The foundation of Stowe as a Public School in 1923 saved a fine eighteenth-century mansion from demolition and the surrounding landscape gardens from being built upon or farmed. Stowe Legends tells of a host of intriguing characters who, under the inspirational headmaster J.F. Roxburgh, set about making a success of the ambitious new school that had inherited a grand, but somewhat down-at-heel home. Here, as never before, are vivid insights into its daily life during the Roxburgh era (1923-49), told from the perspective of many of the leading characters.


Notable personalities include novelist T.H. White. Shakespearean scholar G. Wilson Knight, and Stowe’s glamorous first woman teacher, Doreen Watt. Omnipresent throughout the whole narrative is the common denominator in all the Legends’ lives, John Fergusson Roxburgh, adroitly presiding over ‘the many-coloured web of Stowe’ and somehow ensuring that, despite all vicissitudes, the ground-breaking educational ambitions of 1923 would triumphantly take root in Stowe’s unique Arcadian setting.