George and the Flying Foxes

Author: Christine Hayes

This little book, in twenty-nine short chapters, and with illustrations, is for Quaker teenagers. It is written in a racy style, full of conversations. Some of the characters are themselves Quaker teenagers, George in particular, but also Freddie and Rosie. From the first chapter they interact with Axl, Guy and Jonny, who are the same age as them, and who have blundered into a Quaker Meeting by chance. 

Jonny lives with his parents in a pre-fab, and is wary of the posh people he finds at the Meeting house. But he and George are best mates and go to the Saturday Night Club for table tennis and pop music. One Sunday at Meeting there is a children’s class and Matt, the leader, asks why they enjoy coming to Meeting. ‘I like seeing my best mates’, they say, or ‘I can get out of football’, or ‘I like the biscuits’. But they do have a session about war and how to react to violence. And they hear a lot about a young chap called George Fox. 

‘I am fed up with church,’ says Jonny, ‘I have to sing in the choir and we’re all dressed up like nancy boys’. ‘You mustn’t say nancy boys… It’s rude,’ says George, ‘cos you’re talking about gay people. They’re the same as us, only gay. You get gay rugby players as well as gay ballet dancers’.

The headlong conversations range widely, covering worship, gender issues, attitudes to war and peacekeeping, work camps, communism, and Christianity. And there is a work camp at Bunhill Fields, sleeping on the floor which is great fun; shepherd’s pie, vegetable pie, and apple and plum crumble to follow.

The action then switches to the George Fox Academy, a large boys’ comprehensive school in a tough area of south London. We have a new cast of lads. Some get involved with a group of Roma people camping under the Westway. On a cold frosty morning the headmaster finds two boys kneeling in his parking place; they were praying. ‘Assembly will be happening soon. That’s where we usually say prayers’. ‘But we need to do our prayers as soon as we get to school’ (Muslim boys, clearly). The head then kindly let them use his study on Fridays, with access to a washbasin. 

We then have more formal teaching. George Fox was a strong, fit, energetic young man. He is likened to Greta Thunberg, Marcus Rashford and David Attenborough. In separate classes, handouts tell the history of the civil war, Fox’s interaction with Cromwell and his imprisonment, Pendle Hill, and marriage to Margaret Fell. In Art class they are working towards a group presentation. The boys agreed that this homework wasn’t too bad and they would try to come up with some ‘foxy’ ideas.

The author, Christine Hayes, grew up in Sutton Meeting. Her autobiography, setting her life in the context of national and world affairs, is also worth a look.

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