When Eton College recently announced that Sir Nicholas Coleridge would be its new provost, it made news in Britain’s Conservative press. The provost runs the administration of the 580-year-old school, and it’s he who faces the pressure from parents of prospective students for admission to its $53,416-a-year curriculum. There is an entrance exam, but never enough places. Eton is woven deep into the fabric of the British ruling class, so it’s the provost, too, who has to wrangle the tribes of Old Etonians with assumed proprietary rights to the school.
Coleridge, who will take up his position in September 2024, is quite unlike the present incumbent, Lord Waldegrave of North Hill, the multiple-prize-winning scholar, classicist, fellow of All Souls College at Oxford University, and former government minister. Provosts have traditionally been scholars or diplomats, statesmen or courtiers. Coleridge is different. After Eton and Cambridge, Coleridge’s long and successful career was in the media. His autobiography The Glossy Years describes the 30 years he worked for the Condé Nast media empire, finally as the managing director of Condé Nast Britain and president of Condé Nast International. One reviewer wrote, “The names never stop dropping in The Glossy Years. From Roman Abramovich to Catherine Zeta-Jones, from Adrenalin Village [a London club] and Babington House [part of the Soho House empire] to [restaurants] Wiltons and the Wolseley.”
