This book provides an easily accessible chronological history of the world famous school. It begins with the grant of a charter by Queen Elizabeth I in 1572 to John Lyon, a local farmer and landowner, for a school to provide a classical education to thirty poor boys of the parish. It charts the school's development from these beginnings through the reign of the 'drunken and negligent' James Cox (1713-46), the decline to 69 pupils at the end of Christopher Wordsworth's time (1836-45), Harrow's emergence as a fashionable school for the aristocracy and its rise to 350 pupils at the beginning and 650 by the end of the nineteenth century; this was followed by near bankruptcy in 1939, the revival of fortunes under Ralph Moore (1942- 52) and 'Jimmy' James (1953-71) and progress up to the present day.
The book is fully illustrated and provides an attractive and easy reference for anyone interested in the fascinating history of a school that has produced pupils ranging from Winston Churchill to the painter Victor Pasmore, from cricketer Archie MacLaren to Cardinal Manning, from novelist John Galsworthy to tipster and eccentric John McCririck, from Sir Robert Peel to the explorer Pen Hadow, from Archbishop Randall Davidson to pop singer James Blunt, a hatful of generals and a plethora of Victorian politicians