Jonty Driver

CJ ("Jonty") Driver has published six collections of poems (the latest called So Far, Selected Poems 1960-2004), five novels (the first, Elegy for a Revolutionary, and the latest, Shades of Darkness) and a biography, Patrick Duncan, South African and Pan-African (published first in 1980, immediately banned in South Africa - like his first two novels - but re-issued in 2000). He writes on education for The Daily Telegraph and occasionally reviews for other periodicals, including The Times Literary Supplement and Slightly Foxed, the "quarterly for real readers".

Born in Cape Town in 1939, Jonty Driver spent the years of the Second World War in Kroonstad with his mother and younger brother; his grandfather was the Anglican rector there. His father fought through North Africa, then was captured at Tobruk and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner in Italy and Germany. When he came back, the family moved to Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape, where his father was chaplain of St Andrew’s College, to which Jonty went as a pupil in due course. After most of a year teaching in what was then Rhodesia, and five years at the University of Cape Town, he was elected President of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) in 1963 and again in 1964. In August and September 1964 he was locked up by the police in solitary confinement, ostensibly on suspicion of his involvement in the African Resistance Movement, and immediately afterwards left for England. After a year’s teaching he went to Trinity College, Oxford, to read for an MPhil, and afterwards returned to teaching, at Sevenoaks School (where he was housemaster of the International Sixth Form Centre) and then at Matthew Humberstone Comprehensive School in South Humberside. While he was at Oxford, the South African authorities refused to renew his passport and he became stateless for several years, eventually becoming a British citizen. For more than twenty years he was prohibited from returning to South Africa.

In 1976 he was a Research Fellow at the University of York, and for twenty-three years he was a headmaster (principal, Island School, Hong Kong, 1978-83; headmaster, Berkhamsted School, 1983-9; master, Wellington College, 1989-2000). He is now a full-time writer, although he continues his involvement in education, particularly as a governor of various schools, including Milton Abbey School and Millfield. His latest publication is So Far, Selected Poems 1960-2004. He has been a Trustee of the Beit Trust since 2000, and regularly visits the three countries which that Trust assists (Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi). He is married, with three grown-up children, and he and his wife live in East Sussex, though they often visit South Africa.

To read Jonty Driver's poetry on LitNet, click here.

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