College Record 2013

The Death of a King
by Martin Henig (SF 1998–2009, MCR 2009–)
King George VI died a month and a half before my tenth birthday, when I was a
pupil at a school run by a headmaster who could be at one moment imaginative
and inspirational and at another positively deranged and abusive: he was a creature
of whims. At one moment, without any thought of planning permission, he
knocked up a two-storey tower of plywood with a small room at the top, which he
intended to serve as a classroom for the youngest boys. The authorities, inevitably,
intervened and told him to demolish it by the next day or else! We delighted in
the large tanks of tropical fish and the cage of locusts which ate each other as we
tried to consume lunches which were incredibly unappetising, except when we were
organized to raid the next-door garden for soft fruit while the owner was absent.
Our headmaster had little time for the law, and indeed ended up in jail for assaulting
the boarders, but he displayed a fanatical patriotism with a decidedly fascist tinge,
and flew the Union Jack from the flagpole every day.
I well remember the day the King died, 6 February 1952. The flag was lowered to
half mast and we all knew what that meant: someone important had died. Then
the form teacher announced in a sombre tone that the Head was going to address
the entire school. Rumour was rife amongst us boys, and rumour indeed delivered
the utterly appalling news. The whole class, eighteen or so of us, were sobbing
profusely. Did that happen in other classes, in other schools in England, I wonder?
Rumour had changed a name, a title, a species, and so the awful news was relayed
to my ears and to the ears of my weeping friends as ‘Prince has died!’ These words
were enough to bring tears to our eyes, for Prince was the name of the headmaster’s
Labrador. We might not love his master, an unpredictable creature at one point
building model railways for us and at the next beating our hands with strips of
wood from old orange boxes, but we all adored Prince, ever friendly and affectionate,
whereas the Head could be savage and vindictive.
And so we were drawn to the school assembly, and there to our relief was Prince,
very much alive, and looking remarkably happy dozing at the headmaster’s feet.
With ashen countenance, his master solemnly informed us that King George VI,
King and Emperor – to the Head he would of course always be King and Emperor,
for we lived in a fantasy world – was dead, and so we sang the National Anthem
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