Philip Prowse 1947 – 2023

Philip died, suddenly and unexpectedly, in early June. In his long career in ELT, he worked in many roles in many contexts, made many friends and impacted on many lives. At different times, and often simultaneously, he was a teacher, a teacher-educator, an academic manager, a principal, a materials writer (and in later life a writer of fiction), an editor, and a language school inspector. In all these roles he was known as wise and humane, wearing his wisdom and humanity lightly, often self-deprecatingly, always ready to help students or colleagues, and always the consummate professional.

He made an enormous contribution to this Journal as Reviews Editor between 1995 and 2012. When he took over, each issue of the Journal had five or six reviews, normally of single books. Under Philip’s guidance, this number grew steadily and his last issue (66/3 July 2012) had ten reviews, two of which dealt with more than one title, as well as an innovative Survey Review of the coursebook materials produced over many years by Brian Abbs and Ingrid Freebairn. In fact, during his time in post, Philip commissioned and edited 27 survey reviews of published materials linked by theme or focus. The range of topics covered and the skill and expertise of the reviewers commissioned by Philip made this part of the Journal much more prominent and much more significant than it had been in the past. The extent and impact of Philip’s work in this area is clear from Alan Maley’s Review of ELTJ reviews 1995–2012 published in Volume 66/4 of the Journal in 2012.

Philip began his professional life with the British Council, for whom he taught English and trained teachers in Egypt, Portugal, Greece, and Poland throughout the 1970s. Returning to the UK, he joined Bell College, Saffron Walden, where he was Director of Studies from 1981, and then Principal from 1984 to 1993. Here he was responsible for a wide range of teacher-training courses, as well as language courses for teenagers and adults. In 1994 he became a full-time writer, editor and trainer, and in these roles he proved to be a cornerstone of the ELT community.

His first publications had been best-selling readers for Heinemann, and he subsequently became Series Editor of Cambridge English Readers. He established the guidelines, and the first tranche of readers was published in 1999; among the initial writers were Philip himself, Alan Maley, Sue Leather, and Brian Tomlinson. The series was groundbreaking because it was the first to be devoted entirely to original fiction, with stories focused on contemporary themes and written in a variety of genres. Issues addressed include personal identity, the existence of other worlds, the impact of civil war, deafness, cross-cultural comparisons, and the plight of refugees.

Philip was a great believer in original fiction for learners and spoke about it persuasively. He knew that if the writing was sufficiently compelling, learners would want to go on reading. He therefore insisted that the books should not have exercises, believing that these were not conducive to the pure joy of reading. He was an excellent Series Editor, sensitive and knowledgeable. Importantly, too, he knew how to write fiction, and therefore had enormous credibility among writers.

He was also one of the key founder members of the Extensive Reading Foundation, established in 2004, and he worked hard and long at helping to develop frameworks for the organisation in its earliest stages. All this work testified to his passionate belief in the value of extensive reading for language acquisition.

Meanwhile Philip co-authored numerous coursebooks for primary, secondary, and adult ELT learners, including the award-winning teenage course Inspiration and its successor, New Inspiration (Macmillan). He was an intensely conscientious writer, not only in his commitment to every project, but also in his concern with intrinsically interesting content and humanitarian values. He was also a champion of authors’ rights and served on the Educational Writers Group Committee of the Society of Authors.

In recent years he was able to fulfil his long-held ambition to write mainstream novels: Hellyer’s Trip introduces the eponymous accidental spy on his first mission in Egypt; Hellyer’s Coup and Hellyer’s Line continue the action-packed series with settings in Portugal and Greece. Philip drew on his first-hand experience in these countries to provide colourful and evocative descriptions of place with plenty of authentic and historical detail.

In the course of his career, Philip gave plenary talks and ran training courses and workshops in countries across the globe; he found a source of both pleasure and inspiration in these opportunities to interact with teachers and learners, and this pleasure and inspiration was mutual. Philip’s contribution to the world of ELT is, and will remain, hugely valued by friends, colleagues, and students worldwide.

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