Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Stoolball was played by younger members of the Prep houses until they could prove their proficiency in actually hitting a ball in flight in which case they were promoted to playing cricket. I've never heard of it being played anywhere else either. But then many things about the English public school ...

Of course it could be that the CH gospel choir is of the black US Southern states variety whose music has so influenced American soul music - Aretha Franklin's father was a preacher. In which case it may be a cut above the happy clappy Eurovision Song Contest style.

I had a friend who joined the ...

This business of women priests in the C of E was given an interesting slant when, years ago, the historian Bethany Hughes did a number on one of her BBC TV documentaries and found that women deacons were commonplace in the early Christian church in places like Syria. Makes today's arguments about ...

OK, so having checked out Dullally on Wiki I find that she is actually quite progressive and pro-feminist and pro LGBT. So I feel a bit bad about having jumped to conclusions about her. My experience of Born Again Christians and the evangelical mob is that they tend to be anti-gay and a bit ...

Couldn't make the link work Katharine. The "gospel" bit of it had me worried. Are these choristers redolent of the American Happy Clappy style of religion where their songs sound like entries for Eurovision, rather than the grand old hymns that we sang at CH? The Rev Oilwelby (late Archbish of ...

Whether it's squits, the way your girdle is worn, or silver badge wearers, is any of it really relevant to a modern day school? It should have been consigned to history long ago. It merely denotes how CH is still stuck in the past and not much different from the posh schools, especially as they are ...

The "Silk" mentioned here in the top row will doubtless be Dennis Silk who went on to be a cricketer for Somerset and also headmaster at Radley College. You may have seen him in that TV documentary where they followed various pupils from Radley and caught up with then years later.

The following were Senior Grecians during, or just after, my time at CH.

1955/56 Alan Everest MidB
1956/57 Peter Attenborough MaB
next three, order uncertain
Geoff Hines (LaB)
Jo Thomas (LaB)
David Simon (MidA)
1960/61 John Daniel (MidA)
1961/62 Andy Barker (PeA)
1962/63 Michael Pitcher (ThB ...

Do we think that getting a puffed-up reputation at one's grandiose boarding school is necessarily a good thing? It was said of (I think) the poet Rupert Brooke that he left school and college "magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life".

After following Harlequins men's team I took to following the women and posting on their site. So I was delighted to get two Likes from the sublime Ellie KIldunne. It was to do with the pronunciation of Aiofe Wafer who has just recovered from injury and is back going great guns for Quins. I was duly ...

The idea of being "reunited" took me me back to my days in Col B in the late 1950s. Katharine, I wonder if your brother and his friends in Thornton had the memorable album that we had - Songs for Swinging Sellers by Peter Sellers? One sketch featured a couple interviewing the rather seedy-sounding ...

Today I get lead letter in the Guardian under the heading "Looking for signs of life in centre-right politics". After the Tory conference there was much talk of what is the way forward for the party. Several pundits and letter writers opined that the rot set in under Cameron or Johnson, but my ...

Let me add to that. What's religion like at CH? When I was there in the 1950s it was chapel six days a week and twice on Sundays plus house prayers in the evening. It seemed to be assumed that everyone was a believer. Clearly this could not be so. I got confirmed at around age 14 to please my ...

The severity with which tackles are judged these days dates from the "spear tackles" that were so popular in the days when Southern hemisphere rugby was so brutal that we were obliged to become brutal ourselves. Check out the Lions tour in South Africa led by Willie John McBride when foul play and ...

Watching our girls distinguishing themselves again in the World Cup this afternoon, I wondered if there was a girls' rugby team at CH. We're are presumably past the era when the girls were restricted to hockey and lacrosse.