Chris Woodhead: 'I regret spending too little time sitting still'

Yesterday Sir Chris Woodhead’s wife, Christine, phoned to let me know that after 15 years, his education column for The Sunday Times would not be arriving this week.

I knew at once that he was nearing the end. The former chief inspector of schools had diligently emailed his forthright, no-nonsense answers to readers questions every Wednesday—even, on one memorable occasion, from intensive care—during a nine year battle against motor neurone disease and, more recently, cancer. His last column appeared two days ago, in the most recent edition of The Sunday Times. The news that he had died, aged 68, was announced today.

It was in an interview with The Sunday Times in 2009 that Sir Chris first revealed that he had motor neurone disease, a terminal, paralysing illness that gradually destroys the brain cells controlling the body’s muscles. Half of victims are dead within 14 months of diagnosis, although a handful, notably the physicist Stephen Hawking, have survived much longer. It was one of the cruellest diagnoses a man who loved the natural world, rock climbing and fell walking, could have received, and he feared the illness’s advance.

"I have got motor neurone disease, the illness that doctors are said to most dread contracting," he told me. We had dinner—cooked by Christine—and listened to the poetry of Geoffrey Hill as the shadows lengthened outside his north Wales home. On that day he was still using a stick to walk from the car to the house; within four years he had become a quadriplegic, confined to a wheelchair.

Two years ago came a new and bitter blow: colon cancer which then spread to the liver. He decided to battle on, agreeing to surgery and chemotherapy.

“I couldn’t really visualise the true horror of what was to come and I can’t now, with this new diagnosis,” he confessed.

“But then who can really imagine their own dying and death? And, more positively, what is the point of dwelling on what you can’t know and can’t influence in any way?”

The former grammar school boy shot to prominence as an outspoken fighter for better schools and against the sloppy heritage of liberal, left-wing ideas in education. After he controversially said that there were 15,000 inadequate teachers in England’s schools, the teaching unions turned him into a hate figure. The combative and controversial chief inspector refused to be cowed. Finally, after clashes with the then education secretary David Blunkett, he stepped down in 2000.

A traditionalist, he wanted children to learn Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton—the best that has been written or said. It was a stance that endeared him to right wingers; education minister Nick Gibb was a friend and David Cameron was among those paying tribute to him this week. He was close too to Prince Charles and tried alternative medicine including acupuncture when he first fell ill

In the latter part of his life he took on a new battle, becoming a vigorous campaigner for a change in the law on assisted suicide.

While at first he said he would rather be pushed off a cliff in his wheelchair than “go to Dignitas and sing Beatles songs with bearded social workers”, he later changed his mind after watching a television documentary by the late Sir Terry Pratchett, who had Alzheimer’s, in which a motor neurone disease sufferer was filmed ending his life at the Swiss clinic.

When it became clear that there would be no legal changes that would sufficiently protect his relatives from prosecution if they helped him die, and there was no time left to travel to Switzeland he contemplated starving himself to death. In the end he died after surgery to remove two tumours on his liver at the weekend.

It was during visits to his homes in Wales that I saw at first hand the extraordinary relationship between Sir Chris and Lady Woodhead. The calm and hospitable Christine was, her husband admitted, the reason he had survived so long.

“She does everything from cooking meals to cutting my hair and driving our Vauxhall wagon while I rattle around in the back” he told me.

“I cannot imagine anyone who could be more selfless and loving in their care for me. I hope that if the boot were on the other foot I would be half as good. I somehow doubt I would be.

“She never complains—and I mean that. She has a remarkable ability to predict what I want without me ever having to ask.”

As the illness progressed I marvelled at his ability to as he put it “put on a brave front.” At times he agonised over spending so much time in committee rooms battling “The Blob”—his term for the left-wing educational establishment—wishing that he had instead spent more time climbing in the mountains he so loved. To the end he took solace from the beauty of the natural landscape, poetry and his wife’s cooking.

He once confessed; “I am not this positive all the time. I do not believe anyone who has a terminal illness is going to be positive every minute of every day. The only way you can deal with it is to live from day to day and take enjoyment from what is there. The more limited your world, the richer it can become.

“Looking back on my nearly 70 years in the world."

“It is a cruel thing that has happened. I would not want it. But having got it, there are benefits. You can be brought closer to people who love you. This has brought me closer to Christine. That is something to be grateful for.”