Basil Holden

BASIL Holden, a very unusual and delightful man, was Rector of Glasgow Academy for 15 years which spanned the difficult years of the 1960s. His style of headmastering would not have suited today's imperatives of management, marketing, and money, let alone the league tables. But he was human and original in a way no headmaster today is allowed to be or could imagine himself as being.

He gave himself devotedly to his pupils and staff in the most personal way, knowing them well and with great understanding; he taught maths regularly and delightedly, refusing to believe that anyone need suffer from a ''blank spot'' about the subject; he supported teams and school activities with devotion and genuine interest; and, above all, he believed in people as his highest priority.

After graduating from Cambridge as a Wrangler, he had a year teaching at Highgate School before joining the Navy. At sea he he was involved in the sinking of both the Repulse and the Cornwall; regarding himself as a ''Jonah'' after that, he became an instructor lieutenant.

I was myself exceedingly fortunate in being taught navigation by him at King Alfred, Hove, in 1943. Typically it was he, not I, who remembered this when we met again after his appointment to Glasgow Academy. After the war he went to Oundle School, where he taught maths for eight years and was a housemaster for the last four, before moving to Glasgow.

Glasgow, Scottish Schools, and the Headmasters' Association of Scotland had never met anyone like Basil; some of us took to him and his style with amazed delight and gratitude; others found him just a little bit too eccentric for comfort.

He was never afraid to speak out about his belief in human values and the potential benefits of education for everyone. He had an unshakeable faith in his pupils and in what that faith could achieve; his pastoral

skills were enormous, even when thought to be quixotic - no-one was thought beyond the pale, however wrongly he had behaved; no-one was considered ineducable, however little ''spark'' or response he seemed to show.

Whether in the academy itself or in HAS and other meetings, he was always full of hope for what could be achieved, always raising his voice against despair. That hope, and his extraordinary faith in people, were matched by a charity of outlook I have only once in my life met elsewhere. Together they amounted to a remarkable example of what a Christian life, fully lived, can really be.

He is survived by his wife and four children.