40s and 50s Memories
overseas operations that would subsidise
school fees. British Ropes in Doncaster was
one such, and joining them I ended up in
Nigeria, in early 1982, as Regional Manager
for the Offshore Division of Nigerian Ropes;
becoming after a few years Group Marketing
and Technical Director. The business was of
considerable interest, but the environment over
the years became increasingly uncomfortable.
Appalling corruption and security remained a
constant worry.
I finally returned to UK in 1999, with a huge
sigh of relief, and am now living a quiet life in
Lancashire with my dog and my two sons and
their families nearby.
Sean Brennand 2007, Aspall, with Tango
T. P. BRENNAND
Bishop Fox 1954
Tim Brennand came to King's in 1949 and joined
Bishop Fox House following in the footsteps of
his elder brother Sean. Both boys had previously
been at St. Michael's School, Otford in Kent,
a prep school connected for many years with
King's. When Carpenter House was created
in 1952, Tim was among the first intake from
other houses to man the new house, in his case
joining the prefects' study, with Alastair Monro
as House Captain.
Of his later life he writes:
After leaving King's in 1954 and finding to my
surprise that arthritis that had put me in hospital
at 11 years old ruled me unfit for National
Service, I left my 1956 university entrance
unchanged and decided to spend two years
teaching at home and abroad. A year in the Alpes Vaudoises, climbing a great deal and
teaching a bit, cured me of a planned career in
chemical engineering and instead I spent three
years at Merton, Oxford, reading Geology, and
three thereafter in Dublin, spent mostly in north
Kerry on a PhD. Two liquids, rain and Guinness,
featured notably. Long summer vacations at
Oxford had enabled me to make two memorable
trips, the first to Canada and the United States,
for work in a steel mill in Montreal, then a labour
camp cementing gang at an embryonic nickel
mine in northern Manitoba; secondly, to the
then Northern Rhodesia to prospect for copper
near the Zambesi source in Mwinilunga.
In 1962 I married Sue, the day after my thesis
was handed in, and joined Shell, who had
funded my research, soon after. I shall never
forget the bored face of the receiving personnel
officer who cut me off after two minutes of
my describing the fossils which had been my
delight in the bogs of Knocknagoshel. Real
life intervened. Could I change a half-shaft on
a Land-Rover? Could I be in the Sahara in 6
weeks?
Tim Brennand 1961, and Sue St. John Brooks
(Brennand to be) and Peter Ryan at
Trinity College, Dublin
A mobile party of four and the huge west Niger
basin to map. My first and in many ways the
best job I ever had. Was it worth Shell to take a
concession to explore for oil here? Answer, no,
but we spun out nine months to find out. No oil
prospects but plenty of dinosaur remains and
some uranium. There followed three months in
what was still Tito's Jugoslavia with the same
objective and working with geologists of the
Institut za Naftu of Zagreb. It was wonderful
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