who was the Headmaster of Campbell College, Belfast between 1954 and 1971,
died on 15 September 1997 at the age of 84. He was born on 28 January 1913
A generation of Campbellians will remember John Cook as a Headmaster of considerable authority who insisted on the highest standards of behaviour and was uncompromising in his encouragement of academic excellence. His ambition for the school was pursued with a determination which was leavened by a sharp wit and a linguistic style which was much admired. Many of those who had respected him at school came more fully to enjoy his sense of humour and friendship later in life.
Francis John Granville Cook came from nonconformist west country stock. His great grandfather taught in the Swindon Wesleyan Sabbath School and was a ferocious supporter of Gladstone. His mother was third generation Irish in England. He was proud of that diversity and became the chairman of the Cambridge University Hibernian Society. But whatever may have been the religion of his antecedents he was brought up an Anglican.
John Cook was the only child of a quiet father who was a talented painter and who never wholly recovered from the effect of gas in 1917. A somewhat isolated childhood led to the development of a considerable intellect. After the Wyggeston School in Leicester he was a Squire scholar of Downing College, Cambridge. This was followed by a Tancred Studentship at Lincoln's Inn and a short time spent as a pupil on the Midland circuit. He overcame his regret that he had been unable to practice at the Bar.
If the legal profession, and perhaps the bench, lost what might have been an ornament, the teaching profession did not. When he was appointed by Percy Wallace to teach at Cambusdoon in Ayrshire, he was one of three hundred applicants and very glad to get the job. In 1937 he moved to Rossall where he taught until the war intervened.
His experiences in the RNVR developed new skills. He served as an ordinary seaman on HMS Sheffield in the North Atlantic and on Russian convoys. Commissioned at the RNC Greenwich he went to Scapa Flow on his appointment to the staff of Admiral Macnamara with whom he got on well. The tact, diplomacy and stamina required to convey the Admiral's wishes and instructions to other off icers and to civilians doing business with the fleet were most useful in dealing with school governors later in life. Later, in Italy, he liaised between American forces and the Royal Navy as the war moved north. Like many of his generation he was extremely reticent about his wartime experiences and could only bring himself to hint at the part played by Asti Spumanti in the liberation of the port of Genoa.
Returning to Rossall after the war he was appointed Headmaster of the Junior School in 1949 and thereafter to Campbell College in 1954. Once there he set out immediately and deliberately to transform an already sound school into an excellent one. He needed no instruction in the importance of team spirit or the value of comradeship but his insistence that schools existed for the main purposes of teaching and learning rather than for the playing of rugby football ruffled a few feathers. His initial somewhat uneasy relationship with the governors and some old boys ripened, however, into a warm and constructive partnership.
The main instrument of his policy was the appointment of excellent teachers. His own experience as a schoolmaster and Naval Officer made him a shrewd judge of character. During his time at Campbell and after his retirement in 1971 he derived great pleasure from the fact that many of those he appointed to Campbell College themselves later became Headmasters and many men in whom he had confidence enjoyed long careers at the school. But it must be acknowledged that, in the days when it was still possible to do so, he did not delay in disposing of the services of those whose careers he thought might best be continued elsewhere. His policy was widely acknowledged to be successful. His friends recall his annual agitation in the days before Christmas as he waited for news of the University scholarships to arrive.
He was a great stylist and, somewhat unusually, his speeches on speech days or to the school at the end of each term or to Old Campbellian dinners were eagerly awaited by their audiences. Some of his comments achieved a wide currency. To a boy who was well known to have not the slightest intention of pursuing an academic or clerical career, "if you do not pass junior Latin they will never make you Archbishop of Canterbury"; and to a boy practising on the organ, "Play me some Bach." "But this is Bach, sir", "Well play me some typical Bach", came the unabashed reply.
His devotion to the medieval classics, to English legal and constitutional history, to the Royal Navy and to Anglicanism sometimes masked a reforming and even radical mind. Although sceptical of the motives of politicians his own political impulses were always liberal. He was a lifelong opponent of capital punishment. He was a keen supporter of regional devolution and staggered his friends in the HMC by recounting the ease of access he had to the Permanent Secretary of the Department of Education, or even the Minister, at Stormont. He was delighted that he had survived to witness and enjoy the change of government earlier this year and would have welcomed the signs of more imagination now emerging in Northern Ireland.
Leaving Campbell at the height of his powers at the age of 59 he enjoyed a long retirement. He and his wife Jocelyn, herself a classic and exemplary Headmaster's wife, lived variously in Scotland, Italy, Yorkshire and recently, perhaps most contentedly, in Bryansford, County Down. He was able to read Lessons in church and delighted in inviting his children and grand-children to rise to his bait to the end. He is survived by his wife Jocelyn, his devoted partner of 54 years, and by his son and two daughters.