It is with much regret that we report the death of William H. Durran (1955), who passed away peacefully on Friday 12th July 2024.
William was an incredible and inspiring man, Loretto through and through, and his loss will be felt for many years to come. His funeral was held in Loretto Chapel on Monday 29th July 2024, and it is our great privilege to share the eulogy written by his family and read by his son, James.
“Our father, William Hunter Durran, was born in Hong Kong in 1936, the third child of Katharine Hunter and John Durran. They both had roots here in Scotland — in the Carse of Gowrie and Caithness respectively. When war broke out, his older brother John was here, at Loretto. William was evacuated to Australia with his mother and older sister Isobel. Meanwhile, his father — an ophthalmic surgeon — stayed in Hong Kong to serve as a military doctor, and later became a prisoner of war. In Australia, William’s first steps into education were famously rocky. He used to tell us with strange pride that he was asked to leave his first nursery school after kicking the teacher. However, he soon settled into school life at Scotch College, in Adelaide.
In 1945, he returned to Scotland with his mother and Isobel, and lived with his grandparents, at Arngask in Perthshire. Here, William was reunited with his father, two whole months after VJ Day, since when the family had heard nothing from him, nor whether he had even survived. He’d hitched a lift back from Hong Kong in a small cargo plane and had apparently persuaded the pilot to fly over Arngask, where he knew his family were, before landing and travelling to see them.
In 1946, he joined his brother at Loretto starting in the ‘Nippers’, where he would in due course become Head Nipper. At the Upper School, he continued his stellar school career, becoming a member of the XV, Captain of Athletics, SUO of the CCF, and Head of School. However, he didn’t just excel in sport and leadership. He also sang solo roles in oratorios and opera productions and — singing whole-school anthems here in the Chapel — started to develop his deep love for choral music.
In 1955, he went to Jesus College, Cambridge to read Natural Sciences, focusing on physics, but also developing a lifelong interest in geology. William was always very much a scientist, with an appreciation of the natural world — its order and its beauty — which was at once poetic and unshakeably rational. And he was committed to communicating this appreciation — both to the generations of pupils he taught, and to us — explaining and telling stories about the world, as soon as we were able to listen.
At Cambridge, he also continued to have a rich musical life. He sang in the chapel choir and his organ scholar, John Turner, is — nearly seventy years later — playing for us here today. And he was a keen member of the University Opera Society. It was in rehearsals for a production of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress that William met our mother Janet, then Janet Edmonds, with whom he discovered a profound shared interest in music. She attended his twenty-first birthday drinks party and they were together (and made each other happy) for the next sixty-seven years. They were married in 1961, at Emmanuel Congregational Church, Cambridge, and honeymooned in the West Highlands, where they had also got engaged and where they were to spend much, much more time over the years.
In 1961, after a formative two years working in the Education Department of the United Steel Companies, in Sheffield, he joined the staff at Wellington College, in Berkshire, and was Head of Physics from 1962–1966. In March of 1962, he and Janet bought the first in a series of much-loved Volkswagen camper vans, and — that very week — they brought Katharine home in it, from Wokingham Maternity Hospital. In early photos of camping scenes with the van, William can often be seen wearing his kilt — as he had done on his honeymoon, and as was, indeed, his custom whenever holidaying in the Highlands.
They bought a bungalow off-plan and watched it being built, at 42 Parkway in Crowthorne, and it was here that Robert was born in February 1964, followed by me, James, in December 1965. Katharine remembers how those early years were slightly dominated by our father writing his O-Level physics textbook, Mechanics and the Thermal Properties of Matter, the very 1960s’ yellow and orange cover of which is burned into my memory, and from which pupils here at Loretto learned for many years.
In January 1967, he returned to Scotland and to Loretto as Head of Physics and then of Science — positions he held until his retirement in 1996. He taught physics alongside N. Gavin MacDowell (Hon.) who was a colleague until he retired and has remained a good friend since. In 1971, he was heavily involved in the design of the Science Block — an opportunity to exercise his famous eye for detail and tenacious following of logic, with which he has harried architects and other ‘experts’ ever since. We remember ‘The Labs’ as a slightly forbidding domain, full of exciting apparatus and smells, to which he would introduce us on special visits. And it was, of course, where he taught so much to so many over the decades.
He is remembered by his ex-pupils as someone utterly committed to knowledge and to them. In his letter to me last week, Charles J. Edwards (1983) remembers William’s “profound sense of decency, his complete absence of waffle or wooliness, his wonderfully dry wit and — perhaps mostly — his kindness and his quiet appreciation and understanding of all his pupils.”
These are themes taken up by another OL in a letter to our mother Janet last week: “He was always most kind, taking a real and encouraging interest in whatever challenges, failures or successes came my way — as he took an interest in all students at Loretto, whether he taught them directly or not.”
In 1969, we moved into the recently built (and now sadly demolished) Seton House, where William succeeded Peter C. Wood (Hon.) as its second Housemaster. Here, closely supported by Janet, he was effectively on duty 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, looking after sixty boys, as well as his own home and family. This was the home in which we did most of our growing up. At Christmas, the house provided accommodation for vast gatherings of relations — something of a specialism of our extended family. The rest of the year, the house — and all of the grounds around us — were a paradisal playground for us, especially in the holidays. We played chasing down the corridors. We swam in Loretto pool. We rode our bikes around the paths and roadways. And we played in the woods. The whole school was our home.
Meanwhile, the families of other staff provided handy friends for us, and — of course — for our parents, and there were many happy dinner parties and meetings of the staff wives’ Book Club. There were also musical evenings, at which William introduced generations of pupils and staff to classical music. The boarding house also provided babysitters on-tap, and we remember very happy evenings being looked after by sixth formers.
Usually, babysitting was on Tuesday evenings, which was when Janet and William went to rehearsals of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus. They were loyal and celebrated members for forty-one years, from 1967 until 2008, during which time they sang with the world’s greatest conductors, orchestras and soloists. It was a hugely important part of their lives, and of ours.
William was also closely involved in the musical life of Loretto, not least here, in the Chapel. As young children, we came here every Sunday morning and were introduced to the hymns and anthems, the mags and nuncs and the te deums which he loved. And in 1989, he was key to steering the building and installation of the new organ.
In his professional life, lived to such a great extent within our actual home, William modelled many of the virtues he has taught us over time — of hard work, of duty, of moral sense, and of the central importance of caring — of ‘looking after’. He also demonstrated, time and again, his particular ability to deal calmly and rationally with problems and emergencies. He was always very comfortable dealing with crises.
The life of a Housemaster, who was also Head of Science, was certainly a consuming one. However, we remember times devoted entirely to us — such as the very literally-named ‘Fun with Daddy’, actually quite rarely allowed, when the sitting room furniture was pushed aside for a sort of wrestling and tickling match — always hilarious and always exhausting. And there was a strict ethic about holiday time. There was a countdown to the day when reports were finished, and all attention was on family. The van would be packed, and we would set off into (usually) the hills. The van was our enclosed, family space, where we sat round the table learning card games and many, many songs, which, without a car radio, we sang incessantly on the long journeys. At night, we nestled into our respective bunks, while our father ate his bedtime Crunchie bars below. These holidays were when our parents indulged, and taught to us, their deep love of wild countryside, of rivers, sea and mountains and — especially — of the Scottish Highlands. A particular favourite was the North Coast, where William’s ancestors lived, and where we were periodically photographed standing next to the ‘Durran’ road sign. We also went travelling with the family of Betty, Janet’s twin sister, in our respective family campervans — twice abroad and many times in the British Isles. As well as an amazing father, William was a much-loved uncle to all our many cousins.
In 1985, Loretto recognised William’s long service by granting him a term’s sabbatical. He and Janet bought a new motorhome and used this time to travel, exploring the places and the culture of Europe. When they returned, William (again following Peter Wood) became Vicegerent (or Viceregent, as I think Jesus College Magazine reported it at the time). He continued to juggle a daunting range of roles, including as the School’s examinations officer, as which — colleagues report — his attention to detail ensured that entries and invigilation schedules were always impeccable. Gavin describes how — with a sort of symbolism — he also took upon himself the task of keeping the staff-room clock to precise time. This devotion to precision will be familiar to anyone who has watched our father cooking a turkey, armed with the dreaded meat thermometer.
In 1991, he also spent a term as Acting Headmaster. This was a natural progression for someone who had devoted so much of his personal, professional and intellectual life to the School. But William’s relationship with Loretto went far deeper than can be represented by any position or role. In a letter to Janet, one Old Lorettonian noted that “to know Mr. Durran was to know Loretto.” And that’s why it seems to us so fitting that this celebration is happening here, in the very heart of the school.
When he retired in 1996, he and Janet moved to Carrington, south of Edinburgh, where they had built a house. This became a family base for my brother, sister and me, as we pursued lives and careers heavily influenced by both our parents: Katharine in music, as a professional pianist, and Robert and myself as teachers.
In retirement, William stayed closely connected to Loretto. He edited the sixth Edition of The Loretto Register, and he proof-read the Loretto Hymnbook — carefully adding in all the breath marks. But retirement was really about two preoccupations — travel with Janet, and family.
The former took our parents all over the world. As singers with the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, they travelled to Berlin, Salzburg, Lyon, Paris, Cologne and Rouen. As tourists, they travelled to North America, where many Canadian cousins live, to India, where Janet was born and spent much of her childhood, back to Hong Kong and to Australia. And all over Europe, by motorhome. There were three motorhomes, between 1985 and 2022. The vans gave Janet and William the freedom to go wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted, taking with them the essentials of their world. They would travel to see family, they would take trips around Britain and sometimes they would just check the weather and nip into the Highlands for a few days. Skinny-dipping in freezing Highland burns was a favourite pastime.
They would also plan long odysseys across Europe, latterly returning many times to Croatia. And they have visited some of the greatest music and opera venues in Europe. At Bayreuth, they twice saw The Ring cycle, and the music of Wagner was a great love of them both. In the day or two before William died, he and Janet listened together to hours of it, along with Mahler and other composers they loved and had sung together, and which were a sort of soundtrack to their marriage.
The late 1990s brought the great sadness of the loss of John, William’s brother and our much-loved uncle. The months of his illness brought to the fore William’s enormous capacity for tenderness and ‘looking-after’, as well as his great strength, resilience and stamina at times of crisis. At times, this ability to care has almost defined our father. In recent years, for example, he has busied himself looking after our mother with utter devotion.
But there was also joy. Between 1996 and 2012, William and Janet became “Grandpa and Granjan” to five grandchildren — Joseph, Clara, Nancy, Evie and Arthur — and they became parents-in-law to Noel and to Becky. They have been devoted and extremely active, supportive grandparents. Highlights of all five of their grandchildren’s childhoods have been trips away in “Granjan and Grandpa’s van” — in a sort of reprise of the 1960s and 1970s. The grandchildren certainly helped to keep William young. Evie and Arthur remember when, in his eighty-third year, he climbed with them to the top of an enormous play-castle at Blair Drummond Safari Park, just so he could accompany them down the longest of the tube slides.
In 2001, our parents celebrated their Ruby wedding with a family gathering in their beloved north-west of Scotland, on the shores of Loch Erribol. For their Golden wedding, in 2011, there was a week-long family house-party on the Isle of Skye. And, for their (lockdown) Diamond wedding anniversary, in 2021, there was a garden party at Carrington.
Family was everything to our father. Two days before he died, he said to me: “I just want my family to be useful, to care for people, and to be thoughtful. If they are all of those things, then that's good.”
William has lived a fulfilling retirement with Janet (as singers, travellers and grandparents) for almost as long as he lived with her here at Loretto (teaching, more-or-less running the school, and bringing up three children). It’s been a very long and wonderfully rich life, for which we are all incredibly grateful. He will be deeply missed, but he will also remain admired, respected and — most of all — loved.
To our mother, he will always be “my darling William”. While to the three of us, his children, he will forever be “Daddy”.