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Daniel Cobban, an aficionado of the gothic genre, has had a horror novel published, based on a ghostly tale from Lancashire folklore.

The 251-page book, The Curse of Peg O’Nell: or The Demon of the Well, has already been attracting five-star reviews online.

According to the local legends, Peg O’Nell was a servant who worked at Waddow Hall, home of the prominent Starkie family, in the 1800s. A spirited girl, she often argued with her mistress. On one occasion, her mistress sent her to fetch water and added that she hoped Peg broke her neck. Some time later, on an icy night, this wish came true, with Peg falling into the nearby Ribble.

After that, not only did the Starkies suffer hard times, with many believing it was Peg’s curse on the family, but other ghostly stories also entered local folklore.

Daniel (OE 1994–2001), who currently lives in Clitheroe, Lancashire, said: “Peg O’Nell is perhaps the most talked-about and iconic piece of folklore in the county. She is a mysterious water spirit who dwells in the River Ribble and, although usually dormant, is said to return every seven years, demanding her septennial sacrifice – animal or human, she doesn’t mind – but either way, no one is guaranteed any safety on Peg’s night.”

“I’m a big fan of the Victoriana and gothic genres of literature, and I couldn’t resist fleshing out a full gothic/folk story about Peg O’Nell,” said Daniel, who wrote under the pen name, Daniel Nicholas Cobban and was published by Scottish house, Beul Athris Publishing, who specialise in folklore, among other genres. “It took a lot of research and patience!”

Looking back at his school days, Daniel especially remembers his A-level English classes with great fondness. “Mr [Eric] Houston and Miss [Victoria] Maule were both amazing at helping us get to grips with challenging texts such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.

“Also, as a writer, I deeply appreciated the fact that the School encouraged creative writing: I remember participating in a creative writing competition in Year 8 (or the second year, we called it back then!) and I achieved the runner-up position.”

After QE, Daniel studied English and film at Glasgow University. He qualified as a TEFL teacher and spent some time teaching English to elementary school children in Mexico a few years ago.

“I’m currently a supervisor at a restaurant in my home town Clitheroe, and the flexibility of the hours helps me to continue embracing my passion for writing.”

Having experienced the highs and lows of life as an élite rower, paralympian Tom Aggar is now revelling in his new career as a teacher.

Tom (OE 1995-2002), who until he retired was the longest-serving member of the GB Para-rowing squad, won the gold medal in the Arms-Shoulders Men’s Single Scull at the Beijing Paralympics in 2008, and was crowned World Champion in the same discipline in 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2011. He bowed out of rowing while still competing at the highest level, having taken bronze at the Paralympics in Rio in 2016.

He is now teaching full-time at Claires Court Senior Boys, an independent day school in Maidenhead, and has heard during lockdown that, following his successful final submissions under the teacher-training process, he is now fully qualified as a teacher.

“After retiring from competitive rowing, I worked for a pharmaceutical firm for a short time, before taking the plunge and training as a teacher,” he says. “I had always thought about teaching, but for one reason or another had talked myself out of it. I should have trusted my instincts as I have thoroughly enjoyed my time teaching so far.”

Tom who read Bio Sciences at Warwick University, teaches Chemistry and Biology.

“It’s a fairly small school (by QE standards) of around 450 boys, but very sporty and a really great environment to work in. It’s funny now, as a teacher, how many of the QE standards I find myself holding the boys to here!”

Tom was an accomplished sportsman at QE and has fond memories of his time as a pupil. “I played rugby for so many years with a great group of friends; I really enjoyed my studies, particularly into the Sixth Form. I also had the opportunity to represent the School at so many sports throughout my time there.”

Tom was injured in a non-sports related accident in 2005 and took up rowing as part of his rehabilitation programme. “[Former Headmaster] John Marincowitz and the whole School were so very supportive of me after my injury and it has been great to still keep in touch with QE,” he says.

When Tom stepped down from competitive rowing, he took a break from sport and all the training for a while. But now he tries to keep fit and trains before work most mornings. “I guess old habits are hard to break, and although I don’t miss the pressure that came with being on the team and competing, I still enjoy keeping active.”

Tom is married to Vicki and they have three children, two boys and a girl. He enjoys spending his spare time with them, going for walks and swimming.

“Both the boys have started playing rugby now at Maidenhead in the U7 and U6s, so most of my Sunday mornings are spent on the side of a rugby pitch now!”

Fired up by his own struggles in getting into Law, Izzet Hassan, who now works at one of the five so-called Magic Circle City firms, has set up his own online network to advise others seeking to follow in his footsteps.

While at QE, Izzet (OE 2005-2012) was captain of the tennis team and a noted rugby player. He then read Law at Warwick before going on to take a Master’s degree in Philosophy at Cambridge.

After working at various law firms as a paralegal and in their vacation schemes, Izzet won a training contract with Slaughter and May, where he started in September 2018.

Today, as well as his job as a Future Trainee Solicitor, he runs the Aspiring Commercial Lawyers Network (ACLN), which he set up on Facebook during the autumn of 2019.

“ACLN is a platform designed to help students, graduates and aspiring lawyers break into the legal profession,” he says. “As the first member of my family to go to university, I had to learn the hard way how difficult it is to secure an entry-level position in the field of commercial law.

“My aim is to use the knowledge I have accumulated over the years to help others break into this field.”

The group has expanded rapidly and in its first four months topped 1,000 members.

Izzet is also becoming very well-known on LinkedIn, dispensing nuggets of both general life advice based on his own experience as well as specific guidance for those aiming for a top career in Law.

Writing in February, Izzet said: “My exposure on LinkedIn has grown exponentially over the last two months. Following a few viral posts which have been viewed by almost half a million people, I have become very active in the legal sphere.

“I believe that LinkedIn, as a social media platform, offers an organic reach that is second only to Twitter.

“This, combined with its academic/professional exposure, allows me to advise aspiring lawyers and chime into legal discussions on a much larger scale than would be possible otherwise.”

Here is one recent example of his posts:

• “I am delighted to announce that I have passed my Stage 1 LPC exams.

The LPC happened to coincide with a very difficult time in my life; at times, it felt as though I was being attacked from every possible angle.

When you’re experiencing adversity, sometimes it is very difficult to see beyond the pain you are suffering.

During times like these, I often think about my greatest fears in life and draw strength from the fact that no matter how bad things may seem, they are still nothing compared to what I fear most.

I don’t believe that life gets any easier; I believe we just become stronger and more resilient over time.

How do you deal with adversity?”

Izzet also pays tribute to the support he received from the specialists at Rare Recruitment, billed on their own website as ‘leaders in diversity graduate recruitment’.

“Rare Recruitment were a great resource for me when I was applying,” he says. “The organisation aims to help aspiring lawyers from less privileged backgrounds break into the legal sphere. I benefited greatly from their support, application reviews and mock interviews.”

Having had a long-term interest in investing, Izzet has developed expertise in property and in CFD (Contract for Difference) trading.

“CFD trading is a relatively new form of derivatives trading which allows investors to speculate on the price of the underlying assets. For example, trading gold has historically been very expensive, however, trading CFD gold contracts allows investors to speculate on the price of the underlying gold assets, without actually having to buy the gold itself.

“I am currently developing an algorithm which will allow me to automate the trading process so that I can trade ‘passively’.

“In terms of property, I am very early in my investing career and have spent a lot of time educating myself on various models, particularly the ‘serviced accommodation’ model. By attending regular networking events, I have formed connections with a number of investors and other property investors which I believe will facilitate my progress.”

Izzet visited the School in 2018, along with his QE contemporary, Suraj Sangani, to speak to boys in Years 11-13 as part of the Senior Lecture Programme about how to pursue a career in Law.

Izzet was scheduled to be the guest speaker at the 55th Annual Elizabethan Union Dinner Debate, which had to be called off because of the pandemic.

Simon Dyton went on to become a School Captain under Eamonn Harris and then to gain a Double First and a PhD studying English and History at Cambridge – but his first encounter with QE’s then-Headmaster was far from auspicious.

“He largely ignored me and spoke to my parents,” says Simon (OE 1997–1994; School Captain 1993). “My father said, ‘Why don’t you talk to Simon?’ Mr Harris said to him sternly: ‘I can fix a naughty boy, but I cannot fix a naughty parent.’”

Later, however, Simon learned lessons both from Mr Harris and from other QE teachers that have stood him in good stead for his current role as an English teacher in the Upper School at the Marymount School of New York, a nursery-to-high school for girls on Fifth Avenue.

“The students at Marymount recently voted to have me speak to my school’s National Honor Society and share some scholarly advice. I was immediately reminded of a lesson I learned from Eamonn Harris. He once told me that the most important thing in life was ‘kissing the plan’, by which he meant that ‘doing a little bit’ every day was the best way to get a job done. That has stuck with me.

“I never thought that I’d be using my experiences of English lessons at QE to design my own classes, but the experiences of being taught by Mr [Eric] Houston and Mr [David] Jones proved very useful.

“Mr Cossey was also a fantastic example of passionate teaching. His furious roaring (and slamming of desks) over Harold II’s anger at William the Conqueror stayed with me for years. I love sharing my enthusiasm for storytelling and my enjoyment of language and literature with my students.”

“I remember Mr Houston making a boy stand against a wall in the Science block for ‘not behaving like a good chap’. This is when I started to sense that the school was being hoisted up by its socks into a new kind of institution. I loved the school trips to Moscow and St. Petersburg with Mr [Tom] Guthrie. I met my first Russian gangsters, held my first handgun, and — in a more trusting age of air travel — sat in the cockpit and lowered the landing-gear when we landed back in England.

“I loved being School Captain: organising Founder’s Day was a fantastic challenge.”

After A-levels, Simon took up a place at Gonville and Caius College. “When I went up to Cambridge, my main model for life at university was The Young Ones television show. I had been looking forward to learning alongside girls for the first time, but Caius didn’t admit any female students to read English that year, so I was stuck with more boys. I played rugby and rowed.”

Following his graduation, he stayed on at Caius for an MPhil and a PhD. “My doctorate involved exploring representations of early modern religious radicalism and grew out of a love of John Milton, whose Paradise Lost I first read in A-level English with Mr Houston.”

In those post-graduate years, he recalls enjoying lunch and drinks with Eamonn Harris in The Eagle, the 17th-century Cambridge pub where, in 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick famously first spoke of their discovery of the structure of DNA. “He was excellent company and was really enjoying retirement.”

Simon served as the MCR [Middle Combination Room] President and introduced graduate seminars that continued, in one shape or another, for years. “I loved my time at Gonville and Caius College. I made some excellent friends, and friendships have been the source of memories that I value the most.

“As a graduate student, I really enjoyed teaching undergraduates, but I loved working with teenagers on summer schools—first on a Cambridge University outreach scheme and then for a New York-based company that operated academic summer schools all over Europe. After several years, I visited New York to work for that company on a short-term work visa, which ultimately turned into a Green Card, by which time I was running summer schools and hiring teachers from all over the world to teach everything from Anthropology to Zoology—mostly in Oxford and Cambridge.

“Eventually, I decided that I wanted to teach full-time, so I looked into teaching and joined the Marymount School here in New York. I’ve had no real masterplan or strategy behind my career path. I’ve always enjoyed studying, writing, coaching, and teaching. I am a long-time believer in reading widely, thinking broadly, and finding the happiness in life. I’ve pursued a career that I enjoy and that I find satisfying.”

Among the many highlights of this career, he recalls one recent, somewhat “terrifying”, example: “The students voted for me to take half-court shots during the high school’s Spirit Week pep rally. (Spirit Week, by the way, is a week of morale-boosting activities designed to help the students through the post-Christmas gloom.) I think it was Mr [David] Maughan and Mr Clarke who coached basketball, but nothing prepared me for hundreds of students chanting, ‘Dr. D, Dr. D!'”

Another highlight of his life stateside recurs daily as he savours his walk home each day across Central Park.

“When I arrived in New York, I was told that it was a great place to spend some of my 20s (I was 28) and all of my money, but—now that I’m in my 40s—I’ve found a happy place on the Upper West Side with my wife, Meredith, and dog. I feel very fortunate that I can live and teach in a city that’s incredibly diverse. I recall that I did a project on Kyrgyzstan for Mr Guthrie in A-level Russian, but it’s only in New York that I finally met a Kyrgyz horseman, who was stunt-riding for the circus. You never know who you’ll meet, and everyone has an interesting story.”

He is now a US citizen. “My wife and I spend our vacations in the deserts of southern Utah, on the beaches of the Virginia coast, and in the forests of upstate New York. I appreciate hard work, good fortune, personal wellness, and physical fitness.”

Jake Nielen is revelling in his role within an industry enjoying explosive growth and operating at the forefront of a technological revolution.

Jake (OE 2004–2011) is a London-based account manager with Amazon Web Services, helping financial technology (FinTech) startups rapidly achieve global scale and huge customer growth through applying artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

On graduating from Cambridge, he joined Egon Zehnder, a top-three executive search firm focused on board-level appointments for FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 customers.

“After two years working across various industrial and financial services clients, I moved to do the same role at Amazon, ultimately specialising in finding and convincing some of the best technical minds around the world to build some of the largest distributed technical systems in the world, and solve some of the hardest AI/ML challenges across Amazon Retail, Amazon Prime Video, Alexa, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and even Amazon’s Operations business.

“Whilst in that role it became obvious that AWS was exploding in terms of growth. It currently stands at $36bn revenue globally, growing at 36% year-on-year, which has never been done before in the history of technology services. (We have 19k in the sales team with 12k open roles for next year!).

“In addition to that, we are adding a new feature or product every three hours (2500-plus last year alone), and the pace of change and ability to work in an industry that is revolutionising and democratising how millions of customers around the world consume and process data was too good to pass up.

“I’ve since joined the Startups team, focusing on helping FinTech customers (Monzo, Transferwise, Nutmeg, etc.) get the best out of our services and support those types of customers as they scale globally and offer new services to millions of new customers around the world.”

Among highlights from earlier in his career he would include working on the process to appoint the new Chairman of the Government-owned Royal Bank of Scotland. Another was rebuilding the Prime Video technical leadership team, which last year launched live-streaming of the Premiership in the UK.

“More recently, it has been helping two of my customers win deals with FTSE 100 businesses and supporting [banking start-up] Tide to grow to over 100k small-business users in the UK as well as [helping them towards] international expansion in the near future.”

At School, Jake was a notable sportsman, playing for the First XV and also involved in athletics, water-polo and cross-country.

He vividly recalls “the trials and tribulations of the U16 Sevens and XV rugby teams – the wins and losses and the team-building that came about as a result of an ‘aggressive’ fitness regime based on a strategy that if we couldn’t run through or round our opponents, we would just have to run further and work harder”.

“More generally, I’ve got good memories of constantly being flagged down in the corridor for having my top button undone, the pain of the ‘elephant dip’, the relentless number of A3 grids in Geography.” He confesses to having occasionally been guilty of putting off difficult homework – “deferring it all to an hour before and having to work in the atrium on top of the lockers”.

“But,” he says, “most of all, I have good memories of the dedicated teaching staff who worked above and beyond to provide a top-tier education to anyone, regardless of background, for free.”

He especially praises current Headmaster Neil Enright, who taught him Geography, and his form teacher, Tahmer Mahmoud. Jake, who went on to take a First in Geography at St Catharine’s College, continues to apply Mr Enright’s “organisational capabilities and standards” to this day. “I still colour-code and underline headings on my work.”

“Mr Mahmoud…taught me to intellectually stretch myself to think bigger during form time (‘If you drop a ball, how can you be sure it will always fall to the ground? On what basis do you think the colour red looks the same for you as it is for me?’).”

At Cambridge, his dissertation was on community perceptions of volunteer ‘gap year tourists’ in Ethiopia (“which I loved”).

He remains close friends with a group of OEs – “essentially everyone you see in this picture” [right], taken at Allianz Park, home of Saracens, for the QE First XV’s match against Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School in 2017. Old Elizabethans pictured are top row, left, to bottom right: Alex Grethe, Jake, Anton Bridge, Ioannis Loupas (all 2004-2011); Anoop Raghaven and Max Hassell, (both 2002–2009); Alvin Bombo (2002–2007); Gideon Levitt (2004–2011); Aaron Levitt (2002–2009); Matteo Yoon, Adam Kuo, Alex Goring (all 2003–2010), and Francis Vu (2000–2008).

“The other photos show us all wearing our QE First XV tops in Japan when we went to visit for the Rugby World Cup.”

Jake’s ambition is, he says, “to continue to learn and always be curious, to push myself out of my comfort zone every day, and to continue to do the hard things well. I’ll probably stay at AWS until I come across a Fintech that seems interesting enough to leap in to (in the interests of being curious).”

The Autumn Term started with Queen Elizabeth’s School in good heart following another set of exceptional exam results.

QE has subsequently been named the country’s leading state school for the second consecutive year by the Sunday Times’s respected Parent Power survey, a position we have now held for five of the past seven years.

In fact, Parent Power revealed that not only were we the top state school, but were among a mere handful of top-performing schools of any stripe, selective or comprehensive, state or fee-paying. Nationwide, just four independent schools matched QE’s 95.7% figure for the proportion of A-levels passed at A*-B. Remarkable as our boys’ performance this summer certainly was, there is a further aspect that is not apparent from the league tables, and that is the extraordinary long-term consistency in our A-level results: 2019 was the 14th consecutive year in which the A*-B figure has remained above the 95% threshold.

This extended record of achievement thus goes back to the headmastership of my immediate predecessor, Dr John Marincowitz. But John would, I am sure, agree with me that the platform for our exceptional results was built under the leadership of his predecessor, Eamonn Harris (Headmaster 1984-1999), the sad news of whose passing we received last month.

The ongoing programme of improvement to our facilities begun during Eamonn’s tenure continues. Our project to build a new Music School is on track, with the demolition of the Mayes Building to clear the site completed successfully over the summer. We are currently working on plans to fit out the building, including consideration of interior design. A full tender process for the project will be launched in the spring so that work can start in July next year, once public examinations are over.

This has been a busy term for Music, and for the arts in general, with a full programme of concerts and performances. Sergio Ronchetti (OE 2004-2011), who is a freelance composer and sound designer enjoying success in the gaming sector, visited to deliver a careers lecture to senior boys. After leaving school, Sergio first worked for four years as a professional musician, only then going to Goldsmiths, where he took a First in Music.

The boys participated very successfully in the Shakespeare Schools Festival, performing The Merchant of Venice (pictured above right). Such events are tremendously important not only in enhancing School life in general but also in the development of confident, rounded individuals.

Our new catering arrangements have met with widespread approval from the boys, who appreciate the additional choice and better presentation, the theme days and food demonstrations. The food served now has improved environmental credentials in response to feedback: there is reduced packaging and improved sorting of waste, while our new caterers, Holroyd Howe, are diligently making ethical choices with regards to their own suppliers and the food products that they sell here.

QE recently took on St Albans in a special match marking 100 years since the first encounter between the two schools. The game in 1919, which QE won, was St Albans’ very first fixture, while QE had itself only been playing the sport for a few years. At the centenary match, which St Albans won 36-19, I presented St Albans with this photo (right) of the Elizabethan team from the following season, 1920-21, the earliest rugby team photo that either school possesses.

I was honoured to be invited to give a speech at the Girls’ Schools Association’s Annual Conference for Heads, where I explained our emphasis on creating a culture that nurtures free-thinking scholarship. Of course, if we are to sustain such a culture, we must not rest on our laurels. As we look to the future, we have been gathering feedback from both parents and pupils to inform our next exciting development plan, which will drive the School forward over the next four years. That period includes the 450th anniversary of the School, which we celebrate in 2023, and is personally significant for me, since within this time I will mark a decade of my headship and two decades since I first began working at QE.

We are now in the last year of the current School plan, covering 2016–2020. It is still proving highly relevant; we continue to actively pursue its aims. For example, it was with Enhancing future prospects in mind – one of the plan’s four priority areas – that we launched our inaugural university mock interview evening, which was supported by a considerable number of alumni.

The School’s online presence continues to develop. As many old boys will already know, QE Connect, our new online community for Old Elizabethans, was launched earlier this term and has met with a good initial response. We have many plans to develop it. People from across the wider Elizabethan community also seem to be enjoying interacting with our new QE Instagram and Facebook accounts.

Ivin Jose has been chosen as our 2020 School Captain and is pictured above with his senior team.

My best wishes to all Old Elizabethans for an enjoyable Christmas holiday and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.

Neil Enright, Headmaster