December 2024 / January 2025
This month we meet a newish member of the community. David Brazier has had a successful career in education and retired to Walditch this summer after more than a decade as head of a boys’ school in Surrey. We met him at his new home to hear how he and his wife are settling in…
The Bridge: David, welcome to Bridport – and to Walditch! What brings you here?
David Brazier: We moved here from Beaconsfield. We’d sold our home there but weren’t quite sure where we wanted to move to – first we started looking for a second home in Totnes, as we liked the vibe there. Then we discovered that some friends had bought a campsite in Broadoak. We went to stay with them there and really liked it – and particularly Bridport. We looked at some houses and just fell in love with this one in Walditch, so we bought it and moved here in July.
TB: How are you settling in?
DB: I like the countryside, the sea and the beach and I feel blessed to be here. Everyone has been very friendly and within a week of our arrival we’d been invited to a garden party. My wife, Lizzie, joined the Women of Walditch group, who meet in the village hall, and she’s volunteering with the Bank of Dreams and Nightmares in Bridport, helping to deliver children’s creative writing projects. And I was asked to look after the phonebox library here in Walditch! We definitely feel at home.
TB: It sounds like you’re going to be busy here, even though you’ve retired from your career in education. What led you into teaching?
DB: One of the most important influences on my life was Dr Kathleen Raine, an expert in the work of William Blake, and herself a poet and scholar of enormous philosophical vision. I wrote to her when I was studying Blake at university and she invited me to her home in London; we went on to form a deep friendship and I felt she had adopted me as her ‘spiritual grandson’.
Kathleen understood the ‘great battle’ of life to be between deadening materialism, in which nothing is sacred, and living ‘in the light of the Spirit’. She summed this up using Blake’s words: “Everything that lives is holy.” She was driven by a vision of Spirit-led education, and in her 80s she established Temenos, a charity that offers education in philosophy and the arts along the principles of the sacred traditions of East and West.
She was an extraordinary woman who animated a room with her being – and she changed my life. I’d gone to university in my late 20s, after a few years working in industry, and my friendship with Kathleen made me resolve to become a teacher.
TB: How did you establish yourself in this field?
DB: Initially I went into prep schools. I loved teaching and I always strove to bring what I’d learnt from Kathleen and Temenos to my work, teaching in an imaginative vein. I loved the classroom but I also enjoyed life at independent schools, with sport in the afternoon (I love coaching cricket) and grounds that keep the pupils in touch with nature.
I had a few head-of-department posts then I was headhunted by the Cognita group of independent schools set up by Chris Woodhead, who was the Chief Inspector of Schools in England in the 1990s. I got my first headship at Long Close in Slough, where I worked to change the cultural values of the school and establish a new ethos of inspirational teaching.
Then in 2013 I saw an advert for the headship at St James Senior Boys’ School in Ashford. They were looking for someone with an interest in meditation and philosophy, and I saw an opportunity to bring my two interests together and offer pupils a fully holistic education.
TB: And you got the job…?
DB: I did – and I stayed there until my retirement this year. The St James schools were founded by Leon MacClaren, an economist, teacher and philosopher who espoused the principles of Advaita Vedanta – simply put, each human is ‘pure awareness’, a pure and perfect being. In this context the job of an educator is to remove impediments to light. The school incorporates meditation and mindfulness into each day, and, unusually for UK schools, pupils also learn Sanskrit.
Happily, a holistic approach to education is becoming more mainstream – the Mindfulness in School Project was set up 15 years ago to teach children this vital skill – but at St James reflection and meditation have been embedded for decades. This was my dream job.
I’m proud of what I achieved during my 11 years at St James – visitors to the school would say they could feel the special energy. I ended my working life feeling complete, like I’d achieved what I was sent to earth to do.
TB: Do you think boys do better in single-sex schools?
DB: Yes, I think they do. They stay a bit more innocent and they don’t align themselves with girls.
TB: How does the experience of pupils at St James differ from your own schooldays?
DB: I went to a Seventh-day Adventist school, where there was lots of Bible study, but I wanted a more direct experience of the spiritual life. I had a lively mind but I’ve always valued stillness and later I took up meditation and studied Sanskrit. As the years have passed, I’ve kept an interest in Christian theology alongside other philosophies, and I have an inclusive attitude to the spiritual – I’ve learnt that there are many paths to God.
TB: What about your own children? Have they followed you into education?
DB: My son Peter has – he teaches economics and maths at a school in London, where he also coaches cricket, just like his dad did! My daughter, Grace, is a project manager in the construction industry, also in London.
Lizzie is my second wife. We knew each other when we were at school and we went to a drama club together. I always wanted to ask her out! Then after my first marriage ended, I found her on Friends Reunited and we fell in love.
David writes weekly on Substack: www.davidbrazier.substack.com