Westminster School
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Westminster School |
|
Motto | Dat Deus Incrementum |
Established | 11th century or before Refounded in 1560 |
Type | Boys' independent school Girls in sixth form. |
Headmaster | Dr M S Spurr |
Founder | Elizabeth I (1560) |
Students | 742 |
Location | Little Dean's Yard, London SW1P 3PF Westminster, London England |
Campus | Westminster, London |
Website | Westminster |
Little Dean's Yard from Liddell's Arch |
The Royal College of St Peter at Westminster (almost always known as Westminster School) is one of Britain's top boys' independent schools and one of the nine British public schools, as set out in the Public Schools Act 1868. It is located next to Westminster Abbey in central London, with a history stretching back beyond the 12th century. Its A-level results in 2004, 2005, 2006 and other years over the preceding two decades have been among the highest in the country. The school traditionally aims to help development of independent and individual thinking.The Head Master since 2005 is Dr Stephen Spurr, and there are currently 742 boys and girls, of whom around a third are boarders; most go home for the weekends, after Saturday morning school. Boys are admitted to the Under School at age seven or eleven and the main school at age thirteen. Girls are only admitted to the two senior years of the school (ages 16–18).
Previous Head Masters include Tristram Jones-Parry, John Rae, Richard Busby, William Camden, Nicholas Udall, John Freind, and William Gunion Rutherford.
Contents |
[edit] History
The School had become a Public School (and therefore available to members of the public so long as they could pay their own costs) by 1179, when the Benedictine monks of the Abbey at Westminster were required, by decree of Pope Alexander III, to provide a charity school. It is likely that schoolboys were taught by the monks even before then, and parts of the School's buildings date back to the eleventh century.
This arrangement changed in 1540, when Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of the monasteries in England, but personally ensured the School's survival by his royal charter. The College of St. Peter carried on with forty "King's Scholars" financed from the royal purse. Although during Mary I's brief reign the Abbey was reinstated as a Roman Catholic monastery, it was redissolved on Elizabeth I's accession, and neither of these events had a major impact on the School. The School occupies a number of the buildings vacated by the monks.
Elizabeth I refounded the School in 1560, with new statutes to select 40 Queen's Scholars from boys who had already attended the school for a year. Queen Elizabeth frequently visited her scholars, although she never signed the statutes nor endowed her scholarships, and 1560 is now generally taken as the date that the school was "founded", although legal separation from the Abbey was only achieved with the Public Schools Act 1868. (There followed a public and parliamentary dispute over another 25 years, to settle the transfer of the properties.) Under the Act, the Dean is the Chairman of the Governors; and the school statutes have been made by Order in Council of Queen Elizabeth II.
Camden was the first internationally famous headmaster, but Dr. Busby, himself an Old Westminster, established the reputation of the school for several hundreds of years, as much by his classical learning as for his ruthless discipline of the birch, immortalised in Pope's Dunciad. Busby prayed publicly Up School for the safety of the Crown, on the very day of Charles I's execution, and then locked in the boys to prevent their going to watch the spectacle a few hundred yards away. Dr. Busby nevertheless took part in Oliver Cromwell's funeral procession, when a Westminster schoolboy succeeded in snatching the "Majesty Scutcheon" from the coffin (it was given to the School by his family two hundred years later). Regardless of politics, Busby remained in office throughout the Civil War and the Commonwealth, when the school was governed by Parliamentary Commissioners, and well into the Restoration.
In 1679, a group of scholars killed a bailiff, ostensibly in defence of the Abbey's traditional right of sanctuary, but probably because the man was trying to arrest a consort of the scholars. Dr. Busby obtained a royal pardon for his scholars from Charles II, and added the cost to all the school bills.
During the sixteenth century the school educated a series of poets and playwrights including Ben Jonson, and in the seventeenth John Dryden. In the latter century the philosopher John Locke, scientist Robert Hooke, composer Henry Purcell and architect Christopher Wren were pupils.
Between the beginning of the eighteenth century and the middle of the nineteenth, the school educated seven Whig and later Liberal Prime Ministers, the last of whom was the Liberal Lord John Russell.
Until the nineteenth century, the curriculum was made up of Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew, all taught Up School. Outside school hours, the Westminster boys were uncontrolled and notoriously unruly about town, but the proximity of the School to the Palace of Westminster meant that politicians were well aware of the boys' exploits. After the Public Schools Act 1868, in response to the Clarendon Report on the many financial and other malpractices across nine pre-eminent public schools, the School began to approach its modern form. Recognisably among the leading public schools however, Westminster did not submit to most of the broader changes associated with the Victorian ethos of Thomas Arnold, such as the emphasis on team over individual spirit, and the school retained much of its distinctive ethos. Despite many pressures, including evacuation and destruction during the Blitz, the school also refused to move out of central London along with other prominent schools such as Charterhouse and St Paul's, and remains in its original location at the physical heart of church and state.
Westminster Under School was formed in 1943 as a semi-separate preparatory school for day pupils between the ages of 8 to 13 (now 7 to 13). Only the separation is new: in previous generations Gibbon, for instance, attended Westminster from the age of 11. Originally situated in Little Dean's Yard (the School's private square), the Under School later moved to Vincent Square, overlooking the School's playing fields. Its current headmaster is Mr. Jeremy Edwards.
In 1967, the first female pupil was admitted to the Upper School, with girls becoming full members from 1973 onwards. In 1981 the only girls-only boarding house, Purcell's, was created.
In 2003, Westminster was one of the top schools investigated by the Office of Fair Trading over allegations of fee-fixing between public schools, after a long-standing exception was removed by the Competition Act 1998[1]. The bursars officially discontinued their collaboration, and the matter dropped.
[edit] Location
The School is located primarily in the walled precincts of the former mediæval monastery at Westminster Abbey, its main buildings surrounding its private square Little Dean's Yard (known as 'Yard'), off Dean's Yard, where Church House, the headquarters of the Church of England, is situated, along with some of the Houses, the Common Room, the new humanities building Weston's, and College Hall. Location
Immediately outside the Abbey precincts, Geography, Art and Classics (Latin and Ancient Greek) are taught in Sutcliff's (named after the tuck shop in the building in the 19th century) on Great College Street, and the Robert Hooke Science Centre is just off Smith Square. As part of an expansion programme funded by a legacy from A. A. Milne, the school has added the nearby Millicent Fawcett Hall for Drama/Theatre Studies lessons and dramatic performances; the Manoukian Centre for Music lessons (both timetabled and private) and musical recitals; and the Weston Building (formerly known as '3 and 3A Dean's Yard'), which is situated near the entrance of Dean's Yard to Broad Sanctuary.
College Garden, to the East of Little Dean's Yard, is believed to be the oldest garden in England, under continuous cultivation for a thousand years. Just beyond rises the Victoria Tower of the Houses of Parliament; the Queen's Scholars have special rights of access to the House of Commons. To the North, the Dark Cloister leads straight to the Abbey, which serves as the School Chapel.
The playing fields are half a mile away at Vincent Square, which Dean Vincent created for the School by hiring a horse and plough to carve ten acres out of the open Tothill Fields. The boathouse is now at Putney, and is used for the famous Oxford and Cambridge boat race; although the school's First Eight still returns annually to exercise its traditional right to land at Black Rod Steps of the Palace of Westminster.
[edit] Notable buildings
Westminster, situated in the middle of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Westminster Abbey, St. Margaret’s, and the Palace of Westminster, has several buildings notable through unique qualities, age, and history.
'College Hall', the 14th century Abbot's state dining hall, is one of the oldest and finest examples of mediæval refectory in existence, and in use for its original purpose every day in term-time; outside of term it reverts to the Dean, as the Abbot's successor. Queen Elizabeth Woodville took sanctuary here in 1483 with 5 daughters and her son Richard, but failed to save him from his fate as one of the Princes in the Tower. In the 1560s, Elizabeth I several times came to see her scholars act their Latin Plays on a stage in front of the attractive Elizabethan gallery, which may have been first erected especially for the purpose.
'College', now shared between the three Houses of College, Dryden's and Wren's, is a dressed stone building overlooking College Garden, the former monastery's Infirmary garden which is still the property of the Collegiate Church of Westminster Abbey. College dates from 1729, and was designed by the Earl of Burlington based on earlier designs from Sir Christopher Wren (himself an Old Westminster).
'School', originally the monks' dormitory, is the School's main hall, used for Latin Prayers (a weekly assembly with prayers in the Westminster-dialect of Latin), exams, and large concerts, plays and the like. From 1599 it was used to teach all the pupils, the Upper and Lower Schools being separated by a curtain hung from a 16th century pig iron bar, which remains the largest piece of pig iron in the world. The stone steps and entranceway to School have been attributed as the work of Inigo Jones, and are engraved with the names of many pupils who used to hire a stonemason for the purpose. The panelling "up School" is similarly, but officially, painted with the coats of arms of many former pupils. The shell-shaped apse at the North end of School gave its name to the Shell forms taught there and the corresponding classes at many other public schools. The current shell displays a Latin epigram on the rebuilding of School, with the acrostic Semper Eadem, Elizabeth I's motto. The classroom door to the right of the Shell was recovered from the notorious Star Chamber at its demolition.
Both School and College had their roofs destroyed during The Blitz by incendiary bombs in 1941. The buildings were re-opened by George VI in 1950.
Ashburnham House, which today houses the library and the Mathematics Department, was built by Inigo Jones or his pupil John Webb around the time of the Restoration, as a London seat for the family which became the Earls of Ashburnham. It incorporates remains of the mediaeval Prior's House, and its garden is the site of some of the earliest sittings of the House of Commons. In 1721 when Ashburnham housed the King's and Cottonian libraries, which form the basis of the British Library, there was a disastrous fire and many of the books and manuscripts still show the marks. After the Public Schools Act 1868 there was a scandalous parliamentary and legal battle between the Abbey and the School, until the School eventually obtained Ashburnham under the Act for £4000. In 1881 William Morris conducted a public campaign which succeeded in preventing its demolition along with the neighbouring ruinous mediaeval buildings. During the Second World War, the library was used for very senior military purposes, and the ground floor as an American officers' club. In 1969 it was used as one of the locations for the film The Magic Christian.
[edit] Customs
The 'Greaze' has been held "up School" on Shrove Tuesdays since 1753: the head cook ceremoniously tosses a horsehair-reinforced pancake over a high bar, that was used in the sixteenth-century to curtain off a part of the schoolroom. Members of the school fight for the pancake for one minute, watched over by the Dean of Westminster Abbey (as Chairman of the Governors), the Head Master, the whole School and distinguished or even Royal visitors. The pupil who gets the largest weight is awarded a gold sovereign (promptly redeemed for use next year!), and the Dean begs a half-holiday for the whole School. A cook who failed to get the 'pancake' over the bar would formerly have been "booked", or pelted with Latin primers, although that tradition has officially lapsed.
The privilege of being the first commoners to acclaim each new sovereign at their coronation in Westminster Abbey is reserved for the Queen's (or King's) Scholars. Their shouts of "Vivat Regina" ("Long Live the Queen!") are nowadays incorporated into the Coronation Anthem.
The school was expressly exempted by the Act of Uniformity, to allow it to continue saying Latin prayers despite the Reformation. A service called 'Little Commem' is given in Latin each year, in which the Queen's Scholars commemorate the School's benefactors, laying pink roses on the tomb of Elizabeth I in Westminster Abbey. Every third year a much larger service called 'Big Commem' is given in its place. Every Wednesday there is an assembly Up School known as Latin Prayers, which opens with the Headmaster leading all members of the school in chanting prayers in Latin, followed by notices in English. The School's unique pronunciation of formal Latin is known as 'Westminster Latin', and descends from medieval English scholastic pronunciation: Queen Elizabeth I, who spoke fluent Latin, commanded that Latin was not to be said "in the monkish fashion", a significant warning upon loyalties between Church and State.
Since the monastic Christmas revels of mediaeval times, Latin Plays have been presented by the Scholars, with a prologue and witty epilogue on contemporary events. Annual plays, "either tragedy or comedy", were required by the school statutes in 1560, and some early plays were acted in College Hall before Elizabeth I and her whole Council. However, in a more prudish age Queen Victoria did not accompany Prince Albert and The Prince of Wales to the Play, and recorded in her diary that it was "very Improper"! Today, the play is put on less frequently, any members of the school may take part and the Master/ Mistress of the Queens Scholars (currently a female historian) gives the Latin prologue.
The Queen's Scholars have privileged access to the House of Commons gallery, said to be a compromise recorded in the Standing Orders of the House in the nineteenth century, to stop the boys from climbing into the Palace over the roofs.
[edit] Entry
There are 4 main points of entry for prospective pupils:
- For the Under School, at ages 7 and 11, judged by a combination of internal exam and interview.
- For the Lower School, at age 13, judged by either Common Entrance, a standardised, national set of exams for entrance to independent schools, for standard entry, or the Challenge, an internal set of exams, for scholarship entry, as well as interview.
- For the Upper School, at age 16, judged by subject-specific exams and interviews and conditional upon GCSE results. This is the only point of entry for girls. A handful of boys join at this point each year.
As well as the Queen's Scholarships, which pay from endowment one half of boarding fees, and of which there are normally eight in each year, pupils applying for entry under the Challenge have available a small number, usually 2, of Honourary Scholarships for boys who could have been scholars but do not want to board. Stephen Hawking was entered for the scholarship in 1952, but fell ill on the day of the Challenge examination.
Those entering the Lower School also have the opportunity to obtain scholarships based on musical talent, and bursaries for those whose parents are not able to fund their tuition. Ignoring scholarships and bursaries, annual fees are as follows: [2]
Pupil type | 2005-06 | 2006-07 | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Per term | Per year | Per term | Per year | |
Boarding | £7,682 | £23,046 | £8,105 | £24,315 |
Day | £5,321 | £15,963 | £5,614 | £16,842 |
Day (VIth entrants) | £5,771 | £17,313 | £6,088 | £18,264 |
Under School | £3,697 | £11,091 | £3,900 | £11,700 |
Annual increase | - | 5.5% |
[edit] Westminster jargon
[edit] Year names
Westminster has an unusual system for naming the school years, which can cause confusion to those not familiar with the system.
-
- Year 9: Vth Form
- Year 10: Lower Shell
- Year 11: Upper Shell (GCSE)
- Year 12: VIth Form (AS)
- Year 13: Remove (A2)
The Lower and Upper Shell years are named for the shell-shaped alcove up School where they were originally taught; the name has been adopted by several other schools with a Westminster connection.
[edit] Other jargon and slang
- Abbey
- When used without an article, refers to the compulsory morning service in the Abbey on Mondays and Fridays; "It's time for Abbey".
- Begging a Play
- Making a request for a Play (qv). The Dean annually begs a play at the Greaze, but other plays may also be begged especially by celebrities or in recognition of notable events in the life of the School.
- The Challenge
- The exam sat by pupils applying for scholarships. It was wholly oral until 1855.
- Chit
- A note from a housemaster or registering house tutor, which allows a pupil to buy something (usually uniform or stationery) from the school shop. The cost is added to the school fees.
- Digniora
- Latin for "most worthy". An award given to a pupil for an outstanding piece of work. Previously issued to pupils from all years (Vth form - Remove), it is now only given to boys in the lower school (Vth, Lower Shell and Upper Shell). Pupils who receive one go to the Under Master to be given a silver threepenny piece, generally from the early 20th century, and once 3 dignioras have been earned they can go and see the Head Master to be given a £10 book token.
- Election
- A year of scholars. The first election are the year 9 scholars, the second election are the year 10 scholars etc. There are eight scholars per Election.
- Election Term
- The third term of the academic year, from April to July. The term in which new scholars are elected, formerly in place of those examined and elected to the universities.
- EMC (early morning call)
- A more recent formalisation of having to present oneself to one's housemaster at 0830. The duration of this form of punishment is left up to the Housemaster's discretion. EMC is meted out usually for more menial 'crimes' such as failing to register before morning school and before afternoon school, or failing to do a prep (see below).
- Exeat
- A word used mainly by staff when referring to the half term holiday, which lasts two weeks in the Play Term and one in the Lent and Election Terms. It derives from the Latin for "let him go out".
- Expedition
- A school trip for members of the lower school, which usually involves some sort of outdoor pursuits.
- Fields
- Vincent Square. One is always "up Fields". See "Up".
- Gating
- Pupils are gated as the worst form of punishment before expulsion or suspension. A pupil who has been gated must attend detention every day (including SAP), and register at 8.15 usually for a week. This is most often given for smoking, drinking or skipping lessons.
- The Greaze
- Annual pancake fight. See the section on customs.
- Green
- Dean's Yard; The lawn in the middle of greater Dean's Yard; "The school has a legal right to play football on Green" (always without an article).
- Lent Term
- The second term of the academic year, from January to March.
- LO
- Excused from Station (owing to illness, for example). LO is thought to stand for "leave off" the normal station lists. The letters may actually stand for "Library Order" as upon receiving an LO pupils often must report to the library for private study.
- Mill
- A fight or duel - the Milling Green was the middle of the Abbey cloisters. This term is now out of use.
- Occupat
- During the annual Anglican confirmation service, non-church goers are confined to their Houses. This is referred to as occupat.
- The Pink List
- The list of pupils and members of the Common Room of the school. This exists both as a small pink book (the source of the name) and as a computer database.
- Play
- A day's holiday, especially in conjunction with a notable event. Annual plays are the Queen's Play and the Dean's Play. A recent extraordinary play was the "Pooh Play" in recognition of the School's selling the rights to Winnie the Pooh to the Walt Disney Corporation. The day on which a play occurs is usually a Saturday.
- Play Term
- The first term of the academic year, from September to December. The term in which the Latin Play used to take place (see Customs), although it may now be given in summer.
- Praebendum (plural Praebenda)
- Essentially same as a Digniora, but issued to those boys and girls in the Upper School (VIth and Remove) who submit outstanding pieces of work, or attain well-above average test results. This was introduced by Dr Stephen Spurr at the beginning of 2006.
- Prep
- One of two meanings:
- Short for 'preparation', the exact equivalent of 'homework' in other schools; "Hand in your prep tomorrow".
- Period in which boarders are to do their homework or meaning 1. of Prep. This lasts from 7:15pm (after dinner) until 9:00pm, with a five minute break at 8:00pm. During this period, pupils must be "up house" (see "Up"), in the Library, or in the Computer Room; "You may not leave the school during prep".
- SAP (formerly SEP)
- Saturday afternoon punishment; detention on a Saturday afternoon. It is usually given for bad behaviour, consistently not doing Prep (see above) (for the Upper School (VI and Remove), missing Abbey, station, Latin prayers, rude or unacceptable behaviour, or being caught smoking. Formerly SEP (Saturday Evening Punishment) which consisted of running around green.
- School
- The main hall. Used for assemblies, concerts, plays etc. Always referred to as "up School". See "Up".
- Shag (Day)
- Pupils may attend school wearing clothes not specified by the uniform code, but are expected to give to charity if they do so. This is only permitted on certain days; "It's Shag Day on Friday." Compare mufti day.
- Station
- Sports which are compulsory and held on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon from 2:00pm onwards; "He missed Station as he was sick".
- Up (house, School, etc.)
- "In" or "to". "You should be up house if you don't have a lesson", "Latin prayers take place up School", "Sir John Gielgud was up Grants from 1917 to 1921". Events in Vincent Square are said to be "up Fields", particularly among the Common Room. An exception to the rule is that one is never "up College" or "up Ashburnham", only "in College" or "in Ashburnham".
- Water
- Rowing Station (the Westminster School boat club is based in Putney)
- Yard
- Little Dean's Yard; "He was in Yard" (always without an article). This is also often used to refer to the period after Prep from 9pm to 10pm when boarders are free to entertain themselves in Yard.
[edit] Houses
The School is split into 11 Houses, some of which are 'day Houses' (and only admit day-pupils, those who go home after school), the others having a mix of day-pupils and boarders. The Houses are named after people connected to the house or school in various ways — mainly prominent Old Westminsters but also former Head Masters and House Masters. Other than College, Grant's is the oldest house, not only of Westminster but of any public school.
Houses are a focus for pastoral care and social and sporting activities, as well as accommodation for boarders. All the day houses are mixed-sex, and all houses admit day girls, however only Busby's and Purcell's provide boarding accommodation for girls.
Each House has associated colours, which are worn on ties awarded for various (usually sporting) achievement while representing the House. There are also pink-striped ties awarded for achievement while representing the whole school, with the amount of pink denoting the level of achievement.
House | Abbr. | Founded | Named after | Colours | Pupils | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Boarding | Non-boarding | ||||||
College | CC | 1560 | Dark green | Boys | Girls | ||
Grant's | GG | 1750 | ■ | Maroon on light blue | Boys | Mixed | |
Rigaud's | RR | 1896 (rebuilt) | Stephen George Rigaud | ■ | Black on orange | Boys | Mixed |
Busby's | BB | 1925 | Richard Busby | ■ | Dark blue on maroon | Mixed | Mixed |
Liddell's | LL | 1956 | Henry Liddell | ■ | Blue on yellow | Boys | Mixed |
Purcell's [3] | PP | 1981 | Henry Purcell | Pink | Girls | None | |
Ashburnham | AHH | 1981 | ■ | White on dark blue | None | Mixed | |
Wren's | WW | Christopher Wren | ■ | Purple on black | |||
Dryden's | DD | 1976 | John Dryden | ■ | Silver on red | ||
Hakluyt's | HH | 1987 | Richard Hakluyt | ■ | Yellow on blue | ||
Milne's | MM | 1997 | A. A. Milne | ■ | Yellow on red |
College, the House of the Queen's Scholars (all of whom board), has assigned to it some of the non-boarding girls who enter the School in the VIth form.
[edit] Sport ("Station")
The School has three of only a few Eton Fives courts in the world, which are located behind Ashburnham House. The school frequently fields pupils as national entries in international competitions in rowing, or "Water", and fencing of which they do very well.
The Oxford University crews use Westminster's boat house as their HQ for the boat race, the annual race on the Thames between Oxford and Cambridge. The boathouse was remodelled in 1996, and won a Wandsworth design award in 1999. The school's colour is pink, rumoured to be derived from washed-out red shirts worn by rowers, and later adopted by the premier Leander Club at Henley, which was founded in London by a number of Old Westminster rowers. This unusual colour for sportsmen has occasionally provoked violent incidents- such as stones being thrown at rowers from the bank- but usually removes any need for away kit.
Sport facilities at the school itself are however fairly limited, due largely to its location in the centre of London, which cannot provide space for the widest range of sports. The School's main sports ground is nearby at Vincent Square, but it is limited to football, cricket and tennis and is not large enough for all the pupils doing these sports to use simultaneously. 'Green' is also used, as is the school gym located by the Abbey and the three fives courts, which are arguably the finest sporting facilities in the school.
Westminster has an historic joint claim to having founded Association Football, which remains the main sport at the school. During the 1840s at both Westminster and Charterhouse pupils' surroundings meant they were confined to playing their football in the cloisters, making the rough and tumble of the handling game that was developing at other schools such as Rugby impossible, and necessitating a new code of rules. During the formulation of the rules of Association Football in the 1860s representatives of Westminster School and Charterhouse also pushed for a passing game, in particular rules that allowed forward passing ("passing on"). Other schools (in particular Eton College and Harrow) favoured a dribbling game with a tight off-side rule. By 1867 the Football Association had chosen in favour of the Westminster and Charterhouse game and adopted an off-side rule that permitted forward passing [Marples, Morris. A History of Football, Secker and Warburg, London 1954, page 150]. The modern forward-passing game was a direct consequence of Westminster and Charterhouse Football. The sport of rugby union is no longer played at the school.
[edit] Former pupils
- Fuller list: List of former pupils of Westminster
The following people were educated at Westminster:
- Ben Jonson (1573 – 1637), poet and dramatist
- George Herbert (1593 – 1633), public orator and poet
- John Dryden (1631 – 1700), poet and playwright
- John Locke (1632 – 1704), philosopher
- Sir Christopher Wren (1632 – 1723), architect and scientist, co-founder of the Royal Society
- Robert Hooke FRS (1635 – 1703), British scientist
- Henry Purcell (1659 – 1695), composer
- Charles Wesley (1707 – 1788), Methodist preacher and writer of over 6,000 hymns
- Edward Gibbon FRS (1737 – 1794), historian
- Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832), lawyer, eccentric and philosopher
- Thomas Pinckney (1750 – 1828), American soldier, politician, and diplomat.
- A. A. Milne (1882 – 1956), author and journalist
- Sir Adrian Boult (1889 – 1983), conductor
- Sir John Gielgud (1904 – 2000), actor and director
- Sir Andrew Huxley (b. 1917), Nobel prizewinning physiologist
- Sir Peter Ustinov (1921 – 2004), actor, writer, director and raconteur
- Tony Benn (born 1925), politician, radical
- Peter Brook (born 1925, LL 1937-1938), theatre director
- Nigel Lawson (born 1932, WW 1945-1950), former Chancellor of the Exchequer, father of Nigella Lawson
- Simon Gray (born 1936, WW 1949-1954), playwright and diarist
- Andrew Lloyd Webber (born 1948, QS 1960-1965), composer and producer
- Martin Amis (born 1949), novelist
- Stephen Poliakoff (born 1952, WW 1966-1970), director, playwright and television dramatist
- Shane MacGowan (born 1957, AHH 1972-1973), musician
- Matt Frei (born 1963, RR 1978-1981), foreign correspondent for BBC News
- Helena Bonham Carter (born 1966, LL 1982-84), actress
- Noreena Hertz (born 1967, CC 1983-85), economist and campaigner
- Nick Clegg (born 1967), British Liberal Democrat politician
- Ruth Kelly (born 1968, DD 1984-86), Cabinet minister
- Dido Armstrong (born 1971, WW, 1987-89), British musician under the name "Dido"
- Martha Lane Fox (born 1973, CC 1989-91), dot-com entrepreneur
- Benjamin Yeoh (born 1978), playwright
- Michael Holbrook Penniman(Born 1983, DD 1996-2001) singer, commonly known as "Mika"
[edit] Further reading
- Tony Trowles (2005). A Guide to the Literature of Westminster Abbey, Westminster School and St. Margaret's Church 1571-2000. Boydell Press.
- John Rae (1994). Delusions of Grandeur : A Headmaster's Life. HarperCollins.
- John Field (1986). The King's Nurseries: The Story of Westminster School (2nd edition). James & James. ISBN 0-907383-01-7.
- Lance Bertelsen (1987). The Nonsense Club: Literature and Popular Culture, 1749-1764. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- John Dudley Carleton (1965). Westminster School: A History (revised edition). R. Hart-Davis.
- Lawrence Edward Tanner (1934). Westminster School: A History. Country Life.
- Reginald Airy (1902). Handbooks to the great Public Schools: Westminster. George Bell & Sons.
- John Sargeaunt (1898). Annals of Westminster School. Methuen.
- Westminster Scool Almanack
[edit] Notes
- ^ Independent schools face huge fines over cartel to fix fees, The Times, 2005-11-10
- ^ School Fees, Westminster School website
- ^ Formerly Barton Street, and originally a part of Dryden's