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Economist Professor Richard Brealey made the most of his opportunities and has consequently enjoyed a glittering career.

"Some people have a clear goal in life; others go where the wind takes them. I fall in the latter camp," he explains. It is an approach that has served him well: he is one of the most respected academics in the field of financial economics and has worked as a special adviser to the Governor of the Bank of England.

Professor Brealey (OE 1946 – 1954), who is known as Dick, went to Exeter College, Oxford. "On leaving college I joined the investment department of a Canadian insurance company, partly because they offered immediate responsibilities and partly because they promised me a year working in Canada. Visiting companies as an investment analyst and later managing the UK equity portfolio was great fun, but towards the end of my time there I became interested in some of the exciting new theories about portfolio management."

To pursue this interest and try to apply these theories, Dick got a job in the United States. "My three years in the States involved getting to know many of the academics working in the area and, when I got an offer from the newly established London Business School (LBS) to join their finance faculty, I became an academic myself." Apart from his secondment as a special adviser to the Governor of the Bank of England, he has stayed at LBS ever since. He believes he has been lucky throughout his adult life: "I was lucky to join LBS during the golden age of financial economics. I was lucky to help build a classy finance faculty and to team up with a friend from MIT to write a textbook that 30 years later is still the most widely used finance text [Principles of Corporate Finance, with S C Myers and F Allen, 10th ed, 2010]. During my time at LBS I have had plenty of opportunities to travel, and to consult and provide expert testimony in many countries. And outside work I have been fortunate enough to enjoy rowing, climbing, skiing and riding my horse."

Now Emeritus Professor of Finance at LBS, he holds positions including: Director of the Swiss Helvetia Fund and deputy chairman of the Balancing and Settlement Code Panel; Associate Editor, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance; Advisory Editor, Economic Notes and member of the Advisory Board of International Finance. His career has included visiting appointments at the University of California (Berkeley), University of British Columbia, University of Hawaii and Australian Graduate School of Management.

"My wife, who would probably once have been horrified at the thought of marrying a professor, is now reconciled and grateful that, although I may be forgetful, at least I do not have a wispy beard," he concludes.

Paul Clark (OE 1990-1997) is establishing an impressive career as one of the top names in the UK property industry.

In 2012, he was voted one of the industry's Hot 100 Rising Stars by readers of Property Week magazine – one of the highlights of his career to date. It was the second running of the poll, which is conducted only once every five years. Property Week is one of the UK’s largest industry publications, with a weekly readership of 40,000. Nominees for the Hot 100 must be under the age of 35 and the previous vote included luxury property developers the Candy brothers and Ivanka Trump (daughter of Donald).

"The property industry is a really interesting, varied and - despite the recent market issues - a rewarding place to be," says Paul.

He is currently head of Development at Capita Symonds Real Estate, a subsidiary of FTSE 100-listed Capita plc. Paul runs a team of consultants who specialise in providing advice to landowners and property developers. Some of his current projects include the acquisition of a new property for a film studio, the development of 1,000 homes on the south coast and the structuring of the sale and leaseback of a new bespoke headquarters for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in central London. He has previously worked on the legacy plans for the 2012 Olympics and managed a major urban extension in Oxford.

At QE, Paul was a School Lieutenant and Sergeant Major in the Army Cadets. He won an Army Sixth Form Scholarship whilst at QE, but a skiing accident ended his aspiration to join the Army. He went on to Nottingham University to read Urban Planning. From there, Paul studied Town & Country Planning at post-graduate level at University College London. He then gained an MPhil in Land Economy at Cambridge University, where he rowed for the Sidney Sussex College 1st VIII. Outside work, Paul is now a committee member of the Cambridge University Land Society and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society; he also provides pro bono support for an urban regeneration charity in Finsbury Park.

"There is a wide representation of OEs throughout the property business including architects, engineers, town planners and agents. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a diverse life and the opportunity to have a lasting and positive impact on our built environment," Paul concludes.

Oliver Todd (OE 2005 – 2010) is already making a name for himself as a journalist: he has been shortlisted personally for two national student journalism awards and is involved in an award-winning student newspaper. Currently a student at York University, he says he owes a debt of thanks to the School for this success.

Over the past 12 months Oliver has been shortlisted for The Guardian’s award for best Student Journalist and for the National Union of Students’ (NUS) Student Journalist award, putting him in the top six in the country in those categories.

He received a Special Commendation from the NUS for his work and led his student newspaper, York Vision, to the runners-up spot in the Best Student Media category at the NUS Awards. He was also involved with the same publication the previous year when it was awarded Best Student Publication at the Guardian Student Media Awards.

Oliver joined QE in 2005 and, by his own admission, needed some support to keep focused during the Sixth Form years. “The fact that you managed to keep on giving me a bit of a kick-on through Sixth-Form was probably the reason I eventually made it to university,” he wrote in a letter to the Head of Sixth Form, David Ryan. “It’s all going very well and I doubt I’d have even been here with those ‘kicks’, so looking back it’s much appreciated.”

In the future he is aiming to get involved in news and/or sports journalism. To that end, he has undertaken a wide range of work experience with national media organisations, including The Guardian, the Daily Mail, Sky News and Sky Sports. Ultimately he would like to work in the industry, but accepts this will probably require more training as it is such a competitive field.

OEs Andrew Grethe and Devan Mistry, who were both at the School from 2000 to 2007, are both well on the way to qualifying as architects.

But the pair have far more than just their School and workplace in common: “Having been in the same form and Leicester House since Year 7, we took Art and Physics at A-level, went on to The University of Nottingham and London Metropolitan University together, and now even work at Farrells side by side in practice,” Devan explains.

Terry Farrell and Partners (‘Farrells’), is one of the UK’s most prestigious practices and has offices in London, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Known for its expertise in urban regeneration, its famous projects include Charing Cross railway station, the Greenwich Peninsula and Newcastle Quayside.

Both Andrew and Devan, who are pictured at the top of the Shard, the UK’s tallest building, are currently working towards their post-graduate qualification as architects at London Metropolitan. Andrew is in the first of two years’ study for his Professional Diploma in Architecture (RIBA Part 2), whilst Devan is in his final year on the same course.

“After completing the postgraduate course, there are still a few more hurdles to overcome, but I should be qualified within a few years’ time, and Devan about a year earlier than myself,” Andrew says.

Devan avers that his time at QE was important in nurturing the skills required for his future career: “My interest in architecture stemmed from an early interest and passion for drawing, painting and computers; since my very first Art class at School with Mr Buckeridge and Ms Nicodemus, I developed a keen eye for compositions, collages and the digital realm of design.

“During my spare time, I travelled to various art galleries across London, often by myself, to sketch sculptures, artefacts and people passing by. Soon I found myself drawing the spaces which these wondrous pieces inhabited, such as museums, external facades and three-dimensional forms of all sorts of buildings and structures around London. At one point I became so meticulously engrossed in materials and surfaces, that I would simply sit in the living room at home, watching television, and draw the grain patterns of the wooden floor or the intricacy of the inside of flowers that my mum used to replace once a fortnight.”

It was Devan’s father who first suggested he pursue a career in architecture. “He had a close friend and client who used to visit our home when I was young; his words still play in my ear: ‘The day will come soon when you make a choice between perfection and disarray, but it is architecture that finds the beauty of both as one.’”

Devan’s first contact with Farrells came when he gained a two-week placement there in the summer after completing his GCSEs. He continued working at the firm in his vacations during his three years at Nottingham.

“Once the first three years are complete, a compulsory one-year placement in practice is mandatory; no prizes for guessing where I undertook this stage of my professional education! During this year I worked on several high-profile projects, such as the redevelopment of the prestigious St Ermin’s Hotel in London and the design of a new masterplan for the Nine Elms area in Battersea.

“From May to September, I was presented with an incredible opportunity to transfer across to the sister office of Farrells in Hong Kong. Gaining international experience within architecture at this stage was an impossible opportunity to turn down and I duly accepted; it was probably the best decision I have made to date. Across the other side of the world, I had the greatest pleasure to work on major design projects such as The Springs in Shanghai, China (a key retail and residential quarter for one of the fastest growing cities in the world), West Kowloon Cultural Masterplan, Hong Kong (probably the equivalent of the Southbank Centre in London multiplied ten times over) and a new banking headquarters for Vattanac Capital in Cambodia.”

Devan, who is 24, is projected to gain the highest grade, a distinction, in his postgraduate course this summer.

For his part, Andrew has worked on three large-scale residential projects with part-retail elements: Bicester Eco Village; Skylines, Canary Wharf and Convoys Wharf, Deptford.

Devan and Andrew are keen readers of Alumni News. “We both still take a huge interest in what’s happening at the School and find the newsletter to be a fantastic way to keep up to date with who’s doing what,” says Andrew.

Devan concludes: “This is now the 13th year of knowing one another, but the most interesting thing about it is that we still see each other as the same boys who used to humorously judge each other’s artwork in School. We both agree that this working relationship and friendship is down to our education and the atmosphere created for us at Queen Elizabeth’s.

“Hopefully this relationship will continue for years to come and maybe one day we can even gain international stardom by forming our very own architectural practice.”

The reference provided by E H Jenkins for the application by Leslie Fielding to the Foreign Office proved prophetic indeed: the QE Headmaster’s “really good candidate” went on to pursue a diplomatic career at the very highest level.

After studying at Oxford, Cambridge and the School of Oriental and African Studies, Sir Leslie Fielding, KCMG, MA, Hon LLD, FRSA, FRGS (OE 1943-1951) was posted all over the world. Yet today he says he is more grateful to QE than to any other institution.

Sir Leslie graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, with a First in History; he studied Persian at SOAS in London and was a Visiting Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford. “I was reasonably happy at Emmanuel College and St. Antony’s, but I declined the respective Mastership/Wardenship offers they made without much more than a second thought, in my late fifties; it was QE, where I was blissfully happy, that made me, and opened up my careers.”

Following his graduation in 1956, Sir Leslie was placed second in the open competition for the Foreign (now Diplomatic) Service. In his reference, E H Jenkins wrote: “His character is sound, he has personality and polish, and he has an active mind in which seriousness and humour are combined. In short, he is, in my opinion, a really good candidate.” He also described his former pupil as “an able and public-spirited all rounder”.

Sir Leslie’s career as a diplomat has taken him to Tehran, Singapore, Cambodia, Paris, Brussels and Japan.

He joined the External Relations Directorate-General of the European Commission in Brussels in 1973 as the Director with special responsibility for Europe’s relations with the US and the Commonwealth. He subsequently became EC Ambassador in Tokyo for five years, returning to Brussels as Director-General of External Relations from 1982 to 1987.  He was knighted in 1988.

He was for some years a non-executive director of IBM (Europe) and a Special Adviser to Panasonic (Europe). In recent years he has been busy writing and publishing – mostly on international relations, but has also produced a novel and a screenplay. His most recent work is Mentioned in Despatches … is Diplomacy dead? The work was launched in paperback at the Oxford Literary Festival in 2012; an enlarged, revised, version is due to be published later in 2013.

Most recently, he was invited to contribute to a volume of reminiscences by British civil servants and diplomats who were in the first wave to be sent to Brussels 40 years ago, in 1973, on UK accession to the then-European Community. His article can be seen on his website entitled ‘Bye ‘Bye Blighty I’m off to ‘Brassholes’! In it he refers to the exhaustion of speaking French all day – “different facial exertions”- and attributes linguistic abilities to his education at QE.

After retiring from the diplomatic service he returned to England, where he was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex from 1987 to 92. He chaired the Geography Working Group for the National Curriculum in Schools and served for ten years as Honorary President of the University Association for Contemporary European Studies. He received his knighthood in 1988 and was elected an Honorary Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1990.

He has been a Lay Reader in the Church of England for thirty years: in Exeter, Tokyo, Gibraltar, Chichester and Hereford dioceses, serving also on the General Synod. He was made a Reader Emeritus by the Lord Bishop of Hereford in 2007. After some initial scepticism he now very much approves of women priests.

Sir Leslie is married to the eminent medievalist Sally Harvey and they have two children, Emma and Leo.

A spirit of adventure pervades Professor Richard Brealey’s life. A distinguished financial economist with an impressive CV that features senior appointments in business, the Bank of England and academia, Prof ‘Dick’ Brealey (OE 1946 – 1954) has nonetheless eschewed any idea of a career plan.

“Some people have a clear goal in life; others go where the wind takes them. I fall in the latter camp,” he explains. This spirit is also, perhaps, demonstrated in his love of outdoor activities, including rowing, climbing, skiing and riding his horse.

Professor Brealey went to Exeter College, Oxford, where he read Politics, Philosophy & Economics. “On leaving college I joined the investment department of a Canadian insurance company, partly because they offered immediate responsibilities and partly because they promised me a year working in Canada. Visiting companies as an investment analyst and later managing the UK equity portfolio was great fun, but towards the end of my time there I became interested in some of the exciting new theories about portfolio management.”

To pursue this interest and try to apply these theories, Dick got a job in the United States. “My three years in the States involved getting to know many of the academics working in the area and, when I got an offer from the newly established London Business School (LBS) to join their finance faculty, I became an academic myself.” Apart from a secondment as a special adviser to the Governor of the Bank of England, he has stayed at LBS ever since.

He believes he has been lucky throughout his adult life: “I was lucky to join LBS during the golden age of financial economics. I was lucky to help build a classy finance faculty and to team up with a friend from MIT to write a textbook that 30 years later is still the most widely used finance text [Principles of Corporate Finance, with S C Myers and F Allen, 10th ed, 2010]. During my time at LBS I have had plenty of opportunities to travel, and to consult and provide expert testimony in many countries.”

Now Emeritus Professor of Finance at LBS, he holds positions including: Director of the Swiss Helvetia Fund and deputy chairman of the Balancing and Settlement Code Panel; Associate Editor, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance; Advisory Editor, Economic Notes and member of the Advisory Board of International Finance. His career has included visiting appointments at the University of California (Berkeley), University of British Columbia, University of Hawaii and Australian Graduate School of Management.

“My wife, who would probably once have been horrified at the thought of marrying a professor, is now reconciled and grateful that, although I may be forgetful, at least I do not have a wispy beard,” he concludes.

Tom Aggar (OE 1995-2002) achieved Paralympic gold as a GB adaptive rower. Just three years after an accident that left him paralysed, Tom won a gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics.

A graduate of the University of Warwick who played rugby for the university’s First XV, he suffered the non-sport-related accident in 2005. In the following year he started rowing as part of a rehabilitation programme, and soon demonstrated great talent in the sport.

In 2007, at the World Rowing Championships in Munich, he won the gold medal in the 1000m men’s single scull, beating two-time world champion Dominic Monypenny, of Australia, and setting a new world record.

He then went on to win the World Rowing Adaptive Crew of the Year title from the sport’s international governing body in both 2009 and 2010. And in January 2010 he also became the International Rowing Federation’s first Adaptive Rower of the Year, in recognition of his achievements on the water.

In 2011, he won gold at the World Rowing Championships in Slovenia to secure his fourth Championships title. (The following year’s championships were held in August 2012 and were limited to non-Olympic events.)

His unbroken record of victories against international opposition finally came to an end at the London Paralympics in 2012, when he came fourth in the ASM 1x (single sculls) category at Eton Dorney.

2013 was a mixed season for Tom. At the second World Cup in Eton Dorney he won comfortably to secure the gold medal, but he was unable to repeat that performance at the World Rowing Championships in Chunhju, Korea, where he finished fourth, just outside the medals. But in 2014, he achieved a return to form, producing some outstanding performances. At the second World Cup in Aiguebelette, France, he won a gold medal. He went on to win a silver medal at the 2014 World Rowing Championships in Amsterdam.

Lucian Grainge, who was at the School in the 1970s, heads Universal Music Group – the world’s biggest record company.

Lucian, who was appointed Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Universal in March 2011, has long been acknowledged as one of the most influential people in the global music industry. He has worked with a roster of artists such as Amy Winehouse, U2, Duffy, Girls Aloud and Eminem.

In September 2012, Universal Music Group won approval from the EU to acquire EMI Recording Ltd, bringing a number of artists into the music giant’s fold – including the Beatles. EMI’s labels included Virgin – with a back catalogue including The Human League and the Spice Girls, as well as current artists Emeli Sande and Professor Green – and Capitol Records, which is home to the recordings of Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and the Beach Boys. However, the European agreement, which followed approval from regulators in the US and Japan, required Universal to divest several top artists, including Coldplay, David Bowie and Blur.

Awarded the CBE for services to the creative industries in the 2010 New Year’s Honours, he was then made an Officer of France’s Order of Arts and Letters the following year. He received the French honour at a ceremony in California, where he is based, from France’s then culture minister, Frédéric Mitterand.

Lucian Grainge is known both for fostering digital partnerships and for taking a tough stance on illegal file-sharing.

His own eye for retail is said to go back to his childhood, when he would study which records customers chose in his father’s TV, radio and record shop.

Former QE pupil Alex Halliday made his first forays into online business while still at the School – and now he has become, at 25, the youngest CEO of a company listed on London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM).

Alex, who left QE after his A-levels in 2003, has created SocialGO.com, which allows groups and organisations to create their own social networks and even makes it possible for them to make money from these networks.

He set up the company in 2007 with Dominic Wheatley, the founder of Eidos, a company well known for games such as Football Manager and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. SocialGO launched its premium services in 2009 and has recently raised $2.2million to fund version 2 of its platform.

Writing on his own blog, Alex recalls that when he was only 13 he began building ‘fan sites’ for TV shows, pop stars and other people with a fan base. “It started as a hobby, but once the traffic started to flow, I became involved in selling ads and monetising these networks. The business grew and by 2000, we where serving nearly 30m page views a month and selling ads through agencies like Valueclick, Engage and Doubleclick and we were building an interesting business… This came to an abrupt halt in 2000 when ad rates went from a ridiculous $12 CPM [cost per mille, or per thousand, views] to (a rather more justifiable) $0.60. Suffice to say that business was no longer viable…boo hoo, back to school work!”

Notwithstanding this setback, Alex’s interest in the internet continued unabated and after completing his A-levels at QE, he spent six months in Dubai developing a news website. At the same time he started to develop the prototype of the social networking technology that became version 1 of SocialGO’s product.

The Shoreditch-based company now provides software as a service which allows groups to create, manage and control their own private social networks and provides the members of these networks with the ability to communicate with like-minded people in a controlled and secure environment. SocialGO derives its revenues from subscription premiums paid by network owners and from selling value-added services. If they choose, SocialGO’s customers – the network owners – can, in turn, make money from their networks in a variety of ways: by charging members for access to the entire network; by creating premium areas of the network that are restricted to paying members, and by hosting advertisements.

In a recent article published on Proactiveinvestors.co.uk, former Daily Mail City Editor Ian Lyall noted that in the course of his interview with Dominic Wheatley, the SocialGO chairman repeatedly likened Alex Halliday to Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg – the billionaire subject of the recent blockbuster film, The Social Network.

John Marincowitz, Headmaster at QE since 1999, retires at the end of this academic year. Under Dr Marincowitz’s tenure, QE has further strengthened its reputation, achieving a fifth successive ‘outstanding’ rating from Ofsted and often topping national league tables for academic achievement.

The following tribute was written for the Summer Term issue of the School’s printed termly newsletter.

Towards the end of the School Chronicle, which is read annually on Founder’s Day, it is recorded that “in the year 1999, John Marincowitz, Doctor of Philosophy of London University, succeeded as the 39th Headmaster”. It is a statement which is entirely accurate, yet does nothing to convey the contribution of a man who has served the School with such distinction, not least because it picks up the story some fourteen years into John’s career at Queen Elizabeth’s.

Arriving in 1985, John was given a temporary contract as a teacher of History. His love of his subject is apparent to all who know him, and he set about instilling that same passion into his pupils, engaging them in historical and political debate, encouraging them to read widely and evaluate the differing views of prominent historians, teaching them to question rather than accept, and equipping them with the ability to construct their own argument and present it with conviction. His knowledge and enthusiasm earned him respect and affection in equal measure from his pupils, many of whom were inspired to continue their study of History at university and beyond.

John’s qualities of leadership and management were also quickly recognised in his appointment as Head of Year in the middle school, where pupils in need of support found a sympathetic listener with a genuine concern for their welfare and progress. Pupils in need of correction found a clear and uncompromising response which ensured that a second dose was rarely, if ever, necessary. This appointment gave John membership of “Cabinet”, the senior management team of the School, and an opportunity to influence direction and development. The strong desire to see ever-increasing levels of achievement, confidence and responsibility amongst the pupils made John the obvious choice when the post of Head of Sixth Form became vacant. Under his leadership the sixth form grew in numbers and in quality, with John taking a personal interest in the development of each and every pupil. The development of the teaching staff was also, of course, central to the progress of the School, and John led the first successful bid to gain Investors in People status in 1996.

Appointed as Headmaster in 1999, John set about taking the School “from excellence to eminence”, recognising the quality of the establishment he had inherited from Eamonn Harris, but recognising also the potential to take the School to new heights. At the start of his headship, and at the start of each academic year which followed, John placed before the staff a quotation which perhaps gives the best insight into the philosophy which has underpinned the progress of the School throughout the years of his leadership: “No matter how much you systemise it, education is terribly personal. It is to do with elusive and very important human qualities.” Boys at the School achieve spectacular results, but their personal development, the opportunities for them to indulge their interests, the word of praise in a corridor from a member of staff who has noted their achievement, the careful guidance which sets them on the appropriate path as they move on from Queen Elizabeth’s, all of these rank equally in the School which John has led. Staff have benefited from this approach to the same extent, each given the sense of a genuine and personal interest in their development and huge appreciation for the contributions they have made. It is a testament to John’s remarkable leadership skills that such a convivial atmosphere pervades the School, whilst demands and expectations remain at the highest possible level and improvements continue year on year. In addition to a determination to create the best possible educational experience, John has been tireless in pursuing the objective of translating the generous donations of parents and supporters into the finest facilities for boys and staff to work in; the Martin swimming pool and the Shearly Hall stand as fitting tributes to his success. It is, though, the successes of the generations of pupils who have passed through the School during John’s 26 years at Queen Elizabeth’s and who return regularly to thank him for all that he and the School have done for them, in which John himself takes the most pride and the most pleasure.

The School Chronicle concludes thus: “And so the efforts and generosity of many: the Governors, Trustees, parents, teachers, boys and old boys, all have made the School renowned and all have made the School to flourish – may it always flourish.” Amongst the illustrious predecessors who have made the School renowned and made the School to flourish, John Marincowitz has most surely earned his place – and in so doing he has earned our profound gratitude.