Eton's famous students

David Cameron

Former pupils of Eton College are known as Old Etonians.
Eton has produced nineteen British Prime Ministers, including Sir Robert Walpole, William Pitt the Elder, the first Duke of Wellington, William Ewart Gladstone, Arthur James Balfour, Harold Macmillan, and the current Prime Minister, David Cameron.
Old Etonians who have been writers include Henry Fielding, Thomas Gray, Horace Walpole, Aldous Huxley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Bridges, George Orwell, Anthony Powell, Cyril Connolly and Ian Fleming. The mediaevalist and ghost story writer M. R. James was provost of Eton from 1918 until his death in 1936.

Hugh Lori

 Other notable Old Etonians include scientists Robert Boyle, John Maynard Smith, J. B. S. Haldane, and John Gurdon, the dandy Beau Brummell, economists John Maynard Keynes and Richard Layard, Antarctic explorer Lawrence Oates, politician Alan Clark, cricket commentator Henry Blofeld, explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, adventurer Bear Grylls, composers Thomas Arne, Hubert Parry, and Peter Warlock, and musicians Frank Turner and Humphrey Lyttelton.
Notable Old Etonians in the media include the former Political Editor of both ITN and The Times newspaper, Julian Haviland, the current BBC Deputy Political Editor, James Landale and the BBC Science Editor, David Shukman, the current President of Conde Nast International and Managing Director of Conde Nast UK Nicholas Coleridge, and the former ITN newscaster and BBC Panorama presenter, Ludovic Kennedy, current BBC World News and BBC Rough Justice current affairs presenter David Jessel, former chief ITV and Channel 4 racing commentator John Oaksey, 1950s BBC newreader and 1960s ITN newscaster Timothy Brinton, 1960s BBC newsreader Corbet Woodall, the former Editor of The Daily Telegraph newspaper, Charles Moore, and the former Editor of The Spectator magazine, Ferdinand Mount.

Tom Hiddleston

Notable Old Etonian film and television actors include Eddie Redmayne, Damian Lewis, Christopher Cazenove, Dominic West, Jeremy Clyde, actor and comedian Michael Bentine, Jeremy Brett, Hugh Laurie, Tom Hiddleston, Ian Ogilvy, John Standing, Moray Watson, Jeremy Child, Harry Lloyd and Patrick Macnee.
The school was founded by Henry VI, and is situated next to Windsor Castle. Princes William and Harry are Old Etonians.
A rising number of pupils come to Eton from overseas, including members of royal families from Africa and Asia, some of whom have been sending their sons to Eton for generations. One of them, King Prajadhipok or Rama VII (1893–1941) of Siam, donated a garden to Eton.

Princes William and Harry

Actor Dominic West has been unenthusiastic about the career benefits of being an Old Etonian, saying it "is a stigma that is slightly above 'paedophile' in the media in a gallery of infamy", while the actor Tom Hiddleston says there are widespread misconceptions about Eton, and that "People think it’s just full of braying toffs... It isn’t true... It’s actually one of the most broadminded places I’ve ever been. The reason it’s a good school is that it encourages people to find the thing they love and to go for it. They champion the talent of the individual and that’s what’s special about it".