OM Hall of Fame

The Old Marlburian Hall of Fame is designed, by referencing OMs who have achieved something notable, contributing to the progress of human well-being, in arts, sciences, sport, the military or other, to inspire the Marlburians of the present. 

An additional aim is to put the spotlight on someone overlooked, and perhaps lost in the history of the College or the College website.

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Bruce Chatwin (B2 1953-58)

The subject of a Marlborough College Colloquium in 2014, Chatwin began his literary career with travel writings  - In Patagonia (1977), The Viceroy of Ouidah (1980) and a traditional novel On the Black Hill (1982), which was set in the Welsh Borders “one of the emotional centres of my life”.  

The Songlines (1987) on Australian Aborigines underlined his interest in human restlessness and nomadism.  

Nicholas Murray, his biographer, talks of a tension between Chatwin’s sense of the uncanny and his powerful rationalism.  Susanna Clapp , his editor, writes : At home in England he had a tiny white flat in Belgravia in which everything was concealed.  However, there was on the wall a great Peruvian feather shawl; there was also a great round try in various shades of red brought back from Turkey and used originally by fishermen to sieve fish. 

His own photographs (a selection of these hand in B House) demonstrate his interest in ordinary buildings – huts – and things; he had a passion for corrugated iron and wood, for example, and things made of them which he called “art without the artists”.