Source: Whitehaven News

I’ve just returned from saying goodbye to a man I’d only known this past year but who quickly made an impact on me. The tributes I heard for Peter Watson today at his funeral have only deepened that impression.

It may seem an odd thing to do, to begin the first post of 2015 thinking about a man local to my area who has recently died. Considering this blog’s focus on community, however, I think it is quite fitting for Peter was, without doubt, a man of the community.

Born in Sussex, Peter ‘adopted’ Egremont – a town I knew as my own for many years – in 1969 and never left. Head of English for twenty years at the local school, the Oxford scholar was a formidable intellectual (I learned he could quote most of Shakespeare from memory) but also had a huge heart for the…