Chris Snuggs -Berners/Halls 58-65: "Maybe we had many of the benefits of a school such as Eton but without much of the accompanying BS. I think having lots of boys from forces families helped. No stuck-up toffee-nosed attitudes there!"

Glynne Thomas - Halls 57-62: "Well said Chris - accurate as ever. My father was in the RAMC most of his working life. Nothing but praise for WH. All great lads and masters - comme toi! Things seemed to have changed in latter years; is that progession, evolution or plain disintegration? Started off as a first-class experiment!"

Chris Archer - Corners 66-71: "Initially, I had no choice about going to boarding school (and neither did my parents in sending me) as my father was in the RAF and was posted to the Far East. At 11 I went to Kuala Lumpur for the 1st year (250 miles away from where we lived) then that school closed and I went to Singapore for years 2 and 3. When we came back to the UK I was given a choice and I chose boarding school, mainly because I had a great time for the first 3 years. A choice I never regretted as WHS was also fun. Friends made that I still have today. One question, though. What would people like Johnson, Cameron et al have made of WHS? Also, would they have survived?"

Glynne Thomas: "I think we know the answers to your questions, Chris!"

Chris Snuggs: "Many unanswerable questions! WHS was I think tough, honest and above all unpretentious and/or snobby. We were encouraged (and given every opportunity) to do well, and usually did (in multiple fields) - but there wasn't as I recall any associated superiority-complex - just a belief in no-nonsense endeavour and excellence. Rose-tinted glasses? Perhaps. ANOTHER unanswerable question.

One thing I regret is that I never recall a class where boys introduced themselves. I knew that X's family lived in Aden, Hong-Kong or wherever, but never heard anything about those places - unless informally directly from the person. It would have been interesting had each boy kind of introduced himself and talked a bit about where he came from and how he happened to be at WHS.

PS Taffy aroused (arouses) many different emotions, but when we met Dick Woollett for a dinner in Ipswich during one of the barge-cruise weekends in 2004 he told us two interesting things:

1) Taffy had given him strong encouragement to apply for the WHS Headship and ....

2) Taffy was the least pretentious person he had ever known."

Chris Snuggs: R.I.P Jim Atkinson in centre of this photo, who died from MNS quite soon after our second cruise around 2005. Former British Ambassador to the Congo, he wrote THIS about WHS. http://www.whs-archives.net/docs/various/JimAtkinson.htm

Jim's article is stunning; so much Truth condensed into a short space. I didn't know Jim at school, though we overlapped, but we were together with Peter Brown and Mike Bysh organizing the barge crews. He came on the first two, but fell ill with MND and died soon after, not long after he retired. Just awful. Here we are in 2004 on Peter's yacht (me left, Peter Brown and Jim) moored on the River Stour with a magnificent view of R.H.S. Holbrook having lunch with a glass of chardonnay. That was a beautiful day.