Westminster School - Notable Former Pupils

Notable Former Pupils

See also: List of people educated at Westminster School

The following people were educated at Westminster, amongst about 900 others listed in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

  • Richard Hakluyt (1553–1616), writer
  • Ben Jonson (1573–1637), poet and dramatist
  • Arthur Dee (1579–1651), alchemist and royal physician
  • George Herbert (1593–1633), public orator and poet
  • John Dryden (1631–1700), poet and playwright
  • John Locke (1632–1704), philosopher
  • Sir Christopher Wren (1632–1723), architect and scientist, co-founder of the Royal Society
  • Robert Hooke FRS (1635–1703), British scientist
  • Henry Purcell (1659–1695), composer
  • Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd Duke of Grafton (1735–1811), Prime Minister
  • Charles Wesley (1707–1788), Methodist preacher and writer of over 6,000 hymns
  • Edward Gibbon FRS (1737 – 1794), historian
  • Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), lawyer, eccentric and philosopher
  • Thomas Pinckney (1750–1828), American soldier, politician, and diplomat.
  • Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (1746–1825), ADC to Washington 1777, defeated by Jefferson in 1804 in contest for Presidency
  • Matthew Gregory "Monk" Lewis (1775–1818), novelist and dramatist
  • John Russell, 1st Earl Russell (1792–1878), Prime Minister
  • FitzRoy Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan (1788–1855), lost his right arm at Waterloo, C-in-C in the Crimea who is honoured with a statue in Dean's Yard
  • Augustus Short (11 June 1802 – 5 October 1883), the first Anglican bishop of Adelaide, South Australia
  • A. A. Milne (QS) (1882–1956), author and journalist
  • Robert Southey (1774–1843), poet, historian and biographer
  • Oliver Lyttelton, 1st Viscount Chandos (1893–1972), Cabinet Minister during World War II, chaiman of the National Theatre Board
  • Hossein Ala' (1882–1964), former Prime Minister of Iran
  • Sir Adrian Boult (1889–1983), conductor
  • Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian (1889-1977) Nobel prize winner
  • Charles William Anderson Scott (1903–1946), pioneer aviator
  • Sir John Gielgud (GG) (1904–2000), actor and director
  • Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith (1909–1981), Britain's foremost early aviation historian
  • Sir Andrew Huxley (b. 1917), Nobel prizewinning physiologist
  • Sir Peter Ustinov (1921–2004), actor, writer, director and raconteur
  • Tony Benn (born 1925), politician
  • Peter Brook (born 1925, LL 1937–1938), theatre director
  • Nigel Lawson (born 1932, WW 1945–1950), former Chancellor of the Exchequer, father of Nigella Lawson
  • Simon Gray (1936–2008, WW 1949–1954), playwright and diarist
  • Jonathan Fenby (born 1942, LL 1956-1960), journalist, author and former Editor of The Observer and South China Morning Post
  • Andrew Lloyd Webber (born 1948, QS 1960–1965), composer and producer
  • Martin Amis (born 1949), novelist
  • Stephen Poliakoff (born 1952, WW 1966–1970), director, playwright and television dramatist
  • Timothy Winter (born 1960), Shaykh Zayed Lecturer in Islamic Studies, Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge University
  • Ian Bostridge (born 1964), classical tenor
  • James Robbins (GG 1968–1972), broadcaster
  • Shane MacGowan (born 1957, AHH 1972–1973), musician
  • David Heyman (born 1961), film producer
  • Matt Frei (born 1963, RR 1978–1981), broadcaster
  • Gavin Rossdale (born 1965), musician, songwriter, lead singer with rock band Bush
  • Lucasta Miller (born 1966), writer and critic
  • Helena Bonham Carter (born 1966, LL 1982–1984), actress
  • Jason Kouchak (born 1967), pianist and composer
  • Noreena Hertz (born 1967, CC 1983-85), economist and campaigner
  • Nick Clegg (born 1967, LL), Liberal Democrat leader, MP for Sheffield Hallam, Deputy Prime Minister
  • Ruth Kelly (born 1968, DD 1984-86), Cabinet minister
  • Marcel Theroux (born 1968), novelist and broadcaster
  • Joe Cornish (born 1968), broadcaster
  • Adam Buxton (born 1969), comedian
  • Louis Theroux (born 1970), broadcaster
  • Jonathan Yeo (born 1970), artist
  • Dido Armstrong (born 1971, WW, 1987–1989), British musician under the name "Dido"
  • Martha Lane Fox (born 1973), head of Digital Public Services
  • James Reynolds (born 1974), BBC Beijing Correspondent
  • Conrad Shawcross (born 1977), artist
  • Pinny Grylls (born 1978, HH 1994–1996), documentary film-maker
  • Benjamin Yeoh (born 1978), playwright
  • Alexander Shelley (born 1979), conductor

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Famous quotes containing the words notable and/or pupils:

    “In one notable instance, where the United States Army and a hundred years of persuasion failed, a highway has succeeded. The Seminole Indians surrendered to the Tamiami Trail. From the Everglades the remnants of this race emerged, soon after the trail was built, to set up their palm-thatched villages along the road and to hoist tribal flags as a lure to passing motorists.”
    —For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    “We saw one schoolhouse in our walk, and listened to the sounds which issued from it; but it appeared like a place where the process, not of enlightening, but of obfuscating the mind was going on, and the pupils received only so much light as could penetrate the shadow of the Catholic Church.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)