Life in the boarding house is, at first glance, a triumph of routine over chaos. On closer inspection, it is chaos that has agreed, temporarily, to wear a timetable. Each day begins not with inspiration but with the blunt insistence of the Form 8’s alarm clock, a device whose sole moral purpose is to remind us that sleep is a privilege, not a right. Beds are made and dorms inspected, thus initiating even the most reluctant boarder into the unromantic but essential business of self-reliance. By breakfast, one has already learned that civilisation is a fragile construct, upheld by punctuality, toast and the ever-sunny disposition of our chef, Sinisa.

Following Macbeth’s success as last year’s summer play, and the more recent Form 8 production of The Three Musketeers in French, it was only a matter of time before someone asked the question, why not give the boys real swords? Apparently, this is considered unwise, but Mrs Fairhurst found the next best thing: the British Fencing Core Coaching Programme.

Within our Pre-Prep, we work hard to develop Creative, Curious, Collaborative, and Self-confident learners. We achieve this by taking a holistic approach, in which every child is known deeply, and their uniqueness celebrated and encouraged.

As your child progresses through the school, they will come across different types of assessment. Of course, as we are a selective school, your child will have done an assessment before they joined us – though if they were young when they arrived they may not have realised it! We do this to make sure that all the pupils here will be able to take advantage of what we have to offer.

“That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into!”

I have always been a fan of the stars of early cinema. They took a brand-new technology and used it to combine what they knew already (in many cases, clowning) with new ideas, creating a whole new genre of creativity. Of course, for the first generation of cinema actors, it was not possible to synchronise pictures with sound – but if you watch their films you really don’t need it. They developed a method of acting in which they communicated everything they wanted to say through tight plotting, gestures and some wonderful facial expressions. There was also the new, and related, profession of being a cinema pianist or organist, who had to improvise music to accompany the film, often with added sound effects (literal “bells and whistles”) stuck to the top of the organ. Some silent movie stars stopped work in the 1930s, when sound arrived, but others kept going – and I love that even into the 1940s, Laurel and Hardy movies don’t really need the dialogue.

The embroidery club offers our children a calm and creative environment where they can learn a traditional craft while developing important learning skills. The club allows pupils to work at their own pace and enjoy the process of creating something by hand.