Nick Bomford sadly died on 21 June 2025, age 86.  He left a widow Gilly, his children and grandchildren.  

Nick Bomford has a solid claim to be the most distinguished young schoolmaster ever to teach at the Nautical College, Pangbourne. Following three years in the History Department at the NCP 1961-64, he rose to become headmaster of Monmouth School in 1977, Uppingham School in 1982 and Harrow School from 1991-99. It is quite a record.

Since the NCP era the sort of upwardly-mobile career path Bomford pursued, moving from school to school with more responsibility in each place, has become the norm in private education. At the time he did it, however, it was the exception. Indeed Frank Fisher, his mentor at Wellington College where he taught from 1968-76, had to push him to apply for his first headship at the age of 37, something his contemporaries were already doing.

The NCP in the early 1960s was a way-stop on this journey and occupies a mere eight pages in his published memoir. But what Bomford writes in this short chapter is evocative to anyone who knew the College at that time and illustrative of many of the reasons why the NCP became Pangbourne College just five years after he left to teach at Dartmouth.

The NCP, he writes, “was not a school for the faint hearted or the rebellious.” The Captain Superintendent, Captain A.F.P. Lewis, is termed “almost a caricature of a naval gunnery officer, short of stature and red faced…a capable and energetic man but one in some respects fighting against the tide.” A trio of “impressively able and dynamic younger housemasters (Messrs Stephens, Atkins and Hooper) counterbalanced the more conservative elements in the common room.” Musically, the school was a “desert.”

In general Bomford enjoyed his time at Pangbourne, making good friends, establishing a rapport with the boys, teaching History, supervising shooting, setting up a Classical Music Appreciation Society and taking responsibility for the Colts 2nd XV (which under his command lost a match against a Radley team by the remarkable score of 71-3).

He adds: “The experience of teaching at a not very exalted ability level had been an eye-opener and at times very instructive and rewarding. I do not think I ever had more professional satisfaction than when 12 of the 24 boys in the lowest of three sets in the year group that I was teaching succeeded in passing ‘O’ level,  in one or two cases, the only subject in which they managed to achieve this.”

Three headmasterships followed culminating in the prestigious position at Harrow. “All in all I was extremely fortunate to have spent so many years doing a fascinating job” he reflects. Blessed with a good memory and a tendency to hoard paper, Nick Bomford wrote this lively memoir for his five grandchildren “in case they are ever interested.” It deserves a wider audience.