Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Whether it's squits, the way your girdle is worn, or silver badge wearers, is any of it really relevant to a modern day school? It should have been consigned to history long ago. It merely denotes how CH is still stuck in the past and not much different from the posh schools, especially as they are ...

The "Silk" mentioned here in the top row will doubtless be Dennis Silk who went on to be a cricketer for Somerset and also headmaster at Radley College. You may have seen him in that TV documentary where they followed various pupils from Radley and caught up with then years later.

The following were Senior Grecians during, or just after, my time at CH.

1955/56 Alan Everest MidB
1956/57 Peter Attenborough MaB
next three, order uncertain
Geoff Hines (LaB)
Jo Thomas (LaB)
David Simon (MidA)
1960/61 John Daniel (MidA)
1961/62 Andy Barker (PeA)
1962/63 Michael Pitcher (ThB ...

Do we think that getting a puffed-up reputation at one's grandiose boarding school is necessarily a good thing? It was said of (I think) the poet Rupert Brooke that he left school and college "magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life".

After following Harlequins men's team I took to following the women and posting on their site. So I was delighted to get two Likes from the sublime Ellie KIldunne. It was to do with the pronunciation of Aiofe Wafer who has just recovered from injury and is back going great guns for Quins. I was duly ...

The idea of being "reunited" took me me back to my days in Col B in the late 1950s. Katharine, I wonder if your brother and his friends in Thornton had the memorable album that we had - Songs for Swinging Sellers by Peter Sellers? One sketch featured a couple interviewing the rather seedy-sounding ...

Today I get lead letter in the Guardian under the heading "Looking for signs of life in centre-right politics". After the Tory conference there was much talk of what is the way forward for the party. Several pundits and letter writers opined that the rot set in under Cameron or Johnson, but my ...

Let me add to that. What's religion like at CH? When I was there in the 1950s it was chapel six days a week and twice on Sundays plus house prayers in the evening. It seemed to be assumed that everyone was a believer. Clearly this could not be so. I got confirmed at around age 14 to please my ...

The severity with which tackles are judged these days dates from the "spear tackles" that were so popular in the days when Southern hemisphere rugby was so brutal that we were obliged to become brutal ourselves. Check out the Lions tour in South Africa led by Willie John McBride when foul play and ...

Watching our girls distinguishing themselves again in the World Cup this afternoon, I wondered if there was a girls' rugby team at CH. We're are presumably past the era when the girls were restricted to hockey and lacrosse.

One of the more bizarre snapshots of Saturday's demo by T Robinson and his football hooligans was the appearance of crosses (Calvary style) which were there to be picked up and borne by his long-suffering Christian followers. This was a new one on me. I'm used to going on UK Uncut actions, or Anti ...

Is Foureyes suggesting that only the boarding schools contributed to the British army? When did I say that the army shouldn't exist? My father was on the beaches of Normandy in 1944 doing his bit. He came from a working class background in Middlesbrough and left school at fourteen. But it was a fact ...

Out of interest, is there a CCF at CH these days? I imagine it long ago ceased to become compulsory like it was in my day. I used to be able to strip, clean, reassemble and fire a Bren (the machine gun of choice back then), .303 rifles and .22s, drill a squad, do an assault course in battledress ...

When I was there BW would sometimes pay a visit. We in Coleridge could see him standing on the HM's lawn chatting to Clarence but your brother in Thornton would have realised when the lunchtime band struck up the Dam Busters' march. He would usually give a talk to a group of boys who were at CH ...

It's nice that you still go to church Katharine. Is it CofE? I still have a lingering affection for the CofE although an atheist. I think perhaps we carry with us an earworm of the glories of the Anglican liturgy - the stirring hymns and the readings from the King James Bible - itself a work of ...