Bob hails from Coventry and attended King Henry VIII School, there serving as School Captain in his final year. A schoolboy during war years, he has a fund of funny stories about emergency arrangements and special duties. He and his fellow pupils actually played their part in rebuilding parts of the school after bomb damage.

Bob did two years of National Service which included a period working for Army Intelligence in North Germany. He then proceeded to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he studied German and French under the great teacher Trevor Jones, the outstanding lexicographer of his generation and the most human of academics. In 1956 Bob returned to his old school to teach and, inciden-tally, I was fortunate enough to be his pupil there.

In 1965 he moved to be Head of German at Harrow County Grammar School and six years later he came to Haberdashers'. He was in charge of German here for eleven years and House Master of Joblings from 1976 to 1982. For the past six years he has been Head of Middle School with a brief to supervise and guide some 470 boys in the third, fourth and fifth years.

As a classroom teacher Bob has always been supreme. The meticulous approach of someone who regularly completes the most difficult of crosswords while many others are still abed shows itself in his teaching: every aspect of a course is carefully covered, every point is painstakingly marked. Boys of considerable poten-tial and boys who find language demanding have benefited greatly from the clarity and purposeful-ness of Bob's style. You work hard but there is a lot of laughter as well: a lightness of touch and a sense of what boys like enliven his lessons. Generations of sixth formers have admired the distinctive combination of impressive scholarship and practical teaching which their teacher has offered them. His immense vocabulary (kept up to-date by an exacting personal reading programme) and his unerring eye for accuracy have led many to aim for ever higher degrees of precision. For a number of years he acted as Chief Examiner for one of the G.C.E. boards and was characteristically conscientious in the execution of these extra duties.

As a schoolmaster Bob has been - in the words of his first headmaster - the sort of person who makes a school. For more than 20 years he watched rugby teams and is well known as the most loyal supporter of school teams and a keen viewer of internationals. He has sung in many choirs in school and outside and his reliability and the accuracy of his powerful tenor voice have helped to give substance to many performances. A regular member of the Chapel congregation, he is anxious to continue to learn and to celebrate the faith which has sustained him all his life. Many of us have good reason to be grateful to him for innumerable acts of kindness always carried out quietly and without fuss.

As a man Bob inspires confidence. He is both strong and wise. He can move quickly from putting right a boy who has done something regrettable to offering thoughtful advice to a boy experiencing difficulties in school. Blessed with an unusually large store of common sense, Bob often sees what is most important in a situation and has a practical approach to making things better. He does not like opportunities to be wasted but he has all the time in the world for the individual trying his best, grappling with difficulties, hoping to improve.

All those of us who have known Bob as teacher, colleague or friend wish him - together with Margaret and Jonathan - all the very best for the future. It is so sad that such a vigorous colleague should have early retirement forced on him by an eye problem which has already caused much discomfort for several years. We all hope for an easing of the difficulty in the less hectic days ahead and we express our gratitude to this most dutiful of all schoolmasters for his unstinting hard work, loyalty and humour.

Stephen Wilson