Community Profiles

How did you come to choose Taunton School?
Private school was never seen as an option for my family. We were an ordinary family who had worked hard to get a semi-detached house on an estate in Galmington. I was bright at primary school so my teacher suggested that, as well as doing the 11 plus for entry into grammar school, my family should put me in for the scholarship exams at Taunton.

I didn’t receive a completely free place but received a county-assisted scholarship which was determined by how much your parents earned. My parents still had to pay for the kit and uniform, and I was always conscious that they were making sacrifices for me to attend Taunton.

What were you like at school?
I didn’t make friends easily and felt intimidated. Given my parents sacrifices, I felt I had to do well and I worked as hard as I could. As a scholar, we were a bit behind the boys who had been at Thone. We hadn’t learnt French or Latin, so we had special classes to bring us up to scratch.

My first two years at Taunton weren’t brilliant, although I did start to push myself up towards the top of the class. At the end of the second year, I accidentally said something to a Master which he took very badly. As a result of this, four chaps who referred to themselves as the ‘Big Four’ took me under their wing. My third year was great fun and there was a group of us who played a lot of table tennis and snooker.

Can you remember any teachers at Taunton who had an impact on you?
Roger Priest, the Latin master, was brilliant. He introduced me to Classics, and we studied literature in Latin, love poems and even little anecdotes. Dave Wrench was a great Chemistry teacher. When he didn’t understand something mathematical, he’d say, “I don’t understand this Cappell, take over the class and explain to me why it works!” and I’d have to go up to the board and go through it.

What led you to study natural sciences at Cambridge?
I never really had an idea of where I wanted to go. The staff at Taunton suggested I should go to Cambridge and that Natural Sciences would suit me as you study four subjects. My parents were proud of me getting into Cambridge and, when I got my offer letter on Christmas Eve, my mother and I had several sherries to celebrate.

In my third year I decided to change to Computer Science. My tutor was a bit discouraging, he said I had a good mind, and in those days Computer Science was regarded as a bit of a doss subject. But I found the subject interesting and really enjoyed it.

What’s been your career path since leaving Taunton School?
I got a job with a small software consultancy in Cambridge where they were doing some interesting techy things. Microchips had just been invented and people were starting to put them into circuit boards to make small computers. Nobody knew the limits of what we could do with them, so it was an exciting time. After travelling around North America, I went back to the same company and started working on a new project, a radiotherapy dose planning system developed with Addenbrookes, a research hospital in Cambridge.

In 1982, I started a company with two guys who were clients of Topexpress. We created a system to distribute and display exchange rates in Midland Bank’s foreign exchange dealing room. We also worked with the tech giant Philips, who wanted us to create an interface to a new conference controller using the first touch-sensitive machines in the country.

After three years, I realised that I had been working extremely hard but only owned a third of the company, so I formed my own company, Cambridge Micro Applications 1985 Limited. Most of my work was to do with processing the streams of price data which flow from financial exchanges around the world.

I have never been an entrepreneur who wanted to make millions of pounds. I wanted to work with interesting people and do interesting projects with a reasonable salary and that’s what I did all my life.

What are you most proud of?
There was a project for Unilever. They were building a plant in Malaysia to manufacture a new sort of detergent bar. My system controlled the weighing and mixing of the ingredients and talked to the other parts of the plant. Other contractors would come in for a few weeks to put in their elements, but I was there for the whole project. I used to say to myself, ‘don’t look down’ as I had imposter syndrome, feeling the whole plant was depending on me and not being sure I had the necessary ability. I worked almost every weekend, but I was proud of that one.

If you could give your Sixth Form self some advice, what would it be?
Look out for opportunities and when they come, grab them. Also, opportunities do not always lead you where you expect.

You have left a gift in your will to Taunton to support Assisted Places, why do you think Assisted Places are important?
There is no way I would have received the education I did or achieved what I have in my career, without the help of an Assisted Place. It is wonderful to think that I can do that for someone else.

Did your family connection have any impact on your time at school?
Not as far as I am aware. If the school knew the connection, they didn’t make it apparent. Whilst I obviously knew my mother was a Wills and there was a clear link, at the time I had no knowledge of the detail or the extent of it. My brothers and I knew that my father was an Old Tauntonian and that seemed to be the principal connection with the school.

So, what are your family’s links with Taunton School?
William Day Wills (‘WD’) was the original Chair and Senior Founder of Taunton School. WD’s only son was William Henry Wills, who became Lord Winterstoke.

My brothers and I are great great grandchildren of Henry Overton Wills II (‘HO’), WD’s brother and partner in their tobacco business (WD and HO Wills). HO had 19 children and three of his sons attended Taunton School. His youngest son, my great grandfather, Sir Frank Wills, was the architect of the School Chapel, donated by his cousin Lord Winterstoke. Lord Winterstoke’s adopted daughter, the formidable Janet Stancomb-Wills continued support for the school after his death. She gave the old Winterstoke Library to the school in his memory and in 1912, the Wills boarding houses. She was a great philanthropist and, for example, helped fund Shackleton’s 1914 expedition to the Antarctic. This resulted in her name being attached to one of his lifeboats and an Antarctic glacier! She was honoured for wartime services with one of the first Damehoods in 1918. My grandfather, the youngest son of Sir Frank, happened to be one of her executors. Probably because of that, for several years I, unwittingly, used one of her luggage trunks, marked with her initials ‘JSW’, for school.

There are no living descendants of WD Wills. In contrast, I and my brothers are among the countless descendants of HO Wills.

What did you get from coming to Taunton School?
Beyond a great education, the School gave me independence and self-sufficiency. You didn’t have parents at the end of a mobile phone, and although I believe you could call home, you didn’t. We had two ‘exeats’ a term and that was it. You had to learn to be self-sufficient.

Exemplifying that, I decided in Summer 1970 to solo hitchhike around Europe. It was naive but it was hugely rewarding. I went all the way to southern Spain, back across the south of France and down to Naples. In early September, I ended up at Monza to watch the 1970 Italian Grand Prix. After the race I hitched back through Switzerland and France, only just making the start of School.

Which teachers inspired you?
From autumn 1970 my housemaster was Chris Evans (TS 1966-85). He was down-to-earth, approachable and caring. He seemed to understand the boys in the house and we felt that we had moved into a new modern era. His predecessor, Ernest Neal (TS 1946-71), whilst an extraordinarily scholarly man, was from a different and more traditional generation.

Roy Exton (TS 1949-81) taught me maths. He was legendary for his wall to wall rotating ‘blackboards’. He was genuinely enthusiastic and inspired my love of maths. It seemed like magic until he unwrapped the secrets. I wasn’t aware that he did much in the school outside of the classroom but then in summer 1971 he offered to take a group of us along the North Somerset coast from Porlock to Minehead. He had worked out all the tides so that we could squeeze along the beach and lower cliffs. It was a great day and we saw a broader side to him. One of my regrets is not coming back to thank him before he died (January 1999).

What were your favourite memories of School?
My main memories seem to start in Wills East. An early one was building a truly huge ‘snow woman’ at the back of the house. It started as a giant snowball but ended up as high as the first-floor window. We had a lot of snow that year and a picture of the giant construction made the Tauntonian.

Rugby and swimming were my two sporting activities. Winning the house rugby cup, as part of a very young team, in 1970 was a major achievement. We fought Wills West to a three-all draw in our semi-final and, since the other semi was also drawn, the opponents were changed, and the semis replayed. We prevailed in both subsequent games. Given we had virtually the same team, retaining the cup in my final term in autumn 1971 was relatively straightforward.

What did you do after Taunton?
I was awarded an Exhibition (Junior scholarship) to Caius College, Cambridge and studied Natural Sciences and, in my final year, Theoretical Physics. I spent too much time enjoying myself and deciding I didn’t want to be a scientist so my time in Cambridge was not littered with plaudits.

I applied to accounting firms in January 1975. I had decided that dealing with money would be more rewarding than being in a lab.

Price Waterhouse, as it was at the time, was very impressive. It was professional, modern, and looking to the future. From the moment I went into the interview, everything felt crisper and clearer and their recruitment messages really came through to me.

What was it like to work at PwC?
The one word that sums up PwC is truth. Truth is central to everything the firm does, it says it in the audit report and it runs throughout the organisation. I worked there for over 34 years, retiring nearly 14 years ago, and I am hugely proud to have done so.

Before I became a partner, and the day after the birth of our first child, my boss, Chris Bull, also coincidently an OT, called me into his office. He asked if I would go to New York for a period to support our business out there. When you wanted to be a partner it was an opportunity you wouldn’t refuse but I had to negotiate with him to allow me a few days to discuss it with my wife. The answer was, of course, yes.

What were you most proud of doing at PwC?
I was advising companies on their global tax position and by the end of my 34 years I had a set of blue-chip clients including Tesco, Diageo, Cadbury, General Electric and Vodafone. This was partly the benefit of having been at PwC for a long time but I had brought some of these companies to the firm. They came to me for tax advice and a number subsequently became PwC audit clients. Clients appreciated a hands-on approach, so I tended to roll my sleeves up and get deeply involved. If I got a call from a client with an issue, I would, invariably, pop over to their offices and we would get the whiteboard out to work through what needed to be done.

All in all, the school gave me many good memories and a great education. The education was undoubtedly a springboard to Cambridge and an enjoyable career.

What were your first reflections of Taunton School?
I had only visited England for a summer school, so it was a massive change for me. It was also a bit of a shock as I was always a top student back in Russia, but when I opened my history textbook at Taunton School, I realised I couldn’t understand much of it at all. I had to translate pretty much every individual word. The boarding experience was also a very foreign concept and a challenging one! Initially, the biggest challenge was to improve my English and to adjust to the new system of education, which is what I focused on, but soon my efforts bore fruit and I started getting the grades I was used to.

What did you get up to at Taunton?
Because of the initial language barrier, I stayed in a small Russian clique at the start. I am still great friends with Petr Baron, Anna Baron-Maximova and Julia Kovyliaeva. They are like family to me, there is nothing that can replicate living in a boarding house together and overcoming the hurdles of being in a foreign country, away from family and friends in a totally unfamiliar environment. I was put in Gloucester House and was very proud to become a Prefect in the Upper Sixth.

History was one of my favourite subjects and Mr and Mrs Nash were great teachers and provided a lot of support, as did Mr Chatterton. My education at Taunton could not be more different to that in Siberia. I had never been asked to write an essay before, it was all about regurgitating facts. At Taunton it was much more analytical and critical, with the need to bring in my own opinion. I was very proud to be awarded the Telfer Prize for my Social Biology A-Level Project.

What did you do after Taunton?
Whilst at Taunton, I did work experience in a city law firm and saw that law could be much more than just a court room. However, I wanted to do a broader subject for my degree and went on to do an International Relations degree at Sussex, before completing a law conversion course at the College of Law. That course was the hardest thing I have ever done. I had to learn so much case law. After completing my legal practice course, followed by an LLM, I secured a training contract with an international law firm, now called Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner. During the training contract you do four ‘seats’ of 6 months each, trying different aspects of the firm’s legal practice. One of my seats was in Asset Finance where I helped with a shipping transaction in Turkmenistan, one of the former Soviet republics that still speaks Russian. The partner working on the deal was struggling to communicate with one of the local parties and, as the only Russian speaker in the firm, I was asked to help. I really enjoyed the experience and therefore chose to qualify in this area of law.

During my practice with the firm, I covered areas like shipping and super yacht financing, but later chose to specialise in aviation finance law. I was at the firm for 11 years during which I progressed to a Senior Associate and worked on some fantastic deals with some great clients, but I wanted to make some changes as I had a young son. One of my clients had asked me to become their in-house legal counsel, which I did for five years, before leaving to become General Counsel for an international group of companies that specialise in regional aircraft leasing.

What is your happiest memory from Taunton School?
My happiest memory of Taunton school is a tricky one, 11 years comes with a lot of memories! I remember, early on, having my birthday as a boarder at age 8 years old in Thone; we were allowed to invite students to watch a film of our choice and had a cake baked by one Matron. I can just remember the sheer excitement of getting to ‘host’ some of the day students in the boarding house for the evening! Moving to the senior school, there were so many memories, including going to the National Indoor Hockey Finals, general weekend evenings in the boarding house and the infamous house singing.

What do you do now and what do you find most enjoyable about your career?
I work now as a Clinical Psychologist; most people don’t know what this is and I often get asked if I’m a Psychiatrist. To clear this up, I’m not! We have doctorates but these are in Clinical Psychology rather than medicine. After leaving Taunton I went straight to the University of Nottingham where I did my BSc in Psychology, followed by an MSc in Rehabilitation Psychology. With my primary focus being on Neurological conditions, it was a natural move into a research role at the University of Nottingham, where I was able to work under the supervision of some world-renowned professors in the field of Neuropsychology.

After working for a couple of years I stayed at Nottingham for my Doctorate in Clinical Psychology and then worked initially in the NHS before moving into work with the Ministry of Defence in their new national rehab centre, again in the Neurorehabilitation ward. This is definitely a passionate area for me having come from a military family and spent time as a reservist myself. I love my career because of the variation and the opportunity to straddle both clinical practice and research; I’ve managed to stay active in research and sit in a number of different roles whilst keeping my publication record going! My key area of expertise is in Multiple Sclerosis. Recently, I’ve moved to Bermuda and have managed to set up some of these services here which has been a challenge in itself.

How did Taunton School help you get to where you are now?
Taunton School arguably set me up to manage the demands at the highest level of academia, but I would say more importantly it taught me how to manage competing demands and offer a high level of output. Having boarded from such a young age (7 years old), I learnt independent living skills and found that the pace of academic, sport and other demands at school gave me the best foundation to move this forward into my career. I loved the variety of sports and activities that were offered, particularly in the boarding part of the school and this gave such a roundedness that I’m forever grateful for.