SCHOOL friends who had not seen each other for more than 40 years held an emotional reunion in Darlington on Saturday.

Thirty three former pupils and four retired teachers from the town's Queen Elizabeth Grammar School met for the first time since summer 1959.

They travelled from all over the country and as far afield as Hong Kong to visit their old school, now Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College, before a celebratory dinner at the Blackwell Grange hotel.

Reunion organiser Dr Paul Walker, who lives in Bristol, said the event, for the school first in-take form of 1952, went "brilliantly".

He said: "There were lots of speeches, lots of reminiscing and good fun. We all agreed that we'd been to a super school with super masters, of whom four of the best were with us.

"There were about half a dozen missing from the form who we couldn't trace."

He said it was likely another reunion would be held in a few years.