When Patrick Stewart was 12, growing up in poverty in Yorkshire with a violent father, an English teacher named Cecil Dormand changed his life. Dormand introduced him to Shakespeare, put him in his first play and helped pay for a residential drama course that his family could scarcely have afforded. Stewart only discovered years later that his teacher had helped cover the fees. The frightened working-class boy would eventually become one of the world’s most celebrated actors, but he never forgot the man who first believed in him.
In 2004, Stewart, now chancellor of the University of Huddersfield, personally presented his old teacher with an honorary doctorate. He later invited Dormand to the celebration of his knighthood. When asked to say a few words, the elderly teacher joked that he didn’t know what to call Patrick anymore: for decades, Patrick had called him Sir. When Dormand died in 2021, Stewart wrote that his teacher had been the most significant person in his life. The boy had become a knight, but his teacher remained his Sir.
