Matthew Engel (1959-69)

Joining Jill and Doron on the 36th episode of the podcast, the eighteenth and final of our second season, to tell us his story is British journalist Matthew Engel, who attended Carmel College from 1959 to ‘69, preceded by his two older brothers.  

 

Matthew attended Manchester University and became a journalist, mostly for The Guardian and later the Financial Times. Initially, he specialized in sport, and has covered over 70 different sports, from cricket and football to tiddlywinks and underwater hockey.  Over the years, he reported on just about everything, including the First Gulf War, the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11 - and from all seven continents, the South Pole included.  He lives on a farm in rural Herefordshire, where he is now a county councillor, with his publisher wife Hilary of 34 years, their daughter Vika, and their two dogs, three cats and three horses.

 

Hear Matthew talk about Carmel’s horsehair mattresses; listening to ‘Around the Horn’; ‘what’s wrong with the world today’; smoking in the pillbox; becoming known as the school cynic; an attempt to bribe the school barber; Carmel’s moment in The Guardian’s newsroom; the golden age of newspapers; and the most important piece he ever wrote, “The Day the Sky fell in” (see https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2005/dec/03/familyandrelationships.health).

 

Thank you, Matthew Engel, for turning us again to Carmel days!

 

Personal mentions in this episode:

• Rabbi Dr. Kopul Rosen (Founder & Principal)

• David Stamler (Headmaster)

• Philip Skelker (Headmaster)

• Joshua Gabay (French & Junior School Headmaster)

• June Glover (Primary Department)

• Isabel Craston (English & EFL)

• Mr. P.J. Hobson (English)

• Ron Evans (Mathematics)

• Anthony Engel

• Richard Engel

• Kenneth Kaufman

• Harvey Kaufman

• Avrom Sherr

• Michael Sternberg

• Simon Serota

• David Robson

• Simon Silver

• Steven Fogel

 

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