Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

I think we are pretty certain that the celebrity Josie Lawrence is definitely not an Old Blue.
But I think that the actress in the States is Debbie (now Rosh) Wright, nee Stone, who was exactly contemporary with me, and in 1's. She left school to train as a nurse at the Westminster Hospital, and once trained, moved to America to nurse and moved into acting.
She is not yet a major 'celebrity', but hopefully may be one day.
And there is another OG celebrity in the States... Ruth (now Maggie) McCurry, also an exact contemporary of mine, who rescues retired reyhounds by aeroplane.
And thank you for reminding me of the name of Andree Evans.
And on the Horsham OB side one should not forget the recently late Tenniel Evans....
(no relation, I assume)

Angela Woodford wrote:We don't have, say, a … journalist … from our ranks. …Or do we?

The late Mary Edmond (6's 26-34) was a BBC radio journalist for more than thirty years, ending up as editor of the Today programme and Yesterday in Parliament.

Kate Chacksfield (3's 79-81) is another long-serving broadcast journalist (Sky News, Newsround, producer of The Six O'Clock News etc).

Sarah Eldridge (8's 66-71) spent about twenty years with the BBC as a reporter, producer and editor on current affairs programmes.

If being a BBC Asia analyst and writing on China for BBC Online counts as journalism (and I'm not clear about definitions here), Charis Chan (8's 66-71) deserves a mention.

Billie Felix Jeyes (3's 78-83) is, or was until recent years, a journalist in the States.

Julia Pearey (8's, 6's 77-84) and Anna Swan (3's 71-77) are other names that come to mind, and I expect there are more…

Jo wrote:In terms of this thread in general, whilst all the women mentioned are no doubt very well-known and successful in their own fields, I think we have to be wary of apparently clutching at straws ... I think limiting it to one or two very successful women is better than lists of women to whom the response would be "who's she?"

Hard to disagree with that, Jo, if what we're looking for is an ex Hertford pupil who deserves to feature alongside Baroness Deech on a shortlist of the best-known living Old Blues. (Personally I don't know of anyone who qualifies, though that proves nothing.)

It seems to me though that this thread is also asking wider questions about Hertford:

(1) What distinguished people went there?

(2) What celebrities, if any, went there?

(3) Did anyone from Hertford take up any of the lines of work listed by Angela (or anything similar to them) or did the Hertford climate prevent that sort of thing?

I think all three questions are worth trying to answer, as long as we're careful to distinguish them from the original one, and from each other.

Apropos of question 1, could I just mention the person I always mention on these occasions, Margaret Gowing FRS FBA (Elliott, 4's 32-38), historian of the British nuclear industry and first Professor of the History of Science at Oxford?

NEILL THE NOTORIOUS wrote:On the Horsham side ------- Bernard Levin ?

J.R. wrote:........Who, strangely, hated C.H. and used every possibility he could to denigrate it !

In fairness, John, he did come back to judge a debating competition, and contributed an affectionate obituary of Roy Macklin (Staff 26-46) to The Blue.

And the depiction of his schooldays in his book Enthusiams wasn't wholly bleak.

kerrensimmonds wrote:I think that the actress in the States is Debbie (now Rosh) Wright, nee Stone, who was exactly contemporary with me, and in 1's. She left school to train as a nurse at the Westminster Hospital, and once trained, moved to America to nurse and moved into acting.
She is not yet a major 'celebrity', but hopefully may be one day.

Thanks for that, Kerren. I see she already has two credits in the Internet Movie Database:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2056312/

And there's a short profile and photo of her on this page from 2005:
http://www.brickyardtheatre.com/Archives/Archives.htm

icomefromalanddownunder wrote:Surely Cathy counts as a celebrity?

kerrensimmonds wrote:And yes I did forget Catherine (sorry!)

Forgive me, but I'm so seldom around on this forum anymore: who is Cathy, and why is she a celebrity?

Is she the organist Catherine Ennis (6's 65-71), who later taught at Horsham?

Yes, Rex. Catherine Ennis, world class organist at St Lawrence Jewry, City of London, and Old Blue from Hertford. There's a pretty impressive website.

There is Dr. Sheila Peskett, MA, FRCP, an exact contemporary of mine (4s, 1955 - 62? - not sure), who was & may still be Senior Fellow and Medical Director at Keele. Many learned papers, several prestigious appointments, but not feted in the media so relatively "obscure". Huh!

Sheila Peskett made a point of coming to see me in my first term at Oxford, I think I was the next person to go to LMH from CH after her. In school terms I was far younger than her and would never have spoken to her, I thought it was very kind of her.

Katharine, did you ever meet Paula Neuss (2s, c. 1954-63?) at LMH? She was reading English, & later became Reader in (something like) Mediaeval English at Birkbeck. "Famous" enough for her obituary to appear in The Independent in 1989.
Several papers on the Cornish Plays et al, one novel, and a paragraph in Margaret Drabble's Oxford Companion to Eng. Lit. to her name.
Another OB, Anne Millington - already a Mon. in 1955, can't remember which Ward but she's in the photo of the Duke & Duchess of Gloucester with the other Mons & DR that year - became headmistress of John Ruskin High School, Croydon. There must be dozens of other Hertford OBs who rose to the top of their professions ( e.g. Margaret Clayton, 8s, c1953-61, in the Civil Service) but whose names will remain generally unknown.
I've always thought it a bit of a cheek to claim Ruth Fraenkel (Deech) for CH. Yes, she was there - but I don't think she was grateful for the quality of education she received! In fact as far as I can recall, it was entirely due to her own efforts after CH that she became so successful. I'm sure I read somewhere that her exam results were too mediocre for Oxford initially, & that she went up only after a spell at the LSE. Her acknowledgement of what CH gave her extended, I think, only as far as the sense of the importance of "service to others" that was instilled. I suspect that her achievements owe very little to Hertford - a case of "in spite of" rather than "thanks to"!

On the Horsham side, "they" have forgotten Keith Douglas, 1920-1944; but only those with an interest in poetry would recognise his name. Clearly no-one involved in compiling the list has such an odd habit!

Rex wrote:

Angela Woodford wrote: The late Paula Neuss (2's 54-60) also wrote one, All Girls Together (Duckworth, 1979), a rather jaundiced picture of a girls' school supposedly based on Hertford.

As I knew Paula ( same form, though different Ward) I feel I must challenge "jaundiced". To her it was real, deeply felt, and extremely painful. Furthermore, I suspect that the experiences she described in her book - which was not supposedly based on Hertford" , it was Hertford in that harsh and oppressive era!- contributed not only to the depressive illness that delayed her A-levels, but also to the " bouts of ruinous depression" (Obit., 1989) which brought her life to a tragically premature end.

anniexf wrote:As I knew Paula ( same form, though different Ward) I feel I must challenge "jaundiced". To her it was real, deeply felt, and extremely painful.

You're quite right to challenge it, Annie. I've just had a look in the dictionary and found to my dismay that "jaundiced" is defined as "envious, jealous", which isn't at all what I meant. I suppose I assumed the word meant something like "emotionally drained and looking askance", though that may not be much of an improvement as a description of Paula Neuss's book. In my defence, it's thirty years since I read it, and I'm not sure how much understanding I had when I did so.

I think the way you've cut the quotation is a little misleading, so just to clarify for other readers, it was I and not Angela who wrote the offending sentence.

We had a Wendy Lawrence in 2's at the right time but she did not grow up to be Josie Lawrence, she came from Oxford.

Jo wrote:

Rex wrote:
I think limiting it to one or two very successful women is better than lists of women to whom the response would be "who's she?". Titles help.

I take your point Jo, but it's partly about personal interest, so, although I was aware of Cathy's achievements, I hadn't heard of the younger actors.

xx