Alleyn Club Newsletter 2015

OA News

Sam Howard (85-92), Master i/c Rugby at the College, guided the 1st XV to victory against Warwick School at Twickenham in March 2014 to secure a third NatWest (formerly Daily Mail RBS) Schools Cup in three years. This was followed by a fourth appearance in the final, with the team narrowly losing to Bromsgrove School on 25 March 2015. Angus Imrie (01-12) joined the cast of BBC Radio 4’s long-running soap The Archers in November 2014, taking over the role of teenage character Josh Archer, son of David and Ruth and a key member of the Ambridge based family. Angus has appeared in several television series and films, including ITV’s Kingdom , starring Stephen Fry. Actor Raza Jaffrey (86-91) has been lauded for his role in the fourth series of hit television drama, Homeland . Raza, whose previous credits include playing MI5 officer Zafar Younis in the BBC’s Spooks and Hari Dhillon in the BBC America series Mistresses , played Lt-Colonel Aasar Khan of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence unit. Among the plaudits Raza received, The Times praised him for creating a ‘thrillingly unknowable character’. After first making contact through the Alleyn Club, artists Ben James (90-97) and Sebastian Kite (97-04) collaborated on a large scale installation for Bell’s Whisky to celebrate the brand’s ongoing partnership with charity, Help for Heroes. The pair created a multi- sensory environment that aimed to communicate the powerful stories of wounded servicemen and women and honour their bravery. Ben and Sebastian used 600 backlit bottles mounted in a steel frame to form a circular structure conveying the unity and solidarity of members of the armed forces, and the unfailing support of their families and loved ones. Details of Ben and Sebastian’s work can be found at www.jotta.com and www.kiteandlaslett.com respectively. Conductor Graeme Jenkins (68-77), who works with the Welsh National Opera, spent September 2014 conducting Puccini’s La fanciulla del West and Wagner’s Der fliegender Hollander at the Vienna State Opera. Ronald Jones (45-55) and his wife, Helena, celebrated their golden wedding anniversary on 31 December 2013. Ronald met and married Helena while working in Poland between 1962 and 1965. Chris Jordan (06-07) continued to feature prominently in the England cricket team in 2014, playing in the ICC World Twenty20 and the one-day international and Test matches against Sri Lanka and India. Chris is now well-established within the ODI and Test teams and played for England at the recent World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

As the years passed by members of the form made their mark in the school – two became School Captain and others prefects, several played for the 1st XV or the 1st XI and around a dozen went onto Oxbridge (with about half that number winning scholarships or exhibitions). Others played prominent roles in the various minor sports and in the Junior Training Corps, the Air Training Corps and the Sea Cadet Corps (the forerunners of the Combined Cadet Force) and the Scouts. When the time came to leave many of the form went straight into one or other of the armed forces, with one becoming a Bevin Boy and experiencing the life of a coal miner, before completing their education, while others went straight to university or other further education establishments. Many and varied were the careers they followed – medicine, the clergy, banking, teaching, surveying, insurance, the civil service, engineering, retail and others. In 1989 one member of the form organised a 50 years on reunion at the College on Founder’s Day which was attended by 16 members of the form together with wives and two masters who had taught the form in the 1940s. The idea caught on and further reunions took place to mark the 55th and 60th anniversaries while today the form meets each year, still at the College on Founder’s Day. The whole form survived the war but the passing years have taken their toll and 15 out of the 32 are no longer with us. However, six stalwarts – Derek Akers (37-44; Staff 52-69), Peter Edgley (38-45), Alan Gregory (37-44), Peter Hart (39-42), Dr Charles Mansfield (37-44) and Rupert Sutton (38-42) – attended the reunion in 2014 and a further eight – Cyril Bristow (37-41), Charles Clapham, Reverend Michael Griffith (37-42), Dr Dick Pledger (37-42), Donald Simpson (40-43), Tony Spain (40-44), Reverend Lyndon van der Pump (40-42) and Dr John Watson (38-42) – sent their apologies for being unable to get to Dulwich on the day. The friendships formed in 1939 have endured and owe much to the Dulwich ethos absorbed by those small boys in the 1940s. The appetite for the form’s annual reunion remains and those who attended in 2014 are determined to continue to meet on Founder’s Day each year – and long may they do so.

Detur Gloria Soli Deo

Peter Hart (39-42)

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