THE WYKEHAM JOURNAL 2023
arrived at Winchester — a school
I with which my family had no previous connection — in January 1965 . In those days most pupils started in September but there was a small intake each January . The Headmaster when I started was Desmond Lee , who seemed to a 13-yearold rather remote and austere . The Headmaster when I left was John Thorn , who was neither . One of the first things we learnt about him was that his wife was an accomplished jazz pianist . This was reckoned a promising sign .
While I was in the school , the social and cultural upheavals of the 1960s did not make running a boarding school easy . The outside world was telling the young to stop listening to their elders and to kick over the traces . On the whole , Winchester weathered this storm of change better than most schools I heard about . I recall endless rows over rules of dress and , in particular , about the length of our hair . In the circumstances , keeping the focus on teaching people to think cannot have been easy .
But I was encouraged to think for myself . I was also allowed to find my own uses for my spare time . In my first year I spent enjoyable hours in a small room making a sculpture in the style of the sculptor Alberto Giacometti , whose work I then admired . This was an experiment with a clear result : I was not destined for life as an artist . I then sampled squash , scenery painting , coxing a rowing eight and fell for the love poetry of Thomas Hardy . I was at a school which beamed at us , occasionally directly but more often obliquely , the idea that having had this excellent education , we ought to do something useful with it . My Wykehamist sons , one working for the United Nations Refugee Agency ( UNHCR ) and the other teaching in the Triratna Buddhist order , would agree .
After university I became a journalist , first on a local newspaper in Yorkshire then for The Observer and for many years
Every so often when I was writing , I would hear in my head the voice of my brilliant , ferocious History teacher Mark Stephenson saying “ Are you actually asking the right question ?”.
on The Times . Journalism should be of use to its society — even if much of it isn ’ t — and I can say that I tried to make it so . Every so often when I was writing , I would hear in my head the voice of my brilliant , ferocious History teacher Mark Stephenson saying ‘ Are you actually asking the right question ?’ or ‘ Stick to the point !’.
As I have interviewed people for this edition of the Wykeham Journal I have asked myself what has changed about Winchester in the last half-century
14