In 1896, Mallory attended Glengorse, a boarding school in Eastbourne on the south coast, having transferred from another preparatory school in West Kirby. At the age of 13, he won a mathematics scholarship to Winchester College. In his final year there, he was introduced to rock climbing and mountaineering by a master, R. L. G. Irving, who took a few people climbing in the Alps each year. In October 1905, Mallory entered Magdalene College, Cambridge, to study history. There, he became good friends with future members of the Bloomsbury Group, including Rupert Brooke, John Maynard Keynes, James Strachey, Lytton Strachey, and Duncan Grant, who took some portraits of Mallory. Among these friends, particularly Lytton Strachey, his letters attest a flirtatious, homoerotic and "explicitly gay" friendship. Mallory was a keen oarsman, who rowed for his college.