Stephen Hawking Read Free Page A

the “Billy Bunter” stories and Tom Brown’s Schooldays . He was eccentric and awkward, skinny and puny. His school uniform always looked a mess and, according to friends, he jabbered rather than talking clearly, having inherited a slight lisp from his father. His friends dubbed his speech “Hawkingese.” All this had nothing to do with any early signs of illness; he was just that sort of kid—a figure of classroom fun, teased and occasionally bullied, secretly respected by some, avoided by most. It appears that at school his talents were open to some debate: when he was twelve, one of his friends bet another a bag of sweets that Stephen would never come to anything. As Hawking himself now says modestly, “I don’t know if this bet was ever settled and, if so, which way it was decided.” 1
    By the third year Stephen had come to be regarded by his teachers as a bright student, but only a little above average in the top class in his year. He was part of a small group that hung around together and shared the same intense interest in theirwork and pursuits. There was the tall, handsome figure of Basil King, who seems to have been the cleverest of the group, reading Guy de Maupassant at the age of ten and enjoying opera while still in short trousers. Then there was John McClenahan, short, with dark brown hair and a round face, who was perhaps Stephen’s best friend at the time. Fair-haired Bill Cleghorn was another of the group, completed by the energetic and artistic Roger Ferneyhaugh, and a newcomer in the third form, Michael Church. Together they formed the nucleus of the brightest of the bright students in class 3A.
    The little group was definitely the smart kids of their year. They all listened to the BBC’s Third Programme on the radio, now known as Radio 3, which played only classical music. Instead of listening under the sheets to early rock ’n’ roll or the latest cool jazz from the States, Mozart, Mahler, and Beethoven would trickle from their radios to accompany last-minute physics revision for a test the next day or the geography homework due the next morning. They read Kingsley Amis and Aldous Huxley, John Wyndham, C. S. Lewis, and William Golding—the “smart” books. Pop music was on the other side of the “great divide,” infra dig, slightly vulgar. They all went to concerts at the Albert Hall. A few of them played instruments, but Stephen was not very dexterous with his hands and never mastered a musical instrument. The interest was there, but he could never progress beyond the rudiments, a source of great regret throughout his life. Their shared hero was Bertrand Russell, at once intellectual giant and liberal activist.
    St. Albans School proudly boasted a very high intellectual standard, a fact recognized and appreciated by the Hawkingsvery soon after Stephen started there. Before long, any nagging regrets that he had been unable to enter Westminster were forgotten. St. Albans School was the perfect environment for cultivating natural talent.
    Much remembered and highly thought of was a master fresh out of university named Finlay who, way ahead of his time, taped radio programs and used them as launch points for discussion classes with 3A. The subject matter ranged from nuclear disarmament to birth control and everything in between. By all accounts, he had a profound effect on the intellectual development of the thirteen-year-olds in his charge, and his lessons are still fondly remembered by the journalists, writers, doctors, and scientists they have become today.
    They were forever bogged down with masses of homework, usually three hours each night, and plenty more on weekends, after Saturday-morning lessons and compulsory games on Saturday afternoons. Despite the pressures, they still managed to find a little time to see each other out of school. Theirs was pretty much a monastic lifestyle. English schoolboys attending the private schools