1. A few of the famous former pupils of Rugby School.
A Gallery of Rugbeians
A few of the famous former pupils of Rugby School.

2. Christopher William Brasher
School House,
Winner of the gold medal in the Steeplechase, at the Melbourne Olympics, Founded the London Marathon. Also ran in the 3,000 metres at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics

3. William Bateson Hutchinson’s (Bradley), 1875-1879
Bateson outlined the experimental approach that should be used to study inheritance. By 1902, Bateson had translated Mendel's works into English and was a strong supporter of the Mendelian laws of inheritance. Bateson is credited with coining the terms "genetics," "allelomorphs" (later shortened to allele), "zygote," "heterozygote" and "homozygote." In 1908, as a Professor of Biology at Cambridge, Bateson helped establish the Cambridge School of Genetics. Bateson left Cambridge in 1910 to accept the Directorship of the John Innes Horticultural Institute at Merton. He co-founded the Journal of Genetics in Bateson's work and Bateson himself influenced many other biologists and scientists.

4. Algernon Charles Frederick Sartoris
Arnold House (School Field),
Married Ellen (Nellie) Grant, the daughter of President Ulysses S Grant, the 18th President of the United States, on May 21, 1874, in the White House. Algernon was the son of famed opera singer Fanny Kemble.

5. John Stanley Hawkesworth
Michell,
Artist. Art Director/Tv Dramatist/Producer. His best known works include 'Upstairs Downstairs', 'Duchess of Duke Street', ‘Sherlock Holmes’, and 'Tales of Beatrix Potter.

6. Mark Ian McCarthy
Town House,
Discovered a gene that contributes to obesity, for the first time promising to explain why some people easily put on weight while others with similar lifestyles stay slim. (2007)

7. Sir Arthur Bliss
W.N.Wilson (Whitelaw),
Sir Arthur Bliss ( ) was one of the most important figures in British musical life from the early 1920s,  through to his later years as Master of the Queen's Music.

8. Arthur Ransome
Whitelaw,
Author and journalist who travelled to Russia between 1915 and 1919, as correspondent for the Daily News in Moscow, where he spent four years reporting on the Russian Revolution and its aftermath.
He is best known for his Swallows and Amazons series of novels, ( ), which remain in print and have been widely translated.

9. Alec Ogilvie
Michell,
Invented and patented the world’s first airspeed indicator, and flew gliders with the Wright Brothers in 1908.
Alec is on the left.

10. David Croft
Sheriff,
Real name, David John Sharland. Writer of television series such as Dad's Army, Are you Being Served?, Hi-de-Hi, and ‘Allo ‘Allo.

11. Reid Antony Railton
Donkin (Bradley),
Designed motor cars, such as the Napier Railton, and the Bluebird cars in which Malcolm Campbell broke the land speed record between 1931 to 1935.
His greatest achievements were probably designing the Railton Mobil Special car with which John Cobb set the Land Speed Record at 394.7 mph (635.2 km/h) in 1947 and designing the E.R.A. racing cars built in at Thompson & Taylors at Brooklands. He also designed high speed boats including the jet powered Crusader in which John Cobb was killed in 1952 while travelling in excess of 200 mph (322 km/h) attempting to break the Water Speed Record.

12. Sir Ahmed Slaman Rushdie
Bradley House,
Prize-winning author. Midnight's Children, was published in 1981 and won the Booker Prize for Fiction, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction), an Arts Council Writers' Award and the English-Speaking Union Award. Author of ‘Satanic Verses’, which prompted outcry amongst the Islamic world and resulted in a fatwa (effectively a death sentence), in 1989.

13. Robert Hardy, CBE
Michell,
One of this country’s most successful actors, on stage, television, and film. His roles have ranged from Siegfried Farnon in ‘All Creatures Great and Small’, to Cornelius Fudge in Harry Potter. He is a leading expert on the English longbow and became the longbow/weapons consultant for the Mary Rose Trust.

14. BB (Denys Watkins Pitchford)
Staff,
Artist and writer who taught at Rugby for 17 years.
He wrote and illustrated over 60 books of which some 20 are children's stories.

15. Harry Ricardo Whitelaw, 1898-1903
Developed the two-stroke engine. Harry Ricardo was one of the all-time great engine development engineers, founding the company which still bears his name, Ricardo Consulting Engineers Ltd. At the age of 17, he started a small engine production company: 'The Two-Stroke Engine Company' to manufacture and sell a car which used an engine that he had designed. The Dolphin engine became very popular with marine users.
He is probably best know for the Ricardo 'Comet' diesel injection pre-chamber, of which millions have been produced under licence and by copying. The work and patent was to have a huge impact on the emergent diesel engine technology, and was to be a significant development both in Europe and the USA. The Citroën 'Rosalie' car was the world's first production diesel car, with the engine featuring a design incorporating the Ricardo 'Comet' MkIII combustion chamber.

16. Christopher Lloyd
Stanley,
Celebrated gardener and writer. His garden at Great Dixter, in east Sussex, was an inspiration to thousands of visitors and provided a springboard for conveying his many ideas. He wrote numerous books which were extremely influential, and wrote regularly for Country Life, and latterly, The Guardian.

17. Professor the Hon Wynne Alexander Hugh Godley
Kilbracken,
Wynne was the model for the Epstein statue of St Michael, which graces the outside of Coventry cathedral. He was also a leading economist and professional oboist.

18. Anthony Horowitz
School Field,
Author of numerous books (including the Alex Rider series), and television scripts including Foyle’s War, Midsommer Murders, and Poirot

19. Sir Anthony Quayle
Megsons (Tudor),
Celebrated stage and cinema actor, whose film roles included ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ ‘The Guns of Navarone’, and ‘Anne of the Thousand Days’.

20. Alec Dickson
Tudor,
Alexander Graeme Dickson founded Voluntary Service Overseas, the international development charity, which sent its first volunteers abroad in It directly influenced the development of the Peace Corps in the United States.