Maggie Fergusson’s term as a pupil at the elite boys’ school was thrilling and terrifying

In the past few weeks, controversy has swirled around the Head Master of Eton, Simon Henderson, accused of imposing “wokeness” on a venerable institution. The Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, is even said to favour the idea that Eton might introduce girls as pupils: shock, horror! But Eton did once take girls. I was one of them.

It began in the late Seventies. A clutch of Berkshire girls’ schools – St Mary’s, Ascot; Heathfield; St George’s – found themselves unable to prepare pupils for Oxbridge. So Eton agreed to take them on, post A levels, for the “seventh term”. My older sister was one of the first to arrive – only to find that the business of admitting girls hadn’t been thought through. They had, for example, no lavatory. Far too embarrassed to raise this, the 10 or so girls would trek through Eton, over the bridge and into Windsor, to use the “Ladies” at the Theatre Royal.

By the time I turned up, there was a loo. But the first week or so was still daunting. There was a new vocabulary to be learned: masters were “beaks”, lessons “divs”, terms “halves”, King’s scholars, “tugs”. There were practices like “capping”. As a boy passed a beak, he was supposed to point an index finger up in the air, as if tipping the top hat that had once been part of the uniform.