Sir Robert Horton (Belmont 1947-51), who had a distinguished career in industry, with many positions of responsibility, including Chairman of BP and Railtrack, has died aged 72, on 30th December 2011.
A very sympathetic obituary appeared in the Daily Telegraph on Wednesday 11th January 2012.
Just published: 'THE QUIET GUNNER AT WAR' El Alamein to the Rhine with the Scottish Divisions
by Richmond Gorle MC RA, edited by his son Peter Gorle (Belmont 1947-51), MD of Metra Martech Ltd.
The Quiet Gunner at War is a delightfully fresh and well-written account of war at the sharp end of North Africa, Sicily and North West Europe.
Published by Pen & Sword Books Ltd - Website - Flier
Lord Home,
Dale Vargas
and D J S Guilford
(EFA Vice President)
at a dinner in 1955
David Guilford, who has died aged 80, came to teach at Belmont for a year after leaving Harrow in 1950 and before going up to Christ's College, Cambridge. He had been a boy at Harrow in Druries, whose House Master was Ken Snell, David's uncle, and a mathematical associate of Max Burr. Ken Snell's textbooks, written with his collaborators, Siddons and Morgan, were used by a generation of school children of that era.
Many of the Belmont boys of that period that went to Harrow ended up in Druries: John and Richard Hermon-Taylor, David Moseley, Robert Brown and Dale Vargas. After reading Classics at Cambridge and winning half blues for Eton fives, David taught at Highfield prep school at Liphook, before moving to Eton where he taught classics and was a House Master for fifteen years.
With Martin Shortland-Jones, also formerly of Druries and later also to become an Eton classics 'beak', David won the Kinnaird Cup, the Eton fives national championship, in 1959 and 1960, and again in 1963 with Tony Hughes. David, who remained a bachelor all his life, was a passionate collector, both of Coalport porcelain where there had been a family connection, and postage stamps. Every communication from him had "Save all stamps!" written in his own hand on the back of the envelope.
He retired to Alweston, a village near Sherborne in Dorset.
Timeline book brings Harrow's history up to date
Dale Vargas (E1947-S1952 & Master S1958) has written a handsome new volume entitled "The Timeline History of Harrow School". It is now available and can be purchased at the post-publication price of £25 plus £7 p&p.
If any OBs are in the Hassocks area, both my parents are buried in Clayton churchyard (my Mother's ashes in my Father's grave), and J's ashes are in the same grave.
After my Mother's death in 1998 I planted a yew tree in her memory, with a plaque, which is in the churchyard of St Mary's Streatley on Thames (in front of the church, not behind). Perhaps there are those who might like to pay their respects. [item posted 1 Nov 2010]
Donald Farquhar
Belmont 1944-48
Timothy Farquhar writes that his brother Donald Farquhar died 14th September 2009 in his 75th year.
Dale Vargas (E1947-S1952 & Master S1958) has written a compelling book about Jean Clark Zwolińska, the mother of his Polish born wife Krystyna. After a childhood in Scottish lighthouses and a whirlwind marriage Jean found herself in 1947 Warsaw, a city devastated by the war, with two small children and no knowledge of the language.
Jean not only survived in this unfriendly regime, but became the first port of call for many British ‘lost’ in Warsaw, a role that was recognised by the award of MBE in 1978.This is a story of two very different cultures that have, in the course of history, become entwined in unexpected ways.
Any proceeds from the sale will go to The Alzheimers Society and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.
John Melvill (Belmont X1938-S1944)
We report with regret the sudden death, aged 77, on 12 November 2007 of John Melville (Belmont X1938-S1944) who was a member of the main party evacuated to Belmont Nassau during the war. After Lancing College he had a varied career in theatre and hospitality, then as a mechanical engineer wiht the Worcester Valve Company in the United States. On return to UK, with a business partner he acquired a company making pipe-line valves in Burgess Hill. He retired to Shoreham and was a very enthusiastic supporter of Belmont Reunions. We offer our condolences to his family.
Paul Attlee
1924-2007
From The Times, 27 October 2007, enlarged by Dale:
Martin Attlee was the only son of Clement; Don, Paul and Mark were nephews. All were at Belmont as were two in the next generation, including Martin’s son John, the present Earl.
Paul (d.o.b 27.09.24) went on to Haileybury and Milfield, joined Royal Navy 1943, in minesweepers, trained for a commission at HMS Alfred (Hove!) 1945; then Newton Abbot Agricultural College. He was a farmer in Devon and Cornwall, and wrote for a farming paper. Suffered from Parkinson’s disease for many years.
Roger Day (OB), who has died aged 73, was the saviour of the Monotype printing company, but his business career was sustained alongside a passion for organ playing.
Sir Robert Horton [
X1947-E1951]
writes: Brian Walton went to Belmont before WW2, and Belmont Nassau. He died on 18th March 2007. Brian’s sister, Mrs Ann Attwood, amazingly went to Belmont in Nassau as well. Apparently there were eight girls who accompanied their brothers. She lives in the South of France and at the age of 78 has vivid memories of her time there with Sir Harry Oakes and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The Duchess disliked little girls!
Brian was born in Calcutta in 1928 and shipped back to England aged 4, with his sister, aged 2. He then went to Belmont and they both went to Nassau in 1940, returning 3½ years later. He then went to Merchant Taylors’ and was later commissioned in the Royal Engineers, with whom he served in Malaya, Kenya and Abu Dhabi. When he retired from the Army he joined BP.
His first wife died young leaving a daughter and he later married Ginnie, and they came to live in south Stoke on his retirement. They were both tremendous supporters of the community and it was a dreadful shock when Ginnie was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer just after Christmas, aged only 60. She passed away in March and Brian followed her just three days before her funeral.
His uniform and a bottle of wine adorned his coffin at a humanist ceremony.
He attended the 2003 reunion at Westminster School.
OB News
April 2006
Paul Warburton attended the reunion dinner last June. It is sad to report that shortly afterwards, in August, he was killed in a combine harvester accident. His local walking group have just published a book on local walks in his memory.
Friends of Lawrence Pepler, who died last year, planted a tree at Ditchling Cricket Club in his memory. Sadly it has been vandalised.
A Passage to Nuristan, Exploring the Mysterious Afghan Hinterland,
by Nicholas Barrington (OB) with Joseph T Kendick and Reinhard Schlagintweit
is published by I.B.Tauris.
Jim (Harold Anthony) Jowers (E1942-S1946): Clayesmore and Cirencester Agricultural College; National Service, mainly in Egypt. In 1956 he left to farm tobacco in Northern Rhodesia. In 1963 he returned to do Contract Milking in Sussex and a Farm Manager. Died in 2002.
Richard Jowers (X1943-S1946): When his elder brother Jim left Belmont, Richard, then aged 10, transferred to Vinehall, Robertsbridge. Radley (Head Prefect) and Selwyn College, Cambridge. Trained St Thomas’s Hospital. Registrar Consultant General Physician, before being taken ill and dying, aged just 29, in 1965.
During the war the Jowers family lived in Sussex and chose Belmont as it was close to home, before it moved to Lichfield. Richard's sister Ann can remember one school holiday when the boys stayed up in Lichfield to avoid the aerial ‘dog fights’.
David Sanctuary
Howard
January 22, 1928 - March 25, 2005
Scholarly
dealer, and Old Belmont pupil,whose
interests in heraldry and ceramicscame
together in a definitive study ofChinese armorial porcelain.
See his Times
Obituary (30th May 2005), and the description of his autobiography
(below).
The
Unforgiving Minute
by
the late David Howard
(January 2005)
The
Unforgiving Minute is the autobiography of the late David
Howard, who was at Belmont between Summer term 1937 and Spring
term 1943. He tells of the school’s evacuation from Hassocks
to Lichfield, whence he joined the small party which sailed to
Nassau, Bahamas.
He gives a fascinating description of the adventures of Belmont Bahamas over the following three and a half years, before he returned to the UK to go to Stowe.
David did his National Service in the Coldstream Guards and spent several years in business before turning his hobby into a business and becoming a world authority on Chinese
Armorial Porcelain, a subject on which he has written
several books.
The Unforgiving Minute can be obtained from
The Memoir Club, Suite 11742, 72 New Bond St, London W1S 1RR
email: memoirclub@email.msn.com
Sir Christopher Fraylingappeared
on 'Desert Island Discs'
interviewed by Sue Lawley
on BBC Radio 4 (UK) on Sunday 2nd and Friday 7th November 2003.
OLD BELMONT NEWS
Martin Phillips (Belmont 1953-1960, then Harrow) has been living in Perth, Western Australia since the 1980s. .jpg)
