Harrow on the Hooghly, by John Lethbridge
"Harrow on the Hooghly" was a nickname given to the New School of Calcutta and Darjeeling , on its founding in 1940. The Hooghly is the principal river running through Calcutta; Harrow is one of England's most prominent private schools. It was one of a number of emergency schools set up early on in the Second World War, for children of British parents in India who would otherwise have been educating them in Britain. In 1940 India would have seemed much safer than Britain; there was a real threat of invasion by Germany and, worse, the sea lanes were becoming very dangerous. Getting passage as a civilian was very difficult, and the normal route to India via the Suez Canal was impossible until after VE Day in 1945. There was an excess of refugee children in 1940, with a pressing need to be educated, who could not be accommodated in the existing European schools in India. Then Japan went to war with Britain and the situation in India suddenly looked very threatening. If