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Alan Durband (1927-1993) was an important figure in the education and arts community in Liverpool and was co-founder of the Liverpool Everyman Theatre. more...

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Early years and education

He was born and raised in the poor inner city districts of the Dingle, Liverpool, (Drysdale St.) and Kensington (Esher Road), as the only child of a ship's carpenter, Joseph William Durband, who spent many months at sea on the 'banana boats' during the 1930s, leaving Alan in the care of his mother and aunts. His mother, Edith Durband (née Ashcroft), had come from a background ruined by the failure of the family horse-and-cart business in the late 1920s. She was particularly ambitious for her son, and even before he was born, began making sacrifices & saving money from their modest income for the time when she might have to pay for a grammar school education. However this was not needed as Alan won a City scholarship from Matthew Arnold Junior School in the Dingle in 1938 and gained entrance to the prestigious Liverpool Institute for Boys, where he proved an excellent scholar, eventually being appointed to replace the Head Boy (accidentally killed in a school cricket match) in mid-year.

In 1946 he won a scholarship to Downing College, Cambridge. But this would be delayed by a term of compulsory National Service. Because of his pacifist beliefs, he refused to enter the Armed Forces and as a 'conscientious objector' he was assigned work instead in a coal mine thus becoming a "Bevin Boy" for 18 months. ("He used to drive his car to work, passing the foreman on his bike" (Personal Communication, J. Eedle).

After completing this national service (an experience which later gave him his school nickname "Dusty", aggravated his lifelong asthma, and strongly influenced his political views) he began undergrad life at Cambridge in Sept. 1949, where his tutor was the noted literary critic Frank Raymond Leavis "At Cambridge he tried one afternoon of tennis and cricket on the paddock before deciding that sport was not for him, retiring to his diet of doughnuts and milk" (Personal Communication, J. Eedle). He graduated in 1951, did a year's post-graduate certificate of education, married (Audrey Ashworth) in 1952 and began his career, briefly in Bolton, then in Sept. 1953 returning to The Liverpool Institute as an English teacher and later (1956) becoming Head of the English Department.

Teaching at the Liverpool Institute

His teaching work was generally with the higher streamed, academically-inclined boys and the Sixth form, in preparation for Advanced (A) level English or for scholarship exams to Oxbridge and he achieved very high pass levels and results. "Dusty" Durband later came to considerable public fame as the highly regarded Sixth Form teacher of A level English to Paul McCartney (1958 - 60) who achieved his pass in that subject.

Read more at Wikipedia.org