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Talented tenor Rhys Bowden (OE 1996-2003) has been building a name for himself as a professional classical singer since leaving the School.

This year alone has seen singing him in Rigoletto for Scottish Opera and performing twice with Surrey Opera – once in Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring and once as Luiz in The Gondoliers – while other performances have taken him to destinations including the Isle of Wight (Monteverdi’s Vespers and Smetana’s The Bartered Bride) and Fareham (Mozart’s Requiem).

Over the past few years, music has taken him much further afield – to Australia, New Zealand, Samoa, Singapore, Fiji, South America, Lapland and to many parts of both eastern and western Europe. “I’ve visited Bach’s church in Leipzig, sung to the King of Samoa, and performed in a canyon in the Australian Outback,” he says.

His enthusiasm for music was fired when he was at the School. “I first started taking singing seriously when I was 16. Kieron Howe [QE’s Director of Music] suggested I take singing lessons, and by the end of the year I auditioned for and got into the National Youth Choir. It was then that I realised that I wanted to be a singer, so I owe a lot to my musical experiences at QE. There was so much music going on there, with plenty of opportunities to perform! I sang in the choir and played saxophone in the Jazz Band, Saxophone Quartet and the Concert Band. One of the highlights was recording a CD with the Jazz Band.”

After leaving School, Rhys was a choral scholar at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, and then went on to study music at Girton College, Cambridge, where he performed frequently with the college choir and the university’s opera society and chamber choir. After graduating in 2007, he studied singing on the postgraduate course at the Royal Academy of Music in London from where he graduated in 2009 with a distinction and won the Hilda Anderson Deane Prize.

A growing number of QE alumni are staying in touch with the Sri Sathya Sai English Medium School in Vallanad, Kerala – a village in South West India. In 2011 several old boys took the time to pay a visit, each spending time at the School which QE has supported since 2002.

In November, Cameron Bentley (2002-2009), pictured, visited and four old boys went to visit in the summer. Nir Shah (2004-11), Akshaya Ahuja (2003-10), Nikhil Khagram (2003-08) and Sagar Thanki (2003-10) are all currently undergraduates at Cambridge. “It was an incredibly satisfying and humbling experience and I would definitely encourage other students and teachers to visit the school,” said Sagar, who was touring India with Akshaya and Nikhil. By coincidence, Nir was there at the same time.

Urmil Mehta (2002-2009) who is reading medicine at Queen’s, Cambridge, was involved in the Sai School Appeal during his time at QE and has also maintained his links with Kerala.

The Sai School Appeal comfortably exceeded its own £4,000 fund-raising target for 2011, thanks to a highly successful event for parents and teachers. The Masti evening during the Autumn Term was the climax of a year of fund-raising.

2011 leaver Sam Sherman (School Captain 2010-2011) is studying Anthropology at Cambridge; the result, he says, of his study of the Maasai tribe as part of the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) that he took alongside A-levels.

Along with his other studies, Sam spent a year on his EPQ – which was introduced at the School in 2010. Equivalent to half an A-level, the EPQ offers students the chance to study a topic of their choice in depth.

Following his research and a visit to Kenya, Sam produced a 10,000-word dissertation looking at the impacts of the Maasai Mara National Park on the tribe.

“My Extended Project effectively introduced me to anthropology – which became my chosen discipline at university – and to the idea of ‘cultural relativism’. I found that before the project I had neglected the hugely significant psychological impacts of colonisation, focusing instead on the more tangible social and economic.”

His research took him from the libraries of universities in London to personal communications with ‘modern Maasai’ and anthropologists. Subsequently he returned to Maasailand and conducted a quasi-ethnographic study amongst the Maasai: spending a large part of his Year 13 summer holiday living with a family of Maasai in rural Kenya.

Ben Pugh (QE 2002-2009) has helped Pembroke College, Cambridge, reach the quarter-finals of the BBC’s University Challenge.

He played a leading part as his team beat St Anne’s College, Oxford, in the first round early in the autumn and then again this month as they saw off Nottingham University by 280 points to 125.

Ben, who is reading German and Russian, put in two impressive individual performances, answering questions on a diverse range of subjects, ranging from chemistry and history to identifying that the S in SIM card stands for ‘Subscriber’. In the first round he was also on the receiving end of presenter Jeremy Paxman’s trademark mockery for his ability to recognise the girl band Girls Aloud in a music round, but then demonstrated his depth of musical knowledge in the next round when he identified Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.

Ben studied English Literature, French, German and History at A-level at QE, securing a grade A in all four subjects – the top grade at the time. He was placed in the top five in the UK in AQA’s GCSE German and French courses. While he was a pupil, Ben supported younger QE boys in the weekly language clinics.

Having taken up Eton Fives again a couple of years after leaving the School, Sunil Tailor (1999-2006) has now become the first QE old boy ever to reach the quarter-finals of the sport’s national championships. He hopes one day it might be possible to set up a Fives club for Queen Elizabeth’s School alumni.

Sunil learned the game at QE and then, four years ago while in his second year studying Economics at UCL, he got in touch with QE Fives coach Ian Hutchinson to ask for advice on playing the game as an adult. Since Mr Hutchinson is a teacher at Mill Hill School, he urged Sunil to join the Old Millhillians Fives Club.  “We currently have teams in the first and second division and have competitive matches once a fortnight on average, running from about October to April,” explains Sunil.

Together with an Old Millhillian, Joe Coakley, Sunil entered the Kinnaird Cup, which is the national tournament. Thirty-three pairs entered this year’s cup, which was held at Eton College.

“We were given a slightly difficult first round draw, which we won three sets to one,” says Sunil. “Then we were drawn against the seventh seeds and, in a very close match, we lost the first two sets but were able to bring the match back to two sets all. In the fifth and deciding set, the game was getting very tight. In the end, the scores went to ‘sudden death’ and we won 13-12 to move into the quarter-finals.”

In its report, the sport’s official website, praised this game as “a real dogfight” and saluted “a miraculous shot that had no right to go up”, by which Sunil saved a match point.

The following day, Sunil and his partner faced the second seeds, who had been Kinnaird Cup winners or finalists several times in previous years. They were comprehensively beaten in straight sets but Sunil adds:  “It was a great experience and playing against the better or more experienced players can only make us better. It is a great sport to continue playing after school and I do recommend it fully to QE leavers – hopefully one day, we could also create a QE old boys’ Fives club!”

Sunil is currently training to be a chartered accountant and is a part-qualified ACA trainee with accountancy firm MHA MacIntyre Hudson LLP. He is due to sit his advanced stage examinations in July this year.

• The first Fives courts at Queen Elizabeth’s School opened at the old Wood Street premises in 1880, following a £10 grant from the Governors and a special fund-raising concert. The sport languished for some years after the move to Queen’s Road in 1932 and it was not until the post-war rebuilding programme in 1951-52 that plans for a new court were considered. By 1954, the court was complete and the following year the School was affiliated to the Eton Fives Association and entered the Public Schools Championships.

Ben Pugh (OE 2002-2009) and his team from Pembroke College, Cambridge, fought their way successfully through every round of the BBC’s University Challenge before losing narrowly in the final.

He then took the opportunity, along with the rest of his team, to meet the Duchess of Cornwall at a televised ceremony at Clarence House, during which the winning finalists, the University of Manchester, were presented with the University Challenge trophy.

In the 41^st series of the popular quiz, which was first broadcast 50 years ago, the Pembroke College team gained frequent praise from host Jeremy Paxman, with Ben’s breadth of knowledge and speed of thought proving key to their success.

In the first round, he got off to a good start against St Anne’s College, Oxford, giving a strong individual performance. But Ben also fell victim to Paxman’s trademark mockery after successfully recognising the girl band Girls Aloud in a music round. Pembroke won by 205 points to 140.

The margin of victory was even bigger in the second round, when Ben’s team trounced Nottingham 280–125.

Next up in the first leg of the quarter-finals were Balliol College, Oxford. Ben was very quick on the buzzer, answering a range of starter questions on diverse subjects including dance tempo, planet recognition, literature and geography, which helped his team to establish an early 90-point lead and secure an eventual 240–160 victory. Ben seemed particularly pleased, or perhaps relieved, to be able to answer correctly on the meaning of the Russian acronym ‘gulag’ – since he is reading Russian and German at Cambridge.

In the second leg, Pembroke faced a fellow Cambridge team, Clare College. Ben’s team raced to a 145-point lead – a position from which fellow Cambridge team, Clare College, could not recover, despite a spirited fight-back. Once again, Ben made his mark by answering correctly on topics including politics, philosophy, the American constitution and geographical terminology. Pembroke won 250 – 175.

Pembroke were slow starters in their semi-final and had to come from behind to overhaul opponents UCL, finally winning 185 points to 125.This time, Ben came up with correct answers on Shakespeare, chess, classical music, geography and Home Secretaries. Paxman praised Pembroke as the only semi-finalists not to have lost a match in the competition and heralded their win as “another storming performance”.

However, that unbroken record was finally to fall in the final. Their opponents, the University of Manchester, enjoyed a very strong start and, although Pembroke fought back strongly, they were unable to catch up, finally losing 180 – 135. Ben made his usual significant contribution, answering a number of starter questions on subjects including anagrams, Chancellors of the Exchequer, Swedish chemists, Polish composers and Rift Valley archaeology.