Sir Barnes Wallis (Wd 7/Pe A 1900-04, Treasurer 57-70) died on 30 October aged 92.

Derek Baker (La A 43-50) was settling in as Headmaster.

New staff: Stephen Roberts was to stay seven years; Tim Alexander thirteen; Terry Clark fifteen; Andrew Gunning eighteen; and Jim Endacott twenty-one.

CH choirs sang at Chichester Cathedral, Goodwood House, Shipley and Littlehampton. A cup commemorating Cecil Cochrane (Staff 37-57) went to Peele A for performing ‘Widdicombe Fair’ arranged by Chris Tambling, now Director of Music at Downside. The future dramatist Nick McInerny (Th B) opened his review of the Band Concert, ‘It is difficult to find new superlatives that aptly describe the standards to which the Band now aspires.’

In ‘a season of hard work, considerable success and fun!’ the First XV won seven out of eleven matches under captain Nick Konig. Col B won A-leagues, Peele B B-leagues. Matthew Farrar captained the Sussex 16-year-olds’ rugby team.

London Welsh played the Welsh Academicals in aid of the appeal for Chris Burns, who broke his neck in a CH rugby match. His family contributed an open letter of gratitude for the CH community’s support.

The Art School had been modernised. Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle was staged. Girls from four schools attended the Grecians’ Club dance. 620 trees were felled. Dr Roger Hackett reported a surge of interest in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme. Messrs Waller and Shippen received Scouting long service decorations for their service to CH Scouts (the latter still had 25 years to go).

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The Anonymous Guests played their first gig, at which ‘even Messrs Hailey and Slater felt compelled to pogo’.

Pat Walters, an Infirmary nurse since 1946 (with two breaks), departed. ‘Engagingly original to the point of eccentricity, there will be nobody quite like her again.’

Final total raised by the school community for the Endowment Appeal: £576,500.

Chairing Founder’s Day Dinner, the writer J E Morpurgo (Col B 29-36, Governor & Almoner) looked forward to a Horsham-Hertford merger. ‘Any solution that sacrifices one half of Christ’s Hospital must be corrosive to the other half.’ Replying, Elizabeth Tucker (Headmistress 72-82) spoke of Hertford’s deep sense of communal loss at the death of new girl Justine Goodin.

Robert F Sellers (Ba A 34-43) became Director, Animal Virus Research Centre, Pirbright. 104 OB clergy were listed in Crockford’s. Guy Wills Chandler (Wd 12/Th A 1900-06) was still conducting the business of the British Chess Problem Society, which he’d helped to found in 1919.

Deaths included Sir Ben Barnett (La A 06-13), Deputy Director-General, GPO; Sir John Forsdyke (CH 1895-1902), Director, British Museum; Gordon Grant (Ma A 18-24), Comptroller-General, Patent Office; Charles Anderson (Pe B 05-11), Churchill’s pre-war mole in the RAF; Philip Nichols (La B 34-42), specialist in rehabilitating the disabled; Michael Wilding (Ma A 22-28), film star, husband of Elizabeth Taylor; Frank Phillips (Mid B 12-17), BBC newsreader; and The Blue’s printer Ernie Keefer, who ‘loved the school as though he had been a pupil.’

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