page_title: Tom Driberg
section_title: Lancing
hierarchical_section_title: Tom Driberg / Early life / Lancing
caption_attribution_description: English: Lancing College, near to Shoreham Airport, West Sussex, Great Britain. Founded in 1848 by the then curate of New Shoreham, Nathaniel Woodard, begun in 1854 with the first pupils starting in 1858. The chapel which dominates the skyline of the western side of the Adur Valley was started in 1868 and got to its present state in 1911, a tower was planned for the northern side but was never built. The Woodard Trust owns a number of other independent colleges including Ardingly and Hurstpierpoint and is also involved in state schools becoming academies and will be taking over nearby Boundstone School in Lancing for the beginning of the following academic year.
context_page_description: Thomas Edward Neil Driberg, Baron Bradwell was a British journalist, politician, High Anglican churchman and possible Soviet spy, who served as a Member of Parliament from 1942–55, and again from 1959–74. A member of the Communist Party of Great Britain for more than twenty years, he was first elected to parliament as an Independent and joined the Labour Party in 1945. He never held any ministerial office, but rose to senior positions within the Labour Party and was a popular and influential figure in left-wing politics for many years.
  The son of a retired colonial officer, Driberg was educated at Lancing and Christ Church, Oxford. After leaving the university without a degree, he attempted to establish himself as a poet before joining the Daily Express as a reporter, later becoming a columnist. In 1933 he began the "William Hickey" society column, which he continued to write until 1943. He was later a regular columnist for the Co-operative Group newspaper Reynold's News and for other left-leaning journals. He wrote several books, including biographies of the press baron Lord Beaverbrook and the Soviet spy Guy Burgess.
context_section_description: In 1918, when he was 13, Driberg left the Grange for Lancing College, the public school near Worthing on the south coast where, after some initial bullying and humiliation, he was befriended by fellow-pupil Evelyn Waugh. Under Waugh's sponsorship Driberg joined an intellectual society, the Dilettanti, which promoted literary and artistic activities alongside political debate. He began to write poetry; his aesthetic education was further assisted by the charismatic J. F. Roxburgh, "a magnetically brilliant teacher" who later became headmaster of Stowe School.
  Lancing's Gothic chapel gave Driberg the religious atmosphere he sought, though he found the services disappointingly "moderate". By 1920 he was inclining to the political left and was in rebellion against his conservative upbringing. Finding the Labour Party too dull and respectable for his radical tastes, he joined the Brighton branch of the newly formed British Communist Party.
  After Driberg had risen to responsible positions within the school (deputy head boy, head librarian, and chief sacristan, among others), his Lancing career ended suddenly in the autumn of 1923, when two boys complained about his sexual overtures. To avoid distressing the widowed Amy Driberg (John Driberg had died in 1919), the headmaster allowed him to remain in the school for the remainder of the term, stripped of his offices and segregated from all social contact with other boys. At the end of the term he was required to leave, on the pretext that he needed private tuition to pass his Oxford entrance examination which he had failed the previous summer. Back in Crowborough, after several months' hard application under the guidance of his tutor, the future Lord Justice Pearson, Driberg won a classics scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford.
caption: Lancing College; the tall building to the right is the Gothic chapel.
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