I have been teaching English for almost twenty years; a career that has taken me from Italy to the far east and back to the UK where I have been working since 2007. Before relocating to North Yorkshire in 2015, I worked for seven years at a boarding school in Berkshire as an English teacher and housemaster and ran clubs ranging from Italian to Latin to music and drama. Since my wife and I decided to make North Yorkshire our home and the ideal place to raise our three young children, I have been waiting, with a dogged determination, for a situation to become vacant at Fyling Hall but as teachers almost never leave the school, it has been a long wait!

My great passion, as one might expect of an English teacher, is literature, particularly Victorian gothic and I hope to be able to share this love with the students at Fyling Hall. It is my great belief that, as well as being more culturally enhancing than we can appreciate, reading broadens our horizons, furthers our ambitions and equips us with many of the tools we need throughout life and one of the things that impressed me so much about Fyling Hall is the passion that the English teachers have ignited within so many of the students currently studying there which I saw first hand when I was honoured to have been asked to be a judge at the Daisy Hardy poetry competition; myriad young scholars learning and reciting full poems with a wonderful vim and vigour to their peers.

I look forward to meeting you all, students and parents, in the very near future.

Chris Thomas, Head of English