The OT Reading List

The OT Reading List

Include your book in the next edition: tonbridgesociety@tonbridge-school.org

Discover the latest releases from the world of OT literature. In recent months, we’ve been treated to Sir Tim Waterstone’s (JH 52-57) new memoir, The Face Pressed Against a Window, in which Britain’s most successful bookseller explains what let him to open Waterstones and how he built it up into the business empire it is today.

Explore a sport obsessed dystopian world in Michael Aylwin's (PH 85-90) kickstarter-funded novel, set in the year 2144, and follow Philip Pendered

(CR 67-95) as he travels, footloose and free, in Spain under Franco and 1960's France. Revel in the marvellous eccentricity of some of the Church of England’s most curious vicars in Fergus Butler-Gallie's (PS 05-10) first book, and enjoy Christopher Reid’s (PH 62-67) exquisitely compiled canine-orientated response to T.S. Eliot’s best-selling collection of practical cat poems.

A Field Guide to the English Clergy

The Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie (PS 05-10)

Judge not, lest ye be judged. This timeless wisdom has guided the Anglican Church for hundreds of years, fostering a certain tolerance of eccentricity among its members. Butler- Gallie’s first book is a compendium of several centuries worth of gloriously mad, ecclesiastical nuttiness. Featuring the likes of the ‘Mermaid of Morwenstow’, who excommunicated a cat for mousing on a Sunday, and ‘Mad Jack’, who swapped his surplice for a leopard skin and insisted on being carried around in a coffin.

Old Toffer’s Book of Consequential Dogs

Christopher Reid (PH 62-67)

Christopher Reid offers a canine rejoinder to T. S. Eliot’s best-selling Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats; one of the most successful poetry collections in the world. Reid wrote the collection in response to an invitation from the Estate of T. S. Eliot, and features illustrations by Elliot Elam. His witty and varied poems introduce characters such as Dobson the Dog Detective, Flo the Philosophical Foxhound, and Frazzlesprat, a dog who would really rather be a cat.

Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero

Charles Sprawson (PH 55-59)

Haunts of the Black Masseur is a dazzling introduction to the great swimming heroes, from Byron leaping into the surf at Shelley's funeral to Hart Crane diving to his death in the Bay of Mexico. Bursting with anecdote, Charles Sprawson leads us into a watery world populated by lithe demi-gods – a world that has obsessed humans from the ancient Greeks and Romans, to Yeats, Woolf, Fitzgerald and Hockney.

Ivon

Michael Aylwin (PH 85-90)

Ivon is a fast-moving sporting dystopia by one of the Guardian's leading sportswriters. The book is set in the year 2144, and the world is powered by sport - politically and practically. Each community owes its prosperity or otherwise to the success of its teams and athletes. A person's class is determined by their aptitude for sport. Once their useful life as an athlete has expired, they are placed in stasis at an age predetermined by that class.

The World of Tides

William Thomson (PS 01-06)

In The Book of Tides, William Thomson took the reader on a mesmerising journey round the coast of Britain. Now, he sets out with his surfboard and tidal compass to encounter the waters of the world, charting his most extraordinary sights and experiences. These include the whirlpools of the Arctic circle, the world's biggest ever surfed wave off Portugal, the strongest whirlpool in Norway and, in Australia, the most dangerous rapids known to us.

Made for Love: A Hippie’s Memoir

Philip Pendered (CR 67-95)

Follow Philip Pendered as he travels, footloose and free, in Spain under Franco and 1960s France. Honest and entertaining, and as you would expect from a hippie’s memoir, full of sex, drugs and other surprises. It offers many different moods, some humorous, some, describing the power of music, wonderfully profound. Readers are treated to all kinds of intriguing thoughts about what it means to be young, alive and free.

Uncharted

Bill Bruford (FH 62-67)

What do expert drummers do? Why do they do it? Is there anything creative about it? If so, how might that creativity inform their practice and that of others in related artistic spheres? Applying ideas from cultural psychology to findings from research into the creative behaviours of a specific subset of popular music instrumentalists, Bill Bruford demonstrates the ways in which expert drummers experience creativity in music performance and offers fresh insights into in-the-moment interactional processes in music.

The Fox

Frederick Forsyth (PS 52-55)

Most weapons do what you tell them. Most weapons you can control. But what if the most dangerous weapon in the world isn’t a smart missile or a stealth submarine or even an AI computer programme? What if it’s a 17-year-old boy with a blisteringly brilliant mind, who can run rings around the most sophisticated security services across the globe, who can manipulate that weaponry and turn it against the superpowers themselves?

The Multiverse

Andrew Wynne Owen (SH 07-11)

Wynne Own received Oxford University’s Newdigate Prize in 2014 and an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2015. His first book of poems celebrates human curiosity and is written in a variety of strictly observed metres and with rhyme. The Multiverse sings of science, philosophy, and religion, testing the emotional valences of each. The poet is an enthusiast - for the visible world, for scientific and philosophical excursions.

The Fourth Education Revolution

Sir Anthony Seldon (CR 89-93)

Will artificial intelligence liberate or infantilise humanity? Vice-chancellor of Buckingham University, and former Head of Politics and History for Tonbridge School, Sir Anthony Seldon explores the impact AI will have on the education sector in his latest book, The Fourth Education Revolution.

The Face Pressed Against a Window: A Memoir

Sir Tim Waterstone (JH 52-57)

In this charming and evocative memoir, Sir Tim Waterstone recalls his formative years in a small town in rural England at the end of the Second World War. He explores the troubled relationship he had with his father, before moving on to the epiphany he had while studying at Cambridge, which set him on the road to Waterstone's and gave birth to the creative strategy that made him a high street name.

A Short History of the Angmering Park Shoot

Nigel Clutton (HS 48-51)

Game shooting may not be to everyone’s taste; but has become a driving force behind the creation and restoration of so much of the landscape in the South Downs. This book tells of Angmering Park’s transformation from a little-used peripheral beat, and former Second World War tank training range, into one of the country’s leading driven game shoots.

Ironside: The Authorised Biography of Field Marshal Lord Ironside

Edmund Ironside

This first full authorised biography of 1st Baron Ironside is the definitive account of the incredibly varied and long career of one of the most prolific military leaders of the twentieth century. From commanding allied forces in WW1, to Chief of Imperial General Staff and later, Commander-in-Chief Home Forces in WW2, this was a man born to serve. Witten by his son, Edmund Ironside, the biography is based upon the field marshal’s meticulously kept diaries covering more than fifty years.

The Test

Nathan Leamon (CR 95-12)

Fast-paced, humorous and candid, The Test follows the battles on and off the field as stand-in England captain, James McCall, tries to get his exhausted team across the finish line. Along the way, his story becomes one of fatherhood, friendship and trusting yourself when no one else will. Nathan Leamon's love letter to Test cricket captures the feel and flavour of professional sport from the inside - the good, the bad and the simply surreal.