caesar’s Gallic Wars, a
translation of Aesop’s Fables (copies
of which were printed in-house and
presented to The Queen and The Queen
Mother) and a History of Winchester
College.
In 1999, he became Chairman of the
Headmasters’ Conference. Previously,
when he was a member of its Academic
Committee, it had been said that other
members, concentrating fully, came to
the wrong answer while he, with half his
mind elsewhere, came to the right one.
His family included several
generations of actors and he had a deep
love of the theatre and of music. He
enjoyed directing school plays and on
one remarkable occasion took over the
role of Prospero at short notice on the
illness of the boy playing the part.
But his forte was comedy, whether as
an ugly sister in the dons’ pantomime,
as a late-night cabaret artiste at The
Southern Cathedrals Festival or
(his party piece) doing his dinosaur
impression. This involved his leaving
the room and re-emerging with
slow, deliberate steps, sharp sideways
movements of the head, lizard-like
eyes and the flickering of an unnerving
tongue. He was a superb writer of lyrics
for all occasions and in all styles. A
party of Americans doing Winchester
in half an hour was written up as a barn
dance; and Winchester Cathedral’s
sophisticated Tippett/Tournemire festival
programme as a calypso.
Performing in The Southern
Cathedrals late-night cabaret in Pilgrims’
School Hall, he gently targeted the
cathedral clergy. In an Olympic Year,
he invented the Ecclesiastical Games