I knew that Div, in particular, had given
me a substantial advantage in life from the
moment I went to my Oxford interview.
It has been an honour and a fascinating and enriching
experience to have served as this year’s Guest Editor of
the Wykeham Journal. My aim is, from the perspective
of the outsider, to represent the fundamental change
wrought at Winchester under Dr. Ralph Townsend’s
aegis; to show how his tenure has left the College
positioned to meet the challenges of the future and
to fulfil a clear role in a turbulent world, by producing
individuals who are able and prepared to make a
contribution in a manner denoted by the confidence
of understatement.
My appointment as Editor of the Wykeham Journal
was an entirely unforeseen occurrence. This is because
I re-connected with the School in any way only in
September 2015, nearly 37 years after I left. My Oxford
contemporary, Professor Andrew O’Shaughnessy of
the University of Virginia, an award-winning author,
eminent historian of the US, Keeper of the Thomas
Jefferson Papers at Monticello, and an old friend and
Eton colleague of Dr. Townsend’s, came to New Hall
to give a talk, to which I was invited. Watching New
Hall fill, I was transported to my school play experience,
as a fourteen-year-old, in the same venue, playing the
pivotal dramatic role of Third Myrmidon in Troilus
and Cressida. For a week I shuffled on stage each
evening in a kind of rust-coloured skirt, carrying an
unwieldable spear, assassinated Hector after a fashion,
and declaimed in a tremulous voice the words I had
been ceaselessly repeating in my head, ‘The Trojan
trumpets sound the like my Lord.’ Mostly the right
words; sometimes the right order. I don’t know if the
skirt was appropriate attire for a murderous Thessalian
warrior but it had certainly provided a welcoming
home to a phalanx of the College prop store’s fleas,
necessitating an embarrassing visit to the Sanatorium.
14 The Wykeham Journal 2015
That same evening I met Ralph, Cathy and several
young Wykehamists and found myself once more
involved with Winchester. Subsequently, to my
considerable pride and slight embarrassment, I was
invited to edit the Journal. My five years at Winchester
had been inglorious. I don’t want to belabour readers
with anecdotes of public school life in the late 1970s.
I was not technically expelled, though I was perilously
close on a number of occasions, and what I shall call
here a telephonic prank shortly after leaving, a cruel
and thoughtless one, led to a fairly firm suggestion
by my recently unburdened Housemaster that I
make the parting of the ways a permanent state of
affairs. I complied with this instruction more strictly
than some others I had received. Nevertheless, in
September 2015 I hoped enough water had flowed in
thirty-seven years. This seems to have been the case!
My subsequent career has been varied, though it was
top-and-tailed with spells as a university teacher.
The first, in the early 1980s, scratched for me an
existence in the sub-soil of academe as an accuratelytitled non-stipendiary lecturer at Oriel and Balliol;
more recently I was a Visiting Fellow in Finance
teaching exceptionally motivated international
MBA students at the Cass Business School in the
City University. In the mid-1980s, I worked as a
writer and executive producer for White City Films
(the BBC) and Video Arts, which was Sir Anthony
Jay’s and John Cleese’s production company.
But, the better part of my adult life, twenty three
years in total, was spent as an executive of the Wall
Street Investment and UK Merchant banks Morgan
Stanley, SG Warburg, Morgan Grenfell/Deutsche
Bank and JP Morgan. Enough words have been spent