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‘ He saw it as his mission to educate and civilise us’ GO away lorry driver’, Michael Kidson’s pithy response to a tirade of abuse after Dougal, his beloved dog, ran into the road, earned him a place in Eton folklore. Erstwhile Eton headmaster Sir Eric Anderson summed him up as ‘inspirational, unconventional, indiscreet, dismissive, confrontational, outrageously opinionated, sarcastic, rude, politically incorrect, contrary, sartorially correct, charming, kind, generous, shy and deeply private’.
He taught ‘modern history’, mostly 19th-century, and his heroes Peel, Palmerston and Gladstone he described as ‘giants’; you felt they were in the room with you. His lessons in his old-fashioned classroom with blackboard and map of pre-Versailles Europe were pure theatre, using a combination of descriptive genius to bring events alive, dramatic interventions to maintain attention…
