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Nicholas Millet put his career plans on hold to help with the refugee crisis in Greece.

Nicholas (OE 2001–2008) had been pursuing a steady career as a successful management consultant – but all that changed when he went on a visit to the Jungle refugee camp at Calais. He only planned to help for the weekend, but was so struck by the plight of the refugees that the very next day he flew to Chios. This Greek island was the arrival point for the highest number of refugees after Lesbos, with up to 1,500 making the journey across the Aegean Sea every night.

He told the Jewish Chronicle: “I was seeing people make these dangerous and perilous journeys on the news, and I just felt I had to be on the right side of history. I couldn't help looking at the refugees in Calais and thinking this was my family 70 years ago when we were fleeing the Nazis.”

Having negotiated a leave of absence from his employer, he went on to lead a group of some 60 volunteers on Chios helping to ensure the safety of the desperate people crossing the sea in dinghies and rubber boats. With babies, women, children, the disabled and the sick all crammed together on their journey, it was, said Nicholas “impossible to see them coming off the boats soaking wet and not feel compelled to help them. With my managerial experience, I knew I had a strong skill set that could help."

The European Union-Turkey deal in March 2016 brought a halt to such border crossings into the EU, but many of the refugees remained stranded on the island, where the Greek government refused to integrate the refugee children into the state school system.

Deeply shocked by this infringement of their rights and by the wider failure of Europe to resettle refugees, Nicholas gave up his job with multinational consulting company, Capgemini, and in the same month, May 2016, he and other volunteers working with a Switzerland-based organisation called Be Aware and Share (BAAS) set up Refugee Education Chios. This non-profit organisation has since established two schools – a primary and a secondary – and a youth centre, run by a team of 30 volunteers. The schools have helped educate more than 800 children and young people aged 6-22.

Nicholas, of Stanmore, has a history of involvement in humanitarian projects. Shortly after leaving QE, he spent time at the Sri Sathya Sai School – a village school in Kerala, India, which QE has supported since 2002. And, while he was a student at Cambridge, he did some work as a researcher for the Grameen Bank, the Nobel Prize-winning microfinance organisation based in Bangladesh which works to help the poor.

At Cambridge, Nicholas read for the Politics, Psychology and Sociology Tripos. He co-founded and became president of the Cambridge Global Zero Chapter – Global Zero is an international campaign group working towards the elimination of nuclear weapons. He was also a guest liaison officer for the Cambridge Union and was elected social steward of Fitzwilliam College Junior Members’ Association (the student body).

After graduating, he took a number of short-term roles, before in September 2013 he became an Associate Consultant for Capgemini, one of the world’s leading providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services, with more than 180,000 employees in over 40 countries. In September 2015, Nicholas was promoted to become a Consultant; he worked with clients including Government departments and a British multinational retailer.

In March 2017, Nicholas visited QE to talk to boys about his humanitarian work. The talk was organised by Year 13 pupil Ché Applewhaite under the auspices of the School’s Forward Thinking Society.

Often, he explained, as a result of the wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, children entering the schools on Chios have received little formal education. The schools therefore use a unique, innovative curriculum that pays special attention to refugee children’s needs. There are English, mathematics and arts lessons, together with vocational courses, including business and public speaking.

At the schools and youth centre, the children can talk openly about their experiences. Prejudices about different nationalities and races are actively challenged, as the schools aim to provide a supportive environment where all children can retain dignity and hope. The schools are also now the largest provider of child protection services on the island. The youth centre offers a kitchen so that the young people can cook their native cuisine: before it was established, there were no cooking facilities in the refugee camps.

While established NGOs would have taken six or seven months to set up a similar project, the schools and youth centre were set up very quickly indeed – for this, Nicholas credits the crucial problem-solving and leadership skills that he gained from his experience in management consultancy. However, he also emphasised that a committed attitude was the greatest asset among the volunteers on the island.

The Chios schools have attracted coverage from major news websites and Nicholas has spoken at universities, to the European Commission and with senior EU officials on panels dealing with refugee policy.

He currently plans to stay in Chios for an indefinite period to run the schools.

Lawyer Peter Petrou is rapidly building a reputation for his international expertise – and especially for his work in Africa.

Peter (OE 1994–2000) launched his own firm, Aspen Morris, in 2012, when, at the age of 28, he became one of the UK’s youngest managing partners. Since then, he has been described by Forbes magazine as the ‘go-to person’ for deals in Africa. And in March 2017, he was appointed to the board of trustees of the African Internship Academy, a social enterprise which aims to connect Africa’s leading employers with the continent’s young talent.

After leaving QE, Pani Peter Petrou took a first in Law at King’s College London and then gained a distinction on the BPP Law School’s Legal Practice Course in 2005–2006.

Peter began his legal career by working for two of the largest law firms in the world. Firstly, he joined US-based Dewey & LeBoeuf, working in its capital markets department, where he was involved in several multi-million and billion-dollar transactions for blue-chip clients. In 2007, he moved to London-based Trowers & Hamlins, which is consistently ranked as one of the leading law firms for its work in the Middle East. During his time there, Peter worked with clients in Africa, Russia, India and the Middle East on corporate, real estate and project finance transactions, as well as in litigation.

Since its 2012 launch, Aspen Morris Solicitors, a full-service firm with offices in Mayfair and Enfield has gained considerable recognition: it was named UK Law Firm of the Year for International Law at the Corporate LiveWire Global Awards in both 2016 and 2015 and was included in The European magazine’s New Europe FAST50 Companies 2015.

Peter has also enjoyed personal success and has won a string of awards. He won Property Investor Africa’s 2014 award for Outstanding Contribution to Real Estate in Africa. He is Vice-President of the American International Commercial Arbitration Court, which contains some of the leading arbitrators from around the world. In 2014, he was appointed Global Legal Counsel to the World Leaders’ Forum in Dubai. He was named in the influential Global Law Expert Guide 2016.

In the 2014 Forbes magazine interview, he was described as having “formidable high level political and business contacts throughout Europe, the US, the Middle East and Africa and [is] seen as the go-to person when doing deals in Africa”.

Peter explained to the interviewer how he first became involved in doing business there after an intriguing meeting with a UAE-based real estate firm in 2007 during which he noticed that Africa was the focus of their five-year business plan. “This conversation interested me greatly as many of my clients’ business plans tended to centre around Europe, the Middle East, the Far East or the US. I sounded out my clients about investing in Africa and was initially met with surprising feedback that, despite Africa's abundance of natural resources and opportunities, the continent was being overlooked by them.”

His interest was deepened further after a period of investigation, including several trips to the continent. “My substantial due diligence told me that I had stumbled across a hidden gem,” he said.

He then began promoting the idea of doing business in Africa to his clients, recognising that he would first have to change their perceptions. “It is important that companies and investors realise that Africa is not a continent to be feared but a continent where they can grow their business and make high returns.”

Peter remembers his time at QE with considerable fondness and gratitude: “I had a great time at QE. At the time, I found the School strict, however, looking back, I think it was perfect and that is why so many people have done so well; it gave me the drive and desire to achieve in life and work hard. I made some great friends who I still speak to today and a lot of what I have achieved to date is due to the education I received from QE Boys.”

He has two young daughters, Isabella and Sophia.

Founder’s Day is in many ways the highlight of the year for the entire Queen Elizabeth’s School community – which emphatically includes our old boys, as well as current QE families. I was so pleased to see and meet so many Old Elizabethans at this year’s celebration, with the numbers swelled particularly by past pupils from recent generations.

I hope to see equally large numbers of past pupils at our next major alumni event, The Old Elizabethans’ Association Dinner on Friday 17th November. It is always an enjoyable occasion and I do hope that many reading this will accept this invitation to come along and hear our guest speaker, Robert ‘Judge’ Rinder (1989–1994).

The preceding day, Thursday 16th November, sees another occasion with heavy involvement from our old boys, our annual Careers Convention for Year 11 boys and their parents. We are always interested to hear from old boys who would be prepared to share their professional experience and expertise: if you are interested, do, please, contact my office.

Founder’s Day 2017 marked 444 years of the School’s history. The day began as usual with our Thanksgiving Service at Chipping Barnet Parish Church, followed by the procession back to the School and the Roll Call and Reading of the Chronicle in front of the Main Building.

Our guest speaker at the service was an old boy, guest speaker Ashley-James Turner (OE 2001–2008), who is today Director of Business Development at CoreAzure, a leading Microsoft UK Partner specialising in Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

After his A-levels, Ashley-James went up to Oxford to read Geography. Upon graduating in 2011, he began work in the field of sustainability and environmental science, before making the transition into IT. But he cheerfully admitted to the congregation: “As anyone who knows me will be able to attest, I am not the most obvious candidate when it comes to technology. As my IT team tell me, the biggest threat to my laptop isn’t malware – it’s me! I still cannot figure out how to connect my iPhone with the car’s handsfree, and heaven forbid should I try to navigate through satellite television…”

He reflected on how technology had moved on in the brief period since he was at QE – “we had white boards that were on rollers…and I can remember when I thought Snake on the Nokia 3310 was surely the greatest technological triumph of the 21st century”. Today, Ashley-James counts the support he is able to provide to educational institutions such as QE in dispersing the latest advances in technology as one of the privileges of his job.

The service featured anthems from composers including Vaughan Williams, Tavener and Rutter performed by School musicians and the School and Chamber choirs. Bible readings were given by current School Captain Oliver Robinson, and his predecessor, Varun Vassanth, while the Headmaster led the prayer of remembrance for old boys who had died recently.

Once the formalities were concluded, the Founder’s Day Fete and the annual Stanley Busby Memorial Cricket Match took place. As is now the custom, the match featured a team of alumni taking on the present School First XI on the Third Field.

This year, it was present pupils who won, but by the narrowest of margins. Batting first, the old boys set 165 for the loss of 8 wickets in 20 overs. The innings highlight was the 91 from 57 balls from Kushal Patel (OE 2009–2016). Director of Sport Jonathan Hart said: “It shows that spending a year out in Australia playing Grade cricket has put him in good touch.”

The First XI lost a couple of early wickets, but a 46 from the in-form Kevin Van der Geest and a 59 from Ayush Shah had the game looking safe.  However, once they were both out, things became very close, Mr Hart reported. “With the game tied and two balls remaining, a sharp piece of fielding from Ram Sivarajah gained a run-out. So it was down to the last ball, and it was the First XI who claimed victory, managing to secure the one run required to win.“

On the Stapylton Field, the fete presented a colourful spectacle at which OEs and all our other guests had ample opportunity to relax and have some fun on an unusually hot early summer’s day. Performances by School musicians contributed to the vibrant, festive atmosphere, as did the stalls selling a wide variety of international cuisines. The fete, which is the culmination of many months of planning by the Friends of Queen Elizabeth’s, raised an impressive total of almost £20,000 for the School this year.

Neil Enright

FUTURE EVENTS

Careers Convention

• Autumn 2017: Thursday 16th November 2017
• To include pre-event reception for participating OE volunteers
• Email Matthew Rose (OE) in the Headmaster's Office to volunteer

OE Association Dinner

• Friday 17th November 2017
• Guest speaker: Robert Rinder (OE 1989–1994)
• Tickets will be available from the online shop in September

For more information about alumni events, please contact the Headmaster's office

Old Elizabethan Aidan Radnedge is Chief Reporter at Metro, which last month overtook The Sun to become the UK’s biggest weekday newspaper by circulation.

Aidan (OE 1988-1995) reports on major national and international events and has worked as a war correspondent and an international undercover journalist. He has also written books on world football and about the Olympics.

He follows in the footsteps of his father, Keir Radnedge, a noted football journalist who has written for World Soccer magazine for around half-a-century and is the author of 33 books. One brother, Noel (OE 1993-2000), is an IT expert, while another, Lyndon, is a senior diplomat with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who was Deputy Head of Mission in Montenegro and is currently stationed in Nigeria.

“I have very fond memories of QE,” says Aidan, who recalls, in particular, “trips to Germany to appreciate and enrich our understanding of friendly counterparts”.  He won QE prizes and commendations for Music, History and Politics and was a Form Captain. School records show that he gained some early journalistic experience by working on the Underne House magazine.

After QE, Aidan went to Birmingham University, where he read English.

He happily recalls attending a QE Dinner Debate ten years after leaving School: “Six of us went as a gang and found former classmates surprised to find so many of us were still friends as adults – as we remain: the best of friends, a good gang.”

Aidan is modest about his career – “apologies to QE for squandering such good grounding and potential” – yet his newspaper has a circulation of close to 1.5 million and is also widely read online.  And he routinely writes front-page leads on the biggest news stories of the day, from the death of three-year-old Syrian refugee, Alan Kurdi, who drowned while trying to enter Europe with his family in 2015, to last year’s Brexit referendum.

“In attempts at boasting mode, I would point towards times as a foreign correspondent in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan; working undercover in crisis-ridden Zimbabwe at a time when foreign journalists were officially banned; and to working in earthquake-hit Nepal, famine-ridden Ethiopia and reporting child-soldier stories in Sierra Leone and Cambodia.”

His sports books have been for major publishers, such as Carlton Books and Dorling Kindersley.

Recruitment expert Santino Boffa is now the global chief head-hunter for a fast-expanding international technology company.

His role as Global Talent Acquisition Manager for Qubit is the latest post in what has already been a highly-varied career.

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

Santino began working for Qubit, a Software as a Service (SaaS) start-up company specialising in personalisation, in March 2016. 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.

Earlier this month, 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.”

Santino this month celebrates the first anniversary of his wedding to Carmela Vitale, who works in advertising.

While life at Queen Elizabeth’s School has continued calmly this term, the country at large has been beset by a string of terrible episodes, including terrorist outrages and the fire at Grenfell Tower in North Kensington. On a number of occasions, we have joined the rest of the nation in honouring the dead and remembering the injured and the bereaved through the observance of a minute’s silence. Such events inevitably leave their mark on young and old alike.

Against this backdrop, I am acutely conscious that young people today face many challenges to their mental and emotional wellbeing in a world that has changed considerably since their own parents were children. The curtailment of outdoor play and the prevalence of family breakdown have been cited by commentators as ‘dehumanising’ factors deleterious to a child’s ability to form loving relationships and to trust people. And while technology has undoubtedly brought benefits, an addiction to smartphones, to social media and to computer games is too often replacing the normal human interaction that previous generations took for granted, reducing young people’s capacity for empathy and leaving them socially isolated. Moreover, research is still uncovering the factors which account for the tendency of some older male adolescents to adopt unhelpful, and even risky, behaviours; the key is likely to lie in understanding how a combination of genes, childhood experience and the environment a boy had in early adolescence affect his behaviour at a time when the brain is undergoing physiological change.

Now, more than ever, it is important that teachers, parents and the boys themselves pay due regard to the mental and emotional health of our pupils. To this end, we already have pastoral strategies in place and are also currently developing a new mental wellbeing policy for the School. Pupils are encouraged to engage with political and social issues, as demonstrated by this term’s mock General Election and by tutor-time discussions that have focused on the recent tragedies. Form tutors have been working on developing in pupils the seven ‘learnable skills of resilience’. Alongside such collective approaches, more intensive support is available for individuals, whether to deal with an existing problem or to intervene pre-emptively at an early stage.

Interestingly, several of our alumni have touched on such themes recently. At our recent Junior Awards Ceremony, the guest of honour, Prashant Raval (OE 2003-2010), spoke about the lessons he had learned from both successes and failures. He underlined the importance of hard work and preparation and of savouring achievements when they come. But, recalling that he had been “quite the perfectionist” while a pupil himself, he had some further wise counsel for our young award-winners: “What I’ve realised, alas, is that in the real world, it is nigh-on impossible to achieve 100% in everything, all of the time, and you will make mistakes along the way. Don’t be afraid of these mistakes – instead, embrace them as opportunities to learn.” Prashant took a First in Economics at University College London and then worked initially as an analyst with UBS Investment Bank. After that, he became a Senior Commercial Manager for Aston Villa Football Club, before taking up his present senior post in Operations for Uber. “At the age of 24, it’s perhaps slightly unusual that I’m already in my third full-time job. But this professional diversity has enabled me to begin to truly understand what makes a job more fulfilling, rewarding and enjoyable than another – and that is the scope for learning,” he said.

Our guest speaker at the Thanksgiving Service on the morning of Founder’s Day, Ashley-James Turner (OE 2001–2008), rightly reminded us that the commitment, sacrifice and diligence of QE parents are core not only to the success of their own sons but of the School in toto. After welcoming many Old Elizabethans on Founder’s Day, I look forward to seeing even greater numbers during the Autumn Term at the OE Association dinner – where our speaker is Robert ‘Judge’ Rinder (1989–1994) – at the Careers Convention and at the Carol Service. It has also been great to connect with many old boys on LinkedIn recently: if you haven’t found me there yet, do please feel free to look me up – I will be happy to hear from you.

More than any other event in our calendar, Founder’s Day represents an opportunity for our whole School community – past, present and even future – to come together. It thus seemed entirely appropriate that this year’s event coincided with The Great Get Together, a weekend of community events around the country inspired by Brendan Cox, the husband of Labour MP Jo Cox, who was murdered last year by a political extremist.

In these troubled times, I have been heartened by the poetic endeavours of Old Elizabethan George ‘the Poet’ Mpanga (OE 2002–2009), who put his mastery of language to service in producing a poem to encourage people to report hate crime, which ends with the words “you can’t fight violence with silence”. The poem, which was commissioned by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to coincide with the anniversary of Jo Cox’s death, reminds us of the need to be vigilant against all forms of hatred. Like many of our old boys, by giving his time to causes greater than himself, George is fulfilling the tenet of the QE mission statement that Elizabethans should seek to “make a contribution to society rather than pursuing only personal gain”.

I wish all Old Elizabethans a peaceful and enjoyable summer.

Neil Enright

Akshay Ruparelia has launched his online estate agency and secured more than half-a-million pounds in investment – just a year after completing his A-levels at QE.

Having previously secured £100,000 as an initial investment, Akshay’s current fund-raising campaign for Doorsteps.co.uk hit its £400,000 target in less than half of its 30-day window, which runs until 27th July 2017.  “It’s great news – and I’m sure some in the QE alumni network may be interested in investing in the remaining few days, especially as our largest backer in this campaign is a vice-chairman of Merrill Lynch.” (Compliance rules prohibit Akshay from disclosing this investor’s identity at this stage.)

“My ambitions did depend upon raising the money, so it seems I will now be pursuing them!” says Akshay (OE 2009–2016).

His interest in starting his own business was already well established while he was at school.

“I had long had an ‘entrepreneurial streak’ about me (I hate using the phrase, though, as it is so abstract), whether I was selling sweets in school (sorry!), colognes, or portable chargers. I wasn’t hugely involved in clubs, but I did found the Young Entrepreneurship Club, which was an upper school competition for developing and nurturing new ideas.

“QE has helped me develop a sense of independence and resilience in a competitive atmosphere. This really gave me the mettle and the determination I needed, built over the years. I have also been plagued by a huge work ethic driving me to pursue the business further, in a gap year!”

Akshay spent the first year of his A-levels working on an app –housesmartapp.com/housesmartapp.co.uk. “The app really confirmed my passion – almost an obsession – for the property market, as I saw how entrenched the market was. It lacked disruption and was archaic in its ways, yet we had grown up seeing shopping, dating, reading, taxis and other markets being disrupted and sometimes overhauled completely.”

He was inspired by the record of online market leader Purplebricks, which in just three years had built a market share approaching that of Countrywide, the UK’s largest estate agent, which had been developed through half a century of acquisitions and brand-building.

“The market is ripe for disruption: it’s simply not every day that there is an opportunity to step into such a revolution!”

“I attempted to build the structure of the app with developers, funded initially by renowned internet entrepreneur Mark Kotecha, who has gone on to become a major supporter of Doorsteps.co.uk.” It was at this point that Akshay hit difficulties. “To cut a long story short, this app was far too revolutionary for the market.”

And so, during the second year of his A-levels, he changed tack. “Without compromising grades, I focused on developing a go-to-market strategy for the business – an online agency with a real branded feel, value proposition and great service. Something the market lacked, in my opinion.”

His A-level results last August presented him with a dilemma: “I secured a place to read Economics at University College London.” (Akshay wanted to stay in London, because he was a carer for both of his parents, who are deaf, and because his only other sibling was moving out to get married.) “But I had also secured a £100,000 angel investment to develop the business in the direction I wanted.” He opted to develop the business.

“After continuously tough work, we have rebranded to a warmer feel and the result is doorsteps.co.uk. Within six months of full incorporation, we have escalated to the point where we are the sixth-largest online agency in UK and 41st of over 12,000 general estate agents, based on size.”

Akshay has hired several customer service staff – a focus which is already bearing fruit. “We are top-rated on Trustpilot and word-of-mouth has allowed organic growth, with revenues growing tenfold in less than six months.”

The current fund-raising to enable further expansion and growth is being conducted through the Crowdcube crowd-funding platform. Further details are available here. Akshay can be contacted by email.

QE contemporaries Chris Shurety and Jerry Golland both received awards in the 2017 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

Chris (OE 1956–1963) received an MBE for services to Music, while Jerry, who was also at QE from 1956 to 1963, was awarded a British Empire Medal for services to Business and Charity.

Chris, who is Artistic Director of Contemporary Music for All (CoMA), has devoted a large part of his life to enabling as many people as possible to get involved in music-making. Having started to play instruments himself from around the age of 40, he founded the late-starter orchestral movement in 1983 by establishing the East London Late Starters Orchestra.

He set up CoMA in 1993 to enable musicians of all abilities to play an active role in contemporary music. Today it has a national network of instrumental and vocal ensembles, an expanding international programme and a unique music collection comprising hundreds of works of new music.

CoMA Chair Tom Service, a leading BBC Radio 3 presenter who also writes about music for The Guardian, said: “No single figure in contemporary musical life is responsible for commissioning as much and inspiring as much new music and music-making as Chris Shurety. But what’s most important is how he has realised his radical vision of a fully open, fully participative musical culture – and how an idea that started with CoMA is now radiating across the whole of musical culture, from schools to professional ensembles. He is one of the essential, inspirational presences in contemporary music, and the most deserving of this recognition!”

Richard ‘Jerry’ Golland, a solicitor who lives in Welwyn Hatfield, helped hundreds of young people during more than a decade with The Prince’s Trust. He continues to work with The Sylvia Adams Charitable Trust, a charity formed with the £5.2m assets of an antique dealer which helps vulnerable children and families affected by illness in the UK and supports development projects in Africa.

Now retired, he spent more than 40 years as a lawyer with a number of firms, having benefited from a QE connection for the vital first step in that successful career. He was also the Hertfordshire Chairman – and, later, East of England Regional Chairman – for the Institute of Directors.

On the announcement of the Birthday Honours last month, Jerry told the Welwyn Hatfield Times: “I am surprised, but tickled pink. It is nice to know that people notice, especially as it is local people who have nominated me.”

“It is a great honour to be nominated for this award,” said Chris. “It really serves as recognition for all those many musicians, both amateur and professional, who have contributed so much of the past 25 years to making CoMA not only a reality, but also such an extraordinarily exciting musical journey.  We have taken our first steps. There is much more to come I am sure.”

Last year, he established the Festival of Contemporary Music for All, a collaboration between CoMA, leading professional ensembles, national music organisations, amateur and youth groups. Taking place in six regions across the UK, this was widely adjudged to have been an enormous success and the Festival is now a biennial event. In 2018 there will be 20 locations, including five across Europe. “The Festival is the biggest thing I am working on now,” he says.

As a teenager, he loved jazz and was a regular at Barnet jazz club, but he traces his passion for classical music squarely back to Queen Elizabeth’s School, beginning with the time when his Geography teacher, R M ‘Sam’ Cocks, a member of the Royal Philharmonic Choir, offered him a free ticket to a Prom featuring Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. He adds: “There was no teaching of musical instruments at the School, but my interest was reinforced through a great collection of LPs, probably owned by Music teacher Charles ‘Dick’ Whittington. He also recalls Biology teacher Eric Crofts practising his bassoon while the boys dissected worms and frogs – “It seemed an entirely natural thing to be doing.”

His passion for Music was clearly contagious: “A small group of us used to set off after school every Thursday for what was then the Radio 3 Thursday Invitation concerts.  Lots of contemporary music there!”

Like many OEs, he speaks affectionately of Head of Art Hew Purchas, who died last year. “I was the only sailor in School, but amazingly the School had a Cadet dinghy at Aldeburgh reservoir, so instead of the usual sports, I used to cycle there on a Wednesday afternoon to be met by [Hew Purchas], who used the occasions to paint. He was lovely, other-worldly. He was influential in making me into a practicing artist [see photo]…and today I have a boat moored on the river Orwell.”

Other activities Chris enjoyed at QE included:

• Geology
• Walking, especially in the mountains. “I started a Mountaineering Club whilst at school but guess it has ceased to be in this world of litigation…”
• Books and projects. “I used to organise the school library’s displays.”

“I’ve always been somewhat extra-curricular,” he says. He adds that he was far from a model pupil: “I rebelled and got regularly punished for it. I was told by my English teacher (Colin Carter) once that I had received more beatings than any other pupil in the School’s history – although presumably he meant its recent history; surely not since 1573! As I left, I know the School was putting those days behind it, with the appointment of the new headmaster, Timothy Edwards, in 1961.”

Leaving School with Biology, Chemistry and Geography A-levels, he went to Southampton University – chosen for the sailing – initially to study Geology, but he later switched to Botany. “I followed this with research into ryegrass ecotypes at Aberystwyth and into the physiology of serum proteins following trauma, at Odstock Hospital, Salisbury.

“Influenced by the politics of the late 1960s and early 1970s, I became a community development worker in Kirkby, Liverpool, then Tower Hamlets and later in Greenwich, where eventually, in 1989, I led on environmental issues on behalf of the Council.”

By this time, however, his decision to take up learning to play the violin, viola and cello in the early 1980s was becoming increasingly significant in his life. Having already founded the East London Late Starters Orchestra in 1983, in 1993 he left Greenwich Council to become Director of CoMA.

Chris has four children in two families – aged 48, 46, 19 and 16 – as well as a number of grandchildren.

“I was born in Welwyn Garden City on 22nd April 1945. My father, Richard John Golland was an old boy at QE before the war [OE 1928–1935]. He was a civil engineer. Dad was working in Tanganyika in 1949 building the deep-water port at Mtwara for the infamous Ground Nut Scheme [a failed attempt by the British government to cultivate peanuts on areas of land in this country, which is now Tanzania]. My mother took me and my sister Mary (who went to the Girls’ School) in 1949 by seaplane to Tanganyika. We stayed there until 1953, when it was decided we should come home as my Swahili was better than my English, and I could not read or write, but could dismantle and clean a Lea Enfield 303 rifle and skin a leopard! I was sent to Franklin House, a prep school in Palmers Green where they beat the Swahili out of me and somehow got me through the eleven plus.  EHJ [Ernest Harold Jenkins, Headmaster 1930–1961] interviewed me and I only got in to QE as Dad was an OE.

“I was known as Jerry at school – and often as Golly. My name can doubtless still be found on some silverware at QE: I seem to remember the 220 yards, 440 yards and the long jump cup. I struggled academically as the prep school had not taught me how to learn and no-one realised this when I was at QE. In the end, I ended up with one A-level and quite a few O-levels.

“Fred Jefferies was then a governor and a solicitor practicing in North Finchley. He wanted a couple of articled clerks, so Nigel Emery from my year and I embarked on becoming solicitors through five years of articles. Nigel managed to pass all of his exams, but I took until 1971 to get through mine. Fred made me a partner and I stayed with Merton Jones Lewsey & Jefferies until 1989, when I was enticed away to Join Taylor Walker in St Albans. In 1995 I was headhunted into Matthew Arnold & Baldwin, where I remained until I retired in 2011. Fred was a very good commercial solicitor, and took me under his wing. I found I had a talent for merger & acquisition work, with a particular interest in corporate governance. That interest eventually lead me into advising charities, which in those days were very badly run and needed a good dose of commercial common sense.

“In 1994, Alan ‘Happy’ Morris, an accountant and an OE, asked me to help him with a client called Sylvia Adams. She had fallen over and broken her hip. She had a fantastic collection of antiques, having been a dealer whose best client was Queen Mary! She wanted to set up a charity, and in 1995 Alan and I formed The Sylvia Adams Charitable Trust with £5.2 million pounds generated from the sale of the collection. At that time the Trust supported disabled people, young people, and those in poverty, both within the UK and abroad in third-world countries. Alan was chairman of trustees and I was the other trustee. Alan resigned as trustee in 2000 as he was unwell; I became chairman and we took in two other trustees, one of whom was a certain Eamonn Harris [Headmaster 1984–1999]. SACT continues to this day, although our work is now a little different.” [The charity currently focuses on helping organisations involved in:  early years’ work with some of the country’s most disadvantaged children; supporting and informing families and communities affected by genetic conditions, and development work in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.]

“Going back to 1995, I was approached by the manager of the Prince’s Youth Business Trust to join their board in Hertfordshire to assess businesses that had applied for support and to make loans to them. I volunteered in this way until 2000 when the then-chairman stood down. I was asked to apply for the role, was appointed, and then told a week later that The Prince of Wales had decided to combine the three trusts he had set up over the years. The work of one of the Trusts was contracted out to the YMCA in Watford by head office, and the other two had their own boards and volunteers. It took a bit of doing, but by the end of 2000, we had one Hertfordshire Board and all went well. As Hertfordshire Chairman, I also sat on the Regional Committee. By 2006 we had undergone another set of changes, including merging with the Bedfordshire Board, and when yet more change was proposed which would mean the end of using volunteers except for fundraising, I decided enough was enough! In my time as chairman we helped over 1,300 young people in Hertfordshire, something I will always be proud of.

“I had been a member of the Institute of Directors since 1990.  I used the Hertfordshire Branch as a good networking opportunity. In 2001, I was asked to join the Hertfordshire Committee, and in 2002, when the then-chairman left the role suddenly, I found myself being put forward as Hertfordshire Chairman. I accepted and after four years was appointed Regional Chairman for the East of England. That role was for three years, and I stepped down in 2009.

“My role at The Sylvia Adams Charitable Trust continues, but I am no longer involved in the other roles. I am a member of Brookmans Park Golf Club and this year am Captain of the Muntjacs, our senior section. Richard Newton and I started in 1C in September 1956, and when we played Porters Park Golf Club this year, Richard was their Captain. These OEs get everywhere! I was a member of the OE rugby club, the athletics team and the cricket club. My other passion is our narrow boat, Albert Henry, that we keep on the Grand Union Canal near Ivinghoe. Life at four miles an hour is a great stress-reliever.

“Trina and I were married in 1970 and are still together. Mum and Dad died in 2006 and 2003 respectively. We have two daughters. Sarah is married and lives in Cambridge. She and Ed have two daughters, Emily, who is eight, and Martha, five. Laura is not married, but has a partner, Al, and they have been together for 11 years. They have two daughters, Niamh, four, and Grace, one. They live in Wellington, New Zealand, which means a long trip every year, and lots of Skyping!”