Bowie PDF Book from JFK247

and George singing, was not the only rite of passage
that year. The previous autumn David had sat his 11plus,
the crucial exam that would determine his future
school. The Burnt Ash pupils were well prepared,
and under the gimlet eye of David’s respected and
feared teacher, Mrs Baldry, David and most of his
friends passed. The rigid pecking order of schools in
the area started with Beckenham and Bromley
Grammar at the top, followed by Bromley Technical
School – which had opened in 1959 and was aimed
at future commercial artists and engineers – with
Quernmore Secondary Modern languishing in the
rear. Later in life, David would advise one of his
closest friends to ‘do the contrary action’ and he first
did that himself at the age of eleven. Though David’s
results were good enough for the grammar school,
against all expectations, he opted for Bromley Tech,
and talked his parents into supporting his decision.
Some of the inspiration for this precociously
unconventional move undoubtedly came from
George Underwood, who was also heading for
Bromley Tech. The Tech’s links with the nearby
Bromley College of Art also meant that he would join
a wider community, of the art school kids who would
ultimately come to define post-war Britain.
Contemporaries and near neighbours, like the
Stones’ Keith Richards and The Pretty Things’ Dick
Taylor – ‘the war babies’, as Richards would
describe them – were already embarked on the
same course. The notion that a generation of kids
could make a living via art was novel, born of the
radical reworking of the British educational system in