28 June 2013
Goodbye, Mr Keates. One of our longest-serving English teachers is hanging up his mortarboard. Jonathan Keates has been at the City of London School for 39 years, as well as writing novels and histories and chairing the Venice in Peril Fund.
“I’m a little lachrymose,” he tells me. “They are giving me an alumni evening next week, on the 3rd, to which I hope more old boys than staff will turn up. Then it’s the final farewell where I ride off into the sunset Clint Eastwood-style to an Ennio Morricone soundtrack.”
Among his many former students is Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe, who was taught by Keates for a term. “But we bonded and he was a marvellous pupil, very self-effacing and unassuming. At that time he wanted to become a writer.”
