Many voiced Tribute to John Morgan

John Morgan, author of Once upon a Time, The Q Book and Vocabulary, died, apparently unconscious, at 6.00pm on Sunday November 7th, 2004.

The voices that follow sing of the man and his work and they are the voices of a tiny handful of friends and colleagues.whom|John worked with in depth and deeply influenced. There are literally tens of thousands more EFL teachers whom John also burrowed into and transformed across the world, people I have no awareness of at all in places like:

• Fuzhou, China
• Manila, Philipines
• Belo Horizonte, Brasil
• The Basque Country, perhaps Spain
• Rennes, Brittany, perhaps France
• Sochi, Russia
• Sankt Peterburg, Russia
• Asuncion, Paraguay
• Monte Video, Uruguay
• Recife, Brasil
• Sao Paolo Brasil
• Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
• Cuidad Mejico, Mexico
• Granada, Spain
• Skarrildhus, Jutland, Denmark
• Sardinia, Italy
• Thessaloniki, Verroia, South Macedonia, Greece
• Zagreb, Croatia
• Tirana, Albania
• Sopot, Poland
• West Hungary
• Corfu, Greece
• Kiev, Ukraine
• Two Pilgrims British Council Specialist Courses in Canterbury,UK
• Three British Council Summer Schools in Chester, UK
• Three British Council Summer Schools in Durham, UK
• 15 years teaching on the Pilgrims Summer TT courses in Canterbury, UK.....

I could go on and on, ma basta cosi, 30 years of brilliant work that certainly has surpassed mine and that of some of my closest and dearest colleagues.

Let me paraphrase Garcia Lorca in his Llanto por Sancho Ignacio Mejias

No one knows you,. No. But I sing of you, John.
I sing for later times of your profile and your grace
I sing of the outstanding maturity of your knowledge.
Of your search for death and taste of her mouth.
Of the sadness that was in your valiant happiness.

Much time will pass before is born, if ever there is born
A Londoner so bright, so rich in adventure.
I sing his elegance in words that groan,
And remember a sad breeze through the willow trees.

The original runs thus:

No te conoce nadie. No. Pero yo te canto.
Yo canto para luego tu perfil y tu gracia.
La madurez insigne de tu conocimiento.
Tu apetencia de la muerte y el gusto de su boca.
La tristeza que tuvo tu valiente alegria.

Tardara mucho tiempo en nacer, si es que nace,
Un andaluz tan claro, tan rico de aventura.
Yo canto su elegancia con palabras que gimen
Y recuerdo una brisa triste por los olivos.

John, goodbye from the large constituency of those who loved you, you who totally are no more.

Alan Murray writes:

Mario,
Elena, John Morgan's widow, has asked me to lead this funeral rite - and I feel this is a major task that I don't entirely feel I can do justice to; I do it in some kind of humility to a guy who was contradictory, controversial and creative in a way that most of us can never aspire to. And also for Elena and Watkin and Magnus, his two sons, -I feel too, that it may not do justice to you, in your absence , & your shared experiences with John, who was such a unique person - an awkward and impossible man simply because he was able to formulate the genuine questions that no one else could ask and because he saw the awfulness of the world and the playful creativity that keeps it going. And he was a force majeur in the lived understanding of what it is to learn and to teach in ways that took account of the child in every human being.

Bernard Dufeu writes:

John,
tu viens de nous dire au revoir et les souvenirs remontent: la premiere rencontre a Canterbury lors d'un stage du British Council au debut des annees 80, discret mais tres present dans le groupe, intervenant par petites touches subtiles, avec un humour qui parfois surprenait, car il "decoiffait" parfois ou faisait considerer les choses d'un tout autre point de vue.
Puis rencontre a Rennes, cette fois, c'etait toi qui animais. Tu avais un pied sur le terrain et un sur la touche, laissant les guides legerement flotter si bien que je me demandais parfois ou tu etais…puis tu lancais une petite phrase qui mettait le groupe sur une nouvelle piste. Tu n'etais pas toujours facile a saisir, je crois d'ailleurs que tu etais, par nature, insaisissable. Tu surprenais parfois par tes reflexions inattendues…Simple, discret, tu savais aussi etre moqueur parfois, laissant un sourire narquois s'echapper de ta barbe et l'accompagnant d'une petite lueur ironique dans l'oeil…et puis tu disparaissais tout en etant present…Tu savais prendre tes distances, laissant s'agiter ceux qui s'acharnent a agir pour mieux sentir qu'ils vivent… Tu as pris maintenant la distance superieure mais tu restes present."

Bonnie Tsai writes:

I first met John years and years ago at the British Council in Paris. His creativity and imagination immediately drew me to him.

Over the years he brightened summers at Pilgrims with his boundless energy and ability to make small things beautiful and memorable.

I admired his courage in never selling himself out just to get good feedback at the end of courses. Anyone who was ever able to train with John was indeed privileged.

For knowing him we were all enriched.

Bruno Rinvolucri ( Mario's 18 year old son) writes from Brasil

Hi,
That's fucking savage about john. obviously it was going to happen so its not really a shock but in a way it is because now when you say or write john it seems totally different and it is hard to believe he was ever alive. Yeah it's weird that all this was going on Sunday evening when we were totally oblivious to it, talking merrily in bed.

Mario Rinvolucri writes:

At 6 pm on Sunday November 7th, 2004 John Morgan died of secondary cancer in the brain. The primary cancer had been in his smoke-raddled lungs

John,

I rage against the social climate of the 1950's that made you think smoke drinking was glamorous.

I rage against your mother who smoked like a chimney and led you by the nose.and throat.

I rage against the laggardly doctors who condoned smoking for decades.

I rage against those who made, have made and are making huge profits from deaths like yours

I rage against the State that levies a cynical tax that has made you, John, a high level tax payer.

I rage against you, John, for your slow and knowing suicide

I rage against you, in the last months of your life, for going too gentle into that dark night

I rage against you for GOING.

And yet you went the way you went and that too is a real part of you. That too, I must somehow accept.

It is hard to realise that you will never again:
cook in my kitchen
slice through my thinking
console my wife
shout at your own
soak hours in the bath
listen deeply so I develop my thought
link arms with me facing our colleagues
because you have died for ever in a mound of snuffed out dogs.

You have gone for ever and there is no beyond.

Goodbye John

Christine Frank writes:

I consider John both a friend and colleague who I had the pleasure of knowing for nearly thirty years. We worked together in Canterbury, Mexico, Denmark and Finland, and as a colleague he was co-operative, supportive and open to new ideas. As a friend he was kind and considerate and shall be sadly missed by all who knew him.

Clement Laroy writes:

John Morgan was a comet in my life: he was there, but his re-appearances and the strength of his light were not predictable. He had pushed "humanism" to its extreme consequences and he would give, without thinking of the cost. He had such an extraordinary talent to empathize that he was able to at once see a positive point in what someone did - and he would point it out with great enthusiasm. He not only gave confidence, but also got people to discover what they themselves did not know they were capable of.

This is what he did for me. I am sure there are many people like me, for he would pursue on a trail of friendship and giving…spending his energy and light…I feel I will have visions of this comet as long as I live.

Ephraim Weintroub writes:

To John Morgan - Wise Magician

A night in China Town

Dragged my son slow and silent
No place for smiles in London town
Dragged him unwilling unsmiling
To Chinatown
To sup with John

"John?" an eyebrow shot up
Shrugged an answer
"Wise man perhaps. Magician, Friend"
He sighed, resignation reluctance reserve
Last card on table
"Lived in China
Been about"
He'd heard that lot
And more before
Body said it all
A waste of time

He stepped out of shadows smile alight
A word of greeting son's face lit up
Together drifted down Chinatown
Floating in conversation
New old friends
A few glances a nod of head
The restaurant an easy choose
Crowded room
With Babel high
They sat and spoke
Magician and boy

Of sweet and sour and eggrolls
Of Canton, Tibet and Tai Chi
Of martial arts and Chinese Art
Of dreams, of schemes and just the day

They sat and spoke,
Walked and spoke
Down darkened streets
With lamplight guides
Times up "John said
'Even magicians
have to fly'
The tube, follow your line"
A wave of hand.
He'd turned
And gone
Lost
In the shadows
Turned and gone
Magician, wise man
And always friend

Rakesh Bhanot writes:

I have not seen or been in touch with John for years and it has been a very long time since we worked together at Pilgrims in Canterbury, but in spite of this, John's insights into language teaching, and the zany activities that he concocted to reveal these to his students and colleagues, are still a part of my professional repertoire. However, I am not alone in having been touched in some profound way by working and learning with John. I dare say there are thousands of teachers and students of English in almost every corner of the world who owe John something of a debt of gratitude for making their task more interesting; more enjoyable; more human.

As with all good teachers, it was not only his workshops or the ideas in his books that left their mark, but also the informal conversations that were often challenging, usually witty and sometimes even 'life-changing'. For example, when I first worked with Pilgrims, I was known as Rick and my decision to revert back to my original/given/Hindu name, Rakesh, arose out a conversation with John who, along with Mario, challenged me to explain why I had anglicised my perfectly-easy-to-pronounce Indian name. It took several years to formally renounce 'Rick' but the seeds of doubt - about the wisdom of insisting that I be called by a more western (sic.) name in EFL circles - were planted in my head during a conversation with John in the bar at the University of Kent where Pilgrims ran and still run their summer schools for teaching EFL.

Gerald Kenny writes:

John Morgan was one of the best listeners I have ever met.
He was an extremely useful person to have in any group or kitchen as he could alwaysbe relied upon to respond creatively and thoughtfully to almost minimal input, provided you let him do things exactly the way he wanted to, however strange the results may seem. In fact, the less input he was given the better, as it gave him less to sift through before finding his response. For John often seemed less interested in things than in the gaps between things: the interstices, the chinks in social organization and communication, the gaps in meaning, the understatements, the misunderstandings, the idiosyncrasies, the leftovers.
He read very much the way he listened, with an eye for detail and a prodigious memory. He would read the newspaper thoroughly, devoting particular attention to the small news and the short pieces which most people don't even see let alone read, and polish these gems up for conversation or the classroom. Not surprisingly one of the last articles I read by him began with a reference to a court case concerning breach of probation: a young man had walked out of a training course after being asked to role-play an apple. John used this anecdote as his lead-in to a short history of teaching methodology. As someone who had had learners and teacher trainees interviewing shoes, talking to chairs and imagining the world from a light bulbs point of view, John would have felt great empathy for the young man in court, and probably for his teacher too.
Whatever his considerable personal charm and belief in what he was doing, John knew only too well that his approach often unsettled people in the classroom. He became accustomed to dealing with participants' scepticism, but would always let people make up their own minds, believing that their puzzling was much more important than his professional credibility. For John refused to hide behind the institutional role of teacher/trainer as expert. He was much more interested in being able to respond to things which happened. The resulting dilemmas cannot have been easy to deal with.
I remember seeing him one lunchtime in the staffroom looking for an idea for an afternoon session with a group of trainees which would take account of something which had happened in the morning workshop. What had happened exactly? He couldn't really say, but was looking for a text or a story. He looked frantic. We talked about teaching on thin ice. We talked about how hunters often drown when they follow polar bears onto thin ice in spite of being much lighter than their prey. We both went on with our preparation. At the end of the afternoon we met again and John looked happier. What had he done in class? "We talked about polar bears. Then we did something about freedom. It went well."

A theoretical outline of his approach would have helped many people to appreciate his gifts, but he was much more interested in examples than concepts. His writing about teaching, although always a pleasure to read, was pale in comparison to his excellence as a resource person. He could take almost any sample or source and build from it; and the same sample or source could, for him, be used in almost endless numbers of ways. He was a man of the oral tradition. He was not the sort of master who would tell you about the theory of language teaching, but, to paraphrase George Steiner in Lessons of the Masters, the sort of master you would go to see in order to watch him tie and untie his shoelaces.
John truly came into his own as a storyteller. For those who wish to find some trace of his particular way with words, then I suggest pages 5-6 from the introduction of Once Upon a Time, which he wrote with Mario Rinvolucri. The authors give transcripts of their very different tellings of a Ghanaian folk-tale from a single source. John's telling obviously comes first, reproducing his highly personal way of setting a scene, choosing his words, pausing almost in mid-thought to build a thought the way he wants it this time. There is something beautifully Welsh in the way he gets his imagination around the fairies in this mysterious African tale about a hunchback girl who loses and then gets back her load. In spite of the weight, there is a lightness to the ending which was all John:
"...so she stayed in the house/for a week/and/then there was a festival in the village/and all the girls went out into the streets of the village/and they danced/and the girl looked/out of her window at the girls/in/their bright/costumes/dancing in the street/and she couldn't resist it/she'd always loved dancing and she'd never been able to dance and now she could/and out in the street she went/danced with the other girls/while she was dancing/she felt a weight/on her shoulders/turned round/and there saw the fairies/quietly/going off/out of the village" John Morgan, out of the village, but forever in the folklore

Gill Johnson writes:

Mario,
I'm so sorry about John. I didn't know him as you did, but what I remember most about him was his brilliantly sharp mind, his impish humour, his wonderful spoon and saucepan playing, his encyclopaedic knowledge of old folk songs and his incredible humility. Pilgrims' hilltop summers were thinner and poorer without him, once he decided to stop coming. I rang him up to tell him so once. He was amazed I thought so and I was amazed at how little impact he felt he'd had...

I know you were such close friends; you worked so closely together and for so many years. I imagine it feels like a part of you has been amputated.

I understand how it feels to lose a close friend to cancer. It happened to me 6 years ago. If you want to talk you know where I am.

Rick Cooper writes:

Most days he was Morgan, not John. We had our own exclusive twin's language, an example imperishably audible as I write: how we'd say "yep", mocking whatever patently obvious thing the other had just said. A lexis challenging friendship was pure Morgan, part puzzle as game and part his exceptional, relentless empathy. An empathy that he could so disarmingly achieve in the classroom, cut a swathe of it through the usual prototypic language practice straight to the intimacy of shared real things, without routine, spangled in humor at times and always with a hospitality that is the able and willing listener.

A trainer's work carries within it something of those who have inspired them. My work contains a part of Caleb Gattegno, of Mario Rinvolucri and of John Morgan. Gattegno was the irascible master of no bullshit, that training must stay out of the way of learning. Mario the tireless developer of ways to reach the person and be reached. And Morgan who defined the risk-taking in a fully experienced class, of choosing when to go off path in search of a truth that lies just beyond the predictable, of trusting one's sensations as well as one's curiosity. Morgan like James Thurber preferred to know some of the questions than all of the answers. I cannot imagine teaching a single moment without each of these presences in my work, the rigor, the creative and the route untaken leading right out of my own uncertainties.

I will miss John Morgan deeply in how much he is a part of my love of teaching as I live it and of friendship as I have known it. He also was one uncommon drummer, as anyone whoever shared kitchen-space with him will attest.

Richard Cooper

John Beresford writes:

Pilgrims has always been ecumenical, how else could it have accommodated such disparate characters as John and myself? Yet we were the best of friends and I was very fond of him. I enjoyed his company, his deep intelligence, his wry humour. He enriched my life enormously, as he must have enriched many others, and I shall miss him sadly

Cynthia Beresford writes:

Challenging, exciting, innovative, frustrating, droll, sometimes erratic are some of the adjectives which come to mind as I think of John. Wherever and whenever we taught together he never ceased to amaze me. He was a sensitive and intuitive teacher. With his brilliant mind he was at times unpredictable and often it was difficult to get him to harness his ideas, which meant that team teaching with John became an adventure, even a mystery tour. I shall always remember his long silences followed by inspired (and inspiring) innovative flashes. He was often at his best at two in the morning, sitting on the floor, cross legged, a glass of Scotch at hand, pleased with his bon mots, smiling his gentle self-deprecating smile. I'm happy to keep that memory.

Sheelagh Deller writes:

John Morgan was an important friend and colleague.
I worked with him on a number of courses where we were both away from home, so spent a lot of time together both during and outside the course.
Time with John was remarkable. I learnt so much from him, and sometimes struggled to keep up with his extraordinary wealth of knowledge and originality of thought. Never boring. Always informative. Often thought provoking.
Our approach to training was probably very different - which was probably why we worked so well together. John never gave the impression of having pre-meditated content. He very much trained according to his mood, his current thinking, and the journey he wanted to take his students on. He training was spontaneous. He practically thought out loud, and his students learnt to do the same thing. They learnt to think in new ways, and to think for themselves.

He was always good company, and alongside his strong intellectual side, there was a wonderfully silly side. His storytelling skills were amazing - and he often managed to convince you to believe that they were fact not fiction. not just story -telling but story- making. He would invent a story and manage to convince you for most of it that is was fact rather than his fiction.
John was a one-off. We need more like him. I do and will miss him. And I do wish I had managed just once to beat him at pool.

Herbert Puchta writes:

John Morgan - friend, colleague, mentor, thinker

Pictures of when I first met John come to mind. It was in fact my first visit to Pilgrims. I was invited to sit in on a session that John was co-teaching with Tessa on a Train-the-trainers-seminar. I was breathless when I came out of the session. The brilliance of John's mind... and his wonderful sense of humour. His warmth. The way he facilitated thinking in a group. And how he said unexpected things at what seemed the perfect point of time in the process of a group...and the way he used silence.

I had actually 'met' John before. Through reading his and Mario's book Once upon a time. An eye-opener for a teacher like me who himself had learnt language in a very traditional and strict grammar translation way and was trying to humanise his own teaching. Once upon a time was a wonderful companion for a few years and is still one of my favourite EFL books. Working as a trainer for Pilgrims on the hilltop. What a learning experience! I remember well the "technical evenings". We - the team of trainers - come together once a week for an evening. In turn we give short practical presentations. John is a strong presence - not only when he does a new activity with the group. Also and especially as a participant in someone else's activities. So non-judgemental, so appreciative, so open-minded and eager to learn from others. So generous with sharing his own ideas. So persistent in the search for whatever it is that he wants to explore.

Meeting up as trainers at various conferences abroad. Several times in Paris. Several times in Spain. I have the pleasure to sit in on workshops that John gives, and I have the pleasure of him sitting in on workshops that I give. Fascinating discussions follow - often until late a night. John the observer, the analyst, the one who leads a discussion with such a lot of in-depth knowledge, humour and ease.

For several years after that I don't see John on the EFL circuit. I miss him. Then I meet him again in September 2002 at the Humanistic Language Teaching Conference in Portonovo. One evening a band is playing, and John joins in as a drummer using spoons. As I am writing this, I look through the online photo album of that conference and I find a photo of that moment:http://www.lend.it/portonovo2002/foto/JMorganB.jpg

The next morning John comes as a participant to my group. I am scared when he tells me that he will. An irrational reaction. Maybe because we haven't met for some time. Is he still the same? I'm not scared for long. John is brilliant as always, and very supportive. A colleague in the final round says that she would especially like to thank John Morgan for taking part in the group... because of making her think. I felt the colleague verbalised what many of us felt and what I am feeling now. Thank you, John, for making us think - and for many other things!

Luke Prodromou writes:

Remembering John Morgan: in Prospero's Cell

I first met John in Corfu, in the early 80s; a Greek island, an idyllic place to run a teacher training course, and he was an ideal person to do it with. I was his co-trainer but also his trainee, as it turned out.
Corfu was green, so green and beautiful that spring, and John brought his magic to Prospero's cell. He taught us the power of language and the power of what I see now as a minimalist methodology: no textbooks, no fancy equipment; just him, his quiet voice and his ability to energise a group with a simple commitment to language as a powerful tool for liberating feeling, expressing and shaping identity.
On Corfu, he had his own community of thirty or so state school teachers, all glad to be stranded with him, leaving behind the tired routine and ritual of language teaching in the smoggy cities. We all stayed together for five days, the forest behind us, and the blue sea all around: it was a charmed circle; we were receptive, ready to do things differently, to go beyond familiar techniques and textbooks.
John Morgan could transform a vocabulary exercise into a magical moment of discovery, a small epiphany; he could make you bend and transform grammar into a journey of exploration; and some of those moments, twenty years on, have stayed with me, shaping my own practice.

I remember his little bits of paper, with a word written on them and the energy they could generate when teachers brought to these scraps their own feelings and past experiences. We created collective feeling out of these fragments; they circulated amongst the group, they were re-arranged into new patterns, they were deconstructed, co-constructed and reconstructed; they went forth and multiplied. The power of a scrap of paper!

I remember sitting in a circle in another of John's sessions, scribbling something on another scrap of paper and then sending that fragment out into the group where it would circulate and again grow into something rich and strange. Bits of paper, words, would acquire a life of their own. He could make words get up and walk about. And it was all driven by the participants; he had the idea, the spark: the rest was in the trainee's hands. He never talked about these magical exercises or analysed them; he just did them. This may have frustrated some participants who wanted to know why we were doing all this, in conventional terms. But he trusted the task and our reaction to it; the way it awakened feelings that nearly always lie beneath surface in most ELT training encounters.

It was, I suppose, Dogme years before others gave it that name. It stamped my own teaching and made me appreciate that teaching English as a foreign language could be much more than teaching the lexical and grammatical system. It was about reading ourselves, reading the world outside the window.
John had a tranquil but strong presence. He was a constant challenge to teachers and trainers who slip into deadening, fixed routines I always felt a bit nervous when he was training or when we were just chatting: he stirred up tempests in my mind, he demanded risks, and I was always afraid of drowning if I abandoned my safe, predictable ways of teaching and training.

I remember him at a conference in Greece where he gave the final plenary. He subverted the whole pompous ritual of most plenaries by appearing from the wings onto a stage high up, a mile away from the participants and he sat down, cross-legged, Buddha-like on this football field of a stage. He paused. After a long silence, he began to speak softly, in a steady almost story-telling tone. The audience had to strain hard to hear what John was saying and they also had to strain their habitual pedagogy to go down the humanistic path he was following. He didn't have ready-made answers and it was one of the first plenaries I saw where the speaker didn't speak much and asked the audience to 'do it themselves'. It was turning the traditional ritual of the conference plenary 'inside out': the answers lay with us, the teachers, not the guru up on the stage, all appearances to the contrary. This was humanistic training, no holds barred. It wasn't a path all teachers were comfortable following, because it question ed more than their pedagogic practices.
I remember John that summer at Pilgrims when the trainees just wanted to 'improve their English 'and John set out to improve them as human beings. The resulting confusion was a microcosm of the tensions and contradictions of modern ELT. Most teachers have a technocratic agenda - 'improve my grammar' 'teach me more words' 'I want to be idiomatic' 'how do I teach the exam class?'.
John offered them the magic of self-discovery, which everyone pays lip-service to, but when the chips are down, its 'grammar McNuggets' we need.

For me, then, John Morgan's legacy, can be summed in two ways: first, he was an ELT professional who was 100% a genuine human being, who made you ask: 'why are we doing this anyway?' 'Where does it fit in to my view of human values?' 'In what ways is grammar and vocabulary a part of education, an integral part of our culture as human beings?'. 'What does teaching the language tell me as a parent, a friend?' The 'Q' book captures the questioning spirit of the man.
But it is probably his storytelling book with Mario which is at the heart of his contribution to ELT as education, in the broad sense. It is a book that goes beyond a narrow definition of ELT as teaching a linguistic system cut off from our cultural roots. Even the vocabulary book is really about the stories words tell. It is EFL as cultural practice. It is a kind of action - and a reaction to the dehumanising of language teaching.

Secondly, John's legacy, for me, is how to reconcile this vision of teaching 'humanistically' with the pressures and constraints of teaching 'just to earn a living'. It is the challenge of introducing an educational perspective into a technocratic profession. His work, and that of Rinvolucri and, more recently, the dogme group, tries to put the learner at the centre of the language classroom. In his training, John also put the teacher centre-stage, as the only way to empower the teacher to 'let go' in the classroom and let the learners' voices be heard.

John's work is important in ELT; for me, it represents the educational soul of language teaching and the challenge for those of who stay behind is how to weave that vision into the everyday fabric of a depersonalised, market-driven classroom.
Beyond the memory of John as a decent human being, with magic in his mind, the best tribute to him is that his ideas on ELT as educational practice, as human practice, will live on, in our hands.

Simon Marshall writes:

With John's passing I feel a profound loss of a very dear and unique friend. In all my life I have never met a person with whom I could enjoy - indeed, celebrate - such fascinating, spellbinding conversation. From language teaching along the pathways of literature, visual art, music, spirituality and philosophy, John would always inform and invigorate my own thinking and appreciation. His intellect was of the rarest quality and variety, infused with originality, imagination and no little wit. Always striving for new angles, John forged many which were oblique and acute but none that were ever obtuse. Common are those who speak with knowledge, fewer with understanding and a rare minority with wisdom. I genuinely believe that John had this tripartite ability.

John could also listen with the same eloquence as he could speak. Even when we disagreed, I can honestly say never a spiteful word passed between us.

What a sense of humour! I can remember writhing in tortured laughter in "The Barn" at Witherslack as he explained the wickedly labyrinthine scheming that enabled him to weave, for me, insoluble crossword clues.

John, I'll miss our talks, our laughter and our silences. Knowing you afforded me the opportunity of a fifteen year tour de force of learning.
Thank you so very much.
I will remember you with deep affection forever.

Nick Owen writes:

John and I go back a long way. We were at school together; but he was a big boy and I was still in short trousers. In all likelihood we never noticed each other till we met more than 30 years later. Was it at Pilgrims? Was it in Exeter? I don't remember. But when we did notice each other, he wasn't a big boy anymore. He was massive. A presence. An intellect. Un agent provocateur par excellence. I instinctively liked him and was wary of him. He exuded both passion and reason. Extraordinary openness and unbelievable stubbornness. He could be enormous fun, witty and charming, and at other times totally and utterly difficult and morose. I recognised in him much of a fellow traveller. Just that we were travelling on different pathways. Different but complementary.

John always seemed to me to be authentic, always true to himself. Perhaps I should say to his many selves. He was complex and challenging. He was unafraid of pushing and stretching his colleagues and his students. He was not interested - or so it seemed to me - in being liked but in pushing the boundaries. It was hard to be neutral about John. Of the many students of his I talked to over the years, and in many countries, they either loved his style and responded to his rigorous humanity, or were totally puzzled by it, sometimes downright angry and contemptuous. Like many geniuses and deep thinkers he was flawed. He could get it as very wrong as he could get it very right. He frequently refused to make compromises. Flexibility was not always his strongest suit. Sometimes, in class, he would disappear into his own inner world with the same deep excluding absorption as he would disappear into a challenging crossword or a pint of Guinness. And yet few knew how to master the power of the uncomfortable sile nce a well as John. He made people think, and for me that is one of the hallmarks of a great communicator. I learned much from John. I drew frequently on the ideas in his books. I shamelessly stole his ideas, and some of his methods. I enjoyed and admired his storytelling. He was a great raconteur. And he always challenged me, directly and indirectly, to be more of who I could be.

I have a photo of John and myself sitting together on the heather on a tor on Dartmoor. Without even looking at it, it brings directly to mind that generous toothy smile, the unruly hair and beard, those penetrating and ever-so-slightly disturbing eyes, and the whole great spirit of the man, as wild and unpredictable as a Devonish day on the moors.

I shall miss him. And looking back, he is still the big boy to my short trousered pretender. He taught me far more than I was ever able to offer him. Thanks Morgan. Go well.

Nick Owen

Melanie Ellis writes:

A collage of memories

The summer of the A1 corridor on the hilltop at Canterbury and John as the keeper of the stockpot. Long discussions round the table as the supper bubbled. Everyone curious as to what had gone into the soup to make it taste so good. John telling the 'soup stone' story and ending: 'No, seriously, it was just a pair of old socks I found lying around.'

Late one night in Jastrebia Góra on a course for studium teachers playing 'Botticelli' and drinking beer by the case. A round with the letter Z lasted forty-five minutes- John in leading role, displaying his amazing range of wit and general knowledge.

Quiz nights down the pub in Durham, waiting for the music round and hoping we could pick up some points- which we nearly always did if they got the 'era' right and John was in form.

Sitting on the floor listening to stories, John with legs crossed and rocking, a faraway look in his eye saying: 'And he noticed a flake of snow floating past his nose and felt the overpowering need to sleep. So he went off into the forest and found a cave and made himself a nice deep bed of leaves and curled up, and as his eyes were closing he said to himself: 'I'm not a man, I'm a bear.'

In the kitchen in the house in Grange drinking red wine over a long supper as John talked politics with fierce passion.

John trying to teach me how to solve cryptic crosswords, sending me my very own annotated one ( by 'Mog') showing how the answers were worked out. Me a poor student and Morgan infinitely patient.

I'm left with a warmth in my heart when I think of John, a brilliant, witty, sad and joyous man, who has left us all richer for having known him.

Peter Grundy writes:

A fairly ungenerous time limit
(Morgan and Rinvolucri, Vocabulary, P35.)

Marea
for my wife,
who is out.Yes,
I will tell her you called.

Mario
for me, with a grave truth.

Two things to tell Branka.
In what order,
I wonder.

Palms pressed together
hands raised to his face, John,
ready to start.

Protesting my newest idea is utterly stupid and pointless.

Moments of Morgan.

The things that John didn't:
worry too little, pay a false compliment,
take his work lightly, shave.

To say what he did is more difficult:
brilliant, his books fell short of disclosing his genius,
his generosity.

Hanna Kryszewska writes:

I met John Morgan in the late eighties together with Mario when they did a brilliant training course for the British Council Centres in Poland. They started a revolution in our thinking about EFL although in retrospect I am not sure what was more powerful…..John's sessions, his presence and his ideas or long,long chats in the evenings through the night ( also switching from English into German), with lots of drinks, many cigarettes and some bongo drumming that inevitably followed.

Last time we met in summer 2004. One drink, one cigarette and ideas about EFL that could still shake all of us but little energy to engage. No drumming...

I am very philosophical after John's death. For some of us it is the first time in years that someone more or less our age has died. For me it has been different. A real spate:
A fatal car accident, terminal cancer, terminal leukemia and, I am afraid to say, more bad news round the corner.

So I have tried to cut down on smoking and drinking...but can we fool the Reaper? We can't and there are lots of time bombs ticking……but there is a bottom line from a Polish priest who writes poetry, Twardowski:

Spieszmy sie ludzi kochac tak szybko os nas adchozda

Let us hurry to love people, they leave us too soon...

Gigliola Pagano writes:

Why does your death find me so unready and so unprepared?
Why do I keep thinking I have never told you what a big impact you have had on my life?
When I first met you in Frascati. Your walks around the pond …and me starting to feel how my life could have been different.
It has been a long and hard walk since those days- twelve years ago- and you have been with me all this time.
You have inspired me to think of alternative possibilities - no matter how unreasonable they might seem at first.
You have inspired me to learn flexibility.
You have inspired me to follow the untrodden path.
And I have learnt from you that "silence speaks". This is the name I have given to an activity that I have learned from you and that I will do tomorrow with m2y students.
That will be my silent tribute to you.

Paul Sanderson writes:

My first meeting with John Morgan

As I crept back and peered into the kitchen packed full of Pilgrims trainers one summer evening on the campus of Kent University, I carefully scrutinised the faces (the famous faces) of all those sitting there, eating, drinking, laughing and exchanging hilarious anecdotes. I had found myself trapped there in a corner as they all suddenly lurched in from a night out and filled the table with bread and cheeses and fruit and vodka and salami. I felt awkward and out of place being there amongst them. I didn't know them. They didn't know me. But they all knew each other. I wasn't an international teacher trainer. I wasn't a writer. They all were. I had little to contribute to the conversation. I was overawed. I sat and listened.
When eventually I did come to say my goodbyes and leave, I found my exit outside the kitchen blocked. Above my head on the stairwell was a spider the size of a football (arachnophobics always add a few inches on for good measure). I could not pass. I could not kill it. I was frozen. I would have to swallow my pride, risk looking foolish, and ask a stranger back there in that kitchen to help me. But who?
As I looked through the space between the door and its frame, I surveyed their faces. Who could I ask? Who could I trust to understand and resist ridiculing my fear in front of all the others? My eyes fell on the face of John Morgan, A stranger to me. Yet he had a kind, warm look in his eyes. I went in, leant forward and whispered to him that I needed his help. He said nothing, but got up and followed me out of the kitchen to the stairwell. I pointed to the problem. John simply scooped the offending creature up, opened the window, and let it free into the night. He would never have harmed it. He put his hand on my shoulder to silence my gushing apologies and thanks and at that moment I knew that this was a man I would feel privileged to call a friend.
I was lucky enough to be able to call John a friend, and after that summer, we wrote to one another over a number of years and arranged occasional meetings when I was in the country.
As I sit in this hotel writing this, I feel a sudden chill down my spine. I feel a sense of loss. I feel grief and sadness at the realisation of his passing. I also remember and feel the warmth he showed towards me. I raise my glass to you John.

Mike Gradwell writes:

I haven't seen John for so many years. I valued his comradeship, which he gave easily. We would meet in the summer, with an easy familiarity that always made me feel as if he had just stepped out of the room for a minute before coming in again to forgetfully say 'goodmorning' for the second time. And smile. I admired John, and still do. For me he had something of the Sufi Nazrudin about him. His remarks, comments and stories, however simple, always seemed to have an extra dimension of some essential meaning (even when they didn't, which was part of his charm!). He had the trick of it. He had a brilliance of mind and a natural understanding of others' failings that made him healing to be with, and when he wished he could wield those attributes with consummate skill. As a teacher he was a natural. He was somebody whose way of being I would have liked to take on board for myself but never quite managed to do.
His features, eyes lips nose skin tone angularity of body stay on my shore of vision. To be eternally rediscovered in the wrack of memory. And of course I remember his beard! White and stringy, curling down like a theatrical prop, at once revealing and concealing the thrusting energy of his personality. I loved him well. I wish I had known him better. And now he's gone.

Alan Maley writes:

I cannot claim the privilege of having been a close personal friend of John¹s, although we had a long and, I think, warm relationship. I do not recall when we first met but as the years went on, he became one of my landmarks.
What made him so special? He was, for one thing, a fiercely independent and anti-establishment character. He distrusted authority in whatever form. I always thought of him as a kind of 19th century dissident - the sort of person who would have been with the Chartists, or the early Socialists, before power corrupted them. He would challenge almost any opinion, almost as a matter of principle, and intellectually he was formidably well-equipped to do so. This did not make him an easy person to be around. He could be touchy, intransigent, moody, even aggressive at times. In short, an awkward bugger.
But there was another side to him which was warm, kind, and concerned. He was intensely interested in people, whether as students, colleagues or friends, and sensitive to their needs. He loved good conversation, and having a good time. He was intellectually curious, and amazingly well-read, and well-informed. He had the ability to spark ideas off people- ideas they would not have come upon on their own. And that is a great gift.
Professionally, he was extraordinarily creative, with an ability to hatch new ideas and to find a practical shape for them. His influence on the way we now conduct our teaching is vastly under-rated, probably because he was not very good at personal promotion. Many teachers worldwide owe him a great debt. He will be greatly missed by many.
Two years ago, we were both participating in the LEND seminar at Portonovo in Italy. He took part in the workshop I ran on stories in language teaching. He took a backseat role (when he could well have usurped my role as workshop leader), and was a great support throughout. When it was all over, he was generously fulsome in his comments about what we had done together. That praise meant more to me than almost any that I have received in a 40-year career. And I have a vivid picture of him playing the spoons alongside the Italian Irish band that provided the music one night by the Adriatic ­ he was totally caught up in the moment ­ the music, the company, the atmosphere. That is how I shall remember him.