In 1896, Mallory went to Glengorse, a boarding school in Eastbourne on the south coast of England, having already transferred from a school in West Kirby. At the age of 13, he won a scholarship to Winchester College. In his second - to - last year at Winchester, he was introduced to rock climbing and mountaineering by a master, R.L.G Irving, who took a small number of pupils climbing in the Alps every year. In October 1905, Mallory entered Magdalane College, Cambridge to study history. There, he became good friends with several members of the Bloomsbury Group including James Strachey, Lytton Strachey, Rupert Brooke, John Maynard Keynes, and Duncan Grant, who painted many portraits of Mallory. Mallory was a keen oarsman and rowed in his college "eight", but he did not (as has been written elsewhere) row for Cambridge in the annual Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race. 