Ask certain teachers like Dermot McMahon or Peter Ribbins who was the most intellectually-gifted pupil they taught at St Mary’s and they are likely to say Patrick Dunleavy.

Dunleavy, the son of a civil servant and a teacher, arrived at St Mary’s in the autumn of 1963 and, according to classmate Chris Miller, was already an expert on the situation in Northern Ireland: “He was a genius then and he is a genius now,” Chris told me.

He was also one of the tallest students at the school and had to walk with a slight stoop on the top corridor when he reached his full height of six foot six.

Peter Ribbins taught Patrick History and believes that by the time he reached the sixth form he was already working at a level that would have gained him a first class honours degree.

Yet Geography, under the likes of Ron Hesketh and Bernard McLaughlin, was the subject at which Patrick truly excelled. While his A-Level results were exceptional, his Geography paper won a prize for the best Oxford A-level entrance in the whole country.

In the end he decided not to study Geography at degree level, instead choosing to do Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Corpus Christi.

Patrick, who would become Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the London School of Economics, told me: “I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was a genius because I’m certainly not that, but I did work hard at St Mary’s and that is why I did so well at A-Level I think.”

Patrick says he saw the standard of teaching at St Mary’s improve year-on-year throughout the 1960s and believes his year, which also included other excellent students like Paul Donohue, Gregory Gibbs and the late Fabian Goody was an exceptionally strong one.

Fifty one years ago this week, on 29 January 1971, Patrick returned to the school for the annual awards evening where he received the Craven Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement at A-Level.

The photograph, from the Kentish Times, shows Patrick towering above the Mayoress of Bromley, Alderman Miss Bertha James JP and the Mayoress, Miss Monica James and, of course, as if he needed any introduction, headmaster Fr Philip Graystone who looks justifiably delighted.