MICHAEL PAGE, died 11th December, 1963

Michael Page was one of the most distinguished boys ever to leave Soham Grammar School for University. He was an academic phenomenon in that he was equally gifted in all subjects, and had he taken Arts subjects in the Sixth Form he would have done as well as he did in 1962 when he gained a State Scholarship in Chemistry, Physics and Biology. He was that rarity in the classroom that schoolmasters always hope to find - a boy who had only to be taught once. Never was there any need to repeat a lesson. Indeed if a lesson was repeated for the benefit of others the likelihood was that Michael would not then be listening. Instead he would be planning the follow-up enquiry and the teasing question.

Michael was not only a brilliant scholar. He had wide interests that gave his mind both breadth and depth. He was passionately interested in music, had a catholic taste in literature and was an omnivorous reader. It was typical of Michael that, having learnt French and German at school, on a recent school expedition to Czechoslovakia he quite deliberately struck up a friendship with a Russian student in Prague.

Michael was universally liked at school by masters as well as boys and by both senior and very junior boys. One moment he would be deep in scientific conversation with a contemporary and the next would find him enjoying equally a chat on a much lower academic or even frivolous plane with a first or second former.

He was a boy of many talents, all of which were used to advantage, to the advantage of others as well as to his own. He was gay, gentle and kind. He had a brilliant academic future before him. It is Cambridge University's loss that Michael Page was never to have time to display his many talents before those who would have come to appreciate them. It is Soham Grammar School's loss that, after eight formative years during which Michael's ability came to its high noon, it was cut off, as it were, at the stroke of twelve. One can only guess at what the afternoon might have been.

from Spring 1964 SG