St. Paul’s Old Boys and Oskar Schindler

In the week I watched on PBS Oskar Schindler/The Real Story and noticed that its writer, director and producer was Jon Blair.

The self same Blair was at my school, St. Paul’s, and fled his native South Africa to avoid conscription.

Like another South African of that era – Peter Hain – he wore his badge of liberalism a tad too ostentatiously, resigning as editor of the school magazine Folio after an article was censored comparing unfavourably the facilities of our school to others in the locality.

Subsequently he was critical of the school which had offered him an education. He was typical of the boys at that time who styled themselves as activist students.

St. Paul’s was London‘s premier educational school, majoring in its Oxbridge successes.

It may not have produced 18 Prime Ministers like Eton – or such well-known politicians as Rishi Sunak, Richard Crossman and Stafford Cripps as Winchester had – but Paulines triumphed in many and varied fields, notably the law with 5 judges (Kim Lewisohn, David Bean, Terry Etherton, Nicholas Stadlen and Peter Roth); acting (Jonathan Miller, Rory Kinnear, Jonathan Kydd and Jonathan Coy); intellectuals (Sir Isaiah Berlin); commerce (Sir Lloyd Dorfman and David Soskin); and chess (Jonathan Speelman).

As for Schindler/The Real Story, an exposé of his corruption and philandering, I was reminded of a BBC book club I attended presented by Jim Naughtie with Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler’s Ark.

He was asked where Schindler appeared on the moral compass, to which the Australian writer replied “In a time like this you needed an operator, not a saint”.

Jon Blair needed reminding of this too.