The Chronicle 682

7 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

The school sits on 1,200 acres of north Hampshire farmland so we had space to roam and it was utterly idyllic – a really lovely school – and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The Headmaster, the late Neil Henderson, a former Teddies man, was punchy and interesting, and doing good things with the school: it was on the up. Everyone in the Teddies community will have heard me speak about moral courage, and it was Neil who made me understand the value of this often overlooked attribute. Were you a model pupil? I think it’s fair to say that before I got into the Sixth Form I was relatively naughty – a little bit diffident and annoying, partly as a

result of having broken my leg very badly aged 15 and being off games for a year and a half. I was reasonably clever but didn’t apply myself quite as much as I should have done. Oversight of pupils was very different. We had a rich life that didn’t much involve Masters or organisation; we weren’t completely feral but there was a degree of freedom. I remember some of us entertaining ourselves at the expense of the fish in the House pond – we would catch one and manhandle it up to the Fourth Form dorm via a long line of boys, and then get it back down into the pond before it came to any harm. I also remember diving under beds to get out of trouble and scaling a drainpipe or two.

The Warden as a boy

What are your earliest memories of school? We moved around in the UK when I was very little, from Shropshire to Kidlington and then Abingdon, and then moved to the Far East when I was two and a half. My earliest memories of school are from when I was about three years old and attended Grace’s Kindergarten in Singapore – it was a blast. Travel was by minibus with all the doors open and no seat belts; I remember it as a wonderful way to get about but looking back through the health and safety conscious eyes of a modern-day Head, I suspect I could have fallen out at every turn. By the time I was five, I had moved on to RAF Seletar Junior School and I got there on a gharry . Singapore was a golden time even if my father was engaged in two small wars… My next memory is of a quite different journey to school – the long expedition from Yorkshire to Hurstpierpoint College in West Sussex in a grey flannel suit with my trunk and tuck box. I remember the feeling – almost certainly familiar to every new boarder then and now – of excitement mixed with nervousness. It was a long way from home; you could drive down in a day but you needed two days to get there and back. Where did you go next? I was awarded a scholarship to Lord Wandsworth College in Hampshire and had the most fantastic five years there.

The Warden graduating from Durham University