Famous names who attended Prince George’s new $85,000-a-year residential school

Prince George is set to join Eton College in September, adding his name to a list including former British Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and David Cameron, as well as novelist George Orwell.

The future king, 12, will follow in the footsteps of his father, Prince William, by attending an $85,000-a-year boarding school in Berkshire, near his family home, Forest Lodge, in Windsor.

The experience can be intimidating, even for members of the royal family. Prince Harry described it as “a profound shock” in his book. Sparebut these same corridors have also been walked by some of the most famous names from almost every sphere of British public life.

Politics and power

Eton’s imprint on British politics is perhaps its most visible legacy. The school produced 20 prime ministers, including the Conservatives Cameron and Johnson, who helped define modern British politics in different ways.

After winning the 2010 election, Cameron introduced austerity policies that led to radical and controversial cuts to public services before calling a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. His Remain campaign lost to Johnson’s pro-Brexit campaign, triggering the country’s departure from the union and Cameron’s resignation.

Johnson then negotiated Britain’s exit deal during his years in power, from 2019 to 2022, before resigning following the “Partygate” scandal over the failure to comply with lockdown rules in the corridors of power.

Prime ministers who attended Eton include Anthony Eden, famous for his ill-advised invasion of Egypt alongside Israel and France in 1956 to prevent the nationalization of the Suez Canal, and Harold Macmillan, another central player in Britain’s post-war political landscape. Many ministers, diplomats and senior civil servants were also trained at the school.

This concentration has long fueled criticism that political power in Britain might coalesce around common educational backgrounds, creating overlapping circles of influence stretching from school days all the way to Westminster.

Famous actors

Eton’s influence extends to film, television and theatre, with a number of internationally renowned actors among its alumni.

Hugh Laurie, best known for his role in Homeis one of the school’s most distinguished graduates and is known on both sides of the Atlantic. Damian Lewis gained critical acclaim with his performances in Band of brothers, Country And Billions, while Tom Hiddleston played Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and starred in The night manager.

Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne, who won the Oscar for his role as Stephen Hawking in The theory of everythingfurther highlights the reach of Eton’s alumni network to the highest levels of the film industry.

They are joined on the alumni list by Dominic West, who played Jimmy McNulty in the HBO series. The thread before playing Prince Charles in the final two seasons of the Netflix series The Crownwhich takes place in the 1990s, when the marriage of the current King Charles III to Princess Diana ended in divorce.

Famous authors

Eton’s reach is not limited to politics. Famous literary alumni include George Orwell, the author of 1984 And Animal Farmwhose dystopian depictions of authoritarianism continue to resonate today.

The school also trained poets such as Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the major figures of the Romantic movement, as well as many historians, journalists and broadcasters who shaped public debate.

Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels, was also educated at Eton, as was Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World.

These figures highlight another aspect of Eton’s influence: not direct political power, but cultural authority. Through literature, journalism and commentary, Eton-educated voices have helped define how Britain views itself.

Business, science and industry

John Maynard Keynes attended Eton between 1897 and 1902 before becoming a pioneer of a school of thought known as Keynesian economics, which focuses on government intervention to stimulate demand.

Nobel laureate John Gurdon’s pioneering work in the late 1950s and early 1960s laid the foundation for modern cloning by showing that DNA from a specialized cell could be used to generate an entire organism.

Physicist John William Strutt, known as Lord Rayleigh, made fundamental contributions to physics and was instrumental in the discovery of argon, for which he received the Nobel Prize.

Royal family members

Two of the most famous recent names among Eton alumni are George’s father, Prince William, and his uncle, Prince Harry, who both boarded there.

For Prince George, joining Eton means more than just a formal education. This represents entry into one of the most enduring and influential networks in British society, where relationships formed in adolescence can reverberate across decades.

There’s no guarantee that George’s peers will reach the heights of Eton’s most famous alumni, but he doesn’t need to either. A network of longtime friends who can help navigate the complex intersections of politics, charity, media and the arts could prove invaluable to a future monarch.