The Trust

Alison Beckett 

Member

Alison was appointed Chair of Governors at Sevenoaks School in December 2020. She joined the Governing Body in 2013, and has been Chair of the Education Committee. She attended the City of London School for Girls, read Geography at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and gained an MBA at London Business School. Alison has worked in consulting firms and industry and is a consultant at Egon Zehnder, the leading global leadership advisory firm. She has two daughters who studied at Sevenoaks School and lives in London. She is also a non-executive committee member of the Finance and General Purposes Committee at the Zoological Society of London. 

Robert Sackville-West

Member

After studying History at Oxford University and business at the London Business School, Robert Sackville-West worked in publishing, in 1985 founding Toucan Books, which creates illustrated non-fiction books for an international market. He now combines that with chairing Knole Estates, the property and investment company which – in parallel with the National Trust – runs the Sackville family’s interests at Knole. Among other voluntary roles, Robert has a long-standing interest in education. Until 2008, he was chairman of the governing body at Sevenoaks School, and is currently chairman of the Sevenoaks School Foundation. He is a governor (and chair of the Finance and Premises Committee) at the Knole Academy in Sevenoaks; and a director of the UK board of the International Baccalaureate Organization. He is a trustee of the Chevening Estate, a trustee of the Royal Oak Foundation, and a deputy-lieutenant of Kent.

Robert is the author of the critically acclaimed Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles (2010) and The Disinherited (2014).

Pam Tolhurst BEM

Member

The first 17 years of the world of work afforded me administrative opportunities with the Royal National Institute for the Blind where I gained wide experience of rehabilitation and training of people registered as blind and partially sighted.   On ‘spreading my wings’ beyond that focus I worked for 14 years until 2001 at what was at the time of my appointment Sevenoaks School for Girls.  My initial employment as School Secretary led to me fulfilling the role of Administration Manager, Head Teacher’s Secretary and Clerk to the Governors. I remember the work involved in the school’s change of name to The Bradbourne School.  My previous experience in the welfare of blind people was enhanced in 2001 through employment with Kent Association for the Blind as a guide communicator working with deaf-blind people.   In 2004 I was commissioned as Local Church Leader at Gillingham United Reformed Church in the Medway Towns. I continue to fulfil that call with the privilege of enjoying wider opportunities within the national church. I still live in the house in which I was born in Sevenoaks and am very grateful for the invitations afforded me to maintain contact with Knole Academy.   I really enjoy engaging with people and have a ‘pastoral heart’.