Chris Snuggs: Neil Clayton had a long and successful career at WHS, hugely omnipresent in dramatic productions and credited among other things with inspring Ian McEwan to become a writer:

McEwan’s experience at Woolverstone, as related in the Times Educational Supplement in 2000, was typical. McEwan recalls that he was “mediocre” until the sixth form, when he fell under the spell of Neil Clayton. Ex-Cambridge, the young teacher was cynical about the world at large, enthusiastic about cricket in particular and infectiously excited about poetry and literature. He had “the ability, without a great deal of effort, to communicate a passion for reading widely. His classes were fun . . . He wasn’t afraid of difficulty and he knew we would be proud of undertaking something different.”