Radio Astronomer: John Bolton and a New Window on the Universe

My father’s prime ambition was to sit on the hill

at Sydney and watch England beat Australia.

The greatest puzzle life held for him was not

the mystery of our existence, but the fact that Don Bradman had a

batting average twice that of his hero Len Hutton.

My father had a theory that Australians were a breakaway tribe of

sunburnt Yorkshiremen. This observation was based entirely

on the way the Aussies played their cricket – tough,

aggressive, fiercely competitive and without compromise.

Therefore I grew up believing that Australians were,

at the very least, distant cousins.

Sir Michael Parkinson

Australia Day address, 26 January 2011

John was my thesis supervisor who taught me a lot about being

a scientist. I have always admired his fluency of ideas, his care

and honesty in making measurements and his willingness

to work on all of the jobs from ditch digging on up.

Robert Wilson

Nobel Prize for Physics 1978

To Diane, Katie and Laura

A NewSouth book

Published by

NewSouth Publishing

University of New South Wales Press Ltd

University of New South Wales

Sydney NSW 2052

AUSTRALIA

newsouthpublishing.com

© Peter Robertson 2017

First published 2017

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This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Creator: Robertson, Peter, author.

Title: Radio Astronomer: John Bolton and a New Window on the Universe / Peter Robertson.

ISBN:   9781742235455 (hardback)

9781742242743 (ebook)

9781742248226 (ePDF)

Subjects: Bolton, J. G. (John Gatenby), 1922–1993 – Biography.

Astronomers – Australia – Biography.

Radio astronomy – Australia – History.

Radio telescopes – New South Wales – Parkes.

Design Avril Makula

Cover design Alissa Dinallo

Cover images (front cover): Bolton in 1969, photo by John Masterson (CSIRO Radio Astronomy Image Archive) and Parkes Observatory, photo by John Sarkissian (CSIRO Astronomy and Space Sciences). (back cover): Dover Heights in 1951, photo by Fritz Goro (LIFE magazine).

Printed in China

All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in some cases copyright could not be traced. The author welcomes information in this regard.

This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests.

Contents

Foreword by Ron Ekers and Ken Kellermann

Prologue

1   A Yorkshire lad

2   Farewell to old England

3   Under the Milky Way

4   Go east, young man

5   Australia leads the way

6   Head in the clouds

7   Welcome to Millikan’s school

8   High in the Sierras

9   Radiophysics in transition

10   Starting with a splash

11   Charting southern skies

12   A salute to Karl

13   One small step

14   Astronomer at large

15   A sunburnt Yorkshireman

Notes

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Selected Bolton publications

Index

Foreword

Peter Robertson’s definitive book on the history of the Parkes telescope, Beyond Southern Skies, undoubtedly stimulated his interest in John Bolton. With much enthusiasm and energy he has applied his scholarly approach to recording a history of John Bolton’s life and career, which included the first identifications of radio sources with their optical counterparts and the founding and directorship of two major radio observatories, and ended with his leadership in providing critical real time communication with the Apollo 11 lunar landing and the later Apollo 13 emergency. Why is this biography of John Bolton so valuable? It documents John’s contributions to astronomy both through his discoveries and through his research, which played a crucial role in making Australia a world-class power in astronomy, as well as enriching the entire field of astronomy.

Peter starts with a thoroughly researched personal background involving John’s schools, university and the impact of World War II, all providing context for John Bolton the man. The description of John’s move to Australia and his career in the fledgling radio astronomy group in CSIR (later known as CSIRO) also gives a perspective on the extraordinary development of an entirely new field of research in a country that had been a British outpost, but was in the process of becoming a dominant international player in the new field of radio astronomy.

We read how John Bolton used his hands-on approach to research and his uncanny intuition and propensity to pick the right research areas, which led his Caltech group to a series of remarkable investigations and discoveries. In the short period between 1955 to 1960, his founding and development of the Owens Valley Radio Observatory revived US radio astronomy and led to the broad recognition of the complex structure, luminosity and space density of radio galaxies; to pioneering investigations of radio source polarisation; to a variety of surprising discoveries in planetary radio astronomy; and to the training of a new generation of radio astronomy leaders.

Starting with his first optical identification of extragalactic radio sources in 1949, John began forging a link between optical and radio astronomy. The discovery of quasars flowed directly from this linking of optical and radio observations and after he returned to Australia in 1961 he became directly involved in the design and construction of the Anglo-Australian optical telescope and used it to explore the radio universe. As recounted by Malcolm Smith at the 35th anniversary of the Anglo-Australian Observatory: ‘More than anyone else, Bolton brought radio and optical astronomy together.’

Examples of John Bolton’s very special research style pervade this book; it was particularly well known to his students, including ourselves. He considered it essential for researchers to understand their instrument and helping to build it is the best way to learn. For this reason, John was not a fan of national facilities! How could someone who didn’t understand how the telescope worked be expected to use it effectively? We can see examples of his research style by looking at some of John Bolton’s PhD students: Barry Clark, who was the brains behind the Very Large Array, started at Owens Valley by learning how to use an oxyacetylene torch; Bob Wilson, who went on to win a Nobel Prize, did the circuit design for the Owens Valley instrumentation; and one of us (KK) wired the cables for the interferometer. The other of us (RE) started his PhD by using a tractor to grade the north–south track for the Parkes interferometer; and Marc Price had to build his own telescope, a sky horn, to make absolute measurements of the background radiation. John had the view that we needed to earn our PhD. We were not allowed to use the Parkes 64-metre telescope for our PhD projects as he felt that ‘anyone could get a PhD that way’.

John was intensely competitive in sports as well as research, but was generous in extending credit to others, particularly his students and younger colleagues. The identification of the radio source 3C295 with the then most distant known galaxy, and his leadership in the identification and redshift determination of 3C48 and 3C273, leading to the discovery of quasars, appeared without his name. As described in the final chapter, this made any Nobel Prize nomination difficult. During the last years of a career that was shortened by heart disease, Bolton oversaw the preparations of the Parkes telescope to support the first lunar landing by Apollo 11 and the dramatic rescue of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission.

John travelled widely and had many close friends and colleagues throughout the world. He never asked his staff or students to do anything he could not do himself and he led by example. He shunned authority and would often disagree with management and with the scientific establishment. John had a very clear vision for his research which he pursued with vigour, but he took most pride in the accomplishments of his students, who included six future observatory directors and one Nobel Prize winner.

Ron Ekers

Australia Telescope National Facility, Sydney, New South Wales

Ken Kellermann

National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, Virginia

Prologue

It makes our spirits soar.

Cliff Buxton, The Dish

Itook no particular notice of the name J. G. Bolton when I first came across it. My partner Diane and I had recently returned to our hometown of Melbourne after spending five years seeing the world, most of it spent in Copenhagen. Late in 1980 I was appointed editor of the Australian Journal of Physics, one of the stable of research journals published jointly by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Australian Academy of Science. Although primarily for physics, the journal had a proud tradition of publishing papers by Australian radio astronomers. One of the first papers I edited turned out to be the last research paper published by John Bolton. His swansong paper was one of a series that optically identified some of the thousands of radio sources discovered in the southern skies by the Parkes telescope.

At the time I had developed a strong interest in the history of science and I was casting about for a good topic to research, one that would not only overlap with my day job but would also be a significant story about Australian science. I soon closed in on the idea of writing a history of the Parkes telescope, which, after its construction by CSIRO in outback New South Wales in 1961, had become an icon of Australian science. The prominent radio astronomer Chris Christiansen once remarked that after the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House, the Parkes telescope was one of the most publicised structures in Australia. An obvious start to my research would be by arranging an interview with the inaugural director of the Parkes dish – John Bolton.

After his early retirement from CSIRO, John and Letty Bolton retired to the town of Buderim on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, north of Brisbane. In April 1984 I arranged to visit John, armed with a long list of questions and a fairly primitive cassette tape recorder. Over the next three days I recorded eight hours of John talking about his time as director of the Parkes dish as well as other aspects of his life, such as how he became a radio astronomer in the first place. A few years ago I listened again to these tapes made nearly 30 years earlier. I cringed at times at some of the brash and naïve questions I had asked him, but at no stage did he become irritated or annoyed with me. He was unflappable and I could now admire his patience in talking at length to someone who obviously knew very little about radio astronomy.

John’s daily routine included a late afternoon swim at the local surf beach, where he would catch a few waves. I was a keen body surfer and was happy to accompany him. John produced what he called a windbag, which he said he learnt to use while living in California in the late 1950s. It looked like an oversized cotton pillowcase. He would wet it, inflate it by holding it into the wind, and then tie up the opening with a piece of string. The buoyancy it provided made it much easier to catch a wave than by swimming alone and it remained inflated for a surprisingly long time. After his swim John would dry the bag in the Sun and then fold it away. No surfboard, no roof rack, no worries.

Before I left Buderim John asked whether he could comment on those parts of my draft that directly mentioned his role in the history of the Parkes dish. I was happy to agree, although several years went by before I had anything to show him. He must have liked what he saw and asked whether he could also comment on the other parts of the book not involving him. Eventually, John went through the entire draft line by line, making dozens of detailed and construc-tive comments. In the days before email, we exchanged letters over a two-year period that now fill a large binder.

The last time I saw John was in November 1991 and it was clear that he was in quite poor health. He and Letty had driven from Buderim down to Parkes, where they were to be the guests of honour at a symposium celebrating the 30th anniversary of the telescope’s inauguration. Over 20 papers were presented, including two by John, most of which were lighthearted and irreverent reminiscences by Australian astronomers for whom the telescope had played a major role in their professional lives. Later I arranged for the papers and a collection of photos to be published as a book by the CSIRO publishing group in Melbourne, to which I belonged. The book appeared early in 1994, six months after John had passed away.¹

Bolton received widespread international acclaim for his work and is considered by many to be the leading Australian astronomer of his generation. Similar to other scientists, astronomers do not indulge in celebrity-style Halls of Fame, but if they did John would have been among the very first to have been elevated to ‘Legend’ status. Although a household name in astronomy circles, he is largely unknown by other Australians. Over the years spent researching and writing this book, I have been frequently asked who John Bolton was and why he is a significant figure. I usually responded by asking: ‘Have you seen the film The Dish?’ Probably four out of five people said yes, and so then I’d say: ‘Well, did you know that the lead role played by Sam Neill was John in real life?’ Suddenly my project seemed a bit more interesting to people.

It is interesting to detour here and recount how the film came to be made. Working Dog Productions was established by four friends who met as students at the University of Melbourne and who discovered that collectively they had a great talent for comedy. The TV sketch show The D-Generation established their reputation and they began to branch out into other areas such as documentaries. After about a decade of television, Working Dog decided to try its hand at a feature film. During a meeting aimed at bouncing around ideas, Tom Gleisner told of how the radio telescope at Parkes had transmitted to the world the TV picture of the Apollo 11 moonwalk. The initial reaction from the others was along the lines of, ‘Nah, it can’t be true. We would have heard of this.’ Working Dog obtained a copy of the Parkes 30th anniversary book, which included a chapter on John’s recollections of the Apollo 11 mission. Some of the articles and photos in the book showed a degree of irreverence and larrikinism not usually expected from normally serious and sober scientists – Working Dog realised it was on to a good story.²

A number of obstacles had to be overcome before a script could be developed. First was the telescope itself. Unlike a Hollywood-style production company, Working Dog could not afford to build a replica of the telescope. Not only would they need access to the telescope, but it would need to look much the same as it did at the time of the moon landing in 1969. A couple of the crew made a reconnaissance trip and, when the telescope came into view from the Newell Highway, to their relief they could see that no other modern structures had been built nearby. Apart from a relatively new visitors’ centre for the public, the handful of buildings housing the staff quarters, workshops and offices had not changed since they were built in the 1960s.

Another obstacle was that the telescope’s circular control room, where much of the action would take place, was too cramped to house the cameras, lighting, audio and other equipment required to make a feature film. It would have also been impractical to think about ripping out the banks of computer screens and modern equipment and replacing them with old-fashioned equipment from the 1960s, but then there was a lucky break. Resident astronomer John Sarkissian mentioned that much of the original equipment was stored in a shed near the telescope, complete with old-fashioned bakelite knobs and dials, and some with original NASA logos. A decision was made to cart the equipment to a television studio in Melbourne, where a replica of the circular control room suitable for filming could be built.

After a round of meetings between Working Dog and the Australia Telescope National Facility, which operates the Parkes dish, it was agreed that the film crew would have access to the telescope over a two-week period in May 1999, followed by a further six weeks of filming in Melbourne. For some of the outside locations, plans to film in the Parkes township had to be abandoned as much of its streetscape had been modernised since the 1960s. Instead, to the dismay of Parkes people, filming took place in the neighbouring town of Forbes, where some stately old public buildings and a few old cars made a credible 1960s film set. During development of the script, Working Dog decided to do a practice run by filming another comedy script they had written, one with much simpler logistics that would make it easier to film. It tells the story of a family who are being pressured into selling their home to make way for the expansion of a neighbouring airport. Shot in two weeks and on a very low budget, The Castle became a smash hit and proved a stunning debut by Working Dog as a feature film maker. In one poll carried out in 2010, The Castle was voted the most popular Australian film ever made.

The Dish was screened in Australian cinemas in October 2000, immediately after the Sydney Olympics. The poster at right was used to promote the film in the United States. WORKING DOG PRODUCTIONS

Jane Kennedy was responsible for casting The Dish and knew from the start who she wanted to play the lead role of Cliff Buxton, the character based on the real-life John Bolton. Despite Working Dog having only one film to its credit, she recalls:

We have this enormous gumption and we are never afraid to give people a call. We sent Sam Neill the script for The Dish and Rob Sitch flew up to Sydney to talk it over with him, having carefully rehearsed a sales pitch as to why Sam should do the film. Before Rob got started, Sam said ‘I don’t need persuading, let’s do it’. We thought we needed someone with a certain modesty and a non-fussed way of doing things to portray Cliff Buxton. And also he needed to have a sense about him of us not being aware of how smart he was. Sam was perfect to play that role.

Neill prepared for his new role as Cliff Buxton by studying a few photographs of Bolton. He was unaware that there was considerable footage of John in a number of documentaries made over the years at Parkes, including one especially produced in preparation for the Apollo 11 mission.

My performance was a kind of amalgam of myself, perhaps my father [the pipe] and what the Working Dog crew thought the character should be. During Rob’s visit to Sydney he explained that they had John Bolton very much in mind when writing the piece. I think Cliff’s unflappable, calm and contemplative nature, coupled with an easy authority, an ability to be a reasonable and likeable leader of men – these things come from John Bolton.³

Dish cricket – Sam Neill (left) cast as the unassuming director of the Parkes dish with Kevin Harrington (centre) as Mitch and Tom Long as Glenn. WORKING DOG PRODUCTIONS

The filming at Parkes took place during a spell of fine weather. Neill adds:

We had a splendid time in Parkes, not least because of the Dish itself. If ever there was a piece of machinery that has charisma, that generates affection, this is it. It was something we just loved being around. Playing cricket on the surface of the dish, while it was simultaneously mapping the Universe – this is a thing you don’t easily forget.

After the unexpected success of The Castle, Working Dog was unsure whether The Dish would do anywhere near as well. The Castle is a tale of a working-class family – little Aussie battlers – taking on the big end of town and winning, a sure-fire recipe for success. In contrast, The Dish had no good guys or bad guys and told a quirky story few Australians knew about. As Tom Gleisner recalls:

We were nervous about whether people would find the whole thing too unusual. In film terms it’s not particularly sexy. The film companies and distributors that we were involved in were pretty lukewarm about the idea. As we got into it we realised what a challenge it was going to be. It was to be set in a dusty sheep paddock in the outback with a largely middle-aged cast, dressed in out-of-date clothes. But that didn’t matter as we were already in love with the idea of the film.

The Dish was released in October 2000, immediately after the Sydney Olympics, and became the highest grossing Australian film of the year. After the Olympics there was a surge of patriotic pride and even a sense of relief that Australians had been able to stage what was widely considered the best Games ever held. The feel-good The Dish helped to reinforce a growing belief that Australia could be a significant player in events of global importance.

1

A Yorkshire lad

Yorkshire is an idea, not a place.

Roy Hattersley

Yorkshire is the largest county in the United Kingdom, so large that it is divided up into three areas known as Ridings, each with its own identity and larger in its own right than many other counties. It is also the most populous, even though there are large stretches of untouched countryside such as the Yorkshire Dales. The people of Yorkshire take special pride in their local culture and it is often said they identify more strongly with their county than they do with their country. They like to refer to Yorkshire as ‘God’s own county’.

John Bolton was a Yorkshireman and true to his origins all his life. Even though he left Yorkshire to go to university at 18, he remained a Yorkshireman at heart. Over the years his accent softened, but no one would ever mistake him for someone born in Australia. He returned to visit family and friends whenever he could and quickly adjusted to his life as it might have been had he never left. One-time deputy of the Labour party Roy Hattersley has noted how Yorkshire people have a strong ‘belief in the importance of self-improvement and the propri-ety of self-confidence’, as well as ‘a compulsive desire to compete and an obsessive need to win’ – traits that to a fair degree ring true of John Bolton.¹

John Gatenby Bolton was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, in 1922. He shared the same name as both his father and grandfather. John’s father and mother both came from Yorkshire families with humble beginnings. The Bolton family can be traced back to John’s great-grand-parents. In 1850 Thomas Bolton, a farm labourer, married Elizabeth Gatenby, a dressmaker, in a small town on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. They are believed to have had three sons and two daughters. The second son was born in 1852 and christened John Gatenby Bolton, in keeping with a Yorkshire custom of adopting the mother’s maiden name as the child’s middle name. Thomas and Elizabeth seem to have done reasonably well for themselves. The Yorkshire census from 1871 records them as having a combined grocery and drapers shop.

In 1875 John’s grandfather, the first John Gatenby Bolton, married Annie Andrew and they settled in the mining town of Skelton-in-Cleveland. They had five children, though they lost their fourth child, a two-year-old girl, when a typhoid epidemic swept through the district in the early 1880s. Their fifth child, a boy and very much an afterthought, arrived ten years later and was named after his father. Grandfather Bolton spent his entire career working for South Skelton Mines as a cashier, making up the pay packets of the miners. He was on call night and day to organise rescue missions whenever there had been an accident at the mine – not an infrequent occurrence in those times. He was also the founder of the Skelton branch of the Yorkshire Penny Bank, a non-profit community bank staffed by volunteers that introduced the practice of banking to the working class.

Similar to his father, John’s mother was also an afterthought in her family. Ethel Kettlewell was born 15 years after her sister and almost 20 years after her brother. Although Kettlewell was the name of a small Yorkshire village, the Kettlewell family were farmers from Lincolnshire, the county to the south of Yorkshire. Ethel’s parents made the break from rural life when they moved to Goole in East Yorkshire. Ethel’s father had ambitions to be a railway engine driver, but an accident left him partially disabled and he had to settle for a career as a railway guard.²

The success story of the Kettlewell family was Ethel’s brother Thomas. Situated on the Ouse river that flows into the mighty Humber, Goole was an important shipping port, far enough inland to give it a natural advantage as a place to ship freight to and from the large industrial cities in the north of England. In 1919 Thomas founded the Kettlewell Shipping Company and began ferrying freight from the railheads in Goole to various ports in northern Europe. The company expanded during the 1920s and at one stage operated a dozen freighters. Although its growth slowed during the Depression years, the company prospered in the late 1930s, when Thomas shrewdly decided to specialise in steel and scrap at a time when Britain was undergoing a massive rearmament of its military forces.³

Both John’s parents were schoolteachers and, most unusual for the time, both had university degrees. His mother Ethel graduated from Leeds University with an Arts degree and taught in Leeds for a short while before returning home to teach botany at the Goole Grammar School, a public co-educational school. John’s father was educated at the grammar school in Guisborough and then went to Exeter College on the south coast of England, part of the University of London. In 1915 he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree, with a major in mathematics, together with a Bachelor of Education. He tried to enlist but was spared the carnage of World War I when he failed the medical, thought to be the result of a hernia. Bolton senior took up teaching instead and in 1916 was appointed the mathematics master at Goole Grammar. A history of Goole noted that their grammar school ‘was fortunate in having the services of a brilliant mathematician, J. G. Bolton, who also played the piano for morning assembly and later married Miss Kettlewell, the botany mistress’.⁴

The budding romance that developed between John senior and Ethel was put on hold in 1919 when John was appointed to a position in Liverpool, but they kept in touch through the occasional visit by Ethel (chaperoned, of course, by her older sister). They married in July 1921 at the Methodist Chapel in Goole and spent their honeymoon in Exeter. Upon returning to Goole they began preparing to set up a home in Liverpool when a letter arrived which led to a sudden change of plans. John had been offered the position of senior mathematics teacher at one of Sheffield’s leading schools, an offer he accepted immediately. John and Ethel moved to Sheffield in late 1921 and rented a small terrace house in a rundown area near the centre of the city. On 5 June 1922, less than a year after their marriage, Ethel gave birth to a boy. They named him John Gatenby Bolton, the same as his father and his grandfather before him. Two and half years later a daughter, Joanne, arrived.

The botany mistress and the mathematics master. John’s parents Ethel (née Kettlewell) and John Bolton senior. WHEATLEY FAMILY

When John was five the family moved to a new and more spacious house in Abbeydale, a rural area on the southern outskirts of Sheffield. Two attempts were made to start John in primary school and both failed. He seemed unable to accept the authority of his teacher or understand the need for discipline within the classroom. Fortunately, at this time there was a law in Yorkshire that, if either parent was a teacher, then it was not compulsory to send the child to primary school. After these two early failures John’s parents decided to tutor him at home. His mother, who stopped teaching after her marriage, took care of his introduction to the three Rs. John spent much of his time roaming around the surrounding farms. Later in life, he attributed his keen interest in gardening to these early expe-riences. Although he made friends in the neighbourhood, John’s primary school years were lonely, at a time when most children are being thoroughly socialised at school.

Despite the outdoor life, John was a sickly child who suffered from hay fever in summer and asthma in winter. He also suffered from migraines. In John’s case they were particularly severe and sometimes would last up to three days. He would become extremely sensitive to light and sound and needed to withdraw to a darkened bedroom in complete silence. No doubt this condition contributed to his failed attempts to start school. Although the migraines eased as he got older, bouts of illness were a regular occurrence for the rest of his life.

John’s father taught at Central High School and the house they rented when they first moved to Sheffield was within walking distance. When the family moved out to Abbeydale it was easy enough for him to catch the bus to work. When John was 11 his parents decided to move back closer to the centre of Sheffield. However, in 1933 the school decided to relocate from the inner city to a new campus built on the school’s playing fields, south-west of the city, an area known as High Storrs, near the foothills of the Pennines. It was renamed High Storrs Grammar School. John’s father would spend the rest of his career at the new school. The family moved to Ecclesall, a town near the new campus and soon to become a suburb of an expanding Sheffield.

Another reason his parents decided to move is that John would need to spend at least six months at a primary school to be able to sit the entrance examination for secondary school. Towards the end of their stay at Abbeydale, John had overcome his aversion to the classroom and attended a small private school. In Ecclesall both John and his sister Jo were enrolled at nearby Greystones Primary School. As a foretaste of an outstanding academic career ahead, John passed the entrance examination to secondary school and won a scholarship as well.

Ethel, John and sister Jo on holiday in Bridlington on the North Sea coast. WHEATLEY FAMILY

The house the Boltons rented in Ecclesall – they never bought one of their own – was quite well-to-do by Sheffield standards. The double-fronted, semi-detached house featured a ground floor with a dining room and a lounge room, furnished with a wireless set and a piano where John’s father played and sang the popular songs of the day. A hallway led to a kitchen large enough to unfold a table tennis table. Upstairs there were three bedrooms, one each for parents, John and Jo. A further flight of steps led to an attic bedroom occupied by John’s cousin, Janet Robinson. Janet came to live with the Boltons after her father’s grocery business went bankrupt. Six years older than John, Janet was more like an elder sister than a cousin.

John’s parents were a rather austere couple. They had a circle of friends, mainly teachers and academics, but did not make friends easily. They joined a tennis club and had a passion for bridge, but they rarely entertained at home. If John wanted to have a friend over for a visit he was required to prearrange an appointment, rather than have his friend casually drop in, as most people do. They were not religious, even though Ethel’s father had been a lay Methodist preacher in Goole. They went to social events at the local church, but did not attend church services nor send John and Jo to Sunday school. Politics and the momentous events of the 1930s were rarely discussed at home and, in this respect, John took after his parents later in life. He had little interest in religion or politics and it was uncommon for him to discuss either.

John’s parents granted him a fair degree of independence. During his first year at high school they gave him a weekly allowance of four shillings on condition that he buy his own shoes and pay for his bus fare to school. John persuaded his father to lend him six pounds so that he could buy a Raleigh touring bike. It opened up a new world of adventure. Every school holiday John and one or two mates would board a train with their bikes and set off touring the countryside. His favourite destination in summer was the Lake District and at Easter it was hiking through the Welsh mountains. John would stay in budget youth hostels along the way and often be away from home for three weeks at a time. He was building an independence and self-reliance that would prove of great value early in his career.⁵

King Ted’s

Fac recte, nil time – Do right, fear naught.

School motto

Sheffield is the most inland city in Britain or, put another way, the city where the distance to the sea is greater than for any other city. The city takes its name from the river Sheaf, one of five rivers that flow through the city and divide it into distinctive suburbs and generous stretches of parkland. Sheffield is surrounded by a ring of rolling hills and most of its buildings have views towards the city or out into the countryside.

The history of Sheffield is a history of steel. Every schoolchild was taught that the crucible process for producing quality steel was developed in Sheffield in the 1740s, and that the process for producing stainless steel was invented there in 1912. These innovations, together with an abundance of Yorkshire coal to fuel the steel furnaces, spurred Sheffield’s growth to become one of England’s major industrial cities. Sheffield was a place to live and work, but not to visit. It had fewer hotels and guest houses than cities half its size. The grime and pollution from its factories and the crowding and drabness of its buildings were probably not much worse than other cities in England’s north, but as George Orwell caustically noted in 1937: ‘Sheffield, I suppose, could justly claim to be called the ugliest town in the Old World.’⁶

There were two main secondary schools in Sheffield in the 1930s. One was High Storrs Grammar, where John’s father taught, and which was co-educational to the extent that the boys’ school and the girls’ school were located on the same campus. John’s father decided that daughter Jo would go to High Storrs, while John would attend its major rival, the boys-only King Edward VII School. Known popularly as King Ted’s, the school was formed in 1905 by the merger of two smaller schools and named after the reigning monarch, who had succeeded Queen Victoria in 1901.

King Ted’s was partly funded by school fees and partly by the taxpayer. Similar to most secondary schools in England, it aspired to be like the leading public schools such as Eton and Harrow. A public school education was universally regarded as the finest and most balanced that a school could achieve. The headmaster and most of his staff were products of public schools and they did their best to recre-ate at King Ted’s the features of a modern public school that are now taken for granted – speech days, houses, boarders, prefects, compulsory sport, school magazines and a variety of clubs and societies. Even corporal punishment was modelled on the public schools, with masters permitted to dish out four strokes of the cane. The headmaster of King Ted’s wrote in 1937: ‘The offences for which corporal punishment seems to me most suitable are those which involve some degree of uppishness, or culpable negligence or an occasional outburst of animal spirit that has unfortunately to be suppressed.’⁷

The school underwent a growth spurt in the 1920s when it became the school of first choice among Sheffield’s growing middle class. Its reputation meant it could attract the most talented teachers. When John started in September 1933 over three-quarters of the staff were graduates from Oxford or Cambridge. Although technically King Ted’s could not count itself among the elite public schools, it certainly thought itself the equal of one.

One significant difference between King Ted’s and the public schools was that the Sheffield education authorities insisted that a certain number of places be reserved for students from poorer families, who could be supported on scholarships offered by the school. John had been awarded one of these scholarships after sitting the entrance exam at Greystones Primary, but the catch was that it was means tested. Because his father’s salary was over the threshold, John was classed an ‘honorary’ scholarship holder and his father was required to pay the full school fees. The scholarship meant that John was placed in the highest of the four classes in each age group, which were taught by the best teachers. The scholarship boys had a special status within the school. They were among the most gifted students and a high proportion of them rose to senior positions such as prefects, house captains and team captains.

In his first year Bolton studied English, geography, history, mathematics, Latin, French and science. Latin was compulsory for the first three years and each student was required to take a heavy load of six periods a week in the subject. John found Latin, with its systematic structure, easy to learn and he also found that he had inherited some of his father’s talent for mathematics. He did, however, struggle with English and suffered from a bad case of writer’s block. A change came when he attended English classes and was introduced to the works of Oliver Goldsmith, an 18th-century Anglo-Irish writer. Goldsmith was a