he saw as "a rather brutal place" for boys not suited to the dominant school culture. He sought to reduce corporal punishment and abolished "personal fagging", a Repton practice whereby the youngest pupils were assigned for two years as servants for the most senior boys, who could beat them for mistakes. After moving to Winchester College in 1968, Thorn found less need to address such traditional public-school austerities because, inspired by the late 1960s 'Counter-Culture', senior boys were themselves refusing to continue them. Thorn also opposed the traditional dominance of school sport. "The arts must no longer be Cinderellas", he wrote, "must no longer take second place to cricket nets and the rest of it". He viewed such challenges to Repton's traditions as the fundamental source of such strong hostility from a cohesive faction of conservative, sport-focused teachers, that he sought to leave Repton. Participatory arts At Repton Thorn expanded the roles and resources of the established lead drama teacher and lead art teacher, praising their work as cultivating creativity and sensitivity. Inspired by their methods, at Winchester he developed participatory arts as a valued part of school life, creating a theatre workshop and an art school there. For Thorn, the most valuable aspects of school drama, art or music was pupils' participation and experience of the creative process rather than a polished product. He warmed to experimental plays written or produced by pupils themselves. Thorn also made space in the curriculum for academic study, separate from exam subjects, which aimed purely to expand pupils’ perspective on the world. At Winchester he explored a combination of history, literature, philosophy, politics and science for this purpose. Subsidised places A sometime Labour voter, Thorn was strongly concerned to share his schools with pupils whose parents could not afford the fees. He was keen to co-operate with government schemes for assisted places. He sold Winchester College's 15th century manuscript of Malory's Morte d’Arthur to the British Library in order to fund bursaries for poorer pupils. He modified Winchester's demanding entrance scholarship exams to give talented state school pupils a fairer chance against competitors who had received expensive coaching. John Smyth affair While Thorn was at Winchester, John Smyth, a barrister who lived nearby, acquired a dominant and unhealthy role in the School's Christian Forum. Smyth persuaded some 16 Winchester boys to undergo severe beatings as a kind of penance. Thorn knew that boys