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"Consider your origins, you were not meant to live as brutes but to follow knowledge and virtue.” (Dante: Divine Comedy) so began an address by a former pupil who came from the Balkans at the height of that region's war. He continued with the story of his first Frensham encounter, “I approached someone sitting alone at a table. We laughed together for no apparent reason. My companion turned out to be my countryman and alleged enemy. He introduced me to everyone. I knew I had made a friend and a brother for life.”
He and his "enemy" turned life-long-friend were recent refugees from nationalism. Many of the school’s first pupils were fleeing from Nazi Europe. Others have come to escape different tyrannies. All have found a home in this civilised, tolerant, genuinely liberal school.
 Another of the four Bosnian refugees who joined us came from Sarajevo. The bridge she built for her A level CDT project is in constant use. It serves as a reminder that this school has an eighty year history of giving places to refugees from whom it learns so much.
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Inspirations
