Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Browsing this site and remembering the posts from and about Geoffrey Cannon relating to The Listener and the Radio Times, is there an equivalent of The Listener these days? A more, erm, intellectual version of the Radio Times? I used to enjoy The Listener way back then. It was unashamed to be, erm,...

Peter Ball originally was a monk of his and his brothers own order, down in Sussex. He became Bishop of Lewis. He was not 'a favourite of the later Bishop of Chichester' although he had been with the previous. He ran a strange institution (with his brother (twin)) and various schools (public) used ...

Incidentally, re the date: my exact contemporary Hitchcock was house captain (and a third-year Grecian) in 1962/63. In this photo he is not even in the back row (he's the guy with his mouth wide open in the 2nd row down) and so presumably still a dep. Same goes for Peter Hiner (another exact contemp...

Christ's Hospital chapel c. 1960 used to be very 'low church'. Not evangelical, but without any ceremony, and certainly without vestments or incense. I believe this changed in the late 60s, largely I think under the influence of Robson, and became really quite Anglo-Catholic. Perhaps someone can fil...

From my point of view there was absolutely no 'pop' music whatsoever (except from grecians who had 78/45 record players in their tiny day-room studies - 2 in Pe A at the time). Radio was restricted to the BBC Light programme which ran the gamut of 'Worker's Playtime' to Jimmy Young covers of Franki...

...and none have pernicious private-school networks. Really? In Europe, not that I can think of. Private schools are largely for state-school failuresand misfits, and that doesn't carry much clout. Of course there are powerful networks based on university attendance. The ENA and Polytechnique in Fr...

An individual school in the state sector can 'exclude' pupils by reason of their behaviour at the school, but the state sector as such cannot exclude pupils, as a local authority has a duty to see that a child is receiving an education. And while most countries have private schools, none have a syst...

I can't give you an update on Horwood but I remember him from Col B in the 1950s. He was one of those superior, sarcastic, monitors who had little time for us younger boys and who typified the snotty, hierarchical system at the time. I've said some adverse things about Fryer on this site but in fai...

But Steel and Coward (successive house captains of ThB and both mathematicians) were not given an early push from CH... I imagine the most famous early-pushee who went on to enjoy if not an academic, but an intellectual career was Bernard Levin (who didn't go to Cambridge, though, but to LSE). Someo...

The Tower of London is not in the City of London (as any map of the City will show you), and never has been. It was situated within the 'Liberties of the Tower', which were neither in the City nor in the surrounding county of Middlesex (analogous to Westminster Abbey not being within the jurisdictio...

I think the answer is 'Formally, no.'

Courts ask for a 'victim impact report', I believe. Better than nothing, but not the same thing.

The UK as a member of the EU is not ruled from 'outside' any more than Kent is ruled by the West Midlands. In practice, about 1% of EU directives were opposed by the UK. Membership of NATO involves a far greater surrender of sovereignty, as it commits us to sending British service personnel to their...

I live in a country where you have to have either an official ID card or a passport. Most Germans think they have to have an official ID (but they don't, if they have a passport) and that they have to carry it (but they don't, or a passport either). Foreigners like me don't have ID cards. (The ID al...

Look, I have said in other posts that I think victims ought, in cases of crimes against the person, be formally legally represented at all stages of the case against the accused. It is widely reported that in the English system, where they are not, victims often feel let down or left out. However, t...

Puns have a bad reputation, but they can be serious.

Two examples:

'New presbyter is but old priest writ large' (John Milton. Possibly the wisest aphorism in the English language)

'The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall' (Wilfred Owen, from 'Anthem for Doomed Youth')