Tatler UK - 10.2019

tatler

throwback

september

1989

PHOTOGRAPH: MICHAEL ROBERTS

Michaelmas Half 1989, and Tatler contributor Jo Johnson, Editor of the

Eton College Chronicle like his brother Boris before him, shared his insider

knowledge of the ‘unique vocabulary’ of Windsor’s tailcoated gentlemen.

‘Every buffer on Agar’s or Dutchman’s knows that Eton masters are called

“beaks”, that prefects are called “poppers” and that housemasters are

“m’ tutor”,’ he instructs, his words accompanied by a gallery of his peers on

said Agar’s Plough, the sports pitch where, each year, the school’s Fourth

of June holiday is marked with a tug of war, speeches, cricket and picnics.

This glamorous summer gathering honours the birthday of George III, a

patron of the school who might have been rather baffled by these Eighties

schoolboys, whose California-tinged lingo was ‘gnarly to the max’. Times,

as the young Johnson notes, change, but the famed Procession of Boats at

Fellows’ Eyot is as exalted as ever, with today’s ‘Collegers’ and ‘Oppidans’

still spreading out the picnic rugs, even if parental WhatsApp messages,

pinging to determine who’s bringing what, have almost certainly added the

emoji to the Eton vernacular. As the ‘wet bobs’ row past and boaters are

lifted from heads, one can only hope current coiffure cuts as flamboyant

a dash as the magnificent manes of Johnson’s day.

Accent on Eton

Top row:

Ben Pathe and

Jane Adamson;

Dominic Trusted

and Fred

Pilkington;

Steve Maud

Middle row:

Yermolay

Solzhenitsyn and

Tim Morgan;

Damian Peel and

Chica; Charles

Selly and

John Seely

Bottom row:

Roni Liyanage;

Nicholas ‘Honda’

van der Veen and

visiting guest;

Natalie Fusedale,

the Hon George

Irby and Seb

Wykeham

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