Charles ‘Skipper’ Lynam, the celebrated preparatory school headmaster at the Dragon School, Oxford, during the First World War, inspired a generation of his pupils as they found themselves caught up in the conflict. This book tells the story of the school’s wartime years and the various fronts on which its boys were involved. It traces the roots of a school founded by Oxford dons for their children, its idiosyncratic ways and the extraordinary relationship Skipper Lynam forged with his boys, some of whom (in former pupil John Betjeman’s words) ‘lost their lives for King and Country and the Dragon School’.

Charles ‘Skipper’ Lynam, the celebrated preparatory school headmaster at the Dragon School, Oxford, during the First World War, inspired a generation of his pupils as they found themselves caught up in the conflict. This book tells the story of the school’s wartime years and the various fronts on which its boys were involved. It traces the roots of a school founded by Oxford dons for their children, its idiosyncratic ways and the extraordinary relationship Skipper Lynam forged with his boys, some of whom (in former pupil John Betjeman’s words) ‘lost their lives for King and Country and the Dragon School’.