Tony Robson 1962 to 1969
After leaving St Mary’s in 1969, Tony worked for a year as a trainee metallurgist before going to college to do a HND in Business Studies.
On leaving college, he worked in Personnel Management for eight years, mostly with the Navy Army and Airforce Institutes (NAAFI). He then joined HM Prison Service as a Trainee Assistant Governor. Tony takes up the story:
“My career in the Service spanned 28 years and I worked my way up the ranks via postings to HMYCC Dover, HMP Durham, HMP Winchester, HMP Swaleside and Prison Service HQ to become a Governing Governor in 1991.
“I was Governor in charge at three prisons, HMP Rochester, HMP Standford Hill and HMP Swaleside on the Isle of Sheppey (at the time, the largest high security training prison in Europe) before accepting a posting to HQ where I was Deputy Head of Public Protection with responsibility for life sentence policy for a couple of years and lastly, Project Lead in the building of two prisons.”
While in the prison service, Tony did an Open University degree and a Masters degree at Cambridge University, and is now able, quite legitimately, to write ‘Cantab’ after his name. He retired from the prison service in 2010.
“In 2008, my wife and I sold our house, bought a 47ft sailing yacht and moved onto it the day after I retired. It was located in Greece when we bought it and we lived on her for eight years. For the first four years or so, we wintered in Aghios Nikolaos on Crete and spent the summers cruising the Greek islands and Turkish coast. Then we sailed across the Med through the Straits of Gibraltar and on across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. We sailed the Caribbean and Eastern coast of the USA quite extensively reaching as far south as the jungles of Surinam in South American, as far north as Rhode Island and including such exotic places as Mexico, Belize and Guatemala.The attached photo was taken very shortly after making landfall in Englishmans Harbour in Antigua after our transatlantic crossing It includes my wife, Anne and our crew members, my brother and my eldest son, Mark.
“Owning a boat is an expensive business. We basically ran out of money a couple of years ago and sold the boat. We bought a house in Westbury, Wiltshire three years ago and now live very happily in a lovely part of the country. My latest challenge is church bell ringing, far more difficult than I imagined but after 18 months I'm just about to start method ringing - or will do once the lockdown lifts.”