I first knew Tim at The King’s School, Canterbury in our last year there in 1971. We weren’t close, friendships in such places tended to be ruled by the house you were in – he was in Walpole – or possibly the sports or out-of-class activity you engaged in – I fenced and played music, he did track and field.  He was a natural sportsman – Javelin I think was one of his sports – with a really good eye. I didn’t know this at the time, but when we played golf together, just two years ago in Sierra Leone, I found out that not only was he expert at detecting different birds swooping overhead,  but that in  a sport he had hardly played at all he hit the ball square and true.

That year at King’s he was Head Boy –  so every morning  he would sweep in to Assembly in the magnificent Shirley Hall with a purple gown over the wing collar, waistcoat  and pin stripes which we all wore,  and followed by the other school prefects, all heads of houses, striding down the aisle past 630 of us school boys to take his seat at the front, just on the left of the aisle and facing the  raised stage where the headmaster and other teachers were soon to arrive. At the end of morning assembly, and after the masters had left, Tim would make the day’s announcements and march out with the 10 school prefects trailing behind.  In later years, I don’t remember him ever talking much about his being head-boy; it was certainly something he had every right to be immensely proud of, but this was not his way. He was too modest for that, understated – never vain.

I got to know him slightly in our last term,  the Autumn one of 1971, when we were in the same Upper Sixth class of 12 or so,  preparing for December’s Oxbridge exams in History under the  watchful eye of the ever successful ‘Duffy’ Harris, who year after year garnered scholarships and exhibitions for his star pupils. In the event neither Tim nor I were quite star enough and found ourselves in late 1972 meeting up again at Hatfield College, Durham University. One of his school friends from that History form, also from Walpole, with whom Tim lived for a short time after Durham -  in a rather elegant flat in Covent Garden -  surprised us all by getting a scholarship to Cambridge, then spent much of his first year organising the College Ball before getting sent down for failing his exams. Very Brideshead Revisited it seemed at the time. Tim himself was an extremely good looking young man – in fact he never lost those looks – and was someone who many naturally gravitated to, not just because of his good  looks but because there was a natural charm in him, something which he never seemed to be as comfortable with as others thought he had every right to be.

In what we now call ‘the gap year’, Tim went off on his travels to India. Later he would paint a vivid picture of curry being ladled out for him from a massive cauldron resting over a wooden fire on the edge of Bombay (as we called it then) railway station, the place seething with people and exotic smells. It probably didn’t cost more than a rupee. Tim was a good storyteller, adept at bringing places to life and this was the first of many stories I remember him telling. Five years later, and on my own travels, I was outside that same railway station enjoying my own curry with those special flavours remembered from his earlier experience.    
At Durham,  Tim studied Anthropology, as did I,  and very soon he hooked up with Irish protestant, Topsy,  a slightly older student, who had already been an undergraduate at  Trinity College, Dublin. They spent the whole of those university years together (an unusually long time for a student couple) and in our third year the three of us shared a house in May Street. It was under a viaduct, an old miner’s cottage with an outside loo, and coal fires in the main room and each of the two bedrooms. At the end of the street down Hawthorne Terrace were  the famous organ works of Harrison Brothers and the noisy boisterous  pub, the Colpitts, where we would often go for a pint of Sam Smiths.

I saw a fair amount of Tim over the next few years, his year in Libya after Durham was obviously formative and he often spoke about his time there, his love for the open-ness of the desert and the solace of  the sand dunes.  Back in England, on one occasion I travelled down with him to Dorset where his parents had retired to,  and went to see the church and cemetery  where Thomas Hardy was buried. His father was a clergyman and got on well with my uncle who was a Canon in Canterbury Cathedral during the 70’s.  We were both brought up in the Church of England, and had both been choristers as kids but we carried our faith relatively lightly, and I don’t remember talking much about it. However, the very last time we met, last August in St Albans  we walked to the Abbey and once inside enjoyed  its peacefulness  and he talked about going to Evensong there sometimes.

We were close enough in the years after Durham for me to ask him to be best man at my wedding in 1981. Well, the wedding didn’t happen, and when I did finally get married in 1994, my brother took over the best man  role.  Tim and Claire were very much there though, as guests, presenting us with an inscribed pottery dish which we have since carried all round the world.  There were gaps in our friendship – my wife, Ann and I  were working overseas– but we would meet from time to time in London over a coffee or drink, and there were the (almost) regular Christmas cards and letters, so we could follow the expansion of the family and growth of Joe and Bella. Once, around 2008, when Tim was working at Bedford University, there was a possibility for him to visit Mauritius while I was working there, but this trip didn’t materialise and I never asked him if he eventually got there . 

Around 2017, he visited Topsy in Dublin, some 40 years on and encouraged me too to renew our old friendship. And very much on Tim’s initiative, in recent years Tim and I have seen much more of each other. In late May, 2018, he came and spent a week with Ann and me in Sierra Leone – not everyone’s choice of holiday destination. He was to be our last house guest in West Africa and indeed, since I retired a few months later, our very last to visit us ‘at post’. We had a packed but very enjoyable few days, which, now looking back, encapsulated a lot of what I remember him for. He was curious and genuinely interested in other people, other cultures, a keen observer. He very much entered into the spirit of things. He was happy to share his own knowledge with fellow professionals, which he did when we went on a work visit to the University of Makeni in the north of Sierra Leone and addressed the university’s heads of faculty or to participate in a warm up dance with a group of primary school teachers. The sand, the light, the hospitality of the local people - and the sea food of Sierra Leone reminded him of that year in Libya, which he often talked about on this trip. And we laughed a lot – his was a gentle, somewhat mischievous chuckle which went with a sense of humour that was light but perceptive. He talked about his work at Birkbeck and the College in East London bringing the idiosyncrasies of both to life He also talked about his family. They were the most important thing in his life. He wanted to do good by his children. He was immensely proud of them and it was fitting that they and Claire were together in his last days.

Tim came to stay with us in Bath after his first cancer treatment and had hoped to be at our anniversary party last July. Recently we spoke frequently on the phone We ‘spoke’ the day before he died, sitting up in bed at Claire’s with Bella around, Joe was at work, his sister and husband had been up from Canterbury.  Though I knew time was not on his side, I didn’t realise that would be my last conversation with him – such is the unreality of lockdown that you may not “see” what there is in front of you on the screen. But then he was so good at staying strong in front of others even then, not giving the game away.  I hear though that he was at peace at the end, sharing many wonderful memories with his closest family – that’s the main thing. A good friend.