The wretched month of May
May 1915 proved to be one of the worst of the war with nine OCs killed, eight in the first ten days alone, including a pair of brothers who fell on the same day […]
Category: Features
Features
The man who covered the end of the war
As the Second World War ended in May 1945, millions tuned in to the BBC for the latest news and for reports from Berlin. The man they heard broadcasting from the ruined city was the corporation’s Paris correspondent, Thomas Cadett […]
A middle-class revolutionary
The Old Cranleighan who stood for parliament against Tony Benn and called for a middle-class revolution against the Labour government […]
The final days of Tertius Last
On April 26 1915, Harold Haile ‘Tertius’ Last (East 1905) died at the Queen Alexandra Hospital in London from injuries received in Belgium the previous month. He was 22 and was the tenth Old Cranleighan to have died in the nine months of the war to that point […]
Tragedy in the Sahara
Sixty years ago this month a failed Kenyan coffee planter and three associates set out from Nairobi in a Morris Traveller to drive across Africa, through the Sahara Desert and Europe to London. The poorly planned expedition was to end in failure and the death of Alan ‘Sweetie’ Cooper (East 1926).
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The Battle of Neuve Chapelle
March 10 marks the centenary of the first large-scale British offensive of World War One, the first day of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. In the four-day battle the British lost 544 officers and 11,108 other ranks. Two of the officers who fell on the first day were Old Cranleighans […]
The realities of war hit home
When Cranleighans returned for the Michaelmas Term in 1914 the war was already six weeks old. While the grim news from Europe dominated the headlines, the impact on daily life was limited. Most house rooms at the School had a large map pinned on the wall where the daily positions of the respective armies were […]
On the eve of war …
“The clouds of war were gathering,” wrote Geoffrey Bateman (2 North 1919), “but I think most of us regarded the trouble in Serbia as just a third Balkan war. But by the end of term the situation looked more serious”. Cranleigh life in the days as war approached 100 years ago […]
Cranleighans’ early warning of D-Day
While much has been written about the secrecy that surrounded the D-Day landings, the boys at Cranleigh were among the first in the country to know the invasion had started on June 6, 1944 […]
It was 150 years ago today …
In 2015 the School celebrates its 150th anniversary … but almost two years earlier, in November 1863, the foundation stone was laid and we look back at the events of that day […]