R. Neville Tate OBE

Son of a Yorkshire farmer, R. Neville Tate OBE’s first employment was as a graduate apprentice in aeronautical engineering. However, an urge to travel led to a career change, taking up a post as a science teacher in Buenos Aires where he spent 13 years. Using the long school holidays Neville crisscrossed South America, at first by motorcycle, but later leading numerous schoolboy adventure expeditions to many of the wildest parts of that continent. Canoeing, or cycling, or horse-riding long distances demanding circumstances was often part of the package.

Returning to the UK in the mid-seventies, Neville was soon immersed in a new adventure of quite a different sort, becoming the founding headmaster of Yarm School, one of the very few “Public Schools” to be started from scratch since World War II.

Current hobbies and interests include light aircraft flying, gardening and model railways, and of course, adventure travel. Neville, as a constituency delegate addressed the 1976 Conservative Party Annual Conference and served for five years as a non-executive director of the North Tees Hospital Trust.