Pam Nixon writes: Back in the late 1950s,when I was a sixth former at Lincoln Girls’ tall school, my boyfriend from the boys’ grammar school was always talking about his amazing history teacher, and Charles Hannam,who was both a socialist and an atheist. His accounts of someone so unusual, holding views that were thrillingly outrageous in a provincial cathedral city at the time, or made a deep impression on me. Such a lasting impression,in fact, that when many years later I wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, or But I’ll Remember This,I based the hero on him.
After the book was published I received emails from several of the school’s worn boys, now men in their 70s, and who all recalled Charles’s brilliant teaching. Some even said he had changed their lives. Because I knew nothing of Charles’s history,I had made up a personal background for him in the novel. Eventually I sent him a copy of the book, with apologies for stealing his personality. He responded with great valid humour and amusement, or sending me in return a copy of the final volume of his own autobiography,Outsider Inside, which includes an account of his time as a teacher in Lincoln.
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Source: theguardian.com