the times | Saturday December 4 2021 83
Maths lecture leads to
Bollywood-style romance
Marriages and
engagements, page 84Email: [email protected]Sher as Benjamin Disraeli with Judi Dench in Mrs Brown (1997), a rare film role
marriage was legalised a decade later
they tied the knot after Sher accidental-
ly proposed over lunch at the Wolseley
restaurant in London: “I suddenly said,
‘I was wondering if we should get mar-
ried?’ Greg looked up in surprise, then
said, ‘I’m sorry — is this you proposing
to me?’ ” Doran, who in 2012 was ap-
pointed artistic director of the RSC, re-
vealed Sher’s then unspecified terminal
illness — cancer — announcing in Sep-
tember this year that he was taking
leave of absence to care for his husband.
Sher’s insecurities resurfaced from
time to time. As recently as 1996, while
grappling with Tamburlaine, he was
working to overcome a debilitating
cocaine addiction. It was something he
was open about and did not see as whol-
ly negative. “Cocaine is a terribly time-
consuming drug,” he said. “But nothing
is wasted, particularly for an actor. And
when it came to playing an addict,
which Falstaff is, I recognised that cy-
cle: I’m stopping; I won’t drink any-
more; and then I go on drinking.”
As he grew older he became increas-
ingly meticulous with his theatrical
preparation. He started learning King
Lear, which he played from 2014 to
2016, more than a year in advance, not
something he had always done. “I’ve
simply no idea how as a younger actor
you didn’t learn lines until rehearsals,”
he pondered in a Times interview.
“Now I do it extra early; I like to know
them inside out.”
His big grey beard became increas-
ingly useful, although there was a
length after which cab drivers thought
he was a tramp and refused to stop. Off
stage he was a prolific writer, with nov-
els such as Middlepost (1989) named
after the desert hamlet of Middelpos in
the old Cape Colony where his fore-
bears had arrived in 1902, and an un-mess, Clements was pulled in to help
crew three mercy flights during the
Berlin airlift in 1948, which earned him
his fourth service medal. He had helped
to train the crews in the use of the blind
approach beacon system, an automatic
radar landing system.
Clements did a postgraduate elec-
tronics course at Southampton
University even though he did not have
a degree. After completing the course
under Professor Erich Zepler, he was
attached to the radar research estab-
lishment at Malvern as the Air Ministry
projects officer on the latest postwar
aircraft radar equipment.
While stationed at Malvern in 1956
he was introduced to Monica (née Jen-
kins) who worked at the Midland Bank
in Bristol with his sister Joan. They
married in 1957. She survives him along
with his son, Richard, who works in
healthcare commissioning, and a
daughter, Julia, a pilates teacher. Both
recall the radar specialist’s mental acui-
ty in helping them with their times ta-
bles or watching him transcribe Morse
code at 26 words a minute.
Clements undertook
senior officer training at
RAF Henlow in Bed-
fordshire and com-
manded the radio
engineering unit
before arriving at
RAF Medmen-
ham in Bucking-
hamshire, where
his work with the
Defence Commu-
nication Network
led to his promotion to
air rank.
In the early Seventies he
commanded the radio engi-
neering unit at RAF Henlow, in charge
of 1,200 personnel and responsible for
worldwide installation of communica-
tion systems and navigational aids.
His final role was as air officer signals
at Support Command Signals HQ, con-
trolling more than 5,000 personnel at
RAF Medmenham. He headed off
threats to break up the organisation re-
sponsible for communications, radar
and electronic communications in the
RAF while leading the project to design
and install the radar elements of the
Nimrod reconnaissance system.
He left the RAF in 1976 in the rank of
air commodore and joined Marconi
Defence Systems, where he would go
on to lead the fitting of the Marconi
millimetric active radar seeker to the
Rockwell Hellfire missile.
He left Marconi in 1987 and worked
as a consultant for six years. He was
proud of how high he had flown in the
RAF ranks but never forgot his humble
start and served as president of the
RAF Cranwell Apprentices’ Associa-
tion for ten years.
A keen student of computers, he
would read manuals cover to cover to
fault-find and fix modems while playing
a record of RAF marching bands loudly.John Clements, RAF officer and radar
researcher, was born on December 2, 1921.
He died on October 23, 2021, aged 99John Clements
Pioneering RAF radar researcher who survived
a wartime ditching in the Bristol Channel
As one of six pioneering radar opera-
tors trained by the RAF at the start of
the Second World War, it fell to John
Clements to perform the hazardous
task of fitting and testing air interceptor
and air-to-surface vessel radar systems
to an array of British aircraft.
He nearly paid the ultimate price on
April 8, 1942, testing the first Blackburn
Botha equipped as a flying classroom.
Both engines failed and the aircraft
plunged into the Bristol Channel. It re-
emerged on the surface upside down;
both engines had been torn out by the
force of impact and the bottom of the
fuselage was ripped wide open. The
pilot drowned and after 30 minutes
three survivors, including Clements,
were picked up by a cargo ship.
By the end of the war, he had flown
300 test flights for 22 types of radar in
29 aircraft and spent more than 1,000
hours in the air, but his plan all along
had been to become a pilot. Damaged
eardrums as a result of overexposure to
aircraft engines thwarted that ambi-
tion. Clements was so distraught to
have his application turned
down that he considered re-
turning to civilian life.
Ultimately, he decided
to remain in the RAF,
which he had joined
as a 15-year-old
“Trenchard ap-
prentice” in 1937.
He was still work-
ing on electronic
aircraft systems 56
years later.
Arthur John Bas-
kett Clements was
born in The Mumbles,
south Wales, in 1921 to
Thomas and Eileen Clements.
His father, who had served in Palestine
during the First World War, sold prod-
ucts such as Huntley and Palmers bis-
cuits. The family moved to Bristol when
John was 11. He was educated at
Cotham Grammar School and, Avia-
tion-mad, he would cycle to Filton air-
field to watch aircraft. He gave up the
possibility of university to join the RAF
at 15.
His passion was rewarded. In 1937
Clements passed third out of nearly
2,000 young men in the examination
for aircraft apprentices. Approaching
his 16th birthday, he entered the Elec-
trical and Wireless School at RAF
Cranwell in Lincolnshire to train as a
wireless operator mechanic.
After the outbreak of war, the 18-
year-old was attached to RAF St Athan
in south Wales to test the first airborne
radar equipment, air-to-surface vessels
and aircraft identification. He began
fitting the Sunderland aircraft of 210
and 228 squadrons with ASV Mk 1, en-
abling them to play a vital role detecting
Allied Atlantic convoys at sea.
The H2S radar system developed at
TRE Malvern by Bernard Lovell great-
ly improved the bombing and naviga-
tional accuracy of Bomber Command.
In the middle of 1943 Clements tested
the Mk 2 version (10cm wavelength) in
Halifax and Lancaster aircraft.
At the end of the war and still only 23,
Clements was commissioned. An im-
posing but jocular man who was re-
called for singing badly in the officers’Clement
senior o
RAF
ford
ma
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b
R
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De
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led to
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In the e
commanded
neering unit at RAF Hered re-
life.
ded
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bles,
1921 to
Clements.
served in Palestine
ALAMY; DONALD COOPER; EVERETT/REX/SHUTTERSTOCKsparingly honest, even reckless auto-
biography, Beside Myself (2001). His se-
ries of hilarious theatre diaries included
Year of the King (1985), chronicling his
role in Richard III (should Richard’s
hump be to the side or in the middle?),
Year of the Fat Knight (2015) about
working on Falstaff, and Year of the Mad
King (2018), which followed the gesta-
tion of his King Lear and won the 2019
Theatre Book Prize.
In the latter, illustrated with his
sketches of himself and others, his
schoolboy humour also surfaces. On a
trip to Italy he and Doran spent the
29th anniversary of their relationship
with friends at the Saturnia thermal
springs, the water of which contains lit-
tle brown clumps of plankton. “We
lunch at the poolside restaurant,” he
wrote. “When the group toasts our
anniversary, Janice [Honeyman, the di-
rector] adds, ‘And what a way to spend
it, hey, boys?’ ‘Indeed,’ I answer, ‘in a big
warm bath with lots of loved ones and
a few floating turds.’ ”
Sher remained a self-deprecating
figure, once telling friends that the first
time he met the Queen was at a 50th
birthday celebration for the Prince of
Wales, who had been president of the
RSC since 1991. He was introduced to
her as “one of our leading actors”, which
was followed by a long pause before she
replied: “Oh, are you?” He concluded: “I
felt like replying, ‘No, of course not,
Your Majesty, you’ve seen through me
and I give up. I’m just a little gay yid
from the other side of the world.’ ”Sir Antony Sher, actor, was born on June
14, 1949. He died of cancer on December
3, 2021, aged 72