Viewing archives for Alumni Newsletter

Former QE School Captain Roger Pearce (OE 1961-69), who enjoyed a police career which saw him rise to become head of the Met’s Special Branch, is now a successful political thriller writer.

Roger, who writes based on his first-hand experience, signed a two-book deal with Coronet, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton, and the first book, Agent of the State, has now been published in hardback.

Roger, of Underne House, was at the School when Tim Edwards was Headmaster and John Pearce (no relation) his Housemaster. After graduating with a BA Honours in Theology from St John’s College, Durham University in 1972, Roger married Margaret, a former pupil at Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School, whom he had met when both were Sixth-Formers. Roger had intended to become ordained as an Anglican priest, but instead joined Durham Constabulary in 1973 and transferred to the Metropolitan Police in 1975.

Within a year Roger had applied to join Special Branch at New Scotland Yard. He also began an external LLB Honours degree from London University by private study and in 1979 qualified as a barrister-at-law at the Middle Temple.

Formed in 1883, the Branch’s mission was to gather secret intelligence against terrorists and extremists. It conducted sensitive assignments here and abroad and was also responsible for the protection of the Cabinet, of visiting heads of state and of VIPs. Roger became the head of Special Branch in 1999 and also served as the Met’s Director of Intelligence, authorising surveillance and undercover operations against serious and organised crime. He held both posts until 2003. The Met’s Special Branch was merged with the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch (SO13) to form Counter Terrorism Command, or SO15, in 2006.

In his last months of service, Roger was approached by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to take up the newly formed post of Counter-Terrorism Adviser, where he worked with government and intelligence experts worldwide in the campaign against Al Qaeda. In 2005 he was hired by GE Capital in London as managing director of European security.

Roger and Margaret have just celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. They have two sons, both former QE pupils: Andrew, a composer, and Matthew, an airline pilot. Their daughter, Laura, is a personal assistant.

Roger had been writing for several years and was delighted when a top London literary agent agreed to represent him and eventually brought him together with the team from Hodder. The sequel to Agent of the State, entitled The Extremist, is to be published in July 2013.

This summer marks the 50th anniversary of QE’s pioneering expedition to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe – reportedly the first-ever British school party to visit Russia.

The month-long trip in two Dormobiles covered 5,000 miles, with the party of three teachers, 12 Sixth-Formers and two former School Captains mostly camping along the way.

The expedition came at the height of the Cold War: the Berlin Wall was barely a year old and, coincidentally, was to claim its first victim during the QE trip, when an 18-year-old German bricklayer was shot and left to bleed to death while trying to escape to West Berlin. And just two months after the expedition returned, the world would be teetering on the brink of nuclear war as the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted.

Led by Kay Townsend and Richard Dilley – two masters at the School who had learnt Russian during their National Service – the preparation started a year before the expedition’s departure on 30th July 1962.

The party comprised these two, together with fellow teacher Eric Crofts, as well as former School Captains John Swann and Brian Salter and pupils John Paternoster, Pete Connor, Alan Bloch, Frank Edmonds, Andrew Tarry (known as ‘Ned’: a reference to a character in the Goons, a popular radio programme at the time), Torj Herbert, John Holloway, Pete Mitchell, Sam Smith, John Keeley, Hugh Sinclair and Willy Upsdale.

In parts of Poland and Czechoslovakia, camping was not possible so they were were accommodated in student hostels.

Their experiences ranged from eating takeaway caviar wrapped in newspaper to being stared at by women working on building sites in the Ukraine who muttered “Capitalisti” and spat on the ground. For much of the time, they were accompanied by two young women who had been assigned to them by the authorities to keep watch over them.

John Keeley and Andrew Tarry have produced a full account of the trip, which will appear in the Old Elizabethans’ Association’s forthcoming issue of its newsletter.

They write: “Many of us who left the School 50 years ago do have very happy memories of our time at QE. Our education in the broadest sense was certainly not exclusively focused on exams; many of our life skills were developed playing in sporting teams on Stapylton field, as well as travelling further afield during such challenging school trips as this one.”

Three Old Elizabethan medics are among a group of London healthcare students who have teamed up to sponsor a child’s education in Sri Lanka.

Raahul Niranchanan (2010–2017), Vipushan Konesalingam (2010-2016) and Athithyan Vijayathasan (2009-2016) are supporting a string of fundraising activities to raise £3,000 for Ocean Stars Trust – a UK charity working in Sri Lanka.

All three are studying at George’s University of London and are committee members of the St George’s Tamil Society.

“If there was one lesson we learnt from attending School at QE, it was the idea that everyone is capable of making a change,” says Raahul.

The team originally began as 17 people meeting in the living room of a house numbered 17A, hence the team name they adopted, 17A.

Their JustGiving page explains their motivation: “We appreciate that growing up in London…we often take what we have for granted. So, when uni got a bit tough for us and we started complaining, we took a step back: we realised we’ve actually got an opportunity to even get as far as studying a degree.

“But there are kids out there who don’t even know if they would still be in school tomorrow, or who can only dream of having an education.

“We know education is a gift that no one or nothing should take away from you, not even poverty.

“Our aim is to be able to give the opportunity we received so easily to another child. A child who dreams for a better education, a better future and a better life. We hope we can help make those dreams come true.”

The charity they have chosen works closely with orphans and other disadvantaged children in Sri Lanka.

The team got things off to a good start with a successful bake sale at St George’s University, London, which raised £500, followed by a Hot Wing Challenge – a spicy wing-eating contest in which OE courage featured prominently!

For more information, or to donate to Team 17A, go to their JustGiving, Instagram or Facebook page.

With next term’s examinations fast approaching, my colleagues and I have been further reflecting on questions of how young people study, of effective learning habits and of the best ways to revise.

A recent staff training day focused on how to improve information recall. Research has indicated that reading through notes and highlighting are poor revision strategies, popular as they are. As a general rule, the more active the strategy the better: in fact, even the simple act of reading aloud makes a significant difference to pupils’ ability to recall facts and ideas in an examination. Reading through notes infrequently followed by repeated testing is much better than infrequent tests interspersed by endlessly reading. Short but frequent periods of revision are more effective than one long ‘cramming’ session.

We encourage boys to make intelligent use of technology in their study, but that technology can be a double-edged sword. It has been shown that the apparent efficiency of multi-tasking is illusory, because this habit does not take account of the way the brain actually works. Separate tasks, such as studying while trying to listen to something else, are handled by different circuits in the brain, so if you pay more attention to one task for a moment, you are necessarily paying less attention to the other. Moreover, trying to learn new facts and ideas while multi-tasking can result in that information being sent to the wrong part of the brain, with the result that it is harder to retrieve later.

I know that, when not actually in lessons, many of our pupils, and perhaps some alumni, too, are always ‘plugged in’, smartphone, earbuds and social media at the ready. Some may even fear the prospect of boredom. While the urge to reflexively pick up your phone in moments of ‘downtime’ is understandable, in my view there is much to be said for embracing boredom. Spending time on your own with only your thoughts for company gives you the opportunity to play them out in your head, to explore those ‘new ideas and new solutions’ – concepts not yet sufficiently developed to be shared with others – that form part of free-thinking scholarship. Advances in neuroscience have confirmed physiologically that allowing the mind to wander can engender deep insights and strategic clarity, while also enhancing mental health. The development of such habits accords well with our mission’s aim of “promoting boys’ general wellbeing and their enjoyment of learning, rewarding effort and celebrating success”.

Periods of reflection (‘daydreaming’) can absolutely be productive. As I told guests at our Senior Awards Evening, where we welcomed as our guest of honour, Professor Michael Arthur, President and Provost of University College London: “Creativity cannot be scheduled, nor inventiveness timetabled.” Richard Feynman came up with his Nobel Prize-winning ideas about quantum electrodynamics by reflecting on a peculiar hobby of his — spinning a plate on his finger. And without a time of solitary reflection, we might never have had Harry Potter. J K Rowling traces the boy wizard’s genesis back to a railway journey from Manchester to London which she spent alone, without smartphone or even pen and paper.

At other times, creativity can be stimulated by articulating one’s thoughts and discussing them with others. Here, the time that boys spend in School is important, and QE offers them just the right sort of interlocutors – a combination of equally able and interested peers, together with staff who have deep knowledge, expertise and a well-developed interest in the subjects they teach.

In this age of always-on technology and Google, some question whether we need to memorise facts at all. A pragmatic answer is that effective recall of information has become more important for schools because of recent educational reforms and the return to linear assessments and final examinations. Our senior boys simply must develop the skills of retaining information. One way of achieving this is to train the brain through enjoyable but stretching extra-curricular activity: the learning of lines required for drama productions such as this term’s Lord of the Flies is a good example. But beyond the drive for examination success, there are deeper reasons for our insistence on the importance of knowledge acquisition. In order to think profoundly about ideas, it is first necessary to have certain content securely lodged within your brain.

Moreover, we are in the business here of nurturing and equipping young men who will in the future take up places as leaders in society nationally and internationally. And, simply put, to be a sophisticated adult of that ilk, there is ‘stuff’ you need to know. To this end, we have been turning our attention to the curriculum in the Lower School, asking ourselves if we have got the content right. Cognisant of the fact that boys will inevitably study some subjects for only three years, we are considering what cultural capital every student of Queen Elizabeth’s School should acquire as a minimum. For example, after nine terms of Music lessons, will all pupils be able to appreciate the different genres?

This term, I have enjoyed opportunities to greet old boys who have returned to the School to engage with our current pupils. Most recently, there was Hemang Hirani (OE 2008–2015), who came in to lead a discussion session with a select group of Year 12 geographers. Hemang, who is now a Private Banking Executive at Barclays, studied Geography and Economics at the LSE. His visit was a valuable example of an important aspect of the support we seek to offer pupils – helping stretch the older boys academically by giving them an insight into, and a taster of, university-level material and discussion.

Earlier, we had a return visit from Nick Millet (OE 2001–2008), who spoke to boys in the middle years about his work with refugees, reminding us that although the international migrant crisis in southern Europe may largely have disappeared from the headlines in recent months, an immense humanitarian challenge remains. Nick put his career as a management consultant on hold to co-found the charitable organisation Refugee Education Chios, which provides education, support and training for teenagers and young adults living on the Greek island of Chios, which became a de facto detention centre after the 2016 EU-Turkey agreement.

The ethic of service and of giving something back to society, which Nick’s work reflects, is seen in the endeavours of many younger alumni. Elsewhere in this newsletter you can ready about the fundraising project being undertaken by three OE students at St George’s University Medical School, namely Raahul Niranchanan, Vipushan Konesalingam and Athithyan Vijayathasan.

On the School website, we also reported recently on the efforts of Oxford undergraduates Conor Mellon and Rohan Radia (both OE 2010–2017), who raised £1,800 for a range of charities when they took part in the Oxford RAG’s annual jailbreak ‘run’ and, I understand, successfully reached Amsterdam.

Our young roboteers are currently preparing to go even further afield after being hugely successful in national competitions: I spent a happy lunchtime congratulating around 30 of them as they look forward to going to this year’s international VEX Robotics international finals in Kentucky, from where, of course, QE emerged with a world championship title last year.

It was good, too, to see so many members of the Elizabethan community, including alumni, turning out for the Rugby Sevens.

My best wishes to all Old Elizabethans,

Neil Enright,
Headmaster

When Veli Aghdiran graduated from Cambridge in the depths of the 2008 crash, he wasn’t sure exactly what he did want to do, but he was at least clear about one thing: “I didn’t see myself staying in the UK.”

A decade later, as global vice-president of professional development for high-flying media agency Essence, he has found a career he loves – and, true to his original wish, he is based some 7,000 miles from London.

“I’ve spent the last two-and-a-half years living in Singapore, travelling between our nine Asia-Pacific offices, working with people from diverse cultures and backgrounds…I truly believe that if you can get or create the opportunity to work outside of your ‘home’ environment, you give yourself the chance to supercharge your learning and growth as a worker and as a human.”

Interviewed for the media and marketing news website, Mumbrella Asia, Veli (OE 1996–2003) reflects with great honesty on his time at QE: “The first three years were all about being top of the class. I was not one of the cool kids who did their homework on the bus on the way into school. The next three years were all about minimising the amount of time I had to spend doing work so that I could spend more time awkwardly trying to be cool and annoying my parents.

“North London is an ethnically diverse community and my school truly reflected its diversity. I appreciate the fact that I grew up in an environment where, by and large, diversity was celebrated and embraced. That may be part of what drew me to the study of languages – growing up speaking Turkish, English and a tiny bit of Greek, then learning French and Russian at school.” [Veli is pictured here as a child.]

“I had the opportunity to go to Russia on a School trip in the late 1990s. A group of 20 of us headed to Moscow and St Petersburg. My mind was opened up to the reality that the way life and society worked in my corner of North London was not necessarily the way it worked everywhere else. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to understand that at a young age.”

His love for languages and literature took him to Cambridge, where, from 2004–2008, he read Modern and Mediaeval Languages (Russian and French). The picture shows him on graduation day with his grandfather.

“After I graduated, the clear and defined path that I had been on through education suddenly came to an end. I wasn’t so much at a fork in the road as at a rake. I remember that feeling of not being entirely sure what a good next step would be, and also feeling like whatever path I took would define everything that happened thereafter. It’s interesting that we trap ourselves in these situations where we’re desperate to take action and move forward, and simultaneously frozen in the fear of the consequences – even if the impact of the decision is nowhere near as monumental as we make it feel in our heads and hearts.”

Eventually, he opted to start an online business with a close friend and, with the support of his parents, spent two years building it up. Then, as it suddenly dawned on the pair how much they would need to invest in marketing in order to generate significant revenue from the fledgling business, they realised that they both needed security and a proper salary.

He duly applied for a job with KidStart (the online shopping club that allows parents to save for their children as they shop), which was at that time a relatively new start-up. “Luckily I managed to convey some of that enthusiasm in my interviews, and I spent two great years at KidStart in a role that grew and expanded in lots of different directions, as did my confidence.”

Then came the break that would lead him eventually to his current position: “One of the founders at KidStart used to get invited to Shuffle, an event put on by what was then a small independent agency called Essence. He couldn’t make it one year and offered me his ticket.”

As the audience, who included many Essence staff, gathered at the upmarket venue — a Mayfair hotel – Veli says he remembers thinking that he would love to be part of this company. Six months later, following a “tough recruitment process” he was offered a job and, on starting with Essence in February 2013, he quickly found that his initial impression more than matched up to the reality: “In that first year, the agency I joined doubled in size around me and the excitement of being part of a growing, and successful, business was infectious.”

Towards the end of his first year, he was offered a role applying his industry knowledge and client experience in supporting the company. Although not without some hesitation – “there was, after all, growth for me on the client-facing side of things,” – he decided to take the plunge.

“Five years on, to say that I’m glad to have had the opportunity to move into ‘learning and development’ is an understatement. I’m proud of the work we do as a team and the impact we have on the business, and I’m excited about how we can do, and be, even better. The intellectual challenge of trying to build meaningful and effective learning experiences off and on the job is one that continues to motivate me, and is pertinent for every organisation.”

His personal and professional development has been incremental, although he recalls one “real growth spurt” when he and a colleague found themselves on the stage of a theatre facilitating a session on Essence’s new organisational operating model to the company’s entire New York office: “I was so far out of my comfort zone and went with it, appreciative of the fact that [she] and I got to do this crazy thing together.”

He has similar feelings about his time in Singapore: “Moving here with my wife, exploring a continent together… leading a team of smart and diverse people, learning from and working with a wide array of seasoned leaders have been all ‘the right kinds of challenging’.”

Among the lessons he has learned himself, he highlights:

• The importance as a leader of getting out of his team’s way. “When you’re surrounded by brilliant and smart people, you can waste a lot of time trying to show them that you’re even more brilliant and smart.”
• Finding good listeners who will resist the urge to fix your problems and will allow you to articulate your own thoughts, and thus to learn and to grow.
• Remembering in moments of self-doubt that you have felt like this before and “when you do, it usually means you’re on the verge of something amazing”.
• Stating your intentions, rather than hoping other people will guess what you mean.
• “If you’re unhappy with something or someone, no matter how sure you are that it’s all their fault, ask yourself on what level you might be creating this situation, and what you could do differently instead.”

Old Elizabethan Professor P J Rhodes, a leading ancient historian, highlights a QE connection in a new academic tribute to one of the world’s foremost experts on Greek art.

Peter John Rhodes (OE 1951–1959), who is usually cited as P J Rhodes, has penned a chapter entitled Buildings and History in a festschrift published this spring, Greek Art in Motion: Studies in honour of Sir John Boardman on the occasion of his 90th birthday.

In the chapter, Professor Rhodes, who is Honorary Professor and Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at the University of Durham, mentions that one of Sir John’s contemporaries at Chigwell School was J W Finnett. John Finnett went on to become a popular Classics master at QE, teaching Professor Rhodes when he was in the Sixth Form.

“In my 14th year of retirement, I remain reasonably compos et mentis et corporis,” says Professor Rhodes. “I am still academically active — reading, writing, participating in conferences, still doing a little teaching and higher-degree examining; an academically focused tour of Iran in 2000 gave me a taste for travelling to exotic places (all too often visiting them shortly before trouble strikes — but my reputation hasn’t yet led to my being denied entry to any country).”

He has also been inspired recently to look further into the history of Classics teaching at QE. In an article for the Old Elizabethans Association’s magazine, the Elizabethan, he charts the fluctuating fortunes of Latin and Greek at the School across the centuries, as well as recording his own memories of his teachers in these subjects.

He was at QE during the last of E H Jenkins’ three decades as Headmaster and was in the last year of two-form entry (60 boys) before the post-war expansion. The senior Latin master in that era was Percival Timson, who had been at the school since 1935. John Finnett joined QE in 1951, aged 23.

“Timson and Finnett were of different generations and different styles, but they made an effective pair,” Professor Rhodes recalls in the Elizabethan article. “Timson hated music: on one of the few occasions when he unbent, he explained that at Oxford he had done little work in his first year so needed to do a lot before taking Mods in his second, and at that stage found any sounds that might distract him intolerable. Finnett was keen on music, but regarded Mozart as the greatest composer of all time and everybody more recent as inferior to him.”

A particular inspiration was “rumbustious” Rex M Wingfield, who was his first-form master and first Latin teacher: “…I think he bears much of the responsibility for my having become a Classicist.”

Another Classics teacher was Lynton E Whiteley, from Cambridge. “…On arrival in 1953 he projected a fierce image, and though I think he mellowed I was always somewhat afraid of him.”

Professor Rhodes is the eldest of three brothers, of whom the youngest, John Andrew, also went to QE and later became a modern historian at Wadham College, Oxford (to which Prof Rhodes went as an undergraduate).

“At School I was in Underne House (under John Pearce); I was successful in the classroom but not on the games field (honour was eventually satisfied when I acted as scorer for cricket teams: the Second XI for two years and then the First XI for three); I was involved in music (as a pianist), in the Elizabethan Union and with the school’s printing press.”

He took Latin, Greek, Ancient History and History A-levels at QE. “I sailed through A Level and S Level, but it then took me two years in the Seventh Form to catch up with the kind of competitors who had started Latin at seven and Greek at nine and had spent their school time on little else.” [S Level, involving extra papers, was for those applying for state scholarships for university, before the later introduction of a universal grant system.] “Perseverance, and my parents’ patience, were rewarded, and I did in the end in 1959 achieve the Holy Grail of an Oxford Scholarship in Classics.”

At Oxford, he was a prize-winning undergraduate at Wadham. “As it happens, Finnett later went to Wadham too…as a visiting Schoolmaster Fellow. Sadly, in 1971 he died of cancer, aged only 43.”

Professor Rhodes was awarded a double first-class degree from Oxford. “I continued as a [cricket] scorer in my first year but not thereafter, did not pursue a career in the Union Society, but was involved in music (singing tenor, and, in the absence of better players, acting as a not very good organist).”

He went to Durham as a young lecturer in Classics in 1965 and rose to become, firstly, a senior lecturer, and then, in 1983, Professor of Ancient History there. He retired in 2005 and still lives in Durham.

During his career, he has published extensively on the Classical Greek world; his works span the decades, from The Athenian Boule, published in 1972, to a forthcoming edition of Herodotus, Histories, V.

He has held a number of visiting fellowships; Wolfson College, Oxford (1984), University of New England, Australia (1988), Corpus Christi College, Oxford (1993), and All Souls College, Oxford (1998). He served as President of the Classical Association from 2014 to 2015. In 1987, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and in 2005 was made a Foreign Member of the Royal Danish Academy.

“In Durham I continued with choral singing for many years, and again in the occasional absence of better players, as a not very good organist, and for a few years I was involved with a printing press; I have also been an active member (including two stints as secretary) of the Senior Common Room of University College.”

In the mid-2000s, soon after his retirement, the then-Headmaster, Dr John Marincowitz, told him on a visit to the School that he hoped to reintroduce Latin soon. Professor Rhodes has been heartened to learn not only that this was subsequently done – it is now a curriculum subject – but that Greek is today also available as an extra-curricular subject.

The annual staging of a School Play in recent years marks not the beginning of Drama as a major facet of life at QE, but its renaissance. Work recently undertaken on the archives has brought to the fore photos and documentation from large-scale productions throughout the 1950s.

These plays included Shakespeare (Henry IV, Part I, 1953; Julius Caesar, 1959) and perennial favourites, such as George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (1951), as well as The Would-be Gentleman (1952, adapted from Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) and the now little-performed comedy by James Bridie, Mr Bolfry (1954).

The performances were reported in the Elizabethan magazine of the day and attracted proper, critical reviews from the Barnet Press – and even, on occasion, in the national papers. In 1958, an unnamed critic for the Times Educational Supplement reviewed Nightmare Abbey, Thomas Love Peacock’s 1818 gothic satire: “Queen Elizabeth’s School, Barnet, is blessed with a healthy and ambitious dramatic tradition, and cursed with a constricting stage.” The reviewer went on to praise the cast for “playing their extraordinary characters as if they believed in them, never allowing them to degenerate into burlesque”, while offering a couple of suggestions to the producer.

For most, if not all, of these plays, that post was filled by English teacher Jack Covington. A glance through the programmes reveals some other familiar names, too, including Captain Absolute in the 1950 production of Sheridan’s The Rivals played by one K R Cooper – current Governor Ken Cooper.

After training as a solicitor with Allen & Overy, one of the ‘magic circle’ of top London law firms, Samir Manek is now pursuing his interest in the regulation of markets in his powerful role with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.

“I supervise a global investment bank to ensure adherence with the letter and spirit of the rules and assist with investigations into, and prosecution of, white-collar crime at investment banks,” says Samir (OE 2001–2008).

“Understanding the reasons for the 2008 financial crisis and the regulatory response to it has been the thread that has run through my academic and professional career. Working at the FCA gives me a unique insight into this area, with the opportunity to shape the regulatory landscape.”

Samir, who attended the most recent Old Elizabethans Association dinner in the autumn, remembers his years at the School with gratitude. “QE instilled a strong sense of discipline and drive in me. I have the School’s ethos and all my teachers to thank for this – in particular, Ms Maule [now Assistant Head of English, Victoria Maule] for her enthusiasm and encouragement.

“I graduated with a first-class degree in Law from the University of Warwick, my brother and I being the first generation of my family to go to university.”

During his course, Samir became President of the Warwick European Law Society and was involved in the university debating team. He also spent a year abroad at Utrecht University.

After gaining his Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice, Samir joined Allen & Overy. He took up his post with the FCA in April 2017.

Santino Boffa has followed a varied career path on his way to becoming the top global recruiter for a fast-expanding technology company.

After reading Law at Sheffield, Santino (OE 1996–2003) first became a professional football coach and then took a number of different posts in recruitment. A secondment in 2014 saw him helping to launch a global banking programme – Santander’s My Rewards – to over 3 million account holders.

Then in March 2016, he began working for Qubit, a Software as a Service (SaaS) start-up company specialising in personalisation, where he is now Global Talent Acquisition Manager. Qubit, which has received more than $76m in venture capital funding, helps more than 300 of the world’s top consumer brands to understand and influence how people interact with them across multiple digital channels, including web, mobile and email. Customers include John Lewis, TOPSHOP and Hilton Hotels.

His London-based job involves recruiting engineers globally, with a specific focus on software engineers and product managers. He is also responsible for shaping and executing global recruitment strategies and building world-class teams.

In July 2017, Santino visited the School to help out as part of a careers event. "It was great being back at QE. The School Hall seems a lot smaller these days - and I was really impressed with the new facilities," he said.

"My memories of the School include early-morning games lessons in the old swimming pool in the middle of winter, with the roof leaking. The students today don't know how good they have it!"

He said: "I like to spend my time outside work travelling to new countries and watching my beloved Arsenal home and away."

In July 2016, Santino married Carmela Vitale, who works in advertising.

Yusuf Sherwani is combining his love of technology with his expertise as a medical doctor to help people give up smoking.

Yusuf (OE 2003–2010) has produced Quit Genius, an app which aims to make therapy for people trying to stop smoking more cost-effective and scalable.

"Quit Genius became a passion during medical school after I saw how difficult it was for clinicians to prescribe effective behavioural therapy that could help people change their habits to help prevent disease,” he said. In an interview with the American technology magazine, Wired, he explained that the problem with the face-to-face support often used to help patients stop smoking is that it is simply not financially sustainable. "We're replacing the patient/therapist relationship with the patient and an app."

Quit Genius is among a number of start-ups seeking to demonstrate that "supportive… treatment can be as effective as reaching for your phone”, the article explained.

The app was developed by Yusuf's company, Digital Therapeutics, of which he is CEO, and backed by a partnership, Velocity Health, set up by two large players in the fields of technology and healthcare, namely Wayra UK (which is, in turn, part of Telefónica) and Merck Sharp & Dohme UK (MSD). Velocity Health is an ‘accelerator’ for innovative healthcare solutions. In addition to the backing from Velocity Health, Quit Genius attracted support from angel investors.

Imran Hamid, chief commercial discovery for MSD, told Wired: "We're witnessing the birth of digital therapeutics as a class of medicine in its own right."

In 2017, Yusuf graduated as a doctor from Imperial College School of Medicine, but opted to pause his clinical training to focus on Quit Genius.

"I probably discovered my entrepreneurial streak during my time at QE," he recalls. I started my first online start-up whilst in Year 9, creating a network of online bulletin boards which quickly amassed millions of monthly visitors, before selling the business in Year 11."

In the Sixth Form, Yusuf asked to study Computing, which the School had not previously offered as an A-level. "I'll always admire the fact that QE agreed to create a class for just three of us who wanted to study the subject!

"During that time, I also founded a consumer electronics e-commerce platform which relied on importing high-end audio equipment from China with a friend and contemporary at QE, Zainul Dhalla, which I carried on working on during my gap year.

"The project was actually very successful for a number of years, helping us pay our way through university. However, eventually, we found it too gruelling an experience to juggle Medicine and Law respectively with a growing business and took the joint decision to wind it down. Several other start-ups have subsequently copied the same model and have been successfully operating for a number of years."

Reflecting on his life so far, Yusuf adds this: "I'll simply say that there's light at the end of the tunnel for those who don't make prefect!"