INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM AND DISCOVERY
Q: Can you remember how you and your parents decided on Winchester College?
G: I didn ' t choose Winchester, Winchester chose me. I was at a really standard school in the late 70s, early 80s and there was a teacher called Mr. Kingswell who said‘ you should go off and do a test because I think it would be good for you’. After I passed the first one, I went up to Winchester and did Election with zero preparation, no idea what I was up against. I ' d never done an exam before in my life. I did my best, assuming I wouldn ' t hear any more of it. On the back of that I got an Industrial Exhibition Scholarship funded by Portal Holdings, as they had Wykehamists on their board. From there my future opened up from a very suburban provincial Hampshire with some very narrow horizons.
Q: What was the impact of the house system and are you still in contact with people from school or your house?
G: I loved the feeling of family and collegiality, of being in a house and being part of a gang and part of a team. I really love that I had a very strong identification with this after my initial culture shock. There was a very positive sense of family and later a sense of identification with house and school that continues to this day. There is certainly a feeling of shared experience and allegiance that the majority of Wykehamists I meet in adulthood continue to share.
As it so happens, my three closest lifelong friends are from Winchester College, and we are all meeting up in a couple of weeks ' time.
Q: What were your experiences of original thinking and intellectual freedom at the College?
G: I had a wonderful and hugely transformative experience because the gap between my pre-Winchester and my Winchester experience was that much greater than for others. Going to Winchester from an environment where being clever, let alone loving education was a foreign thing, I found that being top of your class was suddenly cool and that having an inquiring mind and asking questions was not just accepted but actually encouraged by your peers.
I remember Mr. Eliot, who was my first div don and also Michael Fontes: it was these pivotal, inspiring, educated intellectuals that could really take a class and open my eyes to Bach and opera and antique clocks and the Baroque. I always liked science and nature and going out with dons where they cared about which particular species of violet we were studying. That love of life and what life has to offer was part of a love of intellectual inquiry and an acceptance and recognition of intellectual success.
Probably for me the most precious thing from Winchester was not exam results or friends, but it was having my eyes opened to everything that was outside my little world of science; and that remains so to this day.
Q: What would be over-riding highlights of your time at Winchester College?
G: I ' d probably say going on a fungus foray with Mr. Baron and John Durran( who was College Tutor) on a Wednesday afternoon through the woods with a bunch of boys, being inspired not just to love nature but to have an academic interest in it.
Q: What would you say to your younger self with the wisdom you have now, thinking about those early years at Winchester College?
G: I would say ' Don ' t stress so much '. Some of what drove me then was no doubt my innate anxiety to prove myself, but also I think my desire to prove myself worthy of the opportunity that I ' d been given.
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