In my school days 'different from' was the only acceptable form. As one cannot differ towards something only to differ away from something surely this restriction is logical. How did the keepers of our grammar give in to this departure?

I wouldn't say they have. "Different" + "from" is still very much the norm. "Different" + "to" is encountered but it's much less likely than "from". I just proved this by running a comparison on Google's N-gram Viewer. In case you don't already have that on your computer, here's a link:

https://books.google.com/ngrams

Incidentally, the verb "differ" takes only "from": I differ from to you on that issue.


Paul

Hello John

Did the link to the Ngram Viewer work okay? I find it very useful for comparing the uses of phrases in a large corpus of books.

If you encounter any problems with it, just let me know.


PaulM