Mr Flashman has been at Haberdashers' for 30 years. He teaches us History and tells jokes to make it fun. He takes us to many places, such as Mont Fitchet Castle. When he gets angry, he gets very angry!"

"Mr. Flashman is the greatest man I have ever known. He always tries to cheer us up with some jokes. Although he gives us a lot of homework he also makes it fun for us. I like his motorbike because it is very big."

These two testimonials from P1 and P2 speak for the whole of the Preparatory School. Asked to sum up their Headmaster in two or three sentences almost to a man they tell of interesting History lessons, appalling jokes, strictness but abundant kindness. I have no doubt that Basil Flashman will be remembered above all for his great-heartedness and love for every single member of the Prep. It is the kindness and the humour that you notice first; a slow but radiant smile, and eyes which light up with the sheer fun of being alive, but notice also the set of the jaw and the extraordinarily strong neck muscles. Here is someone with true grit -not a man to be trifled with -so it comes as no surprise to learn that he was his college boxing champion in the late 1940s.

Basil Flashman has been at Habs since 1957 and ever since the move to Elstree in 1961 he has had responsibility for the Preparatory School, first under Mr. Manning who was Head of both the Prep and the Junior School, but from 1966 entirely on his own. Over the years he has come to embody the Prep and there are many among boys, parents and teachers who wonder if there can be life after BDF. Certainly it will not be the same, as Basil Flashman is a great individualist who has stamped his mark on the Prep and given it some of his character.

When he arrived at Flower Lane, Mill Hill (the home of the Prep School in 1957), Basil had already had a very varied life. Born in Jhansi, North India, in 1926, he was six years old when he came to England for the first time to attend Bembridge School, Isle of Wight. As a teenager, at the outbreak of war, he was evacuated to Coniston in the Lake District, where the school stayed for three and a half years, and in 1943, at the age of 17, began his working life as a journalist on the Gravesend and Dartford Reporter. Some of his work he sold to the national newspapers at the then princely rate of two shillings and sixpence per line. Basil obviously enjoyed his year as a journalist but in 1944 he was called up to the Army and served with the Intelligence Section in Cairo and India where he not only learnt Urdu but also witnessed the beginning of the end of the British Raj in 1947. It was in India that he learnt to play hockey and his enthusiasm for the game has been such that he continues to play 45 years later for St Albans Veterans - grit and determination once more.

After the war, Basil trained to teach at Westminster College, achieving a distinction in his final examination with, not surprisingly, pure "A" for teaching practice. He was appointed to one of only two vacancies in the whole of Middlesex, and from 1951 to 1956 he taught at Grange School, Ealing, in conditions very different from those which prevail today. There were 55 children in his class and his main memory is that he "never stopped marking". Each week he had to submit to his Headmistress detailed notes of the lessons he planned to give in the coming week and equally detailed comments on the lessons of the week just passed. Any lapses in his punctuation or spelling were ruthlessly checked.

The high standards that Mr. Flashman acquired in those early years prepared him well for the demands of Haberdashers'. He remembers his time at Flower Lane with great affection. The Prep was smaller then, about 150, and not so competitive as it is now. The Entrance Examinations, he says, were much easier. Inevitably, the Prep then felt much more detached from the Main School but there was a good family atmosphere under the benevolent care of Mr. R A Lewin and it was with mixed feelings that Basil and his colleagues left Mill Hill to come to Elstree in 1961.

Conditions in those early years at Elstree were much worse than they had been at Flower Lane. The BBC (now the Design Centre but then much more primitive both in design and appearance) served as home not only to the entire Prep School but also to senior boys doing private study, to the Geography Department, and in the evenings to the boarders doing their prep. It is difficult to know quite how they survived, but they did, and Basil believes that the terrible inconvenience was made worthwhile because of the much broader outlook that came to the Prep Staff who were now fully integrated with the Common Room as a whole.

For 22 years Basil Flashman and his colleagues worked on in the BBC Block. Plans for a bright new Preparatory School were drawn up in the late 60s in consultation with the then Headmaster Dr T W Taylor, and a committee of parents raised a considerable amount of many in support of the venture. Quite naturally Basil was frustrated - he said "disappointed" - when it was decided to build the Music School rather than the Prep School in 1972 but he added with typical generosity: "I was absolutely delighted for the musicians."

Twenty-two years of patience and planning were rewarded when, following an extraordinarily generous gift from an anonymous source, the new Preparatory School was built and opened formally in June 1983. Basil Flashman looks back on that day, and the visit of HRH Princess Margaret, with immense pride and pleasure, and certainly the life of the Prep flourished as never before in its new home. It is the growth of music-making that has given Basil most pleasure.
It has always been his ambition for the Prep School to have its own orchestra, choir and recorder groups and he has been very proud of their performances in the last year.

In retirement, Basil Flashman will be able to look back on 32 years of marvellous service to this school. He has given it his all and his example of commitment and service to the school is an inspiration to all those around him. For each of the last 25 years he has led the Prep School Camp, and for the last 22 years he has taken Prep boys skiing. Throughout this time his History pupils and their mums and dads have made elaborate models of Norman castles and the like from cornflakes packets, some of which have been dusted down and passed from brother to brother or father to son. His jokes are notorious, he calls them "pathetic", but they are much loved and have helped create the Flashman legend. That legend is also fed by his large motorbike. Basil and his wife Margaret, herself an Old Haberdasher, have every reason to look forward to a long and happy retirement. He is proudest of the raising of the academic standards and the range of opportunities available to his boys; and the support and friendship of a loyal and committed staff. His biggest regret is the long time that was spent in the BBC building. He still has ambitions -just one more room, "positively my final demand".

We shall all miss him enormously. I leave the last word to a member of P3.

"B D Flashman is a friendly old man but he is always telling terrible jokes. I am sad he will be leaving and I am sure everybody else is. When he retires I hop (sic) he will remember these 30 years as a golden treasure as I am sure they have been."

Keith Dawson, Skylark 1989