Article by Elizabeth Wells, Archivist, first published in The Camden, 2017 My childhood took place in the window between the collapse of the Berlin wall and the 9/11 attacks. There was much that was wrong with the world in the 90s, but there was also a sense of optimism – a feeling that many of the problems of the past…
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Robert Hooke’s Euclid?
‘He went to Mr. Busby’s, the schoolemaster of Westminster, at whose howse he was; and he made very much of him…There he learnd to play 20 lessons on the organ. He there in one weeke’s time made himselfe master of the first VI bookes of Euclid, to the admiration of Mr. Busby (now S.T.D.), who introduced him’ Biography of Robert Hooke, John Aubrey’s Brief Lives.…
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Price, Worth and Value
CECIL GRAHAM. What is a cynic? LORD DARLINGTON. A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. CECIL GRAHAM. And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing. Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan Around 2 years ago I visited…
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The Grand Staircase by Jit Shetty
There are many landmarks at Westminster School but very few can match the Grand Staircase in Ashburnham House. It is approached through folding doors from the Inner Hall (formerly Ashburnham ‘Upper’) which retains its 17th Century panelling. The hall has low proportions yet the staircase seems to rise from all this. The wide and shallow treads, the carved balusters juxtaposed…
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The Young Dr Busby
The school does not routinely acquire new portraits and as we already have five paintings of Dr Busby in our collection (along with a bust and countless engravings) another picture of the great Head Master was not high on our priority list. However, when this painting came up for sale at a small auction house in Cockermouth, Cumbria, it was…
