Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

I have a feeling that Fryer's wife was Nurse Herbert while at the Sicker but I can't remember a Christian name. Yes, a nice woman as I recall. Every now and again they would invite a couple of boys over to their house for a very welcome and well-cooked Sunday lunch. Fryer was Froggy Fryer while at h...

Nick Duffell (ex-boarder and psychotherapist) covers this in his books The Making of Them and Wounded Leaders. Some of his patients who boarded have told him plaintively "I didn't know where home really was". And an Old Blue posting on one of these threads (possibly The Making of Them, whi...

Mr Halliday was the red-headed art teacher, Michael. I remember him as a rather nice, friendly man who once told us not to be wishy washy in our paintings. Be bold, he advised. Sadly I never quite made it as CH's version of Mark Rothko.

What odds on the whole site ending up as flats for Russian oligarchs?

Michael, I can think of one housemaster of my acquaintance who wouldn't have been so relaxed about sacrilegious comments in the Bible. How times have moved on in half a century. When we were at CH religion and the royal family were pretty much off limits. I do wonder how much those radio phone-ins (...

Yesterday's (Saturday's) Justice for Palestine march in London was at the larger end of these sort of events, by my estimation. Yet not a whisper on the evening news bulletins of BBC, ITV or Channel 4. I do sometimes wonder whether I'm living in a democracy or whether the government has control of t...

I was at CH at the same time as Ben Rubbra and Conrad Clark and often wondered what they went on to do. The pictures of Lambert on the link are interesting, and I note his son Kit there in tandem with Chris Stamp. I met the pair of them while working on the music press in the sixties. They managed t...

Checking out the website for the "Impressionists in London" exhibition which has just opened at Tate Britain, I note that it includes a painting by James Tissot called "London Visitors" which depicts some important looking members of the bourgeoisie plus a couple of Housey boys. ...

We had a very similar experience Michael. Dad was away in the war, Mum and I (aged 1) were in digs in Palmers Green, North London in 1944. A doodlebug cut out overhead and as they heard the whine as it descended the woman downstairs shouted up, "I think this is it!" My mother, like yours, ...

Looking at some Beating the Retreat footage on You Tube I noted the band playing the march that was the Monty Python theme tune. Did this ever get played at lunchtime and if so how many people got punished for going into a John Cleese silly walk?

Certainly NOT in the CH library at the time, as THAT court case was in progress, but someone, somehow managed to get a copy of 'Lady Chatterly's Lover' into school. Now that WAS an eye opener at such a tender age !! Attitudes to sex were changing at precisely this time. As the unfortunate Philip La...

Ho ho! An evangelical from York has replied in the Guardian to my letter. He says that if Eurovision featured the tuneful songs of his local congregation we might win the competition one year. Well done sir, for a pithy and humorous response. Several members of my family were religious as well as my...

Freaky's latest letter to the Guardian, 9 September, under the heading "Whether or not to disestablish the C of E". I run it out here in full because it touches on points already made in this thread. I was replying to Giles Fraser in his Guardian column "Loose Canon". It was inte...

Contrary to Avon's mutterings, 74 is the perfect age to be sending letters to the Guardian, as Freaky proves today (30th) with his latest missive which goes under the heading "Economic recovery depends on spending". This may seem a pretty obvious point but the question is "whose spend...

I remember the name, but that's all. I don't remember any medicals in London. I do remember the address 26 Great Tower Street, I remember where I sat for the Almoner's exam - who sat opposite me and who sat at the end of the table, but I don't remember any medicals. I do remember a medical my first...