Julian Grenville – Edgarley legend

Julian Grenville was one of the reasons why Edgarley rapidly earned such a fine academic reputation in the difficult post-war years. This is something of an irony, for, had it not been for the war, this cultured and hugely talented man would not have graced this country at all, let alone this small corner of it, with his towering academic presence. Sadly, it was as a result of his war-time deprivations that he met an early death mourned by so many colleagues and pupils and regretted by generations to come.

Part of Julian’s obituary in the Millfield Windmill of 1964 reads:

 ‘Julian’s devotion to the school and his capacity for hard work were extraordinary and in the building up of the reputation for good teaching and the ‘good life’ he has had a large share. He in his turn inspired great devotion in his colleagues and his pupils. His quick wit, genuine humility, his readiness to listen and his complete lack of pomposity were some of the qualities which enabled him to handle all manner of men with rare success, and to bring out of them a ‘best’ which often surprised them.’

One of three brothers, Julian was born Julius Guhrauer in 1921, into a successful, professional middle-class Jewish family living in Berlin. His father was a High Court judge, who lost his position in 1933 in Hitler’s Germany and was only able to support his family on a small pension. Julian’s brother, Walter, remembers asking for offcuts at the bakers and waiting with his mother at the market near Julian’s Grammar School until the time when prices were reduced. Attitudes towards Jewish pupils at the brothers’ different schools, particularly for Julian and Walter, gradually worsened until all three were expelled in November 1938, just before Julian was due to sit his ‘Abitur’, or A levels.

This was of course the time of ‘Kristallnacht’, the day when Julian’s mother insisted they all go into the streets to mingle, to avoid the looters breaking into Jewish homes. Their father, meanwhile, had been taken to a concentration camp, barely escaping with his life, although he was granted a temporary visa to enter Britain. Assigned to a ‘Kindertransport’ in March 1939, the three brothers were taken to the station by their mother, who stayed behind to say goodbye to her parents; they were never to see her again.

A special train took the children, doubtless relieved to be leaving Germany but not their families, to Holland where they boarded a steamer to Harwich. Almost immediately the two elder brothers were separated from 11 year-old John, who found himself at a boarding school in Essex, whilst Julian and Walter were sent to another school to study English, of which they had none, before being engaged in war work when hostilities broke out in the September.

Within just two years, Julian had managed to find enough time, energy and inspiration, outside of his working life, to become sufficiently educated to be teaching languages at a Prep School near Crawley.

His route was not an easy one. Registering as an external student with London University, Julian followed a correspondence course, studying French, History and German, entirely privately, but passing first an Entrance Exam, then an Intermediate Exam before finally achieving a 2nd Class Honours Degree, all the while having to hold down a full-time job, firstly as a tailor, then as a teacher at a private school in London. Had he been a full-time student, there is little doubt that he would have achieved a 1^st Class Honours.

Having graduated, Julian obtained a teaching post in 1943 at Burstow School, at Horley in Surrey, and it is from here, two years later, that he writes to Boss Meyer, stating that he is looking for more advanced and challenging teaching, and asking to be considered for a post at Edgarley Hall.

Having been offered a position and having accepted it, Julian unexpectedly, though perhaps not surprisingly given his character, declines it following entreaties from Burstow’s headmaster, who is adamant that the school will go under if Julian leaves, such was the parlous state of his school (and many others in post-war Britain). In typically honourable and candid fashion, and at the risk of his own future, Julian withdraws his acceptance.

Boss, needless to say, is not overjoyed by the state of affairs but appreciates the fine motive. Indeed a few terms later he repeats the offer, which is this time unconditionally accepted by Julian. Neither of the two was ever to regret the decision.

Julian did not take long to make his mark, throwing himself wholeheartedly into the life of his new school, to the extent that new responsibilities were quickly thrust upon him, including the position of Director of Studies.

Boss was not slow to show his appreciation in financial terms, though at the same time he urged Julian to maintain a healthy work/life balance. However Julian’s love of and dedication to his job allowed him no such consideration; the school, the teaching, his pupils were all he lived for.

Sadly, Julian’s childhood deprivations left their mark and his health began to suffer. In 1960, to Julian’s distress, he was obliged to return to his native Germany to recuperate from a serious bout of pneumonia.

This enforced absence proved successful, although his responsibilities had to be reduced, but the next one did not, and in 1963, faced with rapidly deteriorating health and the desperate prospect of retirement from teaching, Julian took his own life in Taunton Hospital. Two months later, on 2^nd February 1964, St John’s Church in Glastonbury was packed with mourners for a memorial service.

Julian’s death, following so close after that of another cherished member of staff, Coral Salisbury, made this a very sad and difficult time for Edgarley. However, such was the strength and reputation of the school that Julian was instrumental in forging that it survived and continued to flourish.

Julian was not only an outstanding teacher and gifted administrator but also a fine colleague, with ‘an unequalled eye for the amusing side of daily life’, as Ben Rushton put it in a later tribute. Indeed, it was Julian who nicknamed Rachel Forbes-Thompson, ‘Rumpty-Fu’ (adapted from Gilbert & Sullivan), and Joan Ludgate, ‘Jane’, for her predeliction for Jane Austen novels. She described Julian as the kindest man she’d ever met. The late Prue Langlands remembered pupils queuing up voluntarily in their spare time for extra Latin lessons with ‘the brilliant Julian Grenville’.

However perhaps the most telling compliment paid to Julian was that by Chris Wickham (Edgarley 1961-62), now the much-published Chichele Professor of Medieval History and Fellow at All Souls’ College, Oxford, who said that Julian Grenville was the most influential teacher he ever had.

What a journey for the Jewish boy from Berlin!

With thanks to JEBG’s brothers, the late Professor John Grenville and Walter Grenville, and Julian’s nephew, George Grenville of Colorado.