J. Howard Whitehouse

Whitehouse, throughout his career in politics and later at Bembridge, was an intense believer in the right of the individual to shape his own life and a bitter opponent of any form of bureaucratic control.

He attended the Midland Institute and Mason Science College (which became the University of Birmingham), specialising at the former in literature, history and political economy.

He founded and edited the society's influential quarterly journal, Saint George (1898–1911), managing its business affairs and eventually becoming its publisher.

He worked briefly with Baden Powell and edited "The Scout", became Sub-Warden of St George's School in Harpenden and was warden of the Manchester University Settlement at Ancoats.

Whilst his life from 1919 was closely bound up with the school he continued to pursue outside interests, penning a number of pamphlets and books on the subject of education and contesting every election between 1922 and 1935 (with, as he once noted wryly "equal measure of success").

He again stood as a Parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Party at six General Elections; Hanley in 1922, Hereford in 1923 and 1924; Southampton in 1929, Thornbury in 1931 and finally Stoke Newington in 1935; He organised the committee to ensure the preservation of the Fram, the ship which carried Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen to the Arctic and later Roald Amundsen to the Antarctic.