Here is a picture of Derek Walker-Smith, later Lord Broxbourne. This Maltese Cross House photograph was taken in 1926 and shows him in a splendid pose with his Houseparent Bob Nevett, seated left.

He went up to Christ Church College Oxford in 1928 to read History. In his second year he published a semi-autobiographical novel ‘Out of Step’, in which he describes his school days at Ormond near ‘the fishing port which was Ormond’s nearest town. This barely disguised portrait of Rossall enjoyed literary success with one reviewer describing it as ‘exceptionally well written for a first novel by an undergraduate of only 19.’ Of which more next week.

Derek Walker-Smith was called to the Bar in 1934, became an M.P. and served as a Minister in many posts under the Macmillan and later governments. He became a life peer and died after a long and distinguished political career in 1992. A very interesting forerunner of the much more well-known OR J.G. Farrell.

Richard McDowell
Archivist