'Make sure your career is rooted in something you love'

Former RGS boarding student Nigel Middlemiss hit on an ingenious idea to help students improve their French vocabulary. His book, Memorize French, is the latest in a long line of publications which he has been involved in during a fascinating career. He tells us more about how he put the book together and looks back on his life at RGS and beyond

IT was while driving along the motorway ten years ago that former RGS student Nigel Middlemiss hit on an idea for a book to help students memorising French vocabulary.

It was the chevrons, the large upside-down Vs which mark out the safe distance spaces between cars, that inspired him.

“They’re called ‘chevrons’, and I remembered the French for goat is ‘chèvre’, and wondered if there might be a link,” he says.

He soon discovered that there was: “Those chevrons look (a bit) like floppy-eared goats.”

It occurred to him that this could be a good way of starting with an English word to remember a French one.

He went on to compile a list of about 4,000 common French words, based on exam syllabuses, coming up with several ways of classifying and more easily recalling them, based on an easily memorable system of friendship categories.

Now retired, Nigel, who left RGS in 1966, recently finished the book - Memorize French - which he started writing aged 70.

And it’s now being read by a new generation of RGS linguists, since Nigel donated copies to the school library and languages department.

Nigel explains how, in his book, ‘True Friends’ are words spelt exactly the same in English and French, such as six and table.

‘Just Friends’ are words spelt nearly the same in both languages, such as March and Mars, May and Mai, autumn and Automne.

‘False Friends’ are French words that look or sound like English words but actually mean something different, such as surnom, which means nickname, and sensible, which means sensitive.

‘Fair-weather Friends’ occur when the French word looks or sounds like the English word and sometimes means the same, but sometimes doesn’t, for example arrive, which can mean arrive but also happen and parent, which can mean parent but also relative.

A ‘Gift from France’ is a word or phrase lifted straight, mostly without any change, from French into English.They’re also called ‘loan word(s)’. Examples are: avant-garde, faux pas, bêtenoire.

He also gives light-hearted clues or mnemonics (memory-joggers) to help with remembering a French word. For example, a clue for ‘snail’ (escargot) could be ‘Snails carry cargoes on their backs - their shells!’. Or for ‘drugs’ (drogue):‘Only rogues sell drugs!’. Your own ‘home-made’ mnemonic or clue may be better still. It’s known that the ‘memory-joggers’ you think up yourself are the‘ stickiest’ and work the best.

“These and other criteria were applied to the 4,000 words,” he says.

Icons and illustrations were done by a brilliant young Ukrainian artist, Maria Diakov, and WhatsApped over (she has been trapped by the war and never been to the West), while the design and layout of the book was done by an Iranian living in France, Nima Abadi.

“A melting pot of all the talents!” says Nigel.

This book is the latest in a long line of publications Nigel has been involved in throughout a long and distinguished career.

After leaving school, he went on to teach and write textbooks, having studied French and German at the University of Oxford.

He has lived in Germany, Finland and Bulgaria and went on to work as an editor with the British Nuclear Forum, the trade group for manufacturers of nuclear power stations, and a director at Echo Research, an international group which analyses the reputations of companies, governments and countries.

School days: Nigel is pictured fourth from left in the back row

Q: What was the most important thing you learnt at RGS?

A: That I was good at something! There were teachers who spotted talent, drew it out, reinforced and encouraged it, and they were the best teachers. Also, that it repays the effort for each of us to be well-mannered, honourable, kind – as far as we can be. I’m a great believer in the dictum ‘What goes around comes around’. That, sooner or later, the way you treat the world will be the way the world treats you. Or as someone once said: ‘Be nice to people on the way up and they’ll be nice to you on the way down!’.

Q: What do you wish you’d known back then?

A: That there was nothing to worry about in the long term, except death and taxes (as Benjamin Franklin, an American Founding Father, wrote).

Q: What was your dream when you were at school?

A: I had no long-term dreams. Only I didn’t think I was cut out to be a hill farmer in upper Nidderdale, which my father was, which he did brilliantly, and which I couldn’t have achieved.

Q: What is the one piece of advice you’d give students interested in following a similar career path?

A: Do several things with your professional life, not just one. But make sure that the various branches of your career are rooted in something you love and feel you’re good at, and that you have signals from the rest of the world that you’re good at it.

Q: Who was your favourite teacher and why?

A: John Bell, my English teacher, who also directed the annual productions and taught me a huge amount about theatre. Also, Robert Atkinson, the headmaster, who taught me English too and I think joined the Communist Party at Oxford in the 1930s. I supported the Labour party at the polling booths in the 1964 elections and he said to me: ‘Middlemiss, for the first time in my life I am not going to vote for your party. They are trying to ruin my school!’. It was just at the time when the Labour government was trying to phase out grammar schools and replace them with comprehensives, and he was against that. As far as RGS went, he was on the right side of history!

Q: Who or what inspired you when you were at school?

A: Doing all right (so I was told) acting the part of Lord Chancellor in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe, and Corbaccio in Ben Jonson’s Volpone. Being quite good at English and foreign languages - that gave me a hunger to do some of these things in future in the wider world, and which I did, not for my own vainglory, but for the sense that I was passing on skills and hopefully enriching others’ lives.

Q: What extra-curricular activities were you involved in while at RGS, both in and out of school, and how valuable were they?

A: The annual theatre productions. They gave me a love that remained my chief enthusiasm right through my life.

Q: What was it that inspired you to follow this career path?

A: Continually playing to my strengths as they seemed to develop: writing (journalism) and devising communications like advertising. So, a success would inspire me onto the next thing, or a setback lead me to take stock and realign. All the time you were patiently trying to go from ‘zero to hero’, learning as you went.

Q: What have been the highlights of your career to date?

A: The highlights I look back at now are the good things I remember of the days, and the people, and the achievements, at each stage of my career. Two examples: winning a £100k European Bank (EBRD) contract after the fall of the Berlin Wall to inform / educate on the upgrade of a Soviet Russian reactor (VVER) in Bulgaria to a W. European-American type (PWR). Winning a £5 million European Union contract to do a daily analysis of national media in all its 25 member countries so it could measure its reputation / impact / standing and adjust its policies if needed.

Q: What’s been the best bit about your career?

A: Seeing the ‘fruits of my labours’, whether publications, advertisements or theatre productions. Seeing the pleasure they hopefully gave and the changes in attitude they led to. The very best thing though was having good colleagues - from all the phases of my life, I’m honoured to say, I have friends still! from RGS, Oxford, the British Council, Oxford University Press, the British Nuclear Forum, Echo Research. I’ve always loved Shakespeare, even though the last time I studied him was in the 5th form at RGS for GC(S)E, but he said something great about friendship: "Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, / Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel". Hang onto good friends and keep in touch with them, right from the start of your career.

Q: And the worst?

A: Probably meetings with no effect or outcome!

Q: What have been the biggest challenges you’ve faced?

A: Getting to grips with unfamiliar skills or technologies e.g. writing language games for overseas students of English, explaining nuclear fusion simply, shaping questions about gaps in reputation, publishing a book on Amazon … until eventually you mastered them. Life is an endless climbing of little learning curves.

Q: What would you say has been your greatest success?

A: Having a lovely wife, who was steady, even-tempered, kind, and a wonderful mother.

Q: What are your hopes for the future?

A: To live for a long time, and to see very often my beautiful and clever grandchildren.

Q: What do you miss most about Ripon?

A: Theatre rehearsals and English lessons!

*Memorize French can be found on Amazon, from where all the proceeds of its sales will go to Nigel’s grandchildren, Beatrix, Evie, Otto, Martha and Iris: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0FFB6JNDD/