Dulwich has now become so cosmopolitan that their rugby players have gone on to represent ten different countries. Notable among their cricketers were the Gilligans and Trevor Bailey, though the most dashing was Hugh Bartlett, Alan Ross’s favourite, ‘whose every movement and expression were the stuff of my dreams’. The first Dulwich boy to play for England, Monty Bowden, went out to Africa under the captaincy of Sir C. Aubrey Smith, fell from an ox cart and was trampled to death. The monument that covered his remains was destroyed recently by Mugabe’s ‘veterans’.
Written with devotion by a retired English master, this is a fascinating and scholarly account of Dulwich’s transformation from its abject beginnings into a great school, though ‘This will give pleasure in the future’ is hardly adequate for ‘Haec olim meminisse juvabit’. It would have disappointed Chips, who was fond of quoting it.
Available from the Commissariat, Dulwich College, Dulwich Common, London SE 21 7LD. tel: 0208 299 9222.
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