Paul Clifford – President 2010 to 2011
The Clifford family has a long connection with MGS. My great-grandfather was a pupil at the school in the 1860s and he was followed in turn by two of his sons, his grandson (my father, who died in 2006) and by me. All my forebears served as President of the OM Society so the weight of well over a century of history as well as the chain of office is now bearing upon my shoulders.
I left Maidstone to go to university in 1971, but my parents lived all their lives in the town or its immediate environs (my mother still does) so my links have remained strong. For more than 20 years I was a non-executive Director of the family business which traced its history in Maidstone back to 1747. I played (largely undistinguished) cricket for The Mote for several years in the university holidays, “groping uncertainly forward” (as John Arlott might have said) while David Sayer’s thunderbolts whistled past the outside edge (and that was just in the nets).
Since leaving university I have spent most of my working life in publishing in a variety of editorial, marketing and management jobs. A number of years ago I switched careers and worked for almost 9 years for Oxfam, running part of the UK operation, raising money, managing part of the shop network, campaigning, and developing its Fair Trade brand. In 1997 I went back to publishing and, since then, have been MD of Lion Hudson plc, the UK’s largest independent Christian publisher.
I have been married for over 30 years and have two grown-up daughters, one married and living in Brussels and the other in London. For 20 years I have been a Church of England Reader (a voluntary office now re-designated Licensed Lay Minister) attached first to a large suburban church and, as of the last 12 months, to a group of rural parishes just north of Oxford. So you can look forward to a sermon at the 2011 supper when it comes to my turn to speak.
I remain enormously grateful to MGS for helping to shape me as a person. The intellectual training, the opportunity to exercise responsibility, the huge variety of extra-curricular openings to develop my aptitudes and interests, the dedication of time and enthusiasm by many masters (I don’t imagine they are still called that) are all aspects that I recall with pleasure. I was sometimes over-awed and out of my depth, often stretched, and once, when as a rather pompous Captain of Cricket I was thrown in full cricket gear into the deep end of the swimming pool, seriously annoyed, but never bored. Haec olim meminisse juvabit indeed.
In my time, MGS was an impressively good and humane institution. Change has come to our educational system with machine-gun rapidity in recent years. Even a county such as Kent which has retained the grammar school system cannot escape the new pressures. There are now more demands and more responsibility on a school like ours than ever. If it can retain the skill of developing so much differing potential among its students while sharing its expertise and their talent with the wider community it will not just live up to its traditions but enhance them.