Charles Edmond (1968) visited school today for the first time in a fair few years.

Charles has had a colourful career in investment banking. Leaving Heriot's in 1968, Charles went to Trinity College Cambridge (having to take three A Levels on top of his 7 Highers, in order to be considered for entry) where he read Economics and Political Sociology. On graduation, he joined the Britsh Steel Corporation in Consett as an economist, before going off to Hong Kong with Data Stream and later Hoare Govett. Charles learned Cantonese fluently before being transferred to Tokyo between 1981-84, then back to London and later a welcome return to Edinburgh. He worked at Stirling University as a Senior Research Fellow in Japanes Finance before running a consulting business. 

Charles has fond memories of Spanish teacher Tam Dennis who instilled in him a lifelong love of foreign languages (he originally took up Spanish as he had wanted to be an explorer!). His days at Heriot's were happy . he came second out of 137 in the entry assessment (after Brian Miller) and loved the acdemic challenge offered by school. 

According to Charles: 'My Japanese is miles better than my Cantonese; Spanish is the only language in which I would claim anything like fluency. I would like to pay credit to Tom Rankin (sp ?) my old Economics teacher. He gave me a sound foundation on economics, upon which I am still building,

More recently, Charles has been Secretary of the Japanese Society of Scotland and is officially both a Samurai and a Shogun (a military commander).

We will hopefully see more of Charles this year, who has promised to join us for one for the Former Pupil Coffee Mornings this Spring.