Logie Bruce Lockhart

Logie Bruce Lockhart MA (Cantab.) (born 12 October 1921) is a British writer and journalist, formerly a Scottish international rugby union footballer and headmaster of Gresham's School.

Background

Logie Lockhart belongs to a family with long traditions of teaching and playing rugby union which has branched out into other areas. His father and his older brother, John Bruce-Lockhart and Rab Bruce Lockhart, respectively, were both public school headmasters, and his grandfather was a schoolmaster.[1] His father and brother Rab both played rugby union for Scotland. His uncle, Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart (1887–1970), was an author and adventurer[2] whose son, Robin Bruce Lockhart, is an author. Another nephew is Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, Baron Bruce-Lockhart, while a great-nephew Dugald is an actor.

Education

Logie Lockhart was educated at Cargilfield School, Edinburgh,[3] Sedbergh School, where his father was headmaster and he became head boy, then at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, before military service in the Second World War.[4] After the war he went to St John's College, Cambridge, as a choral student, later winning a scholarship.[5] At Cambridge, he read modern languages and won the Wright Prize for Modern Languages and was both a rugby union and a squash Blue.[4] He holds the degree of MA.[5]

Military service

Between Sandhurst and Cambridge, Bruce Lockhart saw active service with the British Army during the Second World War. He was first commissioned into the Sherwood Foresters and later served in the Household Cavalry.[1][5] He was one of the first British soldiers to enter Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.[4]

Rugby player

After playing rugby union for Cambridge University, Bruce Lockhart went on to play for Scotland between 1948 and 1953, mostly at fly half and once at centre. His first and last international games were both against England, on 20 March 1948 and 21 March 1953.[6][7]

Schoolmaster

Bruce Lockhart became an assistant schoolmaster (and rugby union coach) at Tonbridge School,[7] then in 1955, at the age of 34, he was appointed as headmaster of Gresham's School, Holt.[1][5]

After becoming chairman of the Headmasters' Conference Eastern Division in the 1970s, he broke new ground by inviting the heads of the Girls' Schools Association to attend HMC meetings.[4] In 1977 he argued that five subjects, rather than three, should be taught in sixth forms, and that this could be made possible by universities teaching more inter-disciplinary and creative courses.[8]

He retired as headmaster of Gresham's School at the end of the Summer Term of 1982.[9]

Journalist

For fifty years, Bruce Lockhart has contributed articles to a wide variety of magazines and newspapers, from Country Life and Rugby World to She. He writes mostly on education, fishing, sport and wildlife.

Author

Bruce Lockhart's book The Pleasures of Fishing (1981)[5] is about his adventures as a fly fisherman, mostly in England and Scotland.[10]

His book Stuff and Nonsense[5] gives the philosophy of a retired headmaster. The educational topics of the last half century are the 'Stuff', while a variety of essays on rugby, fly fishing, camping in old age, wind-surfing in France and so forth are the 'Nonsense'.[11]

Books

Selected articles

Family

Logie Bruce Lockhart married Josephine Agnew in 1944,[1] and they had two sons and three daughters.[5][12] One daughter was killed in a road accident in childhood. His granddaughter, Chelsea Bruce Lockhart, was studying Economics at the University of Bath in 2009.

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Lundy, Darryl. "Logie Bruce-Lockhart". The Peerage.
  2. Lundy, Darryl. "Sir Robert Hamilton Bruce-Lockhart". The Peerage.
  3. Logie Bruce Lockhart, Now and Then, This and That (Larks Press, 2013), p. 27
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 I Will Plant Me a Tree: an Illustrated History of Gresham's School by S.G.G. Benson and Martin Crossley Evans (James & James, London, 2002) ISBN 0-907383-92-0
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Bruce Lockhart, Logie in Who's Who 2006 (A & C Black, London, 2006) ISBN 978-0-7136-7164-3
  6. Logie Bruce Lockhart at scrum.com
  7. 7.0 7.1 1949 XV REUNION at Oldtonbridgians.org
  8. Logie Bruce Lockhart, 'Why Oxbridge must look to its students' in The Times (London), 4 October 1977, p. 18
  9. 'Gresham's School' in The Times (London), 28 July 1981, p. 18
  10. The Pleasures of Fishing at amazon.com
  11. Stuff and Nonsense at booksatlarkspress.co.uk
  12. Mosley, Charles, ed., Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, (Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003), volume 1, page 556

External links