Acting

I always valued my connections with the town and kept up my associations all the time during my tenure at Fourah Bay College above the town on Mount Aureol. I served on the parochial committee of Holy Trinity Church under three successive vicars, during which time the old school building of my childhood with its workshop and the ancient palm tree were taken down and replaced with the new boys primary school. I played cricket and, on my retirement from the field, spent several seasons as commentator for international matches. My involvement with drama, mainly with the British Council Dramatic Society and the National Theatre League, also kept me in touch.

Music and drama have always been part of my life. I joined the Holy Trinity Church choir as a probationer at the age of six and sang there throughout childhood and early manhood. Thereafter, I sang with the choirs of Fourah Bay College and of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. With Logie Wright's Cecilians in Freetown we performed, among other works, Beethoven's Mass in C, Mozart's Requiem and Fauré's Requiem. I was to hear the last again many years later at La Madeleine in Paris, the church where the composer had once been organist. It was sung by a UNESCO choir with Willie Conton singing bass; he had served as ‘repetiteur’ during rehearsals.