four terms, and wrote his first collection there. Julius Harrison composed a cantata and sonata for the school's Jubilee in 1950. William Vaughan Berkley became headmaster in 1952, and remained until 1969. In 1957, he appointed as English master the actor Anthony Corfield, who sustained an active programme in drama for more than thirty years. James Brown, who had been assistant head to Berkley, became headmaster in 1969. He wrote the history of the school, The First Five (meaning the first five headmasters), published in 1988. Brown was succeeded as headmaster by Christopher Syers-Gibson, D. H. M. Dalrymple, Ian Murphy, Andrew Auster, J. Griggs, and, in 1999, Christopher Black. By the end of the twentieth century the school was coeducational and included a nursery, kindergarten and pre-prep as well as the original preparatory school. Alastair Ramsay became the next headmaster and, in 2008, the school merged with Malvern College prep school, on The Downs' existing site. The name was changed to The Downs Malvern to reflect its new stewardship. In September 2009 Alastair Cook became headmaster. Andy Nuttall became Headmaster of The Downs Malvern in May 2020. The Downian Society draws its membership from former pupils, employees and associates of the school. W. H. Auden at the Downs The poet W. H. Auden spent three years teaching English at The Downs during 1932–1935. He returned for the summer term in 1937 when the English master was away. He was loved as one of the more extravagant and eccentric teachers, who supplemented his teaching of English by teaching pupils how to make spitballs stick to the ceiling. He helped to found the school magazine The Badger in 1933, and his contributions to it included poems about school personalities. He continued to contribute occasionally after he left the school. In 1935 he wrote, composed, and organised a musical revue, in which the entire school took part, and reused some of the lyrics in his play The Dog Beneath the Skin. In 1937 he wrote a preface to the catalogue of an exhibition in a London gallery of paintings by present and former members of the school. Auden lived at the school in a cottage that he named "Lawrence Villa" (one of his allusions to D. H. Lawrence). During the summer term, he used to sleep out on the lawn; thus the opening line of his poem "Out on the lawn I lie