Earlier this year, the John Lyon community lost a wonderful and tragically very young Old Lyonian, Joshua Beresford-Smart (OL 2013-2020) to a very rare form of brain tumour.  His loss was very deeply felt throughout the community.

Our Deputy Head, Jonthan Pepperman wrote to all staff the following message about Joshua, which we would like to share.

"Many of you will know that Joshua inspired many with the way in which he fought his condition with good grace and humour, never giving in.  For those of you lucky enough to see his final A-Level drama performance last Spring, you will know he fought to the last, defying the odds that evening to give an extraordinary performance.  Even at the toughest of times, he worried about his friends and their reactions to his condition at least as much as he cared for himself; he had to be there that night, and he had to perform for his friends.  He was outstanding.

Patrick Miles, who performed with Josh in many productions and in the A-Level performance mentioned above, has contacted the School to ask that we share the following with our wider community.  The charity being supported is the School Charity that Josh nominated and which he did much to support as well as benefit from.  Please have a look and offer your support if you can – I know a number of you already have.  Thank you.

To me Josh was more than a friend. He was the first person I met when I first joined the school back in 2016, but through the short time I had with him our friendship became like a brotherhood. Looking back at the moments I had the privilege of sharing with him, never do I remember Josh without a smile on his face. To me and to so many others did he prove that a smile was the most contagious thing anyone could contract.

Throughout these tough months I have done my best to stay close to the family and back in January I had agreed that I would run the London Landmarks Half-Marathon alongside his brothers Tom and Matt. We have all set up our individual JustGiving pages and have already raised over seven thousand pounds between the three of us. It would mean a great deal if our message could be spread to the wider John Lyon School community by sharing my JustGiving page. Please find a link to my page below.

Just giving link

Kind regards,

Patrick"

A full tribute to Joshua will be published soon on this website.