68 Facts About Anthony Chenevix-Trench

Anthony Chenevix-Trench was born in British India, educated at Shrewsbury School and Christ Church, Oxford, and served in the Second World War as an artillery officer with British Indian units in Malaya.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench taught classics at Shrewsbury, where he became a housemaster, and taught for another year at Christ Church.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench was headmaster of Bradfield College, where he raised academic standards and instituted a substantial programme of new building works.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench, born at Kasauli in India on 10 May 1919, was the youngest of four sons, the older ones being Christopher, Richard and Godfrey.

The family returned to England in 1925, moving to Somerset in 1927; Anthony Chenevix-Trench attended school for the first time in Westgate-on-Sea in Kent.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench had already been introduced to classical literature by his father, reading Herodotus at the age of six.

Towards the end of his life Anthony Chenevix-Trench described how this had inspired him, and said that "the words still sing in my mind like music".

Anthony Chenevix-Trench was small for his age, but charmed both teachers and other pupils with his wit and enthusiasm, took part in a wide variety of sports, and continued to excel academically, winning a host of prizes.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench became a house monitor at age sixteen, and head of School House the following year.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench was housed in Peckwater Quad, and rowed in the college's Second VIII.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench was elected to the Twenty Club, an exclusive Christ Church debating society, but he did not join the Oxford Union or the Oxford University Dramatic Society, for reasons of cost and time commitments respectively.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench's tutors for Honour Moderations were Denys Page and John G Barrington-Ward, said to be "one of the best Latin prose scholars in Oxford", who was a crossword setter for The Times.

Each battery was made up of 180 men with four British officers; Anthony Chenevix-Trench's battery was the 24th Mountain Battery, which had recently been re-equipped with 6-inch howitzers.

The battery commander, Edward Sawyer, described Anthony Chenevix-Trench as having been "a tower of strength" in the rearguard action.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench was further praised for his battery's role in defeating the first Japanese amphibious landings at Kuala Selangor, but the retreat continued, and by the end of January 1942 the regiment was back in Singapore, supporting the 28th Indian Infantry Brigade in its defence of a sector of the island's shore west of the causeway linking it to the mainland.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench learned more about India's ethnic and political divisions, read Homer's Odyssey in Greek and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and compiled, bound and decorated an anthology of English poetry.

The track had to be forced through impenetrable jungle, in appalling conditions and with malaria, dysentery and beriberi constant: Anthony Chenevix-Trench suffered all three.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench saved many lives through inspired pseudo-medical advice and hygiene discipline.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench saw one of his fellow soldiers impaled against a tree with bayonets for attempting to escape, amidst many other horrors.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench was remembered as a man who took mortal risks to barter for the food that might keep men alive a few days longer.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench described how the population of Singapore was "crazy with joy and showed it" when British troops arrived to take back control of the city after the Japanese surrender.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench was reunited with his Indian troops, and took the unusual decision that "after all my men have been through and their magnificent behaviour under shootings, beatings, and starving by enemy propagandists, I feel the least I can do to thank them is to see them all happily home to their villages".

Anthony Chenevix-Trench therefore returned to England via India, only reaching home on 29 October 1945.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench returned to Oxford in 1946 to complete his degree.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench was elected President of the Christ Church Junior Common Room towards the end of that year, was involved in reviving the college's Boat Club, and was "the life and soul of the gathering" at many social functions.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench was taught by R H Dundas, Eric Gray, Gilbert Ryle, Jim Urmson and Maurice Foster.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench won the prestigious Slade Exhibition in 1947, and then achieved the remarkable feat of gaining an alpha in every single paper in Greats.

At Shrewsbury Anthony Chenevix-Trench's philosophy was that he preferred that "the majority of boys kept the rules most of the time rather than one which stifled individual vitality".

Anthony Chenevix-Trench served as an officer in the school's Combined Cadet Force, as a coach for rowing crews, and as an organiser of "holiday camps for underprivileged children in Shrewsbury".

In 1950, Anthony Chenevix-Trench was persuaded to accept the position of tutor for Classical Honour Moderations back at Christ Church.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench took up the position in October 1951, but, despite the importance of the post, and the persuasive arguments that only at Oxford could his academic talents truly shine, he found the undergraduates lacking in enthusiasm, and the life of an Oxford tutor to be more detached from his students than he preferred.

In February 1952, George Turner, the headmaster of Charterhouse, who was about to retire, wrote to Anthony Chenevix-Trench insisting he apply for the job, and Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury and chairman of the Charterhouse governors, visited him in person to urge him to do so.

Soon considered the favourite, despite pressure from Christ Church not to leave, Anthony Chenevix-Trench caused chaos by first submitting his candidacy, then withdrawing it after Tom Taylor, housemaster of School House back at Shrewsbury, died suddenly in the post and he was offered the job.

Loyalty to his old school and house won out over both the remarkable opportunity of being headmaster of a major public school at age 32 and his academic responsibility at Christ Church, and Anthony Chenevix-Trench accepted the promotion at Shrewsbury, despite great distress at the conflict of loyalties.

In November 1952, Anthony Chenevix-Trench spoke with Michael Hoban in opposition to a motion at the school Debating Society, proposed by the old boys and then Oxford undergraduates Michael Heseltine and Julian Critchley, that "This House Deplores the Public School System".

Anthony Chenevix-Trench did not change his approach, nor did he object to the continuation of the tradition of fagging, nor that of older boys having the right to use corporal punishment on younger boys.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench took over some of the organisational work in School House, resulting in reports from the boys of great improvements in the quality of the food.

In January 1955, Anthony Chenevix-Trench agreed to be interviewed for the position of headmaster at Bradfield College, who were eager to find a younger replacement for John Hills, and were impressed by Anthony Chenevix-Trench's academic credentials.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench got the job and left Shrewsbury with great regret.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench abolished an ancient tradition whereby the entry of the headmaster to the most revered event was heralded with a trumpet fanfare.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench was successful in re-establishing close links with prep schools, which were vital for maintaining a flow of academically able boys to join the school and increase its numbers.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench relaxed some uniform rules, but maintained rules that he felt reinforced school spirit, such as boys being required to attend inter-school sports fixtures as spectators.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench threw himself into the task of fighting for his teaching staff, succeeding in increasing both pay and rights for housemasters, and recruited young graduates constantly to modernise the range of teachers.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench continued to teach while headmaster, and boys described his lessons as exhilarating.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench was the only headmaster appointed to the Committee on Higher Education which produced the Robbins Report that led to significant British university expansion in the decade and later.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench signed the Marlow Declaration on society and equality, and declined headmasterships at a host of top schools including Shrewsbury.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench ended up describing the housemasters as like medieval barons with swords half-drawn, and never mastered the subtleties of dealing with them effectively.

The BBC reported in 1967 that Anthony Chenevix-Trench had "considerably softened" the rigorous rules on chapel attendance.

Nevertheless, Private Eye duly ran an article in 1969 arguing that Anthony Chenevix-Trench had clearly lost his way, since neither school uniform, nor boxing, nor compulsory Chapel, had been entirely abolished.

The Council at Bradfield, always hugely supportive of Anthony Chenevix-Trench, had never considered his use of corporal punishment a problem.

In June 1965, Anthony Chenevix-Trench failed to prevent a debate proposed by William Waldegrave, then president of the powerful self-selected pupil society known as Pop, on the abolition of corporal punishment, and the motion was only narrowly defeated.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench did not keep the promise, thus storing up yet more distrust.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench ended the uniform requirement of smaller boys being marked out by having to wear the much shorter "bumfreezer" Eton Suit, but this was a tiny consolation for the crushing of his cherished goal of ending school uniform at Eton altogether.

The tumult of the era continued to faze Anthony Chenevix-Trench's tenuous hold on Eton; he adopted a drugs policy that saw him trudging up and down the High Street looking for offenders, and at the same time he declined to expel those caught indulging.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench had always been shocked by the proportion of boys then at Eton who had absolutely no interest in doing any work, and of whom some had the determination to continue to refuse even when threatened.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench took tranquilizers to help him with his worsening nerves when carrying out public speaking engagements, and resorted to heavy drinking to drown his other sorrows.

The offer was rejected, but Neal's house continued to be problematic, and Anthony Chenevix-Trench eventually had to fire him on the pretext of a much less serious incident several months later.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench handled it badly, leading to protests by the boys, and this combined with a growing awareness of the other problems led the Fellows to decide to ask him to leave.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench's enforced departure from Eton made him very dubious about his capability to take on another post as headmaster, but in May 1970 he applied to be headmaster of Fettes College in Scotland, and began the job in August 1971.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench came under considerable pressure from the teachers over pay; they were significantly underpaid at the time and the school could not afford to pay them any better.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench's continued tendency to make promises of appointments that he could not deliver caused problems again.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench continued his practice of administering corporal punishment in private; as the 1970s progressed, this was increasingly an anachronism when many schools were beginning to abandon caning.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench resorted to heavy drinking, trying unsuccessfully to conceal it from his wife.

Anthony Chenevix-Trench was well enough to leave hospital, but was pressured by the governors into announcing that he would retire in August 1979.

Tim Card's book Eton Renewed, published in 1994, finally made public the fact that Anthony Chenevix-Trench had not left Eton of his own accord.

Foot duly produced an article describing his own treatment when Anthony Chenevix-Trench was housemaster at Shrewsbury, and Nick Cohen summarised it in The Observer:.

This, along with similar comments in broadsheet newspapers of the time, provoked a furious backlash from other pupils of Anthony Chenevix-Trench, who set about proving Peel's "one in ten" rule.

Card writes that staff at the school were embarrassed by Anthony Chenevix-Trench's drinking and that he "regarded corporal punishment not as a last resort, but almost as the first".