There was no city life.
There were no shops, and of course,
there was really no television
until I was in my teens.
But it was a country life.
This is Blakeney Point.
So we sailed in the pit here, my father,
when my father was alive,
and then we would walk across
to those sand dunes
carrying all our swimming clothes
and the picnic and everything.
And as the tide came and
went out again we’d sail back
moor the boat in the creek
and then walk up in the mud
and then walk back to our car
and crank it.
And crank start it and go back home.
The big sand dunes,
they probably don’t look very big to you,
but actually they are quite tall.
We'd jump off the top
and jump sort of 30 feet
and land in the soft sand.
So it's great fun
but I used to run up and down them for exercise.
And I would think nothing
of running 10 miles or so.
Yes, running taught me about determination
about not giving up
and particularly not giving up
when everything seems hopeless
and everything is against you
and everything is difficult.
That's the time you must
double down, as they say,
really go for it because success
or the end is just around the corner.
It didn't hurt as much
then as it does now.
So you can live here
very cheaply and we did
and we grew our own vegetables
and had our own chickens,
and we didn't have a fridge
till I was about 12,
so quite self-sufficient.
I really enjoyed painting,
so I did a few paintings,
but I didn't paint it here
I painted from memory,
but there was the odd boat
and nobody else, no cars, nothing else.
And then this was the centre
page of the centre
spread of the Eagle Comic.
And there it is there.
So that is the painting.
I won a very heavy battery radio,
with big valves in it.
There we are.
That’s it.
I did it from memory,
but well, I think I did it from memory.
I can't remember now.
So this is the main school
building called Big School.
I don't know why.
We're about to go into
the assembly hall.
Here we are.
Great.
John Tusa.
My dad taught him
Hodgkin had a Nobel Prize.
My brother there.
I naturally followed in his footsteps.
That's my CBE.
So we're going upstairs
to the headmaster's office.
This is where you got sent
when you were naughty.
But this is my father's classroom.
He was head of classics.
Yes, my father taught here.
And apparently he had throat
cancer and then lung cancer.
But apparently
he couldn't really speak.
So he had loud hailer of some sort
so he could teach people,
it seems unlikely to think
you would need one in a room
as small as this.
But I suppose he would have been
20 of us in here,
probably with old
fashioned desk with ink wells
and ink splodges all over the desks.
I fell asleep there
once and the lovely classics
master threw a black board rubber at me.
Didn't fall asleep after that!
it hurt, actually.
Here we are at the Greshams chapel
my father's memorial
service was held here
and I think I sat there.
I couldn't quite understand why
I had to come to his memorial service
and sit amongst the boys.
But anyway, that's what I did.
And over there is
A plaque to my father
since he was the
head of classics,
It's in Latin, of course.
Major Alec Dyson died
in 1956, born in 1913.
He fought in the Burmese army.
He was a master of Latin
and Greek and a sailor
and his wife, Mary
and father of Alexandra, Tom and James.
The careers master asked me
if I like the outdoors.
Well, I mean, I grew up here
In the outdoors.
Of course, I like the outdoors.
He said.
I think you should be an estate agent.
I went to see an estate
agent in Cambridge
who said I ought to be an artist,
but I quite wanted
to be a surgeon myself.
So I went to St.
George's Hospital for an interview.
The doctor there said,
You should be an artist.
So having been told by
two people to be an artist.
I thought about I should be an artist.
I rather stupidly cycled
through this hedge once
showing off, wearing strap sandals
and I ripped my big toe nail off.
I did
Hockey, rugga' and athletics.
Yes, I used to win the mile
and the three miles.
I started the three mile race.
So we're just leaving the sports field
and the rugby pitch
and coming into the school woods
towards the school theatre.
We did a Shakespeare play every summer.
My father used to produce
the Shakespeare plays
when I was, before I came to the school,
I used to go down
and help him do the make up.
I can't believe I helped him,
but anyway, I think I came because
There were ice creams around!,
and then in my turn, I
did several Shakespeare plays,
the last of which was the Tempest.
But I think the auditorium
is pretty much exactly what it was like
that Jumbo Burrows
built in my day.
But it's a great auditorium.
It's lovely.
My father died, my brother was eleven
and I was nine,
and we both just started here.
And in those days
there was no life insurance.
So the headmaster,
Logie Bruce Lockhart,
said that we could,
we could both board here
essentially free of charge,
but without that.
You know, we had no money.
There was no unemployment benefit then.
So the school essentially
brought me up and paid for my
my childhood.
So it's great now to be able
to give something back to the school.
Their just knocking down
what in my day was the music block.
And so the school knocked those down
and in their place
built the Wilkinson Eye Dyson building.
It's science, maths
and art and design
all together in one building.
It's important to not separate them
and for them to be together.
And, you know, engineering
and design are really the same thing.
Maths and physics tend to be separated,
and you're either a designer
or an engineer or scientist.
And really, they should work together
and be the same thing.
Let's go inside. Yeah!.
And find a place for Diedre’s rug.
Big huge glass windows,
the size, the size of the room itself
and the classrooms are all very light
and airy.
And for me, it's going to be lovely.
Not separating the scientists
and mathematicians
away from the artists, designers
and the robot makers
and the software writers,
all the subjects in here,
are creative ones.
And that kind of creativity
should be something they will share.
So this building is
if anything
actually, it's about experimenting
and making mistakes,
which is what Dyson is all about,
but learning by experimentation,
not worrying about failure
and learning from failure
I think this building is a
wonderful place to do that.