G.B.F. Rudd

When he returned from the abandoned tour he enlisted in University and Public Schools Battalion, later joining the Leicester Regiment as a 2nd Lieutenant, and was then attached to the Bedford Regiment, in 1916. He was wounded in 1916 but returned, becoming a Lieutenant in 1917 and in 1919 was promoted to Captain. He was wounded again in the shoulder in 1917 and reported missing. Later, it was revealed he had been taken prisoner and on his release, he resigned his commission and came home and took over the head mastership of Stoneygate School from his father.

He captained Leicestershire County and between the Wars, appeared in 88 first-class matches as a right-handed batsman who bowled right arm medium pace. He scored 2,916 runs with a highest score of 114 and took 18 wickets with a best performance of three for 38. Between 1947 and 1950, he became the Honorary Secretary.

His sister Milly, spent most of her life as a missionary and was imprisoned by the Japanese during the last War and then later by the Chinese.

His first marriage to Georgina Isabel Kearns of Addington Surrey in 1922, produced two daughters but Georgina died in 1937. Later in 1944, he married again, this time to Gwendoline M. Akehurst with whom he had one daughter. Gwendoline died two years later.

In later years, after he sold the school, it was suggested that the loss of his second wife contributed to his poor health and he died in 1957 aged 62.

His obituary, in the Elizabethan, the Westminster School magazine, said, “He will be remembered for his gift of teaching the classics to those least amenable to that discipline, and for his great sense of humour.”