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St. George’s School
- Type
- International school
- Address
- Chemin de St-Georges 19, 1815 Clarens / Montreux
Not open to visitors
Founded in 1927, St. George’s School is an international school set on the heights of Clarens, by Lake Geneva, halfway between Vevey and Montreux. It was here that Angela Barnett, David Bowie’s future first wife, spent part of her schooling. That tie to Switzerland would matter: in 1976, with the singer’s finances in ruins and a return to England ruled out for tax reasons, it was Angela who knew the country, travelled there and, with a lawyer’s help, arranged residency in the neighbouring commune of Blonay. The school, still running, takes pupils from early childhood to the final diploma and is not open to visitors.
The school through which Bowie came to Switzerland
Angela, the Riviera and “a commodious cuckoo-clock of a house”
In her book “Backstage Passes: Life on the Wild Side with David Bowie”, Angela Bowie recounts how her time at St. George’s steered the couple towards Switzerland. She describes Blonay as “a charming village above Lake Geneva near Montreux”, and the house she found there as “a commodious cuckoo-clock of a house très Swiss”.
David Bowie settled on the heights of the Riviera in 1976, would keep a home in the region into the early 1980s, and kept coming back: the thread of that Swiss story begins with a school, the one his wife had known.
Among the alumni
Over the decades the school has counted several well-known names among its alumni, who call themselves the “Georgians”. For music, the thread remains Angela Bowie, née Barnett. But its former pupils also include the American actress Glenn Close, the Belgian actress Eline Powell (“Siren”, “Game of Thrones”), the British screenwriter Jill Hyem, the Greek heiress Christina Onassis and the Ecuadorian businesswoman Isabel Noboa (school prospectus).
Related artists :David Bowie