Interview
The man behind public- school Nirvana
Anthony Wallersteiner, the headmaster of Stowe, talks to Roderick Easdale about ‘putting the fizz’ back into the most architecturally impressive public school in Britain and a teacher’s life Photographs by John Millar
I
HAD no idea when I became a head- master that one of my duties would be designing a nightclub,’ says Anthony Wallersteiner. We’re standing in a room
that was once three squash courts and is now where Stoics go on a Saturday night. Earlier, we had admired the restored State Library ceiling. ‘Not many headmasters get to decide where to put gold gilt,’ he had remarked then. The flat roof leaked, so pupils had to study under a huge green net to catch the falling plaster. This has now been restored and, as paint analysis showed elements of the ceiling were originally gilded, this feature was replicated. A historian turned art historian—‘You
can’t be a good art historian without a know- ledge of history’—Dr Wallersteiner calls his surroundings a ‘Nirvana’. He teaches a course in Visual Education to first-year pupils based on the history of Stowe. ‘You can do pretty much the whole history of Western architecture without leaving the grounds, from Ancient Egypt to the modern day, although we aren’t good at Victorian. There’s nothing 19th century here as the Dukes of Buckingham went bankrupt in spectacular fashion, which was a good thing as, otherwise, they would have com- pletely changed the character of the place.’
6 School Life, Spring 2013 Stoics approach the school’s splendid South Front, which was created by Thomas Pitt Dr Wallersteiner was a late developer at
school. ‘My prep-school results were just lamentable, atrocious—16% in Maths, 14% in Latin. In French, I was told I couldn’t grasp the simplest grammar.’ But he went on to be a scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read history. ‘I didn’t come into my own until the sixth form. It wasn’t until A levels than I realised I could write an essay that was original, and the
teachers started to take an interest in me.’ After university, he went to Eastern
Europe, with the vague idea of entering the City afterwards. Four months’ travel changed that and he decided to teach instead, although he didn’t, at that stage, envisage it as a long-term career. ‘But I loved it. It’s an extraordinary profession, where you’re engaging with young people, inculcating the passion you have for your
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