Brian Acott (School House 1953)

In response to your social media post about the 70th anniversary of Her Majesty the Queen’s accession to the throne: I was a pupil in School House and the Flag Monitor on 6 February 1952, the day King George VI died. I have a photograph of the Union Jack at half-mast on that day. This is just one of my memories from my schooldays. I still have the formal house and school rugby photos and my 1st XV, 2nd XV and Colts caps. (2022)

Chris Marshall (Sackville 56)

I left Sevenoaks School in 1956 but have returned often, especially when my daughter Anette Marshall (Boswell 91) was in the first intake of junior girls. I found myself on the parents committee for two years. Anette went to Keele University followed by a year at Freie Universität Berlin and works for Paribas in Frankfurt where she has lived for quite a time.In February 1957 I was called to do national service and was lucky enough to be commissioned. I spent nearly two years in Malaya. On my return I did not know what to do but was offered a job in Cornwall and moved to Newquay in 1962. There I met a lady from East Germany who had come to learn English. We married in 1966 at Woodlands Church, Kemsing. After the Berlin Wall came down we went to the authorities in Potsdam and asked for the return of the land bequeathed to my wife by her mother. There had been a large house on the plot but it was bombed by the British in 1943; my wife and her brother had to be dug out. It took 17 years before we were able to say that we owned the land. I designed a house which now stands on the same plot as had my wife’s childhood home. It is opposite a lake where my wife learned to swim and where she still swims every day. I suspect that not many OS or their spouses have been dug out of a bombed house and lived through a Russian occupation. Unhappily, the stories that one has heard from the 1940s, relating to this area, are now being repeated in Ukraine. (2022)