School on the hill, warts and all

I'll warrant no secondary school in New Zealand has produced a finer history than this one written by Rory Sweetman, an Irish-born New Zealander and a professional historian with no links to the school about which he has written.

This is no sanitised history. It pulls no punches in documenting the high and low points which have characterised the school's 150 -year existence. Sweetman points out though it is a commissioned history, he was given the freedom to make his own assessment without fear or favour.

There were recent rumblings pressure had been brought to bear upon the author to sweeten the pill in relation to at least two of the school's rectors (headmasters) whose superintendency over staff and pupils he has analysed in considerable detail.

Reading the chapters devoted to rectors Edward (Ted) Aim (1948-62) and Donald MacLachlan (1963-85), readers can be assured Sweetman has delivered a warts-and-all assessment of two men with particularly strong personalities.

That indeed is the formula to which the author has adhered in analysing the characters of successive rectors up to the present day. Two exceptions: Michael McMillan (1986-2000) and Clive Rennie (2000-present day) penned their own thoughts.

Sweetman has delved into all manner of sources, and spoken with countless former pupils of the school on the hill.

Apart from the letterpress, the book has a rich array of photographs, and diverting caricatures of 1953-54 school staff drawn by pupils.

There are extensive notes and a comprehensive index.

Sweetman writes that some pupils believed attending OBHS conferred an aura, ''as if an invisible hand were lifting you up''. At the 125th anniversary, life governor J.S. Somerville recalled how ''I spent four years here discovering something of myself, something of the meaning of community, something of the game of cricket ... and discovering the glories of the English language and its literature, as well as the basic value of the Classics''.

Others in contrast, Sweetman writes, ''feel strangled by the old school tie, and are scathingly critical of OBHS, one boy characterising it in the 1980s 'a dinosaur-ridden, homophobic, racist, mono-cultured, right-wing cesspit of abuse'.''

- Clarke Isaacs is a former ODT chief of staff and attended OBHS from 1945-1949.