What is everyone talking about this week: Yikes! It's school-reunion season...
For some, an opportunity to reconnect with old chums, is a fearful occasion during which old-school hierarchies rear their ugly heads. May the odds be in your favour.
'I was so lucky getting mono,’ coos Mira Sorvino as Romy White in 1997’s Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion. ‘That was, like, the best diet ever.’ She and her best friend are reflecting on their senior prom ahead of their cohort’s first decennial meet-up, preparing to face the hierarchical world of secondary school once more. What could possibly go wrong? It turns out, everything.
Summer is prime time for the alumni gathering. People flock back, often begrudgingly, to the schools that made them who they are. Anxieties run high, yet the pull is gravitational. Who’s got married? Divorced? Had children? Come out of the closet? Where does everyone live? Who now owns their own home? Whose businesses have succeeded? Whose have failed?
The older one becomes, the more the points of comparison multiply. Who is still in good health? Who, indeed, is still alive? Curiosity always wins out; either that, or we have a repressed teenager within each of us keen to prove ourselves and craving the approval of peers we once deemed superior.
My first sixth-form reunion is taking place in September, 10 years and two months after we left. ‘There’s no escaping it,’ says a friend (I’ll bet: ours is happening on a boat). I have to hand it to the organisers, who decided to take charge once it became clear that our school had forgotten to arrange anything: a far cry from Harrow, which hosts its annual Founders Day in March and invites old boys back to the Hill to play Harrow Football against sixth formers in their old house.
‘It’s a great day out,’ says an old Harrovian. ‘No talk about work or weddings: we just run around the mud getting generally embarrassed about how much less fit we are than our 18-year-old counterparts.’ Not all school reunions are created equal. Some prior attendees mention the worst of their pubescent fears coming home to roost. ‘We all need our heroes,’ one tells me, ‘and I was shattered to find that the person I idolised most at school now led an ordinary life. It was depressing.’ An old Paulina reveals that she once tried to organise a reunion only to face resistance from a group who couldn’t believe that she, a one-time it-girl, was thinking of inviting them. ‘You’re having us on,’ they told her.
Some will organise games. Others, addresses. The most outlandish will involve rituals. For most, however, the school reunion is an occasion to confront the potential reality that the best years of our lives are behind us. ‘I bloody hope not,’ says an old Radleian. ‘Imagine how sad it would have been to peak at school!’ Here's hoping you didn't.
This feature originally appeared in the July 15, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.
