While still in primary school my brother Haydn Mason, who has died aged 89, found his vocation as a teacher: using his own phonics system, he taught his three-year-old sibling to read. He went on to become a distinguished scholar of 18th-century French literature and the Enlightenment, with a special interest in Voltaire. His career spanned six decades and he ended up as emeritus professor of French and senior research fellow at Bristol University.Haydn was born and grew up near Tenby, Pembrokeshire. Our father, Herbert, was a farrier and blacksmith and our mother, Margaret (nee Jones), a Welsh-speaker from Cardiganshire, had been in domestic service until her marriage. Educated at the local village school and Greenhill grammar school in Tenby, he got a first in French at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, then spent an exchange year in France. Following this, he won a Rotary fellowship to study for a masterīs degree in the US. Continue reading...
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