A school’s link to guitarist Eric Clapton and a murderer hanged for killing a policeman has been laid bare in a book.

Former Hollyfield deputy head David Forward uncovered the unusual stories when he retired in 2009 after 30 years at the Surbiton school and decided to research its history.

The biggest surprise came when a former student told him the school was transfixed by the 1959 trial of a German accused of shooting Detective Sergeant Raymond Purdy, the father of a student.

Pupils avidly read newspaper reports of the trial, where Guenther Poldola claimed he suffered from amnesia, before he become the last killer of a policeman to be hanged in Britain.

More drama came four years later when the school hall was gutted in a fire that many believed was started by an unhappy student.

Former pupils remembered the school’s most famous old boy, guitarist Eric Clapton, as “rather shy, moody and withdrawn”, but also a practical joker.

He attended between 1958 and 1961, but was often seen “staring intently through the window of Bell’s Music shop in the Ewell Road and looking enviously at the new colourful electric guitars which were just coming into vogue”.

One of his few remnants is his poem The Battle Cry, published in the school’s magazine during his third year.

The book also details the most illustrious teacher, Anne Wood, whose passion for drama during 1960 and 1965 was a precursor to her career in children’s publishing and TV, where her company Ragdoll created the Tellytubbies.

She told Mr Forward she remembered Hollyfield as traditional, and run on rather strict lines.

The book also covers the war, when students sometimes had to be taught in cold, damp trenches during air raids.

Mr Forward said: “Pupils told me how disruptive [the war] was because of the bombing and scarlet fever. Sometimes teachers would not come in because their homes had been blown up, or parents would keep students at home because of the bombing.”

The book, titled Hollyfield, is available for £10.99 from fast-print.net/bookshop.