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Winchester College appears in fiction both as a school and as fictional Old Wykehamists, people who had been to the school. At least 50 fictional Old Wykehamists have appeared in novels, sometimes following the stereotype of the dull civil servant, though in fact relatively few real Wykehamists choose that profession. The school is further represented indirectly by the writings of Old Wykehamists on other topics.
Amy Audrey Locke's 1912 In Praise of Winchester offers an anthology of over 100 pages of prose and verse about Winchester College.[1] The poets represented in the book include the Old Wykehamists John Crommelin-Brown, Lord Alfred Douglas, Robert Ensor, A. P. Herbert, George Huddesford, Lionel Johnson, William Lipscomb, Robert Seton-Watson, Thomas Adolphus Trollope, Thomas Warton, and William Whitehead. Others in the collection include the biographer and suffragist Lady Laura Ridding, wife of one of the school's headmasters, George Ridding.[1]
Huddesford edited an anthology of poetry by fellow Old Wykehamists called Wiccamical Chaplet, dedicated to the finance minister Henry Addington.[2][3] Some of the poems are in Latin, including the school song, "Domum", subtitled by Huddesford "Carmen Wiccamicum" ("The Winchester College Song").[4] One of the poems, "On a Threat to Destroy the Tree at Winchester", alludes to "Domum", as indicated in its subtitle, "Round which [tree] the Scholars, on Breaking up [at end of term], sing their celebrated Song, called 'Dulce Domum'."[5] Locke provides a verse translation along with the Latin version, and "A Domum Legend" which gives an alternative version of how the school song came into existence.[6]
A former headmaster of Winchester College, James Sabben-Clare, comments that the school itself has been "largely spared the full fictional treatment".[7] E. H. Lacon-Watson's 1935 book In the Days of His Youth however portrays the school in the 19th century under the headmastership of George Ridding, "thinly disguised as Dr. Spedding".[7]
Sabben-Clare discusses how Wykehamists appear in fiction. He notes that James Bond's chaperon, Captain Paul Sender is just one of at least 50 Old Wykehamists in fiction, a dull civil servant, "overcrammed and underloved at Winchester".[7] Sabben-Clare states that despite the stereotype of Wykehamists becoming Civil Servants, between 1820 and 1922 only around 7% of Wykehamists went into the Civil Service, and by 1981 the number had fallen to about 2%.[8] On the other hand, Sabben-Clare writes, Wykehamists have always been drawn to law, with about ten entrants to the profession each year. He find it surprising that so few Wykehamist lawyers are found in fiction: he mentions Monsarrat's John Morell and Charles Morgan's Gaskony.[9]
| Character | Author | Work | Date | Notes and quotes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Antrobus | Lawrence Durrell | Esprit de Corps | 1957 | Sabben-Clare calls Antrobus "portentous and serious minded", and wonders if Durrell knew of Sir Reginald Antrobus, Crown Agent for the Colonies 1909–1918.[8] |
| Sir Humphrey Appleby | Antony Jay Jonathan Lynn |
Yes Minister TV series | 1980–1984 | Sir Humphrey Appleby (Winchester, Balliol, GCB, KBE, MVO, MA Oxon)[10] |
| The Revd. Francis Arabin | Anthony Trollope | Barchester Towers | 1857 | "He was the younger son of a country gentleman of small fortune in the north of England. At an early age he went to Winchester, and was intended by his father for New College;" (Barchester Towers, Chapter 20, "Mr Arabin"). "The agreeable and cultivated vicar of St. Ewold, formerly professor of poetry at Oxford, who ends up as Dean of Barchester"[9] |
| James Arrowby | Iris Murdoch | The Sea, The Sea | 1978 | "a scholar with a gift for languages and mathematics as well as winning history prizes, a poet, traveller, connoisseur, a Buddhist convert, a mystic with apparently supernatural powers".[11] Sabben-Clare suggests Arrowby might be based on the SOE officer Frank Thompson.[12] |
| Edward Ashburnham | Ford Madox Ford | The Good Soldier | 1915 | "It is odd how a boy can have his virgin intelligence untouched in this world. That was partly due to the careful handling of his mother, partly to the fact that the house to which he went at Winchester had a particularly pure tone and partly to Edward's own peculiar aversion from anything like coarse language or gross stories." (The Good Soldier, Part 3, Chapter 3) |
| William Beckwith and Charles Nantwich |
Alan Hollinghurst | The Swimming Pool Library | 1988 | "The diaries chronicle Nantwich’s education (Winchester and Oxford – just like Will)"[13] |
| Captain Edward Bentinck-Boyle | Brian Degas | Colditz TV series |
1972–1974 | Played by Neil Stacy. He catches out a German planted among the prisoners who claimed to be an Old Wykehamist but didn't know his "Notions". |
| George Bertram | Anthony Trollope | The Bertrams | 1859 | "a commoner", "stood forth to spout out the Latin hexameters, and to receive the golden medal" (page 12) |
| Lord Bognor | Harold Nicolson | Some People | 1927 | "a bigger version" of Paul Sender, well-dressed but "soulless, bland, removed from reality"[8] |
| Brookfields | Pamela Frankau | The Willow Cabin | 1949 | "scholar-aesthete"[12] |
| Richard Carstone | Charles Dickens | Bleak House | 1852–1853 | Carstone is "not helped by an allegedly inappropriate, non-vocational Wykehamist education"[14] |
| Collins | Evelyn Waugh | Brideshead Revisited | 1945 | "scholar-aesthete",[12], art historian,[12] "an embryo don ... a man of solid reading and childlike humour." In the television series, Charles Ryder is shown wearing an Old Wykehamist tie. |
| Josiah Crawley | Anthony Trollope | Framley Parsonage The Last Chronicle of Barset |
1861 | Not explicitly mentioned as a Wykehamist, but Francis Arabin refers to Crawley having been "at school and at college" with him. |
| Christopher Dysart | Somerville and Ross | The Real Charlotte | 1894 | "although the occasional glimpses vouchsafed of him during his Winchester and Oxford career were as discouraging as they were brief" (The Real Charlotte, Chapter 8) |
| Errol | Lawrence Durrell | Mountolive | 1958 | "diligent but dull, 'goat-like' Head of Chancery" in the Foreign Office[8] |
| Colonel Henry Esmond, Viscount Castlewood | William Makepeace Thackeray | The History of Henry Esmond | 1852 | "a lively buccaneering spirit" whose year at "'the famous college'" had "passing little effect"[9] |
| Basil Fawlty | John Cleese | Fawlty Towers TV series | 1975–1979 | Basil wears an OW tie[15] |
| Gaskony | Charles Langbridge Morgan | The Judge's Story | 1947 | "the retired judge"[9] |
| Sinclair Hammond | P. G. Wodehouse | Bill the Conqueror | 1924 | "at one of the large English schools – possibly Winchester. Hammond was at Winchester." (Bill the Conqueror, page 225) |
| Peter Hithersay | Nicholas Shakespeare | "Snowleg" | 2004 | "Peter sat in Mugging Hall waiting to hear his name. 'Liptrot?' 'Sum.' ... he drew the tangerine curtain of his 'toyes', the wooden stall ... that encompassed his private world away from home ... it was compulsory to wear a 'strat', a straw boater bought at phenomenal expense from Gieves & Hawkes [in Kingsgate Street] ... Peter would wander beside the Itchen" (Snowleg, Chapter 1) |
| Mycroft Holmes and Sebastian Holmes | Brian Freemantle | The Holmes Inheritance | 2004 | Sherlock Holmes's brother and son, respectively. Sebastian sends reports to his father in a code based on Notions.[16] |
| "I" (AKA Marwood) | Bruce Robinson | Withnail and I | 1987 | Identified as having gone to "The other place", by Withnail to Uncle Monty, who says "Ah, a Wykehamist". |
| Alroy Keir | W. Somerset Maugham | Cakes and Ale | 1930 | "Roy started with certain advantages. He was the only son of a civil servant who after being Colonial Secretary for many years in Hong-Kong ended his career as Governor of Jamaica. When you looked up Alroy Kear in the serried pages of Who’s Who you saw o.s. of Sir Raymond Kear, K.C.M.G., K.C.V.O. q.v. and of Emily, y.d. of the late Major General Percy Camperdown, Indian Army. He was educated at Winchester and at New College, Oxford" (Cakes and Ale, Chapter 1) |
| A. V. Laider | Max Beerbohm | Seven Men (and two others) | 1919 | Possibly: he says "I was at Winchester with Blake", but the point of the story is that he was a pathological liar. |
| The Labour MP | Robert Harling | The Enormous Shadow | 1955 | In line with "the myth of the [Old Wykehamist as a] socialist politician"[8] |
| Mr Lamplough | Dorothy L. Sayers | In the Teeth of the Evidence | 1939 | A dentist in one of the Lord Peter Wimsey stories[17] |
| Hamo Langmuir | Angus Wilson | As If By Magic | 1973 | "scholar-aesthete",[12] "brilliant but unstable plant-geneticist"[12] |
| Dexter Mayhew | One Day | David Nicholls | 2009 novel, 2011 film | "covers some 16 years in the life of Emma Morley (Anne Hathaway), a working-class bluestocking educated at a Yorkshire comprehensive, and Dexter Mayhew (Jim Sturgess), a handsome upper-middle-class Wykehamist"[18] |
| General Melchett | Richard Curtis Ben Elton |
Blackadder Goes Forth | 1989 | Portrayed by Stephen Fry |
| Merlyn | T. H. White | The Sword in the Stone | 1938 | gold medal for being "the best scholar at Winchester". Republished in the 1958 The Once and Future King[19] |
| Michael Mont | John Galsworthy | The Forsyte Saga | 1922 | Suspected of being "a sort of socialist"[8] |
| John Morrell | Nicholas Monsarrat | The Cruel Sea | 1951 | A barrister before joining the Royal Navy; "a living reproof to the solecism of displaying emotion"[9] |
| Edgar Naylor | Cyril Connolly | The Rock Pool | 1936 | "and in places where no Wykehamist, no New Collegeman, no stockbroker, no Naylor had ever previously trod." (The Rock Pool) |
| Odoreida | Stephen Potter | Lifemanship books | 1950–1970 | "The intellectual prowess of the Wykehamist is one of his most widely recognized attributes ... G. Odoreida, one of Stephen Potter's most celebrated Lifemen"[19] |
| Pappenhacker | Evelyn Waugh | Scoop | 1938 | "'the cleverest man in Fleet Street', who liked playing with a toy train which he would address in Latin Alcaics"[19] |
| The spy Larry Pettifer and his controller Tim Cranmer | John le Carré | Our Game | 1995 | The ambiguous title denotes both espionage and "Winchester Football, a game so arcane that even experienced players may not know all the rules". [Cranmer, when a boy:] "‘I’ll give you one chance,’ I say expansively. ‘What is the Notion for Winchester Football?’ It is the easiest test I can think of in the entire school vernacular, a gift. ‘Jew-baiting’, he [Pettifer] replies. So I have no alternative but to beat him, when all he needed to say was Our Game."[20] |
| Peregrine Pickle | Tobias Smollett | The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle | 1751 | "Before he had been a full year at Winchester, he had signallized himself in so many achievements, in defiance to the laws and regulations of the place, that he was looked upon with admiration, and actually chosen dux, or leader, by a large body of his contemporaries." (Chapter 16)[7] |
| Psmith | P. G. Wodehouse | The Lost Lambs Psmith in the City Psmith, Journalist Leave It to Psmith |
1909–1923 | Wodehouse said he based Psmith on Rupert D'Oyly Carte, a school acquaintance of a cousin of Wodehouse. Rupert's daughter, Bridget D'Oyly Carte, however, said that the Wykehamist schoolboy was not her father but his elder brother Lucas.[21][22] |
| Mr Ramsey | Tobias Wolff | Old School | 2003 | "Mr. Ramsey had once told us about a riot of boys at his old school, Winchester, back in 1793, that finally had to be put down by a regiment of dragoons." (Chapter 6, "The Forked Tongue", page 103) |
| Captain Paul Sender | Ian Fleming | The Living Daylights | 1966 | "a lean, tense man in his early forties ... [in] the uniform of his profession – well-cut, well-used light-weight tweeds in a dark green herringbone, a soft white silk shirt and an old school tie – in his case, Wykehamist. At the sight of the tie ... Bond's spirits, already low, sank another degree. He knew the type: backbone of the Civil Service, overcrammed and underloved at Winchester, a good Second in P.P.E. at Oxford; the war, staff jobs he would have done meticulously ..."[7] |
| George Souldern | John Buchan | The Runagates Club | 1928 | "double First and University prizewinner"[19] |
| Dr Spacely-Trellis | Peter Simple | 1957 onwards | The go-ahead bishop of Bevindon | |
| Rupert Willem von Starnberg ("Bill") | George MacDonald Fraser | Flashman and the Tiger ("The Road to Charing Cross") |
1999 | "'Tee jay?' I croaked, and he laughed. 'Aye ... guide, philosopher, and friend - showin' the new bugs the ropes. What did you call 'em at Rugby? I'm a Wykehamist, you know - and that was your doin', believe it or not!'" |
| Sir Derek Underhill and Freddie Rooke |
P. G. Wodehouse | Jill the Reckless | 1920 | "Freddie looked at him as a timid young squire might have gazed upon St. George when the latter set out to do battle with the dragon. He was of the amiable type which makes heroes of its friends. In the old days when he had fagged for him at Winchester he had thought Derek the most wonderful person in the world, and this view he still retained." (Jill the Reckless, Chapter 1) |
| Revd. John Wentworth | Elizabeth Goudge | The Rosemary Tree | 1956 | "nice but ineffectual"[9] |
| Arthur Wilkinson | Anthony Trollope | The Bertrams | 1859 | "as he thought Winchester good for his own son, he naturally thought the same school good for Sir Lionel's son. But Bertram was entered as a commoner, whereas Wilkinson was in the college" (The Bertrams, page 12) |