Biography

Jim Hyde was born in 1925 in Birmingham and grew up in Ward End. His father was a records clerk at the Wolseley Motors works; his mother kept a wool shop in Washwood Heath Road.

In 1936, he went to King Edward VI's Grammar School, Aston. He remembers "walking through the slums of Upper Thomas Street where women washed their clothes at courtyard fountains ... and where the little boys that surged from these slums were hostile". Despite such incidents, he recalls a happy childhood.

In 1939, he was evacuated for 4 years to Ashby-de-la-Zouch.

In 1943 he was offered a place at Jesus on condition that he joined the Cambridge University Air Squadron. He read History: American and Constitutional, and achieved his first flight in a Tiger Moth from Marshall's: Cambridge - Witham - Marks Tey.

In December 1944, life at Jesus was put on hold when he was sent 'on detachment', later departing for Canada in June 1945, where he began a navigation course in Manitoba, Canada. However, the course was abruptly terminated by the Japanese surrender. During 1946 he was sent to Africa and the Middle East with the V.A.S. (Vocational and Advisory Service) analysing the results of psychometric tests on airmen about to be demobilised. After his own demobilisation in 1947 he returned to Jesus.

In 1950 he emigrated to Canada, married Enid in 1952 and after 2 years teaching at Sedbergh School near Montebello, Quebec, they returned to England in 1954. He had a spell teaching at his old school, Aston.

In 1958, he obtained a post at Woolverstone Hall School, a London County Council boarding school in the Suffolk countryside where he was to become Head of geography and housemaster of Johnston's House.

He had a lifelong love of the Suffolk countryside and particularly the splendid grounds of the School with its 18th century mansion and the adjacent tidal estuary of the River Orwell. He was a keen and copious writer although very little was published.

Jim died on 2 April 2006, aged 80. He leaves two sons, Mark and Christopher.