BUSHBY, Michael
Beloved member of the Tonbridge Community, Mike Bushby, sadly passed away on 8 February 2020 after he had a stroke in January. He leaves behind his wife, Judy and three children, Emma, Alison, and Jim (WW 84-89). All of us will remember Mike as enormously likeable. He was caring and thoughtful in so many ways, within the school and elsewhere. He had so many close connections with boys, OTs, parents and all colleagues. A memorial service is being planned and we will share details of this once confirmed.
(Common-Room 1954-1991)

The following obituary appeared in the OT Magazine in the July 2020 edition: 

Tonbridge has been blessed with many fine teachers in the second half of the twentieth century, but few have made as much impact on the school and the lives of boys as Mike Bushby (Common Room 1954-91). The tributes which have poured into the school and to Mike’s family bear witness to not only a great teacher but a much-loved person.

Mike Bushby was born in 1931, growing up in Sutton with his father Howard, who worked for the Prudential, his mother Muriel, a primary school teacher, and his elder brother John. His childhood was interrupted by the war, with two spells of evacuation in 1940 and 1944, the latter after the family house was badly damaged by a flying bomb. He joined his brother at Dulwich in 1944 on a scholarship from the local authority, for his parents could not afford the fees. He played four years in the Dulwich cricket XI, the last as captain, and two years in the rugby XV, again as captain. In 1949 he left to do National Service in the UK with the Royal Fusiliers before going to Queen’s, Cambridge in 1951.

At Cambridge he read English in his first year, and then history. He played rugby for Cambridge without winning a blue, but won three cricket blues in 1952, 1953 and 1954, the last as captain. These were golden days for university cricket, Mike opening with David Sheppard in 1952, with Peter May at number three, and having Colin Cowdrey as the opposing Oxford captain in 1954. As captain in 1954, he opened the batting with Dennis Silk, who went on to become Warden of Radley and was his closest friend through his life.

In 1954 Lawrence Waddy appointed him to Tonbridge, where he spent the rest of his career, apart from an exchange year abroad at Melbourne GS in 1964-5. In this year in Australia his headmaster, Brian Hone, thought so highly of him that he not only gave him the cricket to run but also the housemastership of a day house. Appointed to teach English and History at Tonbridge, he became a tutor in School House and was not subsequently sympathetic to colleagues who complained about their school accommodation, pointing out the spartan nature of his own bedsit in School House with the bowl of water brought in each morning and the chamber pot under the bed. In 1955 he took over from John Knott as master-in-charge of cricket and produced a string of successful sides until he gave up the role in 1972, their style of play characterised by generous declarations and fine fielding. Mike was one of the best fielders of his generation and you could supposedly tell the players he coached by the scars on their knees and elbows.

In these first years at Tonbridge, Mike married Judy in 1962, introduced to each other by Harold and Alison Edwards, and together they went in to run Ferox Hall from 1966-81. Mike was frantically busy, teaching a full timetable and still running the cricket in his first six years in the house. The late 1960s were not easy years for any authority figures but, with Mike, boys knew exactly where they stood. He was firm but fair, with a soft spot for the more rebellious and a very strong sense of the importance of the house and school community. When he came out of Ferox in 1981, his last ten years at Tonbridge remained remarkably busy. He continued to help with cricket and fives, and became Chairman of Common Room, where he put great emphasis on bringing the teaching and non-teaching staff into closer fellowship. He developed new areas of expertise in his teaching, including Chinese history, and became immersed in schemes to help the vulnerable, which lasted all the way through his retirement until his death. For 28 years he was a Samaritan, but his main work was with disabled adults through Winged Fellowship and its home at Crabhill in Reigate. In all this, as with his Christian faith, he just did it with reticence and a deep sense of understatement.

There were many qualities which made Mike an outstanding schoolmaster. He thought much more of others than he did of himself, knowing everybody in the school community and caring deeply about every one of them. It was that gift for caring friendship with people of all ages and backgrounds which set him apart. He had a complete absence himself of any pretentiousness, ‘side’ is the old-fashioned word, and he valued every boy and colleague for what they brought to the school community, about which he cared passionately. He expected commitment and high standards in courtesy, literacy and dress, and reserved his ire for the arrogant, discourteous and slovenly. A good teacher’s disapproval is a powerful weapon and Mike was not someone to cross. He took little notice of current fashion, believing that some standards are changeless. Many Tonbridgians will remember trying to sidle past MHB, hastily doing up their top shirt button or retrieving the sweet wrapper they had just dropped on the ground.

In the classroom he initially enjoyed the role of the old-fashioned form master, welcoming the challenge of teaching both English and History to bottom sets. Many have been the correspondents after his death testifying to the trouble he took in teaching them to write good English and the infectious enthusiasm he brought to the classroom. He was encouraged by wise heads of department to set his sights higher than bottom sets, and he became a hugely effective teacher of O Level History and English Literature (he unsurprisingly preferred Macbeth and Henry V to Romeo and Juliet), and then taking A Level sets through late eighteenth and nineteenth century British history. This was the period he loved most, his historical perspective dividing the key players into ‘good eggs’ like Burke and Pitt, and the ‘prima donnas and subversives’ like Fox and Paine. He shared Burke’s view that ‘good order is the foundation of all things’, but he had a soft spot for the common man, unless he had the misfortune to be subverted by revolutionaries. He said once in an interview that he would like to have been a Victorian stationmaster, doffing his cap deferentially to the local squire and then playing cricket with him on the village green at the weekend. He was never prepared to compromise on standards in his teaching and was hugely punctilious in his marking of essays, with the red biro remarks often outnumbering the original script.

Sport had been an important part of his life as a young man at school and Cambridge, and he had much to offer at Tonbridge on the cricket field and beyond. When he finished his outstanding time as master-in-charge of the 1st XI, he joined Jonathan Smith (JBS) in coaching the Junior Head. Changes in cricket dress, manners and forms of the game have not always met with his approval, but he loved working with the less talented triers of the 3rd and 4th XIs. JBS did however have to warn the boys, when Mike joined him, not to kick the ball back to him if he was coaching you in the net or chew gum while he was talking. He did his spell of rugby coaching and refereeing, particularly enjoying Senior House Leagues, which he regarded as the essence of Tonbridge sport. He also ran the fives, which, under him, was transformed from a game to a social mission. He could stand for two hours on a cold January afternoon on those wooden steps overlooking the courts, without a sweater on, constantly encouraging both effort and good court manners.

He had 15 years in Ferox, beginning in the more difficult anti-authority restlessness of the late 1960s and battling hard to get across his ethos. This focused on the best possible care of the individual and a relentless emphasis on proper standards of dress, good manners and looking out for others. He had endless time for the real triers or those coping with emotional issues but could also call out the slothful or those who complained too much. There was one legendary MHB explosion in Ferox when a boy had the temerity to send back to the kitchen a fried egg whose yoke had been broken. His study at Ferox was an unbelievable mess, with papers scattered over every inch of floor. He bought a filing cabinet to improve this but then lost the key, one brave soul suggesting he might have filed it under ‘k’. Above all he was a kind and caring man, inspiring lasting respect and affection in Ferox boys, who continued to visit and dine him out through the whole of his retirement.

He had the same pastoral concerns for colleagues as he had for boys. His integrity and selflessness stood out and he was always someone to whom newcomers to the school and those with problems could go for a sympathetic and wise ear. He became in many ways the conscience of the Common Room, making us think more about the importance and value of community. He was a driving force in the Community Service Group, his particular focus on the disabled and disadvantaged. This was always done with compassion and sensitivity, for it was for him just a natural and kind thing to do. Without forcing his faith on anyone, he was a strong supporter of Chapel and gave several memorable addresses himself. He did more than anyone to bring together the teaching staff and non-teaching staff, and to welcome retired members of staff and their families back to school.

We loved him too for his idiosyncrasies. He liked to get his work jackets from Oxfam, both because he felt they benefited from the money he spent but also because natty dressing was not important to him. He was certainly a technophobe, resolutely refusing all his life to engage with emails or mobile phones and taking a long time to abandon the Banda spirit duplicator for a photocopier. The photocopies he eventually gave out had a style all their own, with words sprawled at all angles on the page and the last sentence or two often cut off. When he had a holiday home in Devon, he fancied himself as a dab hand with the DIY, so that plumbers and plasterers from miles around would joyfully anticipate his visits with the chance to repair the subsequent damage. Retiring in 1991, he was thankful to miss out on the regimes which have developed of targets and testing, inspections and appraisal, and he was not entirely in favour of the way in which market forces brought the arms race in school facilities and the spiralling cost of school fees. Imagining MHB as housemaster trying to deal with parental messages and complaints via email, voicemail, text and Whatsapp brings a quiet smile in testing times.

The image of Mike which will resound most with many people is the letters he wrote. The thought and care he put into these, whether for congratulation or commiseration, were typical of him. The friendship he gave was lasting and you never came away from any conversation with him without being aware of his essential thoughtfulness, curiosity and goodness. For all his gifts, he was a deeply modest and self-deprecating person who never aspired to be anything other than what he was. His legacy is the Tonbridge community as it has been seen in the recent crisis, which Mike thankfully missed, of helping and supporting others. His integrity and selflessness made all his colleagues reflect on the contribution they made to that community and the people within it. In all this Judy was his greatest love and supporter for 57 years, bringing her own sense of loyalty, calm and warmth to support Mike in all his endeavours and into bringing up their family. In retirement he was often to be seen around the school whether attending chapel, watching cricket and rugby or just borrowing a book from the library. As he aged physically, he remained mentally sharp and engaging, the quiet humour interspersed with wise observations of life. Being able to sit with him on a chair around the Head and talk to him of old and new times continued to be an inspiriting experience, punctuated by those quiet chuckles which were as far as he went with ostentation. Few teachers manage to elicit such extraordinary depths of affection and respect. As Geoff Allibone wrote in his retirement eulogy in The Tonbridgian of 1991, ‘lucky Tonbridge to have been enriched by the life-long career of a man of such calibre’.

David Walsh (CR 72-09)

Mike Bushby, schoolmaster, was born on July 28, 1931. He died of a stroke on February 8, 2020, aged 88.

In 1954 Cambridge captain Mike Bushby (left), approached his opposite number at Oxford (Colin Cowdrey - right) to try and resolve the fact that the varsity matches had become dull. Both captains agreed to dispense with tea on the final day, but the match still ended in a draw.

Mike Bushby 1: Mike Bushby (right), captain of the Cambridge XI with Oxford Captain and OT, Colin Cowdrey, at the 1954 Lords Varsity Match

David Walsh, John Knott and Mike Bushby ran Tonbridge cricket for over 60 years - photo 1986, from p111 of Barry Orchard's Tonbridge History.

Mike Bushby as Housemaster of Ferox, from the Tonbridgian