Kingsley Amis

Dr Zachary Leader has written
I have begun work on an authorized biography of Kingsley Amis, having edited his Letters (HarperCollins, 2000), and I am keen to talk with Old Citizens who were at school with him (he was a pupil from 1934-41). Amis was not the man for extravagant or insincere praise, and what he says of his time at City of London is a real tribute to the school:
Life at a large day-school in a large city embodies a freedom which I should guess to be unique, a freedom based on heterogeneity. Where there is no orthodoxy there can be no conformity and no intolerance. This was certainly true of the City of London School. I have never in my life known a community where factions of any kind were less in evidence, where differences of class, upbringing, income group and religion counted for so little ... The academic teaching was of a standard not to be surpassed, but more important still was that lesson about how to regard one's fellows, a lesson not delivered but enacted. Thanks indeed for that. (Memoirs, p.34)
In his Memoirs Amis mentions several masters: FR Dale, Mr Marsh, Mr Penn, Mr Carruthers, Mr Copping, the Rev. CJ Ellingham. Among the boys he specifically mentions are Moses, Rose, Bateman, Lightfoot, and Williams-Ashman. I'd be grateful to hear from anyone who remembers Amis at school, who remembers these masters and boys (indeed, who happens to be one of these masters or boys - well, boys), or who has any other information about CLS at this period which might be of interest to Amis's biographer.
Zachary Leader
11 Brooksville Avenue
London NW6 6TH
Tel.: 0208-969-2763
Email: z.leader@roehampton.ac.uk