Eton College - Old Etonians

Old Etonians

"Old Etonians" redirects here. For other uses, see Old Etonians (disambiguation). Main pages: :Category:People educated at Eton College, List of Old Etonians born before the 18th century, List of Old Etonians born in the 18th century, List of Old Etonians born in the 19th century, List of Old Etonians born in the 20th century, List of Old Etonians in the Military, and King's Scholar

Former pupils of Eton College are known as Old Etonians. Eton has also produced nineteen British Prime Ministers, including Sir Robert Walpole, William Pitt the Elder, the first Duke of Wellington, William Ewart Gladstone, Arthur James Balfour, Harold Macmillan, and the current Prime Minister, David Cameron.

Notable Old Etonians who have been writers include Henry Fielding, Thomas Gray, Horace Walpole, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Bridges, George Orwell and Ian Fleming. The mediaevalist and ghost story writer M. R. James was provost of Eton from 1918 until his death in 1936.

Other notable Old Etonians include scientists Robert Boyle, John Maynard Smith, J. B. S. Haldane, and John Gurdon, the dandy Beau Brummell, economists John Maynard Keynes and Richard Layard, Antarctic explorer Lawrence Oates, politician Alan Clark, cricket commentator Henry Blofeld, explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, adventurer Bear Grylls, composers Thomas Arne, Hubert Parry, and Peter Warlock, and musicians Frank Turner and Humphrey Lyttelton. Notable Old Etonian actors include Eddie Redmayne, Damian Lewis, Dominic West, Jeremy Brett, Hugh Laurie, Tom Hiddleston, Harry Lloyd and Patrick Macnee.

As the school was founded by Henry VI, and is situated next to Windsor Castle, the school has historically good relations with the British Royal Family; Princes William and Harry are Old Etonians.

A rising number of pupils come to Eton from overseas, including members of royal families from Africa and Asia, some of whom have been sending their sons to Eton for generations. One of them, King Prajadhipok or Rama VII (1893–1941) of Siam, donated a garden to Eton.

Actor Dominic West has been unenthusiastic about the career benefits of being an Old Etonian, saying it "is a stigma that is slightly above 'paedophile' in the media in a gallery of infamy".