Viewing archives for Alumni Newsletter

Artificial intelligence expert, neuroscientist and computer game designer & player Demis Hassabis is almost certainly the most financially successful Elizabethan.

Demis sold the start-up technology company he co-founded to Google for a reported £400 million in January 2014.

Demis is still involved with the company – DeepMind – which hit the headlines in spring 2016 when its AlphaGo program beat one of the highest-ranking players in the world in the ancient board game of Go. The program won four games in a five-game series.

While he was at QE from 1988–1990, Demis was already a chess prodigy, reaching master standard at the age of 13, with a rating that made him the second-highest rated U14 player in the world. He captained many of the England junior chess teams.

He later went on to Christ's College in Finchley, where he took his A-levels aged 16 and then began his computer games career with the British company, Bullfrog Productions. At 17, he was co-designing and lead-programming on the classic game, Theme Park.

He left Bullfrog to read for the Computer Science Tripos at Queens' College, Cambridge, taking a double first. Later in his career, he gained a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from University College London and continued his research in neuroscience and artificial intelligence (AI) as a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at UCL and as a visiting scientist jointly at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.

Following his graduation from Cambridge, he worked as a lead AI programmer on the Lionhead Studios title Black & White. He then founded Elixir Studios in 1998, a London-based independent games developer. He expanded the company to 60 people, signing publishing deals with Eidos Interactive, Vivendi Universal and Microsoft, and was the executive designer of the BAFTA-nominated Republic: The Revolution and Evil Genius games.

As well as designing games, Demis was also an expert player, winning the Pentamind world games championship a record five times before retiring from competitive play in 2003. He is an expert player of games including chess, the Diplomacy board game and shogi board games and poker. The Mind Sports Olympiad website describes him as probably the best games player in history.

In April 2005, his company's intellectual property and technology rights were sold to various publishers and the studio was closed. Demis left the games industry and turned his attention to neuroscience, winning wide acclaim from experts in the field for his research into memory and amnesia. His work was listed as in the top 10 scientific breakthroughs of 2007 by Science magazine.

In 2010, he co-founded and became Chief Executive Officer of London-based DeepMind Technologies, a company working on machine learning, which is a branch of computer science. DeepMind specialises in building ‘general algorithms’ – algorithms that are capable of learning for themselves directly from raw experience or data and are general in that they can perform well across a wide variety of tasks straight 'out of the box'.

Following Google's acquisition of DeepMind, he is now Vice President of Engineering, leading the company’s general AI projects. Google DeepMind’s website proclaims that its aim is to ‘Solve intelligence: use it to make the world a better place.”

Interviewed by the Evening Standard shortly after the deal, Demis said he had no plans to leave London, where he enjoyed living with his wife – a molecular biologist – and two young sons. “I think we punch above our weight,” he told the reporter. "We have some of the world's best universities producing all these amazingly smart people, scientists and programmers who want to work in technology that might change the world. There are not as many opportunities in the UK as in San Francisco, so if you're that kind of company and you base yourself here you have a lot more available talent of the highest calibre that is looking for something more interesting than going into finance or down the usual routes in London."

Demis was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) in 2009 for his game design work. He was awarded the prestigious Mullard Award by the Royal Society in 2014. He was included in the 2013 Smart 50 list by Wired, listed as the third most influential Londoner in 2014 by the Evening Standard and in the Financial Times' top 50 entrepreneurs in Europe.

Johan Byran is forging a successful career as a GP – and achieving remarkable feats in marathon-running as he battles his rheumatoid arthritis.

Johan (1997–2004) studied Medicine at University College London and now practices as a GP in Enfield. He also works in palliative medicine at St Francis Hospice near Romford in Essex.

His JustGiving page explains the connection between his rheumatoid arthritis – an autoimmune disease that causes inflammation in the joints – and long-distance running: “I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 18, just weeks before I was due to go to Medical School. At 18 years old, most people probably thought they were invincible and, sure enough, so did I. However, in a matter of weeks, I was dependent on my brother to care for me in university halls. It was hardly the life of Med School I had imagined. I was destroyed physically and felt powerless to change my circumstances.

"My turning point was running my first marathon in 2008 – the Flora London Marathon. The significance of completing the race was that at one point I would struggle to walk 200 yards down the street to get to my lectures – so the idea of running 26.2 miles was my challenge to not allow this disease to dominate my life. What I took away from that day was that I was able to overcome my physical adversity through a great support network and determination."

In the following years, he has completed multiple marathons as well as an Ironman triathlon and the London2Brighton 100km run. In 2015, he ran 12 marathons in 12 months to raise money for Arthritis Research UK.

Johan continues to run – he has his sights set on the famous Marathon des Sables in the Sahara desert, which is billed as the ‘toughest footrace on earth’. Run over six days, it is more than 150 miles long and the event’s website spells out to potential competitors what they can expect: “Conditions: Stating the obvious – it will be hot. Very hot. Midday temperatures in the Sahara can get up to 120 Fahrenheit. So you will need something on your head. But your feet are just as important, if not more so. You will be running or walking on uneven, rocky or stony ground, with up to 20 per cent of the distance in sand dunes.”

In preparation, Johan has been training in a special laboratory-type environment which emulates the desert’s heat. His friend and QE contemporary, Jonathan Ho, who is a filmmaker, is shooting a documentary about him, interviewing him in various locations – in a classroom at QE, where the photo above was taken, and also at University College London, his old university, and in Morocco.

After a varied early career, Dr Robert Aldridge is establishing a national reputation for his research in the sphere of public health.

Robert (OE 1988–1995) has been a management consultant in the City, a hospital doctor and is now a medical academic.

On leaving QE, he went to Nottingham, where he gained an MEng degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1999. He then spent some time in management consultancy, before a volunteering trip to India inspired him to make a career change.

“After my engineering degree, I took a year out to volunteer in India and, whilst there, I worked with several doctors in very poor areas of the country, delivering services and education to women and working children,” Robert said. “It was during this time that I realised that medicine was actually what I wanted to do.”

He returned to England to take up an existing job offer from Accenture and worked for a period in the investment banking industry, but eventually decided that he needed to follow his true vocation.

He duly went to University College London, gaining his degree in Medicine in 2007. He was then appointed a junior doctor at the Royal Free Hospital and at Barnet and Chase Farm. He subsequently trained as a Public Health doctor in Bromley Primary Care Trust, Bromley Local Authority and Public Health England.

Robert is now an Academic Clinical Lecturer at the Institute of Health Informatics, University College London, and also works in the Data Science team at Public Health England.

Research has been a key interest, and he has written numerous scientific articles in peer-reviewed publications and various policy documents for the Government, including chapters of the Chief Medical Officer’s annual report. In 2010, he gained an MSc in Epidemiology at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“I’m interested in public engagement with scientific research and conducted a project in which I worked with schools across England to see whether schools absence data can be used to detect levels of influenza in the community,” he says.

“My current and future research focuses on infectious disease epidemiology and the health inequalities faced by vulnerable, and often invisible populations such as homeless, migrants, prisoners and intravenous drug-users.

In 2016, he won a national medical prize – the 2016 Lancet Young Investigator award – for his research into tuberculosis among vulnerable people. He gained the award after presenting work from his PhD on Screening of tuberculosis in migrants before entry to the UK: a population-based cohort study. The award, which he won jointly with Dr Vanessa Wong of the Cambridge Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, included a £2,500 prize and the opportunity to write an editorial for The Lancet on the wider implications of his research. Robert describes the award as a “great honour”.

He spends most of his spare time with his young daughter, Hazel, “who keeps me grounded”, he says.

Perseverance has paid off for Richard Davis with the publication of his first book, a hard-boiled thriller set in the USA.

The 2016 novel, False Prophet, was inspired by childhood holidays that Richard spent in the US, when he developed a taste for American thrillers. Its publication marked the culmination of several years’ effort by Richard. “There are no short cuts to writing a novel,” he said. “The hard way is the only way if you want to produce something worthwhile.”

On the book’s publication, Richard (OE 2001–2008) was chosen by Amazon to be in its monthly book promotion alongside blockbuster authors Harlan Coben, Clive Cussler and Marcia Clark.

He shares a publisher with such famous names as Eric Idle and the New York Times best-selling crime novelist C J Lyons.

After leaving QE, Richard took up a place reading English Literature and Language at University College London. Graduating with a first-class degree in 2011, he then took an M.Phil in American Literature at Queens’ College, Cambridge, which he completed in 2012.

“I wrote a novel while taking my Master’s, though it hasn’t seen the light of day,” he says. But Richard persevered: “After university, I set about writing a different type of novel – an American-style thriller. This involved in-depth research into the FBI, cultic groups, psychopathy and weaponry – and eventually led to a 100,000-word manuscript.”

This gained the attention of leading London literary agent The Hanbury Agency, and a new, up-and-coming publisher, Canelo.

False Prophet is about Saul Marshall, a con-artist-turned-FBI-agent, who finds his son taken hostage by a serial-killing cult obsessed with having victims take their own lives. The promotional material accompanying its publication states: “Fast-paced, relentless and brutally exciting, False Prophet marks the entrance of a major new thriller talent.”

In an interview with the Crime Thriller Fella blog, Richard said: “I am lucky enough to have travelled a good deal around America: I have visited some 14 states, and have been to most major locations featured in False Prophet – New York, Boston, Washington DC. In fact, I have stayed in a couple of the hotels I write about.”

His own favourite authors include G K Chesterton, Patricia Highsmith, Paul Auster and Lee Child – like Richard, another British author who is currently the biggest writer of American thriller fiction.

Richard, pictured here in unsmiling pose as instructed by his publisher, says he spends most of his free time reading.

Jonathan Ho is establishing a career as a film and video-maker, embracing both the factual and the fictional.

After School, Jonathan (OE 1997–2004) studied at London College of Fashion for a year, then went to Kent Institute of Art and Design (now known as UCA Rochester), where he gained a degree in Photography.

His portfolio includes many short films and documentaries, as well as a number of music videos for acts including the English drum & bass band, Rudimental. He has filmed fashion shoots for top names such as Victoria Beckham. And Jonathan has shot corporate videos for blue-chip organisations including Marks & Spencer and Ernst & Young.

His location filming has included a trip to Iceland in 2016 for a documentary and he has also worked on his own feature film.

One project with special personal interest has been the making of a documentary about the marathon-running exploits of his friend and exact QE contemporary, Johan Byran, and about the determination of Johan, a medical doctor, to beat his own rheumatoid arthritis.

Besides his freelance work, Jonathan and a team of former colleagues have been involved in setting up their own production, HOP Productions.

In his free time, Jonathan likes to keep active by playing various sports.

We are currently living through turbulent times politically, but here the term has progressed calmly as normal. We continue to hold steadfastly to our values and will ensure that Queen Elizabeth’s School remains an open, tolerant community in which all can express their views.

The highlights of the Summer Term included, as ever, our Founder’s Day. The day’s formal elements proceeded smoothly, starting with the thanksgiving service at Chipping Barnet Parish Church, followed by the procession of staff and boys back to School and the reading of the Roll Call and School Chronicle. There was then the chance for everyone to relax at the afternoon Fête on the Stapylton Field.

It was a pleasure to welcome many Old Elizabethans during the course of the afternoon, including the cricketers who played against our current First XI in the annual Stanley Busby Memorial Cricket Match towards the end of the day.

In the morning, our Guest of Honour for the Founder’s Day thanksgiving service was an old boy, Edmund Watson. Since then, I have had the pleasure of welcoming another alumnus as a guest speaker: Benjamin Lichman presented the awards at our Junior Awards. You can read more about Edmund, Benjamin and about the cricket elsewhere in this e-newsletter.

This summer sees the departure of three senior members of staff who will be remembered by many Old Elizabethans.

Fauziah (‘Gee’) Scarisbrick was appointed by Headmaster Timothy Edwards in January 1983 after graduating from the University of Kent. She became Assistant Head of Mathematics in 1994 and then Head of the department in 1999. As the longest-serving teacher, Mrs Scarisbrick has for some time been Mother of the Common Room and is the only member of staff to have worked with four Headmasters.

Her long career at QE has seen the Mathematics department excel, even by the high standards of this School. She demonstrates great diligence and firmness of purpose, but also a genuine care for the boys in her charge. In June 2014, her service was recognised with an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Also departing are Tim Bennett and Mark Peplow. Tim, who left QE at half-term, joined us in 1996 and rose to become Assistant Head with responsibility for Pastoral Care. Mark Peplow has been with us since 2002, rising to be Head of Games. They have been two huge presences in the PE and Games Department over the years.

Mark, with his trademark dry wit, has presided over QE Games during a period in which we have had many successes in a variety of sports. He has taken a lead role in our major sports, as well as athletics and Eton Fives.

With responsibility for pastoral care and therefore discipline, Tim was well known for his toughness when necessary, but always tempered with a sense of humour and the ability to defuse a difficult situation with his charm.

Both Mark and Tim were involved in the Read Cricket Trophy, which we won again this year. Both have been key figures in the running of the QE Rugby Sevens competition. And both went on the first Sri Lanka combined cricket and rugby tour in 2014. Indeed, Mark is on the current tour, leaving the UK in the last week of term.

All three colleagues leave with my very best wishes for the future.

As the roll-out of our 2012–2016 School Development Plan has been drawing to a close, our subject heads and senior staff have spent a considerable time this term visiting lessons to evaluate them, and the staff as a whole have been reflecting on the progress made in the past four years. Now we look forward to our new School Development Plan, covering 2016–2020. Full details will be announced next term, but it is already clear that the importance of character attributes such as resilience will be to the fore.

Giving time to causes greater than ourselves is one of the ways in which resilience can be developed. We seek to encourage this through our voluntary service programme and, more broadly, in our mission to produce young people who are responsible as well as confident and able. Our emphasis on enrichment through extra-curricular activities also assists greatly in the fulfilment of that mission, with pupils’ wider involvement in School life outside lessons contributing heavily to their development as rounded individuals.

An important innovation this term has been the launch of our Enrichment Week. This featured a number of special activities l outside of the normal curriculum, with the aim of developing in Years 7–10 boys a range of academic, personal and thinking skills. I am pleased to report the week included contributions from Old Elizabethans. Poet and performer Anthony Anaxagorou (OE 1994–1999) led two workshops for the English department, while artist David Shillinglaw (OE 1994–1999) ran a competitive, inter-House Art activity.

In order to deliver our enrichment programme we need high-quality facilities, and we continue to invest in our Estates Strategy. I am pleased to say that work started on the Heard Building last month. When complete, the building will be entirely reorganised and structurally strengthened, and will incorporate a new link with the Fern Building. It will provide a self-contained home for our English Department, with eight classrooms and offices.

The project costs of more than £1m are being met exclusively by charitable giving through the Friends of Queen Elizabeth’s – another remarkable feat of organisation and generosity by FQE and our families and supporters. The Heard Building is named after George Heard, Chairman of Governors before our current Chairman, Barrie Martin MBE. It dates back to the 1990s and was, in fact, one of the very first projects to be funded by FQE. This extensive refurbishment therefore bears testimony to some 20 years of liberal and resolute support for the School on the part of the Friends.

I wish all our alumni an enjoyable summer.

Neil Enright

The Summer Term saw two alumni invited to return to the School as special guests.

Dr Edmund Watson (OE 1999–2006) was Guest of Honour at the Founder’s Day thanksgiving service, while Dr Benjamin Lichman (OE 2000–2007) graced the stage at the Junior Awards Ceremony.

Edmund is currently a junior doctor and member of the Royal College of Physicians. Having excelled at QE, at Brasenose College, Oxford, and in his subsequent medical training, he hopes to become a consultant haematologist.

Characteristically modest, he began the main part of his address to the congregation at Chipping Barnet Parish Church by saying: “I still see myself as a ‘work-in-progress’, and I definitely am not sure that I deserve the honour of being invited to speak to you here today.”

He then told the boys: “As you go through the rest of your careers at QE, use those wonderful brains of yours to think, and to make the most of this remarkable School environment – whose 443rd Birthday we celebrate today – to help you become masters of asking good questions.” Those questions should be about themselves, about others and about the world around them, he said.

The service featured the traditional prayers for the School, as well as Bible readings, hymns and music by Vivaldi, Brahms, Rutter and Hubert Parry. Afterwards, the boys, staff and guests processed to the School, where, in time-honoured fashion, Headmaster Neil Enright gave the roll call in front of the Main Building. The School Chronicle was also read aloud – a tradition started by Ernest H Jenkins, in 1930.

As well as Edmund, the VIP party included: his wife, Emma, and parents; the Chairman of Governors Barrie Martin and his wife, Perin; Rector of Chipping Barnet Reverend Chris Ferris; and the Deputy Mayor of Barnet, Cllr Sury Khatri and his wife and Deputy Mayoress, Tara Khatri.

While at QE, Edmund was a gold medal-winner in the Biology Olympiad and won distinctions in his Advanced Extension Awards, before going on to Oxford to read Medicine. As an undergraduate, he won various Collections prizes and earned Exhibitioner status during his first year, following this up with a Scholarship in his second, before graduating with a first-class degree in his third.

“I had a fantastic time at university – Brasenose is a very friendly college and I was very lucky to encounter a great group of friends, as well as the girlfriend who is now my wife,” he says. He took the opportunity to indulge his love of music and enjoyed singing with the Brasenose Choir, becoming a Choral Scholar. He also played clarinet regularly with the university’s Wind Orchestra, performing in locations as varied as Northampton, Glasgow and Israel.

During his post-graduate clinical training at Oxford, he was awarded a distinction in his Finals and a Prize Viva. He particularly relished his elective study placements in Malaysian Borneo and the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, USA. He continued to pursue his interest in singing, forming an a capella choir group, The Ultrasounds, and devoted many hours to his role as treasurer for the Osler House Club, a 450-strong society for medical students.

He began working as a junior doctor in 2013 at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, and whilst there he joined the Gloucester Choral Society. In the following year, he moved on to north Bristol’s Southmead Hospital, before taking up his current employment with North West Thames Foundation School, which includes ‘rotations’ in clinical haematology, cardiology and renal medicine at the Hammersmith and Harefield Hospitals.

Edmund was able to deliver some teaching in his final year of Medical School, as well as designing a two-week course for fourth-year medical students. He has continued to teach as a junior doctor, delivering various ‘bedside teaching’ sessions to Bristol University students. Having realised early in his medical studies that he enjoyed research, he is keen to be involved in it and in education in the future, and plans to apply for a Teaching Fellowship next year.

In his introductory speech at Junior Awards in the School Hall earlier this month, the Headmaster thanked Dr. Benjamin Lichman for attending and spoke of the importance of reflection. Alluding to the annual appraisals that are a standard feature in the modern working world, Mr Enright said: “This time to stop and reflect is valued by both employers and employees alike, giving the opportunity to ask the questions that American poet and writer Carl Sandburg felt were so important to reflect on: ‘Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going?’”

Benjamin arrived at Junior Awards just a few days after himself being a recipient at an awards ceremony – in his case, receiving his doctorate in Biochemistry from University College London.

Writing his thesis, which comprised 316 pages and 86,729 words, had been a lengthy and laborious process, he told the assembled boys: “The whole four years involved working on an enzyme found in plants which helps create some of humanity’s most valuable medicines. You study so many different subjects. I think you are very lucky – I just spent the last four years studying a single molecule!”

The ceremony rewards boys in Years 7, 8 and 9 for their achievements. It features musical interludes which this year included pieces by Mozart, Fauré and Devienne. VIP guests included the Mayor and Mayoress of Barnet, Cllr David Longstaff and Ms Gillian Griffiths.

Benjamin recalled his own first academic award: a Year 7 prize for public-speaking. Praising the School, which he said had been “central to my journey”, he urged the prize-winners not to be complacent in the future and warned them against excessive competitiveness and viewing their successes in comparison with others.

And, like Edmund Watson and the Headmaster, he urged the importance of asking questions. He illustrated this by recalling in some detail the famous story of Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin. Fleming, instead of throwing away agar plates which had accidentally become contaminated, was curious enough to ask what the effects of the fungal growth had been on the bacteria that had previously been spread on the plates. “And experiment followed by question followed by experiment (and on and on) eventually led to…the birth of the golden age of antibacterials, which saw the elimination of many types of infectious disease.”

It was important, too, not to stop asking questions, Benjamin said. The question “Are antibiotics good for human health?” would have been answered with a simple “yes” ten years ago, but, as the use of too many antibiotics has enabled some bacteria to gain resistance and become superbugs, it is now clear that that answer is not entirely true.

Benjamin recently took up a post-doctoral appointment in one of the world’s leading groups in the study of natural plant products.

Paul March is putting his expertise as a lawyer with nearly two decades of experience of the media and entertainment industry to good use in his own talent agency.

London-based Marchy Management provides representation and professional services for radio, television and media clients.

Paul (OE 1985 – 1991) was a prefect at QE and showed both commitment and early promise. He threw himself into School life, getting involved in cricket, tennis, journalism and debating. His report card describes him as “an excellent character”, adding: “This boy did a great deal for QE – a true friend of the School throughout.” Current Head of Politics Liam Hargadon remembers him as one of his earliest Politics students.

After A-levels, he went to Leeds University to read Law, where he took up student radio and continued to work in journalism. He went on to law school and gained a Master’s degree in Law (intellectual property) at University College London. He then became a trainee with Covent Garden-based Clintons, a boutique law firm specialising in the entertainment, digital media and creative industries digital media.

For the next 16 years, Paul was a key member of the practice, advising celebrities, musicians, writers, broadcasters, DJs, format creators, radio and television executives and independent production companies. A member of the Board of Trustees of the Radio Academy, he has for many years written on media and legal matters for publications including The Guardian, Herald and Broadcast. In 2013, he wrote a practice paper on television format rights for LexisNexis, the international legal publishing company.

In the same year, he established Marchy Management. “I felt that there was room in the market for an agency focused primarily on broadcasters and presenters and welcomed the opportunity to apply legal and business affairs skills and experience more creatively than the context of private practice and a purely law focus allowed,” he says.

Clients currently on the agency’s books include broadcaster Justine Greene, the newsreader and writer on BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 6 Music, as well as Dave Kelly and Lucy Horobin, who jointly present the drivetime show on Heart London.

Paul has maintained his interest in Politics: the posts on his blog tackle topics such as Brexit and Donald Trump.

He has also maintained his friendship with the School. He has helped at various QE careers events, providing current pupils with information and guidance on legal careers. Recently, he was instrumental in securing a visit to the School by the Daily Telegraph’s Senior Political Correspondent, Tim Ross, who gave boys an insider’s view of the 2015 General Election in a lunchtime talk to the Politics Society. Paul accompanied his friend, Tim, on his visit.

Although not an academic historian, Hugh Small has written books on Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War that have been acclaimed by experts for challenging long-held views.

Hugh (OE 1954–1961) conducted extensive original research for the two volumes and has taken part in several broadcast programmes on his findings.

The books were written after Hugh had already enjoyed a distinguished career that took him to California’s Silicon Valley and to Chile and France and saw him advising governments in Europe and Asia on the liberalisation and regulation of the telecommunications industry.

He studied sciences in the Sixth Form at QE and then read Physics and Psychology at Durham, graduating in 1966. He began his career as, in his own words, a “junior suit” at Ford’s Dagenham plant.

From 1976 to 1981, he was the principal network architect for the world’s first commercial internet, the SITA multi-airline reservations network, where he designed routeing and flow control procedures and commissioned packet-switching hardware and software.

From 1983 he became a partner in two US strategic management consulting firms, Arthur D Little and A T Kearney, managing telecommunications industry consulting teams. He stayed in this role until 1999.

In 1990 as a personal pro bono initiative he lobbied for stronger regulation of British Telecom (BT) to prevent the company from delaying investment in digital exchanges. The Thatcher administration implemented his recommendation in the face of fierce opposition from BT’s Board of Management and their party-political supporters. Notwithstanding this opposition, BT’s share price trebled in 18 months as the regulation forced upon the company enabled competitors to generate new mobile telephone traffic on BT’s network. “The lesson is that industry-specific regulation can be beneficial to shareholders even when management’s natural reaction is to lobby against it,” says Hugh.

He has had a long-standing interest in Victorian public health reform. Florence Nightingale, Avenging Angel was first published in 1998. Described as a “masterly piece of historical detective work” by medical historian James le Fanu in the Daily Telegraph and as a “shattering blow” by Nightingale’s biographer, Mark Bostridge, it details the sanitary disaster in Florence Nightingale’s wartime hospital and explains why the government covered it up against her wishes. The book goes on to look at her work after the war to put the lessons of the tragedy to good use to reduce the high mortality levels among the civilian population at home – the work which in fact established her reputation in her own lifetime. A second edition of the book, published in 2013, added more detail of her journey from tragedy to triumph. Among the most recent programmes to feature Hugh’s research was BBC 4’s The Beauty of Diagrams, presented by Professor Marcus du Sautoy.

Hugh’s next book, published in 2007, was The Crimean War, Queen Victoria’s War with the Russian Tsars. It had a similarly striking impact: the Journal of the Crimean War Research Society stated: “One of the most original and thought-provoking books on the Crimean War…He has shaken the foundations of ‘accepted knowledge’ on the war.”

Hugh was until recently Secretary of the Westminster branch of Living Streets, the national charity that campaigns to promote walking and cycling, and for improvements in the urban environment to encourage this. He lives in Marylebone and is a committee member of the St Marylebone Society, the area’s oldest amenity society.

Last year, he stood as the Green Party candidate for the Cities of London and Westminster constituency in the General Election, and retained his depoist. He also writes a blog on political economy.

Hugh is a widower with two daughters and five grandchildren.

Copies of both his books now grace the shelves of the School’s Queen’s Library.

Now a successful photographer living in the Austrian Tyrol, Gavin Otter is a prime example of how careers and lives can develop in unexpected directions.

Although neither a linguist nor a sportsman at School, Gavin (OE 1984–1989) is now fluent in German and an enthusiastic marathon-runner, skier, climber and snowboarder.

He is also a qualified paramedic with the Austrian Red Cross, having come second in his class in a course that was taught entirely in German. He taught himself the language, simply learning it from those around him and from the media.

Upon leaving School, Gavin had originally planned to go first to university and then into the army, but ended up doing neither. “I don’t regret that at all. I have studied other things, which I believe have benefited me more.”

He worked in marketing & sales and originally came to Austria with a former business partner to set up an events company. “We had that for seven years and my business partner still runs that, but I moved on purely because it was not making me any money. “I learnt a lot, though, and it was fun. You have never really learnt anything until you fail: just stand up and do something even better.”

He first started developing an interest in photography in around 2007 and has been a professional photographer for some three years. “It evolved into something that is now a business,” he says. He works on a variety of assignments, including weddings, documentaries and commercial projects and says: “I am fortunate to be surrounded by some of Austria’s most stunning scenery, as well as some fascinating people.”

In a recent project for his blog, A Month of Colour, he photographed subjects ranging from his two small boys at play to summer views of Austrian mountains and, from a visit back to the UK, a picture of the QE main building.

His advice for others considering a move into a similar career is: “Make sure you have another source of income as well; you are not going to be David Bailey overnight and it takes a while to build up a business. It is fun, though, building a business and watching it grow.

“If there’s anything I would like to pass on, especially to the boys at School currently, it’s this: don’t quit – you don’t know what you are going to do tomorrow and anything can happen. You can plan your life ahead…but things develop and you have to look for opportunities and go with what you feel is right.”