Lunch with Tony Little, Headmaster at Eton
Wednesday 12th November | 12.00 for 12.30 | Drawing Room | £65.00
The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. So the Duke of Wellington was supposed to have said. Others, such as Orwell, have analysed the perhaps apocryphal quote.
As headmaster at Eton College from 2002 to 2015, Tony Little experienced first hand at least the basis for belief in this statement. He had also been at what alumni sometimes say is “the school in Slough” as a schoolboy (and music scholar) ahead of Cambridge and a choral scholarship there. As headmaster, he had to oversee the maintenance of buildings that were in some instances over 500 years old. So a heritage site manager. After his tenure, the school’s latest alumnus in Boris Johnson became Prime Minster. As Tony remarked ahead of this: “Eton has had 19 pupils go on to be Prime Minster. Some of them good”. Maybe someone from his tenure at the head of school will emerge to take Eton’s No. 10 Downing Street roll call to 21.
Since Eton, Tony has consulted on schools all over the world, including Shanghai, drawing on spells before Eton as head at Chigwell and Oakham (as well as department head and head of house posts at Brentwood and the latter role at Tonbrige, where he was assistant master). Join Tony for a salon lunch where considered will be education in the UK and beyond and his experiences that provided the inspiration for his award-winning and highly-acclaimed book, An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Education. A chance to review in the company of someone with a lifetime of insight from our most prestigious educational institutions how as a nation we in the UK prepares future generations for life after school at university and beyond. A chance also to savour how perhaps the most famous school in the world functions from the perspective of an insider who experienced the place both as a poacher and game keeper.
Lunch with Tony Little is sure to an education. Book early to avoid sitting out of class.