As St Mary’s broke for the 1971 Christmas holiday, long-serving English master Dermot McMahon recalls waving goodbye to Fr Cyril Trueman as the two men headed their separate ways at the end of term.

Two weeks later, Dermot was stunned to receive a telephone call from Fr Graystone advising him that Fr Trueman had died in the Midlands following a family visit in Wales.

His death from a heart attack at the young age of 51 stunned the St Mary’s community and robbed the school of a Marist priest who enjoyed huge popularity among both staff and pupils.

Fr Trueman had arrived at St Mary’s in the summer of 1966. There had been some concern that when legendary English and drama master Adrian Jarvis left the school the annual play would wither on the vine.

Yet Trueman picked up where Jarvis had left off and maintained an exceptionally high standard of productions which spanned Murder in the Cathedral (1967) to She Stoops to Conquer (1971).

Trueman was a superb linguist and phonetician with a great interest in pronunciation and the spoken word and was in great demand as a public speaker.

Many boys recall his funeral at St Lawrence’s Church in Sidcup.

In his memory, the school established The Father Trueman Trophy for outstanding achievements in English or associated activities. The first recipient, at the end of 1972, was Paul Higham who took the lead role in a number of school players and later became a County Court judge in Australia.