Bryan Randell Coles. 9 June 1926 — 24 February 1997

Bryan Coles's background and career reflect in microcosm the enormous changes that occurred in the British educational system in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Hisparents, Charles and Olive (née Randell) Coles had both come from families that migrated from Somerset to Cardiff, attracted by the expansion of the docks in the 1880s, one grandfather having been a plumber and the other a carpenter. Charles received no formal education beyond elementary school, despite doing exceedingly well in the scholarship examination, because his parents were unable to afford his attendance at high school; he started work as a book-keeper. Olive's formal education also had been curtailed; she went to work as a milliner until their marriage in 1923.