The OT Dinner, 25 September 2002

The OT Dinner took place in Skinners Hall on 25th September last year. Christopher Everett, Master of the Skinners Company and ex-Head Master of Tonbridge, was in the chair. The following is an extract from his speech at the Dinner.

Gentlemen, it is a great privilege for me to preside over tonight’s proceedings as chairman and to propose the toast to the School.

You are Tonbridgians of eight generations and seven Head Masters, from Sloman to Hammond. Earlier this year Lawrence Waddy came to Skinners’ Hall during a short visit to England and he particularly asked me to bring you his greetings. Michael McCrum and Jennifer Ogilvie send theirs.

Before I go any further I want you to join me in saying thank you to the man whose work year by year makes this such a wonderful occasion. I refer of course to John Gibbs. John’s support and friendship for Tonbridgians and Old Tonbridgians is legendary, and I could keep you here all night if I were to try to do him justice. Your presence here speaks for me - not just your numbers but also the range of generations and interests- Tonbridgians who in your days in school were actors and musicians, scholarly and less scholarly, artists and games players and now all of you pillars of a wide range of professions.

It is also a pleasure to welcome members of staff past and present, with a particular welcome to James Waters, Head of School and to Nigel Lashbrook, Acting Head Master in place of Martin Hammond, who, lucky blighter, is on a hugely deserved term’s sabbatical.

As always there have been multifarious O.T. activities this year and I risk omitting some if I attempt to enumerate them all. But everyone here will want to join me in congratulating the cricketers on once again winning the Cricketer Cup. In the semi-final the team - supervised somewhat insouciantly from the boundary by Jonathan Arscott who had a broken thumb (he had masterminded an earlier win from Malaysia) - put on the most devastating display of fielding and tight bowling I have ever seen. In the final, postponed a week by rain, the team, rejoined by their captain, ran out easy winners.

Even the Cricketer Cup would have been at risk but for John Gibbs’s support. One Sunday there would not have been an eleven if John had not volunteered to drive to Oxford and take on to the match venue a team member whose overnight social engagements cast some doubt on his ability to be there on time.

Compared with the service of so many here today I feel rather a fraud. I left the Diplomatic Service before I could do any harm. I became a Head without having taught. I was lucky enough to be made a Liveryman without being apprentice or freeman. So I feel all the more deeply the honour of standing here as Master of the Skinners’Company.

I am also conscious of the long line of distinguished people who have been Chairmen of previous dinners. Indeed I feel rather like one of Zsa Zsa Gabor’s later husbands, who is said to have remarked on his wedding evening that he knew what he was supposed to do but wasn’t sure how to make it interesting.

Members of the Society who left Tonbridge in my time will have forgotten that with some effrontery, given my ignorance and your knowledge, I devoted the first part of my leavers talk to the facts of life. Reminding you of this will enable you to explain to your partners that if you have any shortcomings in this respect they are entirely my fault, though I hope you won’t suggest that we should have given you work experience.

But if you have forgotten that part of my talk you will not have forgotten that I also said I did not think leavers had any duty to the school but that if they wanted to keep in touch then the school would warmly welcome it and do all it could to facilitate ways in which OTs could continue to meet each other. I know also that to O.T. gatherings I always said that the school valued its links with OTs because they provided one of its windows on what every school calls the real world.

Of course both sides have other links and relationships - the school with parents, the community of Kent, prep schools and others; you all with your growing families, your other wider friends, with your professional colleagues and associates, and with others. But just as the school can be to you not a nostalgia trip but a touchstone of values, an insight into future educational developments, and a focus of friendship, so you can be to the school a source of insight into the changes in society and a means of ensuring that the school remains in touch with the real world.

One of the mechanisms that binds us together is the O.T. Society and that is why I am so thrilled that the Society’s new management is building with such vigour on the foundations laid by their predecessors.

On the Hon Sec’s side, my first Hon Sec was Colin Schooling. My second for the greater part of my time was Tim Denham, who has only recently retired. I count it a huge privilege to have been made an Honorary Vice President of the Society at the same time as Tim. I will not embarrass him by dwelling on the gratitude we feel for his exemplary period of office but I would like to say this. As a turner-up at school and O.T. events he is in the premier league. His encouragement has been hugely appreciated. Now Peter Morris takes up the baton and we warmly welcome him.

On the Presidential side my first President was George Edward Hudson, so you can imagine what a pleasure it is that in the twilight of my years Anthony, his son, has taken up office from those intervening Presidents - Humphrey Tilling, Colin Cowdrey and David Kemp. David is sadly laid low with bronchitis tonight but sends his warmest greetings.

After Tonbridge and Oxford Anthony Hudson went to Radley to teach where he became Second Master (and one of the stars of the Radley TV programme). He then became Headmaster of Pangbourne, where he was the inspiration and driving force behind the building of the magnificent Falklands Memorial Chapel. But throughout this career he never lost his links with Tonbridge, is now en route to be Master of the Skinners’ Company in 2004, and I, like many others, hugely value his friendship and support.

Under the leadership of Anthony and Peter the O.T. Society is now looking at ways to strengthen its activities further, to establish stronger links with all its members through developing its data-base and its own web-site, and to see how O.T. activities can be developed for the benefit of members and the school. This is an exciting prospect.

Exciting as it is I can feel John Gibbs stirring and wondering if I have forgotten his three separate injunctions (all infinitely polite) to be brief, and even worse if I have forgotten that I am proposing the prosperity of the school. Well I may have forgotten the first but I have not forgotten the second.

The whole of the relationship between school and OTs only has meaning if the school prospers and succeeds. In a moment Nigel Lashbrook and James Waters will tell us how things are going. I don’t want to steal their lines. But I hope they will forgive me if I exercise the privilege of being a Governor to say one or two things.

Throughout my time at Tonbridge David Kemp was an unfailing support to me, as he was to the school. He also unfailingly told me that we should be doing more for the buildings - advice I failed to take. In the thirteen years since I left the buildings have been transformed and extended in a way only matched by the mid-Victorians.

This year a huge upgrade of the artificial pitches is in hand and beyond that what is apparently to be thought of as a sports village rather than a sports hall. So the development of what are already staggeringly good all-round facilities goes on. Of course the school has always produced scholars. Sir Owen Chadwick, one of the elite 24 who hold the O.M., is an example of this, but what is remarkable now is the overall achievement of all Tonbridgians and the school’s place, in the face of formidable competition, at the head of the league tables.

Faced with the challenge of the 21st century, Governors and school are assessing priorities and looking to the creation of a far-seeing development plan. We will all have ideas for what should be in it, and the school will want to listen even if not accepting everything they hear.

Above all what enables us to look to the future with confidence is the calibre of the staff. Over 60% are new since I left in 1989. I was lucky to serve with a wonderful Common Room. In the face of all the difficulties of teacher recruitment Martin Hammond has appointed teachers of the highest academic quality and with as great a range of experience in games, the arts, and other pursuits as Tonbridge has enjoyed in the past, and with that commitment to individual pupils which is the foundation of a good school.

For all these reasons it is with great confidence that I ask you to rise and drink the toast - “ the prosperity of the school coupled with the names of the Head of School, James Waters, and the Acting Head Master, Nigel Lashbrook.”