The teacher who inspired a lifelong writing career
A former pupil of Bridgewater School has paid tribute to the late English teacher Mr Norman Pakes, whose encouragement helped shape a distinguished career in journalism and, more recently, as a published author.
Peter Harris, a founding pupil of Bridgewater School, went on to become Health and Medical Correspondent for the Manchester Evening News, a role that took him across the UK and overseas during more than 25 years in journalism. Since retiring from mainstream newspaper reporting, he has established a successful second career as an author of both factual and fiction books.
Peter credits much of his early inspiration to Mr Pakes, whose belief in his writing ability helped set him on his professional path.
“Had it not been for the late Norman Pakes I can say with certainty that I would not have had a successful career in journalism and, now, in my retirement, as an author.” Peter said.
Peter’s father was a long-serving family GP in Salford – and for a time the doctor to Bridgewater School – and had hoped his son might follow him into medicine. But Mr Pakes recognised a different calling.
“My late father was a family GP and it was Mr Pakes who told him that I really had a leaning toward a journalistic career and not medicine, as my father had always expected,” Peter explained.
The moment Peter first voiced his ambition remains vivid. During his French oral exam he was asked, in French, what career he hoped to pursue.
“I replied, in my schoolboy French: “I want to be a journalist,” he recalled.
It was Mr Pakes who then took the important next step.
“It was then that Mr Pakes said that my father ought to be told – and he did so on my behalf at the next school open evening.”
Peter’s journalism career later saw him report on major medical developments and public health issues. One particularly memorable assignment placed him inside the operating theatre at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester as a medical correspondent covering the hospital’s first heart transplant.
That experience would later inspire one of his novels.
Alongside his journalism career, Peter has written three non-fiction books: God’s Sabbatical Years, a Holocaust war memoir; Salford at Work, an industrial history of the city where he lived and worked in his early life; and A Doctor in Lowryland, which tells the story of post-war, pre-NHS life in Salford through the experiences of his father, the city’s longest-serving GP.
In recent years he has turned increasingly to fiction, publishing two novels: The Filipino Doll and The Blighted Son. His first novel carried a personal dedication reflecting the lasting influence of his former Bridgewater teacher. The Filipino Doll was dedicated:
“To my wife, Wendy, and my late English teacher, Norman Pakes, who encouraged me to write.”
The Blighted Son explores the story of a white supremacist who receives the heart of a man he would have despised – a plot inspired by Peter’s first-hand experience witnessing that historic transplant operation. His latest novel, The Surrogate Assignment, is due to be published later this year.
Reflecting on his career, Peter says it all traces back to the encouragement of one teacher who recognised his potential and helped him take the first step.
