My friend Peter Everington, who has died aged 90, was in his second year studying classics at Cambridge when the Suez crisis came to a head in October 1956. The perceived arrogance and deceit driving Britain’s involvement in the invasion of Egypt shocked him deeply, and prompted him to rethink the direction of his life.
Turning to his strong Christian faith, he felt a call to build bridges between Britain and the Arab world. This led him to switch his degree course to Arabic, and after graduation, in 1958, he became an English teacher in newly independent Sudan. Over an eight-year period, he worked in secondary schools in Port Sudan and Khartoum and at the Higher Teacher Training Institute in Omdurman, and he revisited the country many times subsequently.
