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London 2012 is almost here – and Queen Elizabeth’s School is hoping for fresh success as well as reflecting on past Olympic glories.

Rower Tom Aggar (OE 1995-2002) recently received confirmation that he is part of the British team for the Paralympics, where he will be defending his single sculls title. Tom won gold at Beijing in 2008, when rowing made its Paralympic debut, and has never been beaten in five years of competition.

“I’m under no illusions that it will be tougher competition than Beijing but competing in a home Games is a great opportunity,” he told BBC Sport.

Tom started rowing as part of a rehabilitation programme following an accident in 2005 that left him paralysed.

Other QE Olympians include high jumper Peter Wells (OE 1939-47), who competed in the Games both at Helsinki in 1952 and at Melbourne four years later.

Peter’s own website tells the story of how he discovered the discipline while at the School: “In his first few years at QE, Peter’s competitive athletics were limited to running distances up to 400 yards. However, there was a high jumping pit at the School with a bamboo bar and sand. He became drawn to this, and spent hours after School trying to clear the bar at varying heights. The school library had a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings from the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and Peter spent hours browsing the book, and attempted to emulate the styles pictured. Unfortunately, what the pictures didn’t show which was the take-off foot, and this led to Peter developing an unusual style.”

This deficiency clearly did not hamper him too much, because he picked up a number of awards while still at the School, starting with the London Public Schools vs Paris athletics fixture in 1946. At the same event a year later, he became the first English schoolboy to clear 6ft, setting a new public schools record.

After leaving school, he began his two years’ National Service in the Army. In 1949, his jump of 6′ 6¼” broke the English Native High Jump record in Bristol – a record which stood for ten years.

After first touring New Zealand when competing for England at the 1950 Empire Games in Auckland, Peter decided to emigrate. In his own words: “The seeds were sown and when the rest of the Empire Games Team caught the boat back to England, [I] had decided that [I] wanted to stay.”

He was New Zealand champion for seven years from 1950/51 to 1957/58 and broke the New Zealand high jump record twice – his December 1954 jump of 6ft 4½in stood for 14 years. He came 12th in Helsinki, 16th in Melbourne, fifth at the 1950 Empire Games and fourth at the 1954 Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver.

Peter still lives in New Zealand. He is married with five children and ten grandchildren, including two with whom he is pictured (right), Sophie and Tim. He keeps fit by cycling 100 miles every week.

A few years before Peter was another QE athlete whose hopes of an Olympic medal were dashed by the outbreak of the Second World War. Ernest ‘Jim’ Nankivell (OE 1926-1934, pictured below), who died last month at the age of 95, was a steeplechaser and was chosen to represent Great Britain at the 1940 Games in Tokyo. These, of course, never took place.

Born in Potters Bar in 1916, he was a member of Southgate Harriers Athletics Club, and competed at county and international level in the late 1930s.

After serving with the Royal Artillery during the war, he returned to Barnet and established a career in woodwork, eventually launching his own company, C&C Woodworking Co and becoming a successful businessman. As well as producing cases and crates for the Ministry of Defence, Jim retained a passion for athletics and designed a 200-metre indoor running track. He was also interested in cars.

“He was always very active,” Gordon Francis, 72, told the Barnet & Whetstone Press. Gordon’s father, Sydney, was a school friend of Jim’s. “He was very strong and very determined. I remember on one occasion asking Jim if he had a good weekend, assuming he would respond with having done a few jobs and a bit of gardening. But, no, Jim got up at the crack of dawn, drove from Barnet to Snowdonia in his Austin Healey, climbed to the top and returned the same day.”

After the death of his first wife, Kathleen, Jim married Pat in 1981 and the couple moved to Bournemouth. Mrs Nankivell said that she had many happy memories from their 30 years together and that her husband had been looking forward to the London Olympics.

• A number of QE boys have won London 2012 Olympics tickets through a popular ballot run as part of the Get Set Network schools group.

Founder’s Day saw the revival of an old QE tradition – a cricket match between the current First XI and an old boys’ team.

The match was last played regularly in the early 20th Century, although it was revived in 1984 for one year only as a retirement ‘gift’ to former pupil and master, Eric Shearly (1920-2005).

Revived permanently by the Headmaster, the match is now to be known as the Stanley Busby Memorial Match, in honour of Mr Busby, who was a QE parent and also a Governor from 1989-2011. His widow, Margaret, was among the VIP guests on the day.

On this, the first time the match has been played in the 21st century, spectators enjoyed a thrilling 30-over game, with the School team emerging as narrow winners.

The OE team – who were mainly in their late twenties and organised by Nick Jones (OE 1996-2004) – batted first. They set a target of 169, losing four wickets and ending their innings with Nick on 95 not out. In reply, aided by Sebastian Feszczur-Hatchett’s 52, the First XI amassed a similar total, winning the match with a four off the last ball of the day, finishing on 171-5.

Cricket remains a strength at QE.  In recent times, teams from Years 7 and 8 have both won the Middlesex Cup, overcoming strong opposition from the best of independent and state schools.  And, for the first time, the School this year played host to the Read Trophy – a mini tournament involving QE and three Lancashire schools.

Nick Jones manifested a passion for both sport and science, especially biology, while still at the School. But he believes that when he joined QE in 1996, few would have thought it possible that he would end up as a marine biologist working in remote locations worldwide.

“Yet here I am some 16 years on, working in a very different career to the majority of other QE alumni. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at QE. A biological interest, combined with a love for the sea, led me to enrol in Marine Biology at Southampton. I become increasingly fascinated with the marine world and after completion of my Master’s degree in 2009, I was awarded a scholarship for an internship at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences to work in the coral reef ecology department.

“Coral reefs are some of the most threatened habitats in the world, as well as some of the most colourful and diverse. Unsurprisingly, I had no desire to move back to the UK and I got the opportunity to establish a new coral reef research programme for the research and conservation company Blue Ventures in Belize, Central America, after finishing my internship.

“Living and working on a desert island in the Caribbean Sea is a magnificent thing, and some of the wildlife I encountered made for awe-inspiring occasions, from swimming with colourful reef fish, endangered manatees and turtles, to sharing the water with potentially dangerous sharks and crocodiles.

“Sharks were what got me into marine biology in the first place,  and when I was offered the opportunity to study Great White Sharks in South Africa it was too good to turn down. The waters just off Cape Town contain the highest number of Great Whites in the world. Despite being one of the most feared animals on the planet, they are very poorly understood and incredibly endangered, with estimates of as few as 3,500 individuals left worldwide. Working with wild animals that can get to over 20 feet in length and weigh over a tonne presents its own challenges: caution is needed in even the most simple situations, but the sight of a Great White in the wild is one of nature’s greatest, and working so closely with them was a dream job.

“However, warmer waters and the lure of diving on coral reefs in remote environments were too great and I was drawn to the Seychelles, working on a cutting-edge project to grow coral reef on large artificial reefs to attempt to replenish the depleted coral reefs of the region. Living on an island that had five times as many giant tortoises as people was incredibly surreal, with regular interruptions by nesting Hawksbill turtles. This long-term project could be a key point of reference to save coral reef environments in the coming years.

“After spending three years in the field I have now returned to England to work for the Environment Agency,” Nick concluded. “One advantage of being back in England is that I could get back into playing cricket. It was a pleasure to be back at the School which got me interested in science and set me on my way around the world.”

• Nick’s photograph here shows him in the Seychelles with a hawksbill turtle.

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.”

Joe Sheffer has been shot at, interrogated and deported, but remains committed to his chosen career as a freelance photo journalist and cameraman based in Yemen, widely known as one of the most dangerous countries in the world.

Joe (OE 2000-2007) specialises in covering news in the Gulf and East Africa, and his news features have appeared in The Times, the Guardian, Private Eye and Global Post. He also works regularly for Channel 4 News.

On finishing at QE Joe fulfilled a passion for travelling and spent seven months touring on his motorbike, called Bianca. His travels took him through Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, China and the Himalayas. During that time he kept a blog, illustrated with his own photography.

After a year back in the UK, at Manchester University – which he describes as “depressing, like being in a prison cell” – Joe took off again, this time for the Pamir Highway, known as the Rooftop of the World, with a plan to cycle the old silk roads. During this trip he pushed himself to the limits – cycling at high altitude in inhospitable, if not hostile, terrain. “The pass to the Tajik border station is over 4,300m, for the first time the air got noticeably thinner and I had to keep going. I felt like vomiting up my breakfast and it took several hours to cycle the 13km to the top of the pass.”  But once again the trip produced a wealth of photography and blogs.

“I realised that there was an opportunity for me to carve out a career as a photo journalist and freelance cameraman, particularly if I was able to tough it out in difficult or unsettled areas,” said Joe. With that in mind, he settled in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, widely acknowledged as one of the poorest and most dangerous countries in the world.

Having completed his Politics and International Relations degree at Manchester, he has spent much of this year covering the war with al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, mostly for Channel 4 News.

“I also covered the protests around the recent Grand Prix in Bahrain,” said Joe. “I was shot in the leg with a rubber bullet and deported from Bahrain – not business-class needless to say!” He spent a few days back in the UK but promptly headed back to the gulf and his pursuit of news.

An original thinker, Joe demonstrated both an interest in current affairs and a strong degree of self-reliance and enterprise while in the Sixth Form at QE. He spoke regularly in Sixth Form debates, performing with great conviction and merit, and was well respected as the sergeant in the CCF and as a Prefect. Alongside his studies for A-levels in Politics, Business Studies and History, he made time for a wide range of activities outside School, including attending local party political meetings, climbing, kayaking, organising work in a press agency, learning Arabic and planning travels in the Middle East.

A charitable trust set up by the family of Guy Joseph (OE 1997-2002) has raised £106,000 this year through a wide range of fund-raising events. Guy was killed in a paragliding accident in the Pyrenees in October 2011, aged 25.

The trust was established to support two causes that Guy was particularly passionate about, namely disadvantaged children and conservation. Members of his family and friends will be travelling to Nepal in the spring to start building work on an Early Childhood Development Centre in his memory.

Guy graduated from Newcastle University with a first-class degree in Marine Biology. From autumn 2009 until the summer of 2011, he lived and taught scuba diving in Labuan Bajo, on the Indonesian island of Flores. Whilst there, he helped set up MantaWatch, an organisation dedicated to protecting the endangered manta ray through tracking, research, management and conservation.

Guy’s Trust honours Guy’s commitment to MantaWatch by funding two annual internships for deserving and academically gifted students to spend a month working with the organisation in Flores. The recipients of the first two Guy Joseph MantaWatch awards, announced earlier in 2012, were Anindita Rustandi and Muhammad Ichsan, described on the Guy’s Trust website as “enthusiastic, motivated and passionate young marine scientists”. Both are students at the Faculty of Fishery and Marine Science at Padjadjaran University, Indonesia. The cost of the two internships for 2012 was £1,765.

Guy lived in Pokhara in Nepal for several months during the winter of 2010-11. He loved the country and its people, especially the children, and had planned to return there. The trust, in partnership with the international Non-Governmental Organisation, ActionAid, is building two Guy Joseph Early Childhood Development Centres (ECDCs), one in Dhikurpokhari and one in Dansingh.

Guy’s parents, sisters and 26 friends are due to fly out to Nepal in March to spend a week starting to build the Early Childhood Development Centre.

“These ECDCs will promote the right to pre-school education for children in this impoverished region of Nepal and help hundreds of children get the start in life they deserve,” said Guy’s mother, Vikki. “The ECDCs will not only provide learning and recreational materials but will also run a wider programme including teacher training, parental education on nutrition, and health and hygiene.”

The School adopted the trust as one of its charities for 2012-13. “We were greatly saddened to hear of Guy’s death,” said Headmaster Neil Enright. “The School supports a number of charities each year and we felt that Guy’s adventurous spirit and commitment to the causes he espoused were very much in keeping with the ethos of the School.”

• The Guy’s Trust website may be reached at www.guystrust.org

When Aaron Tang (2006-2012) was offered a place to read Law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) while he was still in Year 12, it presented him with a serious dilemma.  Should he leave QE a year early to take up this prestigious offer, or stay in the Sixth Form and complete his A-levels?

After a term of study in Hong Kong he finds the course excellent, but says only time will tell if he has made the correct choice. Either way he acknowledges his debt to the School.

Aaron, who was a School Lieutenant in Year 12, ultimately wants to practice Law in Hong Kong, but is finding it quite strange as the majority of his friends and peers are applying to UK universities.

“The idea of going to CUHK was first presented to me when I was in Year 11 at QE, when I attended a seminar in London. The Law Faculty at CUHK was then only five years old and they were hoping to encourage more students from abroad to enrol,” says Aaron.

Aaron signed up for CUHK’s summer school at the end of Year 11 and was impressed by the campus, faculty building and collegiate system. In Year 12, he achieved grade A in all his AS subjects – English Literature, Maths, Economics and Politics – and could potentially have gained a place at a Russell Group university in the UK.

In addition to a tuition scholarship from his faculty, his college (Wu Yee Sun College) has also presented him with the Francis Wong Hok Bun Memorial Scholarship for Distinguished Freshman worth HK$20,000 (approximately £1,600).

“Many have asked why I chose CUHK. I’ve two main reasons: firstly, it’s rare for students to be offered a place a year early and, secondly, I was awarded a full tuition scholarship to read the subject of my choice. I hope these factors will help me stand out when applying for a training contract with an international law firm.”

Aaron, who would like to practice Law in Hong Kong, where his parents live, is hoping that during his time at CUHK, he will also be able to establish useful contacts in the city. He is impressed with the course, which is taught in English, and considers the best part to be when students are required to apply the law to fictional scenarios. “The lectures are extremely thorough and detailed, giving the students a very strong understanding of Law,” he added.

“Although only time will tell, I hope that my choice of coming to CUHK was the right one,” said Aaron. “It goes without saying, all this would not be possible without QE. It still feels quite strange to me to be a former student of the School.”