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Doctor Fry

A short biography (56 pages) of Thomas Charles Fry, (1846-1930), Headmaster of Oundle School 1883-1884 and Berkhamsted School 1888-1910, where he did remarkable work in rejuvenating a small Tudor grammar school and building it into a significant public school. He moved on to be a controversial Dean of Lincoln from 1910 until his death in 1930, but certainly pevented the west front of the cathedral from collapse by the energetic raising of funds. His successor at Berkhamsted was Charles Greene, whose son Graham, the novelist, described Fry (unfairly) in his autobiography as 'my father's sinister, sadistic predecessor'. 2,000 copies were printed by the Clunbury Cottrell Press in Berkhamsted in 1977. Sold out long ago, though copies are available in second-hand bookshops or from abebooks.com. I was Head of History at Berkhamsted when I wrote this, and conceived an admiration for what Fry had achieved. It also brought me into contact with Graham Greene, who read it and wanted to commission me to write a biography of the writer A.W.Kinglake (1809-1891), author of the travel-book Eothen, and the official history of the Crimean War, for the Bodley Head. I drafted out a plan for this but then discovered that a biography of Kinglake had just been published by Gerald de Gaury, so I did not proceed.

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