A CORKING REVENGE
How a master at a top public school devised an exquisite punishment for the claret loving colleague who had an affair with his history teacher wife
rICHARD GREED’s wine collection comprised 300 or so bottles of fine vintages. A Bordeaux man, Mr Greed’s hoard was made up mostly of claret. At a conservative estimate, it was worth around £15,000. The history teacher kept his store in the wine cellar at Radley College in Oxfordshire, one of the most prestigious boys’ boarding schools in the country, ready to pull out a bottle or two for a special occasion — or even a not-so-special one.
Mr Greed’s pride in his collection was well known among pupils and teachers alike — among them Richard Jackson, who is in charge of the school’s Combined Cadet Force.
Mr Jackson was the husband of 42-year-old Theresa Jackson, the school’s head of history, and, when Mr Jackson discovered his wife was having an affair with Mr Greed, a history teacher in her department, he asked himself this question: which method of revenge would cause his love rival the most pain?
The answer was very obvious: the destruction of his precious wine collection.
By a happy quirk, one of Mr Jackson’s responsibilities at Radley was custodian of the school wine cellar. so, one day, he let himself in, made his way to the racks in which Mr Greed’s claret was stored and set to work.
It may have been tempting, in his fury, to simply smash the bottles to smithereens.
But Mr Jackson evidently has a sense of humour, for instead, according to a wellplaced source, he used a precision tool to make a hole in the inverted section at the base of each bottle, let the wine drain away and returned each bottle to its rack.
He worked methodically, until every single bottle was drained of its contents, and then slipped away.
What Mr Jackson did to the wine — did he put it into a container or drink some of it himself? — is unknown.
BUT there is no doubt that his intention was to vicariously enjoy the rage and astonishment experienced by Mr Greed when he next visited the cellar to pull out a bottle or two of Chateau Chasse- spleen or Chateau Poujeaux.
It certainly must have been quite a moment.
The events described above occurred at Radley 18 months ago, but the aftershocks of that affair between the two teachers — and the revenge of the cuckolded husband — continue to this day.
Last week in the Mail, sebastian shakespeare’s Diary revealed Theresa Jackson is to leave the school.
It has, understandably, been a difficult 18 months for her. Her marriage collapsed after her affair came to light, and the whole school knows her business.
But a Radley source said that, after initially handing in her resignation, she regretted her decision and asked if she was able to stay. Her request was refused.
‘Theresa’s departure is a great loss,’ said the source. ‘ she is a lovely person, generous in spirit, very kind and extremely bright — the boys love her.’
Her estranged husband has remained at Radley, however; so, too, has Mr Greed, having weathered the storm and managed also to keep his own marriage intact.
He’s even got much of his wine collection back, courtesy of the generosity of Old Radleians who, having read about the incident in the newspapers, sent in some bottles of fine wine to their old teacher.
It was the first real scandal that the school, whose fees are £35,490 per annum, has known in its 170-year history.
And whether it is the shock of this, or the fact that the current Warden (the Radleian term for headmaster) has a bold new ‘ vision’ for the school, there is, as we shall see, a definite sense of unsettledness within the hallowed walls of this venerable institution.
According to our source, there is unhappiness among the female staff, who feel, rightly or wrongly, that the Warden, John Moule, favours his male staff over the women — and that Mrs Jackson’s departure is symptomatic of this bias.
According to one parent, there is also currently an issue of discipline among the generally impeccably behaved boys — with five drugs-related expulsions and several suspensions, some related to possession of cannabis and so- called ‘legal highs’, since last september.
It hasn’t helped matters, says the parent, that the master in charge of discipline is one Richard Greed, whose extra-marital antics have been the talk of the school.
Furthermore, there is concern among parents and locals about plans by the school to redevelop more than 100 acres of land that it owns, with the construction of more than 1,000 homes in the area around it. Its secluded location amid lush green countryside is the envy of many.
Radley has succeeded in its push to have its land’s green belt status removed by the local council. Villagers are resigned, according to one local, to the fact that the character of the village and surrounding countryside is going to be indelibly changed.
THE project, the villager estimates, could bump up the school coffers by up to £50 million.
Radley College, with the motto: ‘Be ye wise as serpents, and harmless as doves’, was founded in 1847 by William sewell, an Anglican priest.
His aim was to provide an education ‘in accordance with the tradition and values of the Church of England’.
The school’s Georgian mansion and other Victorianera buildings are set in 800 acres, which include a golf course, lake and farm- land. Former pupils include former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion and the late comedian Peter Cook.
Traditionally regarded as ‘ High Church’, there was surprise in some quarters, says a parent, about the 2014 appointment of John Moule, then headmaster of Bedford school, as Warden. Mr Moule is an evangelical Christian who, prior to joining Radley, served as an elder at the Hope Church, near Bedford.
Richard Greed, who married his wife, Julie, in 1992, with whom he has a 19-year- old son, has been at the school for 23 years.
Theresa Jackson joined Radley as head of the history department in 2007, taking up residence within the school grounds, which is the custom of all teaching staff. she wed Richard Jackson in 2008.
Around this time, Mr Jackson, who had spent 14 years working in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Royal Navy, took on the role of instructing cadets in the
Combined Cadet Force at the school. In 2015, Oxford-educated Mr Jackson also took on a history teaching post at nearby Abingdon School, another leading independent establishment. According to one who knows him, Mr Jackson is ‘popular, very jovial and kind’.
It was around this time, it is believed, that Mrs Jackson and Mr Greed’s friendship began to develop.
‘Mr Greed is rather flirtatious with women,’ says a source. ‘He’s very smooth and has the gift of the gab. Some years ago, he appointed the most glamorous young matron to one of the boarding houses, who was the subject of many crushes among the boys.
‘There were rumours that Mr Greed himself was among those who had a crush on her, and it was said that he once asked her to cut his toenails. She left soon afterwards.’
It’s not clear precisely when the affair with Mrs Jackson began, but it is believed it may already have started by the time Mrs Jackson and Mr Greed, along with two other dons, as teachers are known at Radley, flew out to St Petersburg, Russia, with a group of fifth form pupils, on a five-day tour.
The trip included an overnight train journey to Moscow. ‘What an adventure,’ wrote Mrs Jackson on the school website.
Says a parent: ‘A lot of wine was apparently consumed on the trip.’
How Mr Jackson found out what was going on isn’t clear. But he himself has past form as a risktaker. In 1999, when he was a history student at Oxford, Mr Jackson, then 20, broke a heraldic shield off the door of the boathouse at St Peter’s College, while trying to break in for an assignation with a PhD student.
He kept the plaque as a memento of the encounter, but then sent it anonymously to the Oxford Student newspaper after the boathouse burned down, requesting it be placed in any replacement.
The story of his wife’s affair was first revealed by a Sunday newspaper in March last year.
‘ It was a complete shock,’ says the source. ‘They’d kept it completely secret.’
A week after the affair was made public, Mr Greed, says a parent, was tasked with the role of meeting and seating parents at the annual confirmation service at the school chapel. ‘The parents were amazed that he was so prominent,’ says the source.
Not long afterwards, Mr Greed, adds the source, went on a tour of boarding houses to give a talk entitled: ‘Mistakes I Have Made.’
This was eagerly anticipated by the boys, who assumed the affair with the head of history was going to be top of the list.
‘Everyone presumed he saw that as his chance to apologise for the deceit, but instead, he listed his mistakes as running into the sea to chase a rugby ball and nearly drowning, and running over the top of a car while drunk at university,’ says a source.
‘The boys were gobsmacked. It was generally perceived that he was having a mid-life crisis.’
It was all getting rather awkward. According to the insider, Mr Jackson was quite vocal in his denunciation of Mr Greed. ‘He said he wanted everyone to know what a s*** he was.’ Mr Greed’s wife, Julie, meanwhile, was urging discretion, which led to friction between her and Mr Jackson.
Then there was the fact that Theresa Jackson and Richard Greed were continuing to work together in the same department.
‘Once it got out, the affair ended and the pair became very professional and detached with one another,’ says the source.
‘But, of course, the boys were all watching them.’
Mr and Mrs Jackson separated and began divorce proceedings last summer. Mr Jackson’s father, Stephen, says his son was ‘devastated’ by the events. ‘He was in love. He thought a lot of Theresa. But he is a fairly stoic sort of character and he is soldiering on.’
He added that his son had told him Mr Greed was ‘very angry’ about the sabotage.
A friend of Mrs Jackson says that, despite the split and the commencement of divorce proceedings, the couple have, indeed, managed to remain friendly.
But, at the end of this term, she will be leaving the school. Her departure, says the source, has dented morale among some of the female staff.
While the school’s eight- strong management team is comprised entirely of men, a ‘women’s group’ has now been set up with the aim of fighting perceived sexism.
‘Some feel that the Radley senior management are more like snakes than doves,’ says the source, referring to the school motto.
Meanwhile, the dispute rumbles on over Radley’s plan to redevelop 104 acres of land in two separate schemes. The school is directly involved in one of the projects, in conjunction with a property developer, to build 255 houses on a 27-acre site directly opposite the school, and stands to profit from the sale of the homes.
This plan is currently at the consultation stage, but an application is due to be put to the local council in the coming weeks.
In the second scheme, the school is planning to sell or lease a 77-acre site just up the road from the school to developers who plan to build 900 homes, a primary school, a care home, a children’s nursery, a pub-restaurant and shops.
A planning application has been submitted, but has not yet gone before the planning committee.
Radley’s Board of Governors is certainly heavily populated by individuals with property-related interests: they include the chief financial officer at Savills UK, the chief executive of a property investment firm, a barrister whose main practice areas include property and the chief executive of Douglas and Gordon estate agents.
AS PART of his ‘vision’ for Radley, the Warden intends to ‘ seek an increased number of boys from different backgrounds’.
It has been suggested that the proposed property scheme is intended to fund bursaries for boys from poorer families, but there is scepticism in some quarters about this laudable objective.
‘It seems we are to have a housing estate on the doorstep of the College,’ says another parent. ‘The idea is that it funds the Warden’s “vision”. If asked, they will use this as the excuse for everything, even selling off the family silver, which is what most see they are doing.’
As for the wave of recent expulsions and suspensions, while demonstrating the school takes drugs offences extremely seriously, it does seem to back up the assertion that discipline has become an issue.
Asked to comment on the claims about expulsions and suspensions, concerns about the planned property development and the feeling among some of the female staff that they are ‘ under threat’, the school issued the following statement: ‘ Our pupils know that we expect the highest standards of behaviour from them and that, in particular, the College has a clear and firm stance on drugs.
‘Our parents know we take our responsibilities seriously and implement our policies appropriately.’
For now, however, the serenity of Radley College is ruffled. There is a restiveness in the air. From time to time, the affair between the two history teachers crops up in discussion among the boys.
And one mystery remains: just what did Mr Jackson do with all that claret?