He was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, United States of America, in the fall of 2009, and a fellow at the Hawthornden Writers" Retreat in March/April 2011. Driver’s life was full of searching and longing, for South Africa, and in particular his beloved Karoo. The joy he felt at the coming to power in the mid-1990s of Nelson Mandela and the ANC evaporated in his latter years, when it became clear that the ANC had lost its way. After his time at Oxford, Driver taught at Sevenoaks School and then at Matthew Humberstone Comprehensive School in South Humberside. In 1976 he was a Research Fellow at the University of York, and for twenty-three years he was a headmaster (Principal, Island School, Hong Kong, 1978-1983. Omdraaivlei", "A Game of Tennis" and "Puppets"), and four poems in No 396 (April 2018): "Last Lesson of a Wintry Afternoon: a Kaddich for Joanna, Lady Seldon", "Extract from a Diary", "Diary Entry"

Perhaps because of his father’s job, or his height (eventually 6ft 4in), young Jonty was badly bullied. But instead of becoming a bully himself, as can happen, he grew into one of the warmest and kindest of people to young and old alike. The cover of this is from a water-colour painting by Jonty and includes one previously unpublished poem. The fifth is A WINTER'S DAY AT WESTONBIRT & OTHER POEMS; all the illustrations His father, an Anglican priest as had been his grandfather before him, nurtured in him a strong sense of justice, a passion for the development of young minds, hearts, and bodies. Even at sixty Jonty was still to be found “flailing”, as his distinct running style was called, around a school playing field. He also had deep literary interests which he shared with his sister Dorothy, professor of English successively at UCT and Adelaide University, and her husband, the Nobel Literature Laureate, JM Coetzee. While I, and many others, seek to come to terms with the death of a friend, it’s a far greater challenge for Jonty’s wife, Ann, their children, Dominic, Dax and Tam, their spouses, and eight grandchildren.Jonty’s personal recipe for success has been ‘motivation and inspiration, the germs of which he has introduced in epidemic proportions to the School. We have all been shaken and stirred and are the better for it.”

After gaining a British passport and supported by his scarcely less remarkable wife Ann, he began his teaching career at Sevenoaks School, helping, through his stewardship of the overseas house there, to begin the school’s meteoric rise to its present eminence. From here, partly through concern at spending his entire career in the independent sector, and partly due to the impossibility of buying a house in the Sevenoaks area on a schoolmaster’s salary, he left the independent sector and transformed sixth form studies at a pioneering comprehensive in Cleethorpes, which became a beacon of excellence in its area. The Man with the Suitcase, the life, execution and rehabilitation of John Harris, Liberal Terrorist, was published by the Crane River Press in 2015 and is available from the publisher or So-called retirement from Wellington at sixty saw a veritable Indian summer in writing. A fifth and final novel, a memoir about the schools he had served and shaped memoirs of an historical kind, one for Granta prompted by a photograph of his friends in the 1960s or, most recently, by the obvious debt he felt to Robert Birley. STILL FURTHER, New Poems, 2000-2020, was published by the Uhlanga Press in South Africa and the UK in 2021. It is available from bookshops in South Africa, fromthe Africa Books Collective in theThis is all narrated in an easy but expressive jargon-free style with a great deal of humour, much of it directed at the author himself and a picture emerges of someone whom we can unreservedly admire and not only because of his opposition to apartheid, something the author barely mentions. Jonty Driver is not only an idealist, as I said, but one whose idealism is tempered by an underpinning of pragmatism. He was described within his valete, which appeared in the October 1989 edition of The Berkhamstedian as “the first of the ‘modern’ headmasters of Berkhamsted who recognised the need to get out and about- forging international links, teacher swaps, the introduction of scholars from other continents, contributing to the work of the Headmasters’ Conference and many other public engagements and visits abroad. All these activities have brought the name of Berkhamsted to the forefront, sometimes in places where it was little known before, as well as enriching the life of the School in many ways.”

As of November 2019, Driver was a full-time writer, though he continued his involvement in education.The programme for the memorial service usually stands in the entrance hall at Hanglip Farm, next to the collected works of C.J. Langenhoven, collected editions of Punch and other colonial magazines, farming manuals, family bibles of a branch of the Van Zyl family, and stern family portraits. In the Anglo-Boer War, Hanglip Farm had served as headquarters for General Koos De La Rey, and later for British soldiers under Lord Kitchener. He is now a full-time writer. He recently retired from being one of the six Trustees of the Beit Trust, which exists to help the people of Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, in particular with In 1976, he was a Research Fellow at the University of York, and for 23 years he was a headmaster (Principal, Island School, Hong Kong, 1978–83; Headmaster, Berkhamsted School, 1983–9; Master, Wellington College, 1989–2000). [2] [6] Writing career [ edit ] At the time, Mandela had retired in some triumph after serving a single term as president of the supposed ’new South Africa’ – which I found hugely ironic, seeing that, not too long before, at a stage-managed provincial and local farmers’ union meeting, ostensibly about farm labour, I was singled out as a farmer in league with ‘the devil’. But I digress …

A bigger volume, STILL FURTHER, New Poems 2000-2019, is to be published by the Uhlanga Press, probably in 2021. He became a fellow at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, US, in the fall of 2009, and a fellow at the Hawthornden Castle Writers’ Retreat in March and April 2011. He also served as one of the trustees of the Beit Trust for many years.In 2012 he became the joint-winner of a competition run by the Kingston University Press for a short biography. The biography will be published late in 2013 by the Kingston University Press. Furthermore, in 2013 Happenstance Press will publish twenty-six of his poetic works, titled ‘ Citizen Elsewhere’.He is now a full-time writer, though he continues his to be involved in education. SOME SCHOOLS, described as a "professional memoir", was published by John Catt Educational Ltd in September 2016. It is an 80,000 word account of the various schools Jonty Driver worked in after In 2000 Driver retired from Wellington and eventually settled with Ann in a delightful old cottage at Northiam, near Rye in East Sussex. The house displayed another of the paradoxes that were always present in his life: an unusually tall man fitting himself comfortably into a low-ceilinged cottage, as if he had clambered into a dolls’ house overflowing with books. In addition to his career in education, Jonty has been a senior lecturer in literature and creative writing at the University of East Anglia since 2007. He has had numerous novels and volumes of poetry published including A Messiah of the Last Days (Faber) and Before (a collection of 22 poems, published by Crane River).