Pictures from Nicholas Booth

February 3, 2022 OSA Admin Articles 0

A selection of Nick’s books – learn how to rob the Bank of England, join in a quest of the ages and follow a pre-war safebreaker on his way to be the greatest double agent of the war
The Old Sandbachians’ Association is proud to present a selection of images kindly provided by well known Sandbach School alumnus, Nicholas Booth.

Nick went on to work for the world’s oldest newspapers – The Observer and The Times – as had Kim Philby. Unfortunately, Nick’s own application to join MI6 must have got lost in the post. So he has bidden his time writing about spies and one of his books is being made into a film by Tom Hanks. He has a thriller out later this year. For the rest of the time, he writes books, adaptations, scripts, shopping lists and tweets as @thievesbook.

Click the photos to see a full size version

It is a little known fact that in Sandbach in the seventies, many pupils clearly had rickets without realising as they looked through a telescope

In 1979, a group of lads actually built a telescope at school and one, as this photo shows, had even transformed into Nosferatu
High tech 1980 – no social media, kids and the latest news from NASA across the pond came by Clipper Ship
When travelling in California, it was always helpful to blend in with the natives, appear incognito and not reveal to anyone you were British
From humble beginnings – the editors of The Sandbachian in 1982 went on to greater things and, in those days, the pub
This was in The Daily Mail so it must have been true, although in those days not every article mentioned house prices
The very first article Nick ever wrote. Great timing: five years later and Uranus would have been in the headline
Anything for a cheap photo opportunity – here is yer mon at the podium where the latest from space are still announced today
As part of his research, Nick also worked for a time for Mossad but would have to kill you if he revealed you any more
Nick was a 00 operative years before Daniel Craig, shown here with the Quartermaster and words familiar from school – “Now pay attention”
Here is a man with a very silly haircut – and yes, that is also Donald Trump, when Nick worked for The Times
People only ever read the headlines – when Nick went on a speaker tour in the U.S. in 2009, he got some very funny looks
N. Booth (5L) and P Franklin (3M) in Los Angeles in 2008 on important movie business. Well, Paul was: Nick was supposed to be writing a book
Speech Day 1978 – Nick had been up all night practising his surly expression and won a prize for looking annoyed and teenage in the extreme
In 2015, Nick was commemoration speaker at the school and was delighted to find exactly what he learned had been posted on a wall

Nick as he appears today, shown here singing show tunes in Waitrose car park. Mid life crises come in many different forms