Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Don't expect anything useful from this side of the Med John. The Maybot is being blown hither and thither by the various factions in her party. The Guardian political sketchwriter John Crace believes that she is now reduced to taking advice from the four pot plants in the cabinet room in Number 10. ...

Are we sure of the current mood, Sejintenej? I know that opinion polls aren't always reliable but in the last six months there hasn't been one that has put Leave ahead and the most recent and biggest, two weeks ago, had Remain ahead by twelve points. Every day the serious papers and often the TV new...

Katharine, further to my last post I've just been watching a lecture on You Tube by Sir Ivan Rogers titled "Where Did Brexit Come From and Where is it Going to Take the UK?" Rogers is a civil servant with long EU experience and he is not hopeful. He resigned from his negotiating job at one...

The business community, here and in both bits of Ireland, have finally found their voices and are loudly worried. Not before time in my opinion. But the Leaver brigade are shouting "project fear". Again and again vox pop on the television news are asking why we can't just get on with it. N...

I was once told by a classical music writer that Mozart hated the noise made by the violin so got his obligatory violin concertos out of the way early in his career in order to concentrate on piano concertos and symphonies. I don't know whether this is true. It may be that the violin was harder to k...

I've tried to avoid mentioning people's nicknames up till now but the mention of Hitchcock reminds me that when I first went into Col B (Autumn term 1955) I remember that Paul Fantle and Hitchcock had just joined Col A and were known as Hitchtool and Fancock by their housemates. Finbarr Saunders hum...

I think what it was, that sometimes I am browsing these sites and decide to see if I can still remember names to faces, or vice versa. It's a kind of mental exercise as I get older, rather like doing crosswords every day. And this time I spotted Banker Brown, top row, and this prompted me to launch ...

Remarkable article in today's papers in which the Archbishop of Canterbury (or the Rev Oilwelby as Private Eye calls him) admits to sometimes speaking in tongues when praying. This is something that Evangelicals claim to be able to do, although I'd always imagined that it was rather unusual and that...

After all this time it's interesting to try and put names to faces but I think I can still name the Grecians row plus a few others, even though I was in Col B. Back row, third from right, is our old friend Banker Brown, already dreaming of the opportunities for currency speculators if only someone m...

Interesting point here about the demise of pop music between rock 'n' roll and the onset of the Beatles, et al. Michael mentioned Cliff Richard's 'Move It' as being his only decent one. Yes, and in about 1980 I asked him about it. I was working for the music industry paper Record Business and our ed...

In reply to ZerodeConduite, firstly I agree with your memories of Van Praagh. He always struck me as being a bit more progressive than many of the teachers in the 50s. There was one hilarious time when we were in the lecture theatre watching VP's slides of his travels in Sarawak. Suddenly one flashe...

Yes, an interesting point Michael. Is it not true (and I only submit this due to the views of a friend from Germany) that the private schools in Germany are not necessarily better in educational standards than the rest but because the parents are, for example, strict Catholics who want their childre...

Firstly, apologies to Golfer. I probably did go over the top in the circumstances. But I do still stick to my original points. The system is unfair. Avon says that my points are selective. Which ones and in what way?

If the state sector is failing it's because it's underfunded and because it has, by definition, to take in the most difficult youngsters and cannot exclude. them. The immensely snooty private sector (including Christ's Hospital) doesn't have to take in the very bottom layer of society and can in any...

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 fair...