John Thorn (headmaster)

[3] For Thorn, the most valuable aspects of school drama, art or music was pupils' participation and experience of the creative process, such as writing and producing plays, even if the product had rough edges.

[2] The school's examination performance improved during his tenure, and at least some pupils such as the poet James Fenton and the professor of classical lieder Richard Stokes benefited from its creative arts.

[1][2] Thorn encouraged the school's "Div system", where boys spent 1/5 of their class time on non-examined subjects such as history and literature for scientists and science for non-scientists, aimed purely to expand pupils' perspective on the world.

[2][4][8] He found that Winchester, inspired by late 1960s counterculture, was already rejecting traditional austere public school customs such as he had encountered at Repton, as senior boys were refusing to continue them.

[9] He reduced compulsory attendance at Chapel, and tried to increase the teachers' pastoral care of their pupils in the face of the period's countercultural drugtaking, while allowing the boys to wear their hair rather longer than had been customary.

[2] He wanted the school to be open to a wider range of pupils—not only those with wealthy parents, and to widen its approach from emphasising the classics to cover the humanities including English literature, and the sciences.

[2] Thorn sold Winchester College's 15th century manuscript of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur to the British Library to fund bursaries for poorer pupils;[10] the sale, completed in 1976, sharply divided opinion at the school.

[13] Thorn used his year as chairman of the Headmasters' Conference in 1981 to oppose what he saw as excessive emphasis on A-level results for university admissions, and to champion public schools, since he believed that "education is far too important to be left to governments.