David Briggs (headmaster)

David Briggs at 100

John Davidson Briggs (born 1917) (known as David Briggs), is a former Headmaster of King's College School, Cambridge.^[1]

Early life and education

He was born in Norwich, England, son of Canon George Wallace Briggs and Constance Barrow.^[2] One of his godfathers was the Archbishop of Canterbury Randall Davidson. He sang in King’s College Choir both as a chorister, from 1927 to 1931, and as a choral scholar, from 1936 to 1939.^[3] He attended Marlborough College as a Foundation scholar, and then studied classics and history at King's College, Cambridge, where he held simultaneously an academic exhibition and a choral scholarship.

He sang in the first broadcast Christmas Eve carol service from King’s College Chapel in 1928, and continues to sing in a church choir. He was interviewed by Mishal Husain in A Celebration of Christmas Carols broadcast on BBC Radio 2 on 25 December 2013, making his broadcasting career span 85 years. He was again interviewed on the BBC Today programme on 24 December 2015 in which Briggs, aged 98, believes he is the last survivor of the 1928 choir.^[4]

In 1940 he married Catherine Mary Lormer,^[2][5] a mathematics teacher whose students would include Sir Andrew Wiles who later proved Fermat’s Last Theorem and Sir Timothy Gowers, Rouse Ball Professor at Cambridge. Their children are Johnny, who farms in Wales, Andrew, Professor of Nanomaterials at Oxford, Catherine, who teaches the visually impaired, and Anne Atkins, writer and broadcaster.^[2]

Wartime

As a conscientious objector Briggs was drafted into the Pay Corps, a job which he disliked intensely and his father, who was then Vice-Dean of Worcester Cathedral, negotiated him a transfer into the Medical Corps. However, it became a requirement that members of the Medical Corps had to bear arms, an order which he refused to obey on the grounds that he would not bear arms that he would not use, and faced the possibility of court-martial, but this was withdrawn after the order was found to be against the Geneva Convention, and for the rest of the war he continued as a corporal, being ineligible for promotion or decoration as a conscientious objector. He took part in the Normandy landings and help set up a field hospital, 102 British General Hospital ^[6] near Bayeux, where he formed a choir of about 25 doctors and nurses which subsequently performed in different parts of Normandy.

In early June 2014 Briggs movingly recalled some of his experiences from this time in a radio interview given in a brief BBC D-Day anniversary presentation.^[7] While in the Medical Corps he formed and conducted an a cappella choir.

Career

From 1946 he taught classics at Bryanston School Dorset.^[5] With his wife’s mathematical help in the planning and the boys' labour, he built the Greek Theatre at Bryanston which led to the highly reputed Greek summer school which is now held there every year.^[8]

In 1959, following a short hiatus, Briggs succeeded Donald George Butters^[9] as Headmaster of King's College School, Cambridge, a position he held until his retirement in 1977.^[10] During his tenure he turned the school co-educational. The school's Briggs Building, created to house science, languages and maths classrooms and a library, is named after him.^[11]

Friendships

After returning to Cambridge he became a close friend of conductor, organist and composer Sir David Willcocks,^[2][12] and of church historian The Revd Professor Owen Chadwick.

References