40s and 50s Memories
51
nearly three years serving King and Country
in the Queen's Royal Regiment. This took
me to Ulster, India and occupied Germany. I
remember meeting Barry C. Gugg (BF45) on
board a troop-ship en route to India, and we
met again at the officer's Training Group in
Bangalore. In fact we were both commissioned
on the same day, and eventually returned to the
UK on the same troop-ship as the days of King
and Emperor were coming to an end.
In Bangalore I also bumped into Joe Varley (BF
or A) who had been captain of swimming and
the 1st XV rugby team.
At Oxford there were quite a number of OAs,
and at Queen's also. Apart from myself, there
was M.F. Hoare, Paul Randall, John Ridler,
Peter Gardiner, W. Pickering all at Queen's,
while elsewhere, d.f.d.grange-Bennet,
Michael Scott, Gordon Brady amongst others.
In fact there were enough of us to be able to
entertain Mr. and Mrs. Unmack who travelled
up from King's.
Coming down from Oxford, I joined the Boots
Company as a trainee/ scholar in 1951.
I remained with Boots for 33 years, retiring in
1984. Over this period I had reached the position
of Managing Director of Boots Retail Services
and Chairman of Boots the Chemists. I have
nothing in particular to elaborate regarding my
career with Boots other than to say that it was a
good period in my life with much enjoyment in the
company of my colleagues, and where loyalty
to the company enabled staff to work their way
up into positions of increasing responsibility. All
this has now changed in industry, and no one
is considered for promotion who has not had
experience elsewhere on his or her CV.
After retiring, I joined the boards of a number
of companies as non-executive Director, and I
became Chairman of three.
M. HOARE
Bishop Fox 1945
Michael Hoare left King's in 1945 as School
Captain. He was a member of Bishop Fox House,
under George Morgan as Housemaster, with dormitories and changing rooms at Gatcombe.
Chemistry, French and art were his favourite
subjects, and he remembers John Scott, Bill
Dovell, and Jack Charles as friends at school.
He notes:
My memories of King's are naturally coloured
by the fact that I was there during wartime. Food
was, to say the least, basic. We were fortunate
in not being a target for enemy bombers,
though we did have a Heinkel strafing the
cricket pitch one evening. War work, afternoon
activities lifting potatoes on a nearby farm, amid
rain and mud stand out. Also memorable were
parades of the OTC through Taunton as a part
of campaigns to raise money for Spitfires, etc. I
remember also very well the period just before
D-Day when I watched gliders passing over the
garden at Gatcombe nightly, until one morning
I heard on the radio in my bedroom the historic
broadcast from Eisenhower announcing the
invasion had begun.
Of his life after King's, he writes:
I went up to Oxford in Spring 1945 to read
Chemistry as a member of Queen's College,
and was awarded my D. Phil in 1950. I then
accepted a Fellowship to study for a year in
the Sorbonne in Paris where I concentrated on
combustion research.
1951 was a key year for I got married to
Hildegarde Scheel v. Unruh, and I embarked
on my career with Esso. I began as a research
chemist working on lubricating oils and
petrochemicals and was also seconded for a 6
month study of radiation chemistry at Harwell.
After ten years I joined Esso Petroleum HQ
in London as a research consultant to the
board and manager of the corporate planning
department. When gas was discovered in the
North Sea in 1966 I was appointed manager
of Esso Europe's newly formed UK Gas
Department, with responsibility for negotiating
the sales agreements for Esso's UK and
Norwegian North Sea gas to British Gas Ltd.
By 1980, I had become a Senior Consultant
to Esso Europe for their natural Gas activities
throughout UK, Norway, Holland and Germany.
In 1984, I retired from Esso Europe and set up