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A visit to the School by The Globe Players gave all the pupils in Year 9 an enjoyable introduction to Romeo and Juliet, the Shakespeare play they will be studying in the first term of next school year.

“It was a pleasure to see the boys enjoying an opportunity to watch this important GCSE text come to life on stage,” said English teacher Sarah Snowdon.

“It offered them a memorable way to appreciate the dramatic relationship between characters and themes, and was a useful introduction to next year’s Shakespeare unit.”

The Globe Players, based in Hampton, Middlesex, is a registered charity which aims to inspire and stimulate young minds through high-quality live theatre, employing professional actors, directors and writers.

The present charity was founded in 2009, but the group traces its origins back to 1966, when The Globe Players Children’s Theatre and Shakespeare Company was founded by actors Faith Noble and Patrick McEvoy. It was a family company, comprising Faith, Patrick and their eldest daughter and son, Jennifer and Michael.

Today The Globe Players work in primary and secondary schools across London and the South East.

Year 9 boys, Sixth-Formers and staff gathered to hear the astonishing testimony of Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich when she visited the School.

All of Year 9 were permitted to take a break from normal lessons to listen to Mrs Tribich, who survived a spell as a slave labourer for the Nazis and periods in two concentration camps, Ravensbruck and Bergen-Belsen. Having lost all her family except her brother in the Holocaust, in 1947 she came to England and built a successful life here.

Matthew Dunston, the History teacher who organised her visit, said: “Mrs Tribich’s story is truly amazing. It was a great privilege to be able to hear at first hand from one of the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors.”

Her visit to the School was covered by the  team of QE journalists who have entered the BBC School Report project. They filmed the event in the School’s Main Hall with a view to it forming one of the features to be submitted as part of the 15-minute news programme they have to produce.

Mala Tribich’s story

Mala was born Mala Helfgott in 1930 in Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, her family initially fled eastwards. On their return, they had to move into the ghetto that had been established in her hometown, the first in Poland. Life in the ghetto was terrible, with families living in overcrowded, unhygienic conditions.

The family decided it would be safer for Mala and her cousin, Idzia Klein, who were both Jewish, to be taken to the town of Czestochowa and pretend to be Christian children, staying there until the deportations were over. A couple named Maciejewski came to their home to collect payment in advance and it was arranged that Mala would be collected first and Idzia a week later; it would have been too dangerous to take two Jewish children on the train at the same time.

Mala and Idzia were taken to a house on the edge of Czestochowa and pretended to be relatives from Warsaw. Life was uncertain for the girls and they often felt vulnerable. Sometimes it was safe to mix with visitors, but at other times the girls had to hide in a wardrobe and stay there until they had left.

Both Mala and Idzia missed their parents, but it was not safe for them to return. When Idzia told the Maciejewskis that she could go and stay with good friends of her parents, who were hiding their valuables, they took her there. Mala was eventually taken back to Piotrkow, where her father was waiting for her in the attic of a flour mill with Idzia’s father. On seeing Mala, he turned white with shock and said: “Where is my daughter?” Idzia was never seen again.

Shortly after Mala’s return to the ghetto, there were further round-ups, during which her mother and eight-year-old sister were snatched. Everyone taken was murdered in the local forest. Soon afterwards, Mala had to undertake the responsibility of caring for her five-year-old cousin Ann Helfgott, whose mother had been deported to a concentration camp.

When the ghetto was liquidated, Mala became a slave labourer until November 1944, when the remaining Jews were deported. Mala was separated from her father and brother and, together with Ann, was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp.

After about ten weeks, they were transported in cattle trucks to Bergen-Belsen, where conditions were appalling and Mala contracted typhus. At the time of the liberation by the British Army, Mala was very ill. She was transferred to a children’s home offering medical care and it was many weeks before she recovered.

Three months later she was sent, with a large group of children, to Sweden, where she spent nearly two years. Not expecting any of her family to be alive, Mala was surprised to receive a letter from her brother, Ben, who was by then in England, the only other member of her close family to have survived.

In March 1947, Mala came to England to be reunited with Ben. She learned English, attended secretarial college and within a year was working in an office. In 1949, she met Maurice, whom she married in 1950.

Whilst her children were growing up, Mala studied and gained a degree in Sociology from the University of London. Today Mala has two children and three grandchildren. Her testimony appears in the book, The Boy, by Sir Martin Gilbert.

QE took to the high seas for this year’s School play, Treasure Island – a rollicking tale of piracy in the 18th century.

More than 70 pupils, staff, Old Elizabethans and friends of the school were involved in staging playwright Ken Ludwig’s fast-paced adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s perennial favourite.

The cast comprised boys from Years 7-13, ably supported by a large technical support crew. Suitably bracing nautical accompaniment was composed specially for the occasion and delivered by an orchestra led by the School’s Director of Music, Kieron Howe.

Headmaster Neil Enright congratulated all involved in the play, which ran over two evenings in the Shearly Hall: “To the audience, this was simply a very enjoyable and successful evening, but to all those involved, both on stage and behind the scenes, it was a very ambitious production, requiring both skill and dedication over a period of many weeks.

“High-quality extra-curricular activities such as drama are an essential part of QE’s success, enabling boys to enjoy worthwhile pursuits while at the same time developing in them both technical skills and character attributes.”

Memorable moments during the play included appearances by the pet parrot of Long John Silver. The colourful puppet, constructed by Art teacher Jeanne Nicodemus, was operated by cast members deploying skills they learned at a recent National Theatre puppetry workshop which followed their visit to see War Horse.

The production’s director, Elaine White, explained how the whole School had been primed for the play, which is the main QE production this year. “There were several appearances around the School by our swashbuckling characters. Traditional sea shanties, prepared with help from Music teacher Jennifer Brown, have echoed through our classrooms and the School’s Dance Club have come ‘on board’ with some merry jigs,” she said.

Both junior and senior boys enjoyed success in this year’s 10th Anniversary Spring Grove Festival, with the Junior Saxophone Quintet and the Purdy Barbershop Group picking up first prizes in their categories. 

The barbershop singers’ victory meant that QE won the Senior Popular Category for the second consecutive year and for the third time in four years.

Congratulating the QE ensembles, QE’s Director of Music, Kieron Howe, said: “This is a prestigious competition which attracts entries from a high-quality field across London including Dame Alice Owen’s School, St Paul’s, Henrietta Barnett, Haberdashers’ Aske’s and Hasmonean High School.

“I am very happy for our boys to have the opportunity to perform at this event and also to be able to compose music to be performed live. I hope all they have learned a great deal from the experience.”

The festival in Hampstead is divided into two age groups: Senior, for Years 11-13, and Junior, for Years 7-10.

The Purdy Barbershop Group of Anhad Arora, Daniel Cheung, Jamie Mui, Kavi Pau, Simon Purdy and Varun Vassanth achieved their success among the Seniors with their rendition of Bridge Over Troubled Water by Paul Simon, arranged by pupil Kavi Pau.

The Junior Saxophone Quintet, comprising Rufus Kent (alto saxophone), Philip Mahboobani (tenor), Sanjeev Menon (alto), Drew Sellis (alto) and Mark Thomas (baritone), won the Junior Popular Category with their performance of Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror.

The Senior Saxophone Quintet were placed second in the Senior Popular Category. Tom Archbold (baritone), Kieran Eatough (tenor), Nikhil Patel (alto), Pranay Shah (soprano) and Kian Yarand (alto) presented PR Girl by Andrew Tweed and Funk Dunk by Karen Street.

In the composition category of the festival, QE’s Senior Sax Quartet performed fellow pupil Mital Dodhia's piece, Stumbling Robots, taking second place. Having reached the finals, the quartet, made up of Tom Archbold, Kieran Eatough, Pranay Shah and Kian Yarand, were narrowly beaten into the runner-up spot by a Fugue for String Quartet written by a pupil from Dame Alice Owen's School.

Hundreds of young children were treated to an eclectic musical feast at QE’s annual concert for its five partner primary schools.

The programme at this year’s event ranged from Johann Strauss’s Blue Danube waltz and Holst’s Jupiter from The Planets to film music from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

More than 300 primary school visitors enjoyed the experience of listening to a live symphony orchestra as well as the opportunity to learn about individual instruments.

As a specialist music college, QE has partnerships with five local primary schools: Bushey Heath Primary School; Christ Church CofE School; Foulds School; Frith Manor Primary School and Moss Hall Junior School.

The concert, primarily aimed at children in Year 4, lasted just over an hour and took place in QE’s Shearly Hall.

“It was a thoroughly enjoyable occasion and I am really pleased that all five of the schools were able to come this year,” said Director of Music Kieron Howe. “The Symphony Orchestra performed the Strauss, Holst and the Harry Potter pieces. In order to demonstrate the ‘families’ of the orchestra, there were also performances from the String Quartet, Wind Quintet and Top Brass.

"These ensembles presented a variety of music including Pizzicato Polka and movements from Camille Sain-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals.

“As part of the event, the QE boys talked about and demonstrated their instruments – from violin to cello, from flute to bassoon, from French horn to tuba and not forgetting percussion – explaining how each of the instruments works.”

Year 9 boys enjoyed the opportunity to see some remarkable aeroplanes in the air during their visit to the Imperial War Museum’s site at Duxford.

Highlights included the mighty Chinook tandem rotor helicopter, which first hovered overhead and then landed right next to the QE group on the airfield near Cambridge.

The trip to Duxford, one of the largest air museums in the country, is organised by the History department, with half of Year 9 going on one day and the other half on the next.

Head of History Helen MacGregor said: “We had two really good, if sometimes windy, days. We were able to go inside the first Concorde test plan: having seen how large it looked on the outside, the boys were surprised by how small it felt inside.

“One of our groups particularly impressed one of the guides in the American Air Museum hangar by knowing that a stealth bomber is painted black so that it ‘soaks up’ the radio waves used in radar.”

IWM Duxford is set within a famous First and Second World War airfield and is home to more than 200 aircraft as well as tanks, military vehicles and boats.

An original 1917 Belfast hangar hosting the Battle of Britain exhibition contrasts with the contemporary architecture of the American Air Museum, designed by British architects Foster and Partners.

Attractions include the AirSpace exhibition, which tells the story of British and Commonwealth aviation. Its Aircraft Hall houses more than 30 aircraft, including the most famous British fighter and bomber types of the Second World War – the Spitfire and Lancaster respectively – as well as the Concorde, which claims the distinction of being the fastest-ever example of the supersonic airliner.