Views and Styles
Durband was an atheist, and like his mother, a committed socialist and a supporter of Left wing, 'progressive' causes. He was the Communist Party candidate for school elections in 1946 and he withdrew (at the Head's suggestion) in favour of the Labour candidate "to prove the value of the united left". . At the same time he was creating imaginative money-making ideas such as an insurance scheme against physical punishment in which boys "paid him sixpence a week premium with pay-outs if we were punished"! (Personal Communication, J. Eedle).
His ideas were to evolve into an unusual combination of beliefs and experiences. His acute social conscience seemed to lie easily alongside a love of life with all its joys: of good food, wine and clothes, comfortable houses and luxury cars, made possible only by his entrepreneurial bent and an extremely strong work ethic which produced a steady flow of royalty payments from several decades of sales of his study guides in Britain and the United States. As an entry in the School Magazine (July 1962) announcing his departure, put it: "nestling in his briefcase alongside L5A's exercises were the latest brochures on refrigerators, washing machines, caravanserai, nuclear disarmament, brilliant new textbooks, and resurrections of long defunct amphitheatres". An obituary in the Liverpool Daily Post on 13 March 1993 said "His influence lives on in the minds of the boys he taught and the strength of popular theatrical productions in Liverpool".
He became a Justice of the Peace, (J.P.) in Liverpool in 1974 and is survived by his wife, Audrey, and his son, Mark, and daughter, Amanda.
Read more about this topic: Alan Durband
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