John Thorn (headmaster)

At Repton Thorn hoped to make the boys more "industrious, creative and happy" in a school where, he felt, sport overshadowed everything else, academic attainment included, and which he saw as "a rather brutal place" for boys not suited to the dominant school culture.[3] He sought to reduce corporal punishment and abolished "personal fagging", a Repton practice whereby the youngest pupils were assigned for two years as servants for the most senior boys, who could beat them for mistakes.[4] After moving to Winchester College in 1968, Thorn found less need to address such traditional public-school austerities because, inspired by the late 1960s 'Counter-Culture', senior boys were themselves refusing to continue them.[5] Thorn also opposed the traditional dominance of school sport. "The arts must no longer be Cinderellas", he wrote, "must no longer take second place to cricket nets and the rest of it".[6] He viewed such challenges to Repton's traditions as the fundamental source of such strong hostility from a cohesive faction of conservative, sport-focused teachers, that he sought to leave Repton.[7]

At Repton Thorn expanded the roles and resources of the established lead drama teacher and lead art teacher, praising their work as cultivating creativity and sensitivity.[8] Inspired by their methods, at Winchester he developed participatory arts as a valued part of school life, creating a theatre workshop and an art school there.[9] For Thorn, the most valuable aspects of school drama, art or music was pupils' participation and experience of the creative process rather than a polished product.[10] He warmed to experimental plays written or produced by pupils themselves.[11] Thorn also made space in the curriculum for academic study, separate from exam subjects, which aimed purely to expand pupils’ perspective on the world. At Winchester he explored a combination of history, literature, philosophy, politics and science for this purpose.[12]

A sometime Labour voter, Thorn was strongly concerned to share his schools with pupils whose parents could not afford the fees.[13] He was keen to co-operate with government schemes for assisted places.[14] He sold Winchester College's 15th century manuscript of Malory's Morte d’Arthur to the British Library in order to fund bursaries for poorer pupils.[15] He modified Winchester's demanding entrance scholarship exams to give talented state school pupils a fairer chance against competitors who had received expensive coaching.[16]

While Thorn was at Winchester, John Smyth, a barrister who lived nearby, acquired a dominant and unhealthy role in the School's Christian Forum. Smyth persuaded some 16 Winchester boys to undergo severe beatings as a kind of penance. Thorn knew that boys were visiting Smyth at his home but for some years was unaware of what was happening there. When Smyth was exposed in 1982 Thorn got him to sign an undertaking that he would not contact young people in future, but did not inform the police. Smyth later moved to Southern Africa where he resumed his activities. In 2019 Winchester College commissioned an independent review into Smyth's involvement with the School. Thorn, now in his mid 90s, was not well enough to contribute.[17]