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www MessiahandFaure’sRequiem, among many others. But it wasn’t all classical. Andrew Milne (then Sanderson Housemaster) was a keen saxophonist and composer, and at his invitation Cleo Laine and Johnny Dankworth performed at the School more than once, as both Richard and Dominic vividly remember. Indeed, perhaps it was partly due to this broadening of musical horizons that Dominic later found himself playing backing cello for punk-folk activist Billy Bragg – not a sentence you often see written.
On leaving school, he undertook a Short Service Limited Commission with the Royal Artillery, before going to Downing College, Cambridge, to read Architecture – which he managed to do while also rowing for both his college and the university. Then it was on to The Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL and into practice in London, Ahmedabad and Toronto. In 1992, following in his father’s footsteps and having shadowed him in the role for a year, he was appointed Pageantmaster of the City of London’s Lord Mayor’s Show and became responsible for choreographing the safe passage of 7,000 participants – in carriages, on floats or mounted – through streets lined with spectators. He set up Reid & Reid, Ceremonial and Event Consultants, with his wife, Suzanne, and the company advised on the London Marathon. He was also the first Executive Director of the Boat Race, was appointed Director of the Royal Society’s 350th anniversary programme and worked on The Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002. No wonder then that when HRH Prince Harry was looking for someone to deliver the inaugural Invictus Games in 2014 in only nine months, he turned to Dominic.
Richard followed his father and brother to Oundle, and then his children, Ellie Smith (Sn 12) and George Smith (St A 13), went to the School. He skipped the first year and went straight into the Fourth Form, eventually sitting his O and A levels a year young. He remembers that the School was academically rigorous. Much was expected of the boys, but they were helped to achieve – even
though,tobeginwith,hewasput next to a Maths scholar in class and claims that he spent months “wondering what on earth was going on”. Later, he played for the 1st XV and rowed in the 1st VIII, and engaged fully with all the CCF had to offer, under ‘Crunch’ Edsall (so named because he insisted on feet coming to attention with a ‘crunch’) and ‘Brick’ Levet, whose real name was Roger, but whose size suggested a certain sort of outhouse. History – and high-level sport – at Durham was followed by a career in the Light Infantry (now The Rifles), which saw him rise to Brigadier and serve in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2012 he was tasked with mobilising 18,000 military personnel to ensure the security of the London Olympic and Paralympic Games, and in 2014 he assisted in planning the same for the inaugural Invictus Games. When he left the Army in 2015, he was appointed Director of Operations at the Stamford Endowed Schools, only leaving to join Invictus.
In January 2019 the post of Director of Operations became vacant and was widely advertised. The appointment process was 100% transparent. Richard was “outstanding” and the Foundation was “very fortunate indeed to get him”, Dominic says. It is clear that theirs is a combination that works. The two complement each other and personify the claim that there is no such thing as a typical Oundelian. One is all movement and energy, the other more reserved and seemingly more considered.
What part, I wondered, did their time at Oundle play in getting them to where they are now? Can the School take any of the credit for their careers to date and for the success they are obviously making of their current roles? Oundle, they say, taught them far beyond the academic syllabus. “There was a breadth of experience on offer,” says Dominic, “that I don’t think I would have found anywhere else.”
They feel they were there in a golden age when relatively ordinary, not especially over-privileged boys were led by a creative, innovative
generationofteachers,whose enthusiasm was contagious and encouraged. Richard remembers expeditions across Europe to the Eastern Bloc in a green minibus driven by Alan Midgely (Head of History), who remains one of his role models. “He encouraged reading and a desire to learn that have stayed with me throughout my life,” he says. “And we learnt so much. Alan opened our eyes. We saw things and talked about everything, and we were encouraged to think for ourselves.” He recalls a group of them having supper one evening in a café in Prague and a lady at the next table crying as she heard them talking freely about politics, art, current affairs, history – anything and everything, and all subjects she and her compatriots would not have dared discuss in public.
Oundle’s pastoral care, says Dominic, was “superb”. His Tutor, David Warnes, inspired and encouraged his tutees, and was prepared to take a risk on their behalf. When Dominic ‘crashed’ his A levels, he was encouraged to sit Oxbridge anyway – and he succeeded. “I learnt to challenge myself,” he says, “to innovate, be at the forefront, be adventurous.” This has clearly stayed with him. In 2008 he was asked by John Harrison, his Bramston Housemaster and later the Director of the Stahl, to play Odysseus in his production of Euripides’ Hecuba. To his surprise, he found himself not only agreeing to do it, but loving both the process and the result. “Try everything!” he says with a grin.
Some names crop up time and again: John Harrison, Tim Brown (Director of Music), John Booth (Head of Art), Michael Bloxham (St Anthony Housemaster), David Warnes, David Edsall, Roger and Janet Levet, Vic Northwood, James Berry (Sidney Housemaster), Cornelius Moynihan (Head of the Foundry) and, above all, the revered Barry Trapnell, Headmaster from 1968-1984. A solitary, very bright figurehead, Trapnell inspired and led while managing to remain removed from the daily bustle of what was even then a very busy school day.
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THE OLD OUNDELIAN 2018 –2019
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