Catherine arrived at Lancing in 1962, aged two, with her parents and younger sister when her father was appointed Head of History. She spent her childhood here then teenage years in the sixth form and returned, in her forties, as Foundation Director.

At Lancing Catherine explored her love of literature and theatre. She has vivid memories of reading Paradise Lost with Donald Bancroft and performing in the Greek Theatre. At Westfield College, London University, she read English and German, was on the magazine editorial team, Honorary Secretary of the Student Union, and led event management for the summer ball—a role she reprised forty years later at Lancing.

The pioneer experience of being one of a handful of girls at Lancing set Catherine up for the rest of her life. After university, determined to become a food writer and to study her subject first hand, she wrote to Albert Roux asking to be a trainee chef at Le Gavroche, his three-star restaurant. Incredibly, he took her on—the only female in the kitchen. This led to an extraordinary five years cooking in kitchens all over London and in France. Her next move was to the burgeoning M&S food empire where she created its first crispy duck and Thai green curry and her own food retail consultancy followed for twelve years.

2023 finds her, suddenly, in her eighteenth year at Lancing (and with grandchildren). The experience has been a privilege. The Foundationers programme is an important focus of her work, alongside nurturing the warmth of the Lancing community. She has yet to write about food but that will come in retirement when she begins to catalogue her library of cookery books.

This portrait is taken in the Reeve Art School, named after her father for his service to the College as Chair of Lancing’s Governing Body.