Please note that due to the popularity of this event, only those that have pre-registered their attendance are guaranteed entry.

Surviving 9/11

A talk by Alistair Lester

 for the Tennant Lecture Series

Thursday 9 November 2023

Drinks in the Lowry Dining Room from 7.30pm

Lecture in Big School at 8pm

On September 11th 2001, on a clear Tuesday morning, Al Qaeda terrorists flew two hijacked planes into the Twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York, another into the Pentagon and a fourth, widely believed to be targeting the Capital building in Washington crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after the hostages stormed the cockpit and overwhelmed the hijackers. It was a day that changed the world we live in. 

On that morning, Alistair Lester, a young man of 27, was in New York for the first time. He was working for Aon and was attending meetings at the Aon offices on the 100th floor of the South Tower.

Almost 20 minutes after the first plane hit the North Tower, a second Boeing 767 appeared out of the sky, turned sharply toward the World Trade Centre and sliced into the South Tower, above the 70th floor.

Aon lost 176 employees in the attack but miraculously many survived. One of them was Alistair Lester.

Twenty-two years later, Alistair (now Co-CEO of M&A at Aon) has generously agreed to talk about the events of 9/11 to a large audience for the first time. Although none of the Tonbridge boys were alive in 2001, he feels it is important for them, and their parents, to hear first-hand what it was like to be at the centre of an attack which claimed nearly 3,000 lives and had a huge impact on world history.  The events of 9/11 led directly to war in Afghanistan, to the US declaration of the ‘War on Terror’ and subsequently to the invasion of Iraq and a series of other tumultuous events and conflicts across the world. 

We are extremely grateful to Alistair for agreeing to give this talk.

Places will be in demand (we have reserved some seating for current pupils) and on this occasion we ask that you kindly register individually.  

This event is fully accessible.