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When Wesley Went to Winchester

Factual: Life Stories

BBC Radio 4 Extra - When Wesley Went to Winchester

Wesley Kerr traces fellow ex-pupils who won rare free places at elite Winchester College

In 1970,  journalist Wesley Kerr won a bursary to the elite Winchester College. What happened to other lucky pupils?  From 2011.

In 1970, broadcaster Wesley Kerr was awarded a County Bursary to study at one of Britain's top public schools, Winchester College. 

Over 40 years later, he opens the gates of memory and attends a special reunion to find out what happened to the other bursary boys and explores the scheme's attempts at 'social engineering.'

From a working class background, Wesley was a black foster child from Hampshire. With the odds against him, he passed the exam and interview and took the opportunity which led to him becoming BBC TV news' first black reporter and later Royal correspondent. 

The national bursary scheme ran from 1947 to 1974, after a request by Winston Churchill that a quarter of public schools places were to be taken by state school boys, funded by the local education authority. A number of other schools such as Eton and Rugby also gave bursaries.

Wesley meets over 30 former pupils, who include a former judge, the man who designed London’s latest Routemaster bus and the Bishop of Gibraltar. 

With stories of strange accents, school pranks and those who struggled to fit into an alien environment, Wesley hears how the experience gave them new opportunities and shaped their lives.

Producer: Tamsin Barber

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 2011.

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