Part 2 (Obituaries) - King's College - University of Cambridge

his 90th birthday. Age did eventually take its toll on Oliver too, though he
retained his skill in music to the extent that he was still able to play the carols
in his retirement home at what turned out to be his last Christmas. Oliver died
on 10 April 2005, survived by his daughter Annabel and his son Martin. His
wife Molly predeceased him.
GERALD WILSON TAYLOR (1949) was born on 5 December 1929 in
Market Drayton, Shropshire. Apart from some time as a war evacuee in Settle,
Yorkshire, he was raised in Market Drayton and Bradford, where he went to
the grammar school. At school he excelled, especially in Classics, and was
awarded in 1948 an Exhibition Scholarship to come to King’s. After deferring
his scholarship for a year of National Service in the Royal Electrical and
Mechanical Engineers, he came to Cambridge in 1949 where he read Classics.
A keen and able sportsman, during his time at King’s Gerald practised rugby,
cricket, hockey and sailing.
After graduating in 1952 Gerald trained as a teacher with the Education
Department in Cambridge for a year. His first teaching appointment was to
Llandovery College in Wales. In 1955 he married another teacher, Josephine
Taylor, who became his lifelong partner.
From Llandovery he continued his teaching career at Nottingham High School
and King Edward VII School in Sheffield. In 1969, the family now extended
with three children, Gerald was appointed Deputy Headmaster at the Bishop
Wordsworth’s Church of England Grammar School for Boys in Salisbury.After
seven years in Salisbury he was appointed Headmaster of the Skinner’s School
in Tunbridge Wells in 1976, a position he held until his retirement in 1991.
Gerald is remembered by his colleagues as unassuming, generous and
helpful. While adamant to preserve a rigorous academic standing he was a
down-to-earth man when it came to practical issues. His pupils might have
remembered him for his challenging “unseens” or for sending them out
into the damp wilderness of the Welsh mountains. But more than anything
he was a teacher and a headmaster expert in getting his pupils to realise
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OBITUARIES