South Wales Evening Post column, March 21, 2025
HAVE a think: how many of your old classmates have ended up being featured on Desert Island Discs? And . . . if you could go back in time, would you have put money on them being featured on the classic Radio 4 show? OK, I guess if you went to the old Dynevor School in Swansea you might have had a decent punt on Rowan Williams fulfilling his destiny and being featured on the show as Archbishop of Canterbury. But most of us will have looked around and wondered where our fellow students would end up. It was something of a privilege (hard won through the old 11-plus exam, by the way) to attend the old Queen Elizabeth Grammar School for Boys in Carmarthen. The Queen Elizabeth, for those of you who don’t know the history, refers to Queen Elizabeth the First, rather than the Second. The clue is in the fact the school was founded in 1576. If you are a fan of Tom Brown’s Schooldays, you will get an idea of what sort of a school it was - as close as you can get to a ‘public school’ as it is...