On Friday 17 May 2024 we hosted our 6th Bradfieldian London Lunch, once again being held at the Lansdowne Club in Mayfair. We had a range of Bradfieldians spanning over 70 years of the College’s history. This included those who left in the Class of 1950 including Chris Lee (G 45-50) and John Nott (B 46-50) alongside some of the most recent leavers being Marshall Scott (G 17-19), Will Bray (H 14-19), Harvey de Meester (H 15-18) and his brother Chester de Meester (H 12-17) who also happen to be the grandsons of George Burne (A 48-53).

Guests came from overseas too. Bradfieldians Michael Devitt (A 52-57) known as Michael Chapman at Bradfield and Robin Elliott (B 54-59) usually live in the USA and Pete Jones (F 93-98) and Johanna Lindström (M 14-16) both live in Germany. David Cook (E 55-60) and Tim Sills (D 55-60) left Bradfield in 1960 and others from the 1960s included James Wyatt (G 58-63), Raoul Pinnell (C 65-69) and Crispian Cartright (C 65-70).

We had a group of girls this year from the Class of 1992 using the lunch as a 1992 reunion from Palmer House. Organised by Olivia Garran (I 90-92) the group included Paula Oppenheimer (nee White), Michelle Giles (nee Fischer) and Henny Swan. Also, on the same table were, Will Dixon C 86-91) and Hannah Greatrex nee Iredale (I 89-91) who had not been to a lunch before and Yaser Martini (C 84-88) who returned with friends Alec Cramsie (C 83-88) and Jonathan Hassell (C 84-88).

It was great to see many of last year’s Class of 1987 reunion back at the lunch again including: Timothy Walton (F 82-87), Andrew Walwyn (B 82-87), Christopher Bailey (F 82-87), Tom Mallinson (A 82-87) and James Hart (D 82-87). They are looking for even more of their year group to get together next year.

Several members of current College staff hosted tables including Head of Business Mike Rippon, Director of Co-Curricular Roger Wall and Teacher of Geography Roger Keeley, alongside the Bradfield Society team and the Headmaster.

Everyone enjoyed pre-lunch drinks followed by a three-course meal in the Lansdowne Club’s Grade 2 Listed Ballroom. The lunch was followed by an update from the Headmaster Chris Stevens on the school and its pupils focussing on key themes of Bradfield beginning with the letter H including: Happiness, History, Humble and Humility.

After the lunch, Tom Robertson (F 95-00) enjoyed having a demonstration of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) project for education Campus XR which is being run by the College Director of IT Trevor Benstock. Nick Finegold (E 79-83) who came to the lunch is a generous advocate of this project and the demonstration was done by Will Bray who joined the team at Bradfield to support investment in its continued development.

Everyone enjoyed the lunch with feedback including: “We both thoroughly enjoyed it and thank you for putting us on excellent tables with great company” and “many thanks for all your assistance in pulling together the gang” from a year group who reunited together once again at the lunch.

A gallery of photographs of the lunch can be viewed here