Anton Bantock

Anton Bantock is founder and vice-chancellor of The University of Withywood, a community-oriented university in Bristol, U.K. that helps fund the education of needy young people in Bristol and developing countries.

Once a year a few months in the summer, Anton travels the world and collects his experiences doing sketches. Everyone in Bristol knows him and likes him, because he goes out of his way to help people.

He has a small cottage (really old) in Wales near a place called Harlech. When Rosalind was still living near me, he offered to take myself and my grandchildren Leanne and Philip with him to stay there. He paid for our fare. He was born in this cottage and it had small rooms. He had walls knocked down and downstairs is now one large room. Also he had a bathroom installed. A former animal outhouse he had converted into an extra bedroom with bunkbeds.

Lots of visitors from all over the world come to his cottage for a fee. Mostly climbers who like to climb Mount Snowdon in Snowdonia. The cottage stands on the edge of a hill overlooking a wonderful bay. The whole coastline there cannot be approached from the road, so the whole beach is there for Anton and his guests to enjoy. It is wonderful to see the sunset.

There are many places where Anton buys school books for children and he had schools built in India and Africa. There is one family he had known for years. The father is a teacher and the children are very bright. He is helping three of them to get a higher education so they can teach too.

In India, while staying to provide books for pupils, a nun came from nowhere with nothing else but her habit and a pair of sandals on her feet. There were a lot of orphans she looked after and somehow with Anton's help a school, which also accomodated them, was gradually built. Of course, it is not a school as we know it, but it helps children with their education and they are very eager to read and are pleased when Anton takes them to buy second-hand books.

It is just amazing to listen to all his stories. I just love it, and so do all his other friends. Here I am getting carried away, but I think it is good to tell something different to ordinary life.

Gisela Cooper

To learn more, visit Anton's Travel Letters & Sketch Books