The OKA are saddened to report that former member of staff, Keith Brooks, passed away on 28th February after a short illness with Covid-19.

Keith joined the English Department at Kimbolton School in September 1962.  He undoubtedly prided himself on being an old-fashioned disciplinarian, and it was only as pupils moved up the school that they realised his bark was usually put on for such effect.  For most of his time at Kimbolton he taught all year groups, the Fifth Form benefiting from his experience as a Cambridge Board examiner, and the Sixth Form gaining from his thorough and methodical treatment of their texts, whilst relishing his mischievous sense of humour and occasionally sharp tongue.  They gave his lessons an exciting unpredictability.

Keith also spent some years as the Housemaster at the Stonely Hall boarding house.  Although he expected high standards and achieved them by close monitoring of the boys' work, Keith and his wife, Betty, provided a warm friendly atmosphere.  When Stonely Hall was sold, Keith became housemaster for Gibbards, and again he exerted a close and equal supervision of every member of his house, loyally supporting them in every activity from Music and Public Speaking, even to the sports that were really alien to him (namely, girls' hockey!).

Virtually from his arrival, Keith produced school plays every second or third year - Moliere in the Mandeville Hall; Shakespeare in the Courtyard; the very first production in the Lewis Hall - and he gained as much pleasure from these plays as did the audiences and the cases.  Their success was considerably due to his own acting experience.  He played a wide range of parts for the Montagu Players: from the tragic and notoriously difficult Leontes in 'The Winter's Tale' to a comic role as a cricketer in 'Outside Edge'.

He left Kimbolton in July 1988, not to retire, but to run a new venture in Norfolk.  Keith and Betty eventually retired to live in Saffron Walden.