A royal princess at Eton? School has secret plans to admit girls
EtON College has turned out 20 prime ministers and innumerable Cabinet ministers — as well as Princes William and harry.
soon, it could educate Princess Charlotte or harry and Meghan’s daughter, Lilibet.
For I hear that the Berkshire boarding school is actively considering the most radical change in its 600-year history, by admitting girls.
‘I’ll let you into a secret,’ says eton’s Provost Lord (William) Waldegrave, the former tory Cabinet minister. ‘every year, the governors of eton consider whether eton should go co-ed.
‘And we don’t quite decide. But, of course, we will go co-ed in due course.’
Lord Waldegrave, 76, the brother of Queen elizabeth’s right- hand woman Lady susan hussey, has been Provost, or chairman of eton’s governing body, since 2009.
He made the comments at a reunion dinner at eton for those who left in 1983.
Intriguingly, this included a
■ NADHIM ZAHAWI, who was sacked as Conservative Party chairman in January over his tax affairs, attended the British Kebab Awards at the Park Plaza Westminster Hotel this week. He remarks: ‘Four weeks ago, I was dealing with the donors. Now I’m dealing with the doners.’
small band of ‘ Old etoniennes’ — about 16 women who were at the school for just one term, during which they prepared for the exam then taken by all those hoping to go to Oxford or Cambridge universities.
As I reported last month, these women had initially not been invited to the reunion. however, the etoniennes of 1983, who include high Court judge Dame Philippa Whipple, did not take their exclusion lying down. ‘they kicked up a stink and mounted a campaign,’ I was told. ‘Now they’ve been asked [to attend].’
Eton, which charges fees of £ 46,000 a year, sometimes appears to struggle when women come into the equation.
In 2020, it sacked an immensely popular english master, Will Knowland, after he posted a lecture online, and refused to remove it, which cited a Marie Claire magazine article, containing one woman’s observation that she yearned to be overwhelmed by the ‘sheer power of her husband’s masculinity in the bedroom’.