I have been asked by my old school to give the current students a talk about freedom in the air and my work with Rotary International. I came across this article on the Times Online website, whilst finding out what the school has been up to since i left in 1995. Seems not much as changed,
School of rock
The stars are fighting to get their kids into Bedales. What it is about the posh public school that makes it so cool
Word reaches us of a slightly uncomfortable situation at Bedales, near Petersfield, in Hampshire, Britain’s most famous coed boarding school. You may recall that there was a bit of scene when Jude Law and Sadie Frost showed up there a few weeks ago to look around, as their son, Rafferty, had just landed a place – cue excitable newspaper reports of girls screaming at dishy Jude from dorm windows. The only problem is, Pearl Lowe and Danny Goffey, the other half of the infamous Primrose Hill wife-swapping cabal, have also chosen Bedales for one of their kids, and are said to be somewhat peeved about Law and Frost’s decision, as all parties are now on nonspeaking terms.
They shouldn’t worry. There is probably no better place in the country for the swinging, Earl Jean- and Birkenstock-wearing jet-set vegans of London’s most notorious locale to educate their kids. They will be joining a roll call of alumni that includes Lily Allen, Daniel Day-Lewis, the Kooks’ Luke Pritchard, Kirstie Allsopp, Viscount Linley and Sophie Dahl. And if the school’s gilded noninterventionist reputation is to be believed, the Primrose Hill children will probably come back as best friends, not bitter rivals, having talked out their parents’ salacious behaviour like mature, responsible adults, building bridges for the grown-ups, healing themselves in the process and learning to operate as individual thinkers. That’s what you pay for when you send your kids to the coed apotheosis that is Bedales.
