David Faber

Headmaster, Designated Safeguarding Lead

Management

David Faber took up his appointment as the tenth Headmaster of Summer Fields in September 2010. He is an old boy of the School, a former parent and had previously served as a Governor for nine years. He teaches History, with particular expertise in the Second World War and the history of appeasement.

After attending Summer Fields, along with many other members of his family, David Faber was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Modern Languages, played 2nd XI cricket and won a half-blue for rackets.  After university he worked for the Conservative Party in a number of roles, before contesting the Stockton North constituency unsuccessfully at the 1987 General Election. He was elected to Parliament in 1992 for the Westbury seat in West Wiltshire, which he held for nine years.

During the 1992-1997 Parliament he served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister for Overseas Development and then to the Secretary of State for Health. He also sat on the Social Security Select Committee and was Secretary of the Conservative Education Committee. Between 1997 and 2001 he was for a time Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, as well as a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee and the Public Accounts Committee.

He stood down from Parliament at the 2001 election to pursue a career as a writer. His first book, Speaking For England, published by Simon & Schuster, is a tryptich biography of the Amery family – Leo Amery, a prominent imperialist politician between the wars and his two sons, John, who was hanged for treason at the end of the war and Julian (OS), who enjoyed a long career as a politician himself.   In 2008 he published Munich, The 1938 Appeasement Crisis; it has also been published in the United States, again by Simon & Schuster, and translated into Czech. He continues to be an occasional lecturer and contributor to both broadcast and written media, in particular on the subject of Appeasement.

David Faber is currently serving his fifth three-year term as a member of the main MCC Committee and is also Chairman of The Club’s Arts and Library Committee. For many years he was a Trustee of two prominent addiction charities, the Rehabilitation of Addicted Prisoners Trust and Clouds, which, during his time as Chairman of Trustees, merged to become Action on Addiction.

Cricket remains one of his principal hobbies, as is golf (he is a member of the Royal & Ancient) and Chelsea Football Club. He is married to Sophie and has two daughters and an Old Summerfieldian and Oxford graduate son.