Verner C. Bickley, after the University of Cardiff and service in the Royal Navy in India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), joined the British Colonial Service and served as an Education Officer in Singapore before joining the British Council in Burma and Indonesia. He later returned to the Overseas Service as Director of the Hong Kong Government’s Institute of Language. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Hong Kong and Chairman of the English-Speaking Union, Hong Kong. FOOTFALLS ECHO IN THE MEMORY A Life with the Colonial Education Service and the British Council in Asia Verner C. Bickley The Radcliffe Press LONDON • NEW YORK To Gillian for her patience and love Supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council fully supports freedom of artistic expression. The views and opinions expressed in this project do not represent the stand of the Council. Published in 2010 by Radcliffe Press An Imprint of I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright © Verner C. Bickley 2010 All illustrations © Verner C. Bickley 2010, except the photographs of the staff of Altrincham Grammar School and of the School Scout Hut The right of Verner C. Bickley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN 978 1 84885 085 9 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress catalog card: available Typeset in Minion by Dexter Haven Associates Ltd, London Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham CONTENTS Illustrations ix Acknowledgements xi Foreword by Rt Hon the Lord Hunt of Wirral, MBE xiii Foreword by Valerie Mitchell, OBE, Director-General xv the English-Speaking Union of the Commonwealth Preface xvii Introduction 1 The First Step 3 1 Beginnings 5 2 Fun and Games 12 3 A Good Environment 19 The Second Step – School Days and Conflict 27 4 The Grammar School 29 5 Came the War 37 The Third Step – Navy Days 45 6 Wake Up! 47 7 The Holiday Camp and Worse 57 8 The Midshipman 66 The Fourth Step – Back to Reality 81 9 Return to Ceylon 83 10 Back to Wales 91 11 A Study Regimen 100 The Fifth Step – Singapore: Lion City 109 12 The Undelivered Message 111 13 Friends and Acquaintances 124 14 Sarawak and Broadcasting Days 131 15 The Railway Victims 140 16 There Was Still an Emergency 146 17 Mount Pleasant 153 The Sixth Step – Burma: Land of the Crested Lion 163 18 Intruders, Snakes and Ruined Dinners 165 19 Maymyo, Taunggyi and Miss Gulliver 178 The Seventh Step – Indonesia: A Multitude of Islands 191 20 Culture 193 21 Penasihat 204 22 The Mob 211 The Eighth Step – Japan: Land of the Rising Sun 223 23 Some Surprises 225 24 Tokyo Perspectives 239 25 Culture Learning 248 26 How English Works 258 27 Celebrities 270 The Ninth Step – Hawaii to Hong Kong 279 28 Return to the Service 281 29 Reflections 283 Notes 287 References 297 Index 301 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. The writer’s parents, Stephen Verner and Lillian Bickley. 7 2. 86 Allerton Road, Liverpool. 15 3. Staff of Altrincham Grammar School, Cheshire, 1942. 31 4. The Scout Hut at Altrincham Grammar School, Cheshire, 33 1935. 5. Naval cadets at Aberdare Hall, University College of 50 South Wales and Monmouthshire, Cardiff, 1944. 6. Cypher Group at country-house training centre in Alton, 68 Hampshire, 1945. 7. Cypher Group at the House in Alton, Hampshire, 1945. 70 8. Author and fellow officer outside the Naval Distributing 85 Authority Building, Colombo, Ceylon, 1946. 9. Calais to Dover Ferry, 1947. Peter Marychurch, Isobel 95 Biddulph and the writer. 10. Evening Garden Party in Singapore, c. 1952. 135 11. Rashid and Mina in the grounds of 7A, Goodwood Hill, 143 Singapore, 1954. 12. Lunch at the State Teachers’ Training College, Rangoon, 171 Burma, 1960. 13. At the summer school in Maymyo, Burma, 1960. 181 14. ‘Rusting, damaged tanks and savaged armoured cars…’ 183 Kyaukypu, the Arakan, Burma, 1960. 15. Miss Gulliver at the early morning market, Kyaukypu, 185 the Arakan, Burma, 1960. 16. Guests at a function held in the British Council library, 213 Jakarta, 1962. 17. Author with Harry Lawrence, the British Council 217 Representative in Indonesia, 1963. 18. A tea ceremony with Mr and Mrs A.S. (‘Ash’) Hornby, 237 Tokyo, Japan, 1969. ix – Footfalls Echo in the Memory – 19. The British Ambassador, Sir Francis Rundall, Lady 274 Rundall and Princess Chichibu at a Japan–British Society reception, 1966. 20. HRH Prince Charles at a Japan–British Society 276 reception (with the British Ambassador, Sir John Pilcher), Tokyo, Japan, 1970. x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the following publishers for their permission to include the following material in this book: The Penguin Group (UK) for an extract (as an epigraph) from The Go-Between by L.P.Hartley; The Scout Association for the lyrics to, ‘We’re Riding Along on the Crest of a Wave’, by Ralph Reader; David Higham Associates for the poem, ‘For Johnny’, by John Pudney; Warner/Chappell Music for the lyrics of the song, ‘If a Grey- Haired Lady’,by Ted Waite; seven lines from the song, ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’,words and music by John W. Bratton and Jimmy Kennedy © 1907, reproduced by permission of B. Feldman & Co Ltd, London, W8 5SW; Faber and Faber Limited for permission to quote three lines as an epigraph and one line as part of the title from T.S. Eliot’s poem, ‘Burnt Norton’.An excerpt from ‘Burnt Norton’ in Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot, copyright 1936 by Harcourt, Inc. and renewed 1964 by T.S. Eliot, reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. I wish to thank Dr Lester Crook of The Radcliffe Press and Liz Friend- Smith for their encouragement, thoughtful help and suggestions. I am most grateful to the Headmaster of The Grammar School, Altrincham, for permission to include photographs of the School and of the Scout Hut. Last, but certainly not least, I would like to express my gratitude to my wife, Gillian for her forebearance, her practical help and her moral support over a long period. It would not have been possible without her. xi FOREWORD Rt Hon the Lord Hunt of Wirral, MBE Although he was born in the Northwest of England and educated there and in Wales and London, Verner Bickley has lived in Asian and Pacific countries for over fifty years. In these engrossing memoirs he retraces his steps from childhood and early schooling through his involvement as a nineteen-year-old naval officer in pre-independent Sri Lanka and India. After demobilisation, early in the bitter winter of 1947, we find him completing his university education and then serving in the Colonial Education Service in Singapore and, later, as a British Council officer in post-independent Burma, Indonesia and Japan. We learn what Verner’s life was like as he took each adventurous step as teacher, broadcaster and cultural diplomat in a life often enlivened by music and song, dance and entertainment. In this informed personal narrative, he shows empathy, sympathy and concern for those he has met, irrespective of their place in the world, using his own passage through time and terrain to illustrate and bring alive what the world has been like for many persuasions and personalities of people. In spite of parenting that bordered on benign neglect, or perhaps because of it, the author had an innocent childhood and youth. In the Navy from the age of eighteen, the round edges began to be hardened just a little and he learned quite young that he had to find his own way in the open spaces of the world. Refusing to retire, Verner now lives in Hong Kong where he writes and publishes on a variety of topics (most recently on the 2008 Olympic Games) and devotes himself to the English-Speaking Union (Hong Kong) as Chairman of its Executive Committee, providing invaluable service to an organisation that is very close to my heart. I commend this book to you. xiii FOREWORD Valerie Mitchell, OBE Director-General, the English-Speaking Union of the Commonwealth In 1945 at the age of nineteen, Verner Bickley left Britain for the first time. As a young naval officer he found himself in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and India. Both countries were then still part of the British Empire, although there were anti-colonial rumblings in both countries. In India, he was present at a mutiny staged by the then Royal Indian Navy and in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) he sat patient – but wondering – in a train that was deserted without warning by its Sinhalese, anti- colonial crew. These early experiences introduced him to cultures and communities in countries other than his own. They were to be reinforced over a long career spent in the Colonial Education Service and the British Council and strengthened in recent years by his membership of the English-Speaking Union, most recently as Chairman in Hong Kong which has grown and developed under his strong leadership.