CANFORD
A Question of Identity
A Festival of Ideas
17th - 22nd October 2014
To Parents, Staff and other Members of the Canford Community
You are extremely welcome to attend any of the events on the programme. In fact I hope
that large numbers turn up. There is no need to book in advance except for the piano
recital on Friday 17th October
To Canford Pupils
Particular subject and year groups are required to attend specific events: you can look
these up in the programme. Please arrive on time. I hope that you will engage in the
issues by asking questions and contributing to discussion.
I hope that you will want to go to more talks than required in order fully to follow through
the theme.
If you want to attend talks in lesson times other than those allocated to you, you should
e-mail [email protected] with your request and seek permission from whoever is teaching
you within the time allocated to the talk.
Gavin Knight, Writer-in-Residence
We are pleased to welcome Gavin Knight as writer-in-residence. As well as attending
events and speaking himself, he will be working with classes in English and other subjects
and joining in discussion as it develops.
Gavin Knight is a journalist who has written for The Times, The
Guardian, The Telegraph, Prospect, Newsweek, New Statesman,
Esquire, Monocle and many other publications. He has also
appeared on CNN, ITN, BBC, Channel Four news and Sky News.
He is currently writing his second book on the Cornish fishing
community, the last frontier men doing the most dangerous
civilian job in Britain. This will be published by Chatto & Windus, part of Penguin Random
House. His first book HOOD RAT was shortlisted for the prestigious Orwell Prize
2012 and the Crime Writer’s Association Non-fiction Dagger Award. It was BBC Radio
Four’s Book of the Week, serialised in the Daily Telegraph and currently being developed
into a TV series. Over the two years prior to the publication of HOOD RAT he was
regularly embedded with frontline police units in London, Manchester and Glasgow as
well as spending time with dozens of violent criminals involved in gun and gang crime. He
accompanied detectives on a manhunt, firearms and drugs raids and was embedded with a
CID unit over a lengthy drug surveillance operation.To source the powerful human stories
at the centre of HOOD RAT, he spent time with criminals, inmates, gang members, heroin
addicts, social workers, youth workers, charities, trauma surgeons, victims of violent crime
and their families.
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Introduction
One of the best descriptions I know of the search for who we are comes in this poem by Seamus Heaney called Personal
Helicon:
As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.
One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.
A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.
Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.
Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
Break time concerts
Monday 20th -Wednesday 22nd October
To Set the Darkness Echoing
10.45am-11.05am
Monday-Library, Tuesday/Wednesday-The Long Gallery
Friday 17th October
Translating Cultures: Reflections on Language and Identity
Professor Charles Forsdick
11.50am-1pm, Layard Theatre
UPPER AND LOWER SIXTH FORM
Music and the Shaping of National Identity
Béla Hartmann
2.30pm-3.45pm, Layard Theatre
FOURTH AND FIFTH FORMS
Is Britishness Dead?
Professor Nigel Biggar
4.45pm-5.45pm, Layard Theatre
ALL AS AND A2 POLITICS, HISTORY, ENGLISH AND
RELIGIOUS STUDIES STUDENTS
This poem is one I keep coming back to for the way it moves from the child’s unselfconscious attempt to explore the
possibilities of the world around him to the adult’s deliberate philosophical and psychological struggles to define who he is and
where he fits into the wider world.The poet rhymes, ’To see myself, to set the darkness echoing’, a reaching out into the world
around him in an attempt to define his identity, to know where he fits in.
Homelands
A recital of piano music from Russia, Germany, Poland, Spain
and Norway
Béla Hartmann
7.30pm-9.30pm, Music School
ALL MUSIC SCHOLARS, GCSE AND AS MUSICIANS, ALL
PIANO STUDENTS
This theme week or festival of ideas is not intended to find answers to questions of who we are and what we might be but I
hope that it does indeed ‘set the darkness echoing’.
Saturday 18th October
Identity is a complicated thing and in today’s world it is increasingly tricky to grasp who or what we are, to see beyond the
surface to the truth: gone for most are the apparent certainties of the rural upbringing in a fixed location and confident culture.
And yet the impulse remains to define ourselves against the world in which we live. We form allegiances to people, teams,
beliefs, nations, using them to establish a sense of selfhood. Sometimes our allegiance turns us against those whose identities
are different from our own; so many of the conflicts in today’s world arise from people’s desire to assert their sense of identity
in opposition to that of others.
All the speakers in this festival were invited to consider what it means to belong to a particular nation or culture, to explore
ideas about home and identity and possibly to develop this into a consideration of the nation state in history and in the
contemporary world.
I have been thrilled by the response of so many eminent and varied people to the invitation and the journey from Professor
Charles Forsdick’s reflections on language and identity to Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s musings on clouds and how they affect the way
we see ourselves, should be an exciting intellectual journey to set the darkness echoing.
In creating the programme I am particularly grateful to Gavin Knight, the writer-in-residence, for his help and advice and to all
the guests for the time and energy they have given to this project. I hope that they find their visits to Canford as rewarding as
it has been to assemble this programme.
John James
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Overview of Schedule and Expected Attendance
Why History Never Ends
Eva Hahn
8.30am-9.30am, Layard Theatre
UPPER SIXTH HISTORY, ALL AS AND A2 MODERN
LANGUAGES
National Heroes-International Icons
Professor Hans Henning Hahn
9.45am-10.45am, Layard Theatre
UPPER AND LOWER SIXTH GEOGRAPHY, UPPER AND
LOWER SIXTH ENGLISH
A Question of Identity
The keynote lecture
Professor A.C.Grayling
11.30am-12.30pm, Layard Theatre
ALL UPPER SIXTH, LOWER SIXTH, AND FIFTH FORMS
(except those leaving for away matches)
Monday 20th October
FUTEBOL: The Brazilian Way of Life
Alex Bellos
11.50am-1.00pm, Layard Theatre
ALL FOURTHS AND FIFTH FORMS, PHYSICAL
EDUCATION AS AND A2
Finding Your Self
Julian Baggini
4.45pm-5.45pm, Layard Theatre
ALL UPPER SIXTH
Patriot Games?
Alastair Hignell
7.30pm-8.30pm, Layard Theatre
UPPER SIXTH AND LOWER SIXTH PHYSICAL
EDUCATION, SPORTS SCHOLARS / SHELLS (either this
talk or Tuesday at 7.30pm for Professor Margaret Cox)
Tuesday 21st October
Soldiering and the Sense of Self
Oli Coryton (OC, Franklin House 1992-1997)
10.00am-11.00am, Layard Theatre
ALL FOURTH FORM AND FIFTH FORM, ALL NCOS
A Sort of Englishman
Hattie Morahan
11.50am-1.00pm, The Library
UPPER AND LOWER SIXTH ENGLISH AND DRAMA
A Report from the Referendum
Tom Panton (OC, Court House 2005-2009)
4.45pm-5.45pm, The Library
ALL UPPER AND LOWER SIXTH POLITICS
Naming the Dead
Professor Margaret Cox
7.30pm-8.30pm, Layard Theatre
UPPER AND LOWER SIXTH BIOLOGY, CHEMISTRY
AND HISTORY/SHELLS (either this or Monday at 7.30pm
for Alastair Hignell)
Wednesday 22nd October
Being a Man in 21st Century Britain
Gavin Knight
11.50am-1.00pm, Layard Theatre
ALL FIFTH FORM, UPPER AND LOWER SIXTH
GEOGRAPHY
A Nation of Cloudspotters
Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of The Cloud Appreciation
Society
1.45pm-3.00pm, Layard Theatre
SHELLS, UPPER SIXTH AND LOWER SIXTH FORM
GEOGRAPHY, UPPER AND LOWER SIXTH CHEMISTRY
AND PHYSICS
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Break-time Concerts
Monday 20th -Wednesday 22nd October
To Set the Darkness Echoing
10.45am-11.05am
Monday-Library
Tuesday and Wednesday-The Long Gallery
A series of short break time concerts with poems and music read and
performed by Canford pupils and staff. Coffee and biscuits will be served.
Music and the Shaping of National Identity
Béla Hartmann
2.30pm-3.45pm, Layard Theatre
FOURTH AND FIFTH FORMS
Canford is lucky to have such a distinguished musician as Béla Hartmann as a visiting piano
teacher. This afternoon his credentials as a speaker and thinker about music will be on
display. His Czech-German origins and his outstanding musicianship make him an ideal
person to introduce the huge subject of music and national identity.
This evening you can go on to hear Béla play an amazing range
of music in his ‘Homelands’ recital.
Friday 17th October
Translating Cultures: Reflections on Language and Identity
Professor Charles Forsdick
11.50am-1pm, Layard Theatre
UPPER AND LOWER SIXTH FORM
By linking together ‘translating’ and ‘cultures’, the talk seeks to explore the ways in
which translation – understood in a broad sense as a term encompassing a variety
of processes relating to the transmission and sharing of languages, values, beliefs,
histories and narratives – may be seen as helping to shape our understanding of
culture, society and identity. The presentation will address the extent to which
translation is increasingly central to a number of areas of contemporary public
concern, and will consider a range of issues relating to this, including multilingualism,
translation and self-reflection, the public understanding of languages, and translation as a form of creativity.
Charles Forsdick is James Barrow Professor of French at the University of Liverpool, and AHRC Theme Leadership
Fellow for ‘Translating Cultures’. He has published widely on travel writing, colonial history, postcolonial literature
and the cultures of slavery. He is also a specialist on Haiti and the Haitian Revolution, and has written widely about
representations of Toussaint Louverture.
His publications include Victor Segalen and the Aesthetics of Diversity (Oxford
University Press, 2000), Travel inTwentieth-Century French and Francophone Cultures
(Oxford University Press, 2005) and Ella Maillart, ‘Oasis interdites’ (Zoé, 2008).
He has also edited and co-edited a number of volumes, including Francophone
Postcolonial Studies: A Critical Introduction (Arnold, 2003), Human Zoos: Science
and Spectacle in the Age of Colonial Empire (Liverpool University Press, 2008),
Postcolonial Thought in the French-Speaking World (Liverpool University Press,
2009), Transnational French Studies: Postcolonialism and Littérature-monde
(Liverpool University Press, 2010), Travel Writing: Critical Concepts in Literary and
Cultural Studies (Routledge, 2012), Ethics on the Move: Travel Writing and CrossCultural Encounter (Routledge, 2013), and the forthcoming Black Jacobins Reader
(Duke University Press).
Is Britishness Dead?
Professor Nigel Biggar
4.45pm-5.45pm, Layard Theatre
ALL AS AND A2 POLITICS, HISTORY, ENGLISH AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES STUDENTS
The historian Linda Colley has argued that British
identity was originally constructed around the project of a Protestant
empire that ceased to exist over fifty years ago; and last month 44.7%
of Scots voted to leave to the United Kingdom of Great Britain. So is
Britishness dead?
Nigel Biggar is Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Christ
Church, Oxford and Director of the McDonald Centre for Theology,
Ethics, and Public Life. He previously served as Chair of Theology at the
University of Leeds and Chair of Theology and Ethics at Trinity College Dublin. His research interests include the
formative bearing of religious concepts on moral life; the contribution of religion to the health of liberal societies; the
development of a concept of ‘public reason’ that permits the engagement of metaphysically contradictory positions;
theories of natural law; the theology and ethics of national identity and loyalty, of forgiveness, of killing (especially in
relation to suicide, euthanasia, and war), of military intervention, and of burying the past after civil conflict, and of the
vocation of universities.
He has published the following books: In Defence of War (Oxford University Press, 2013); Behaving
in Public: How to Do Christian Ethics (Eerdmans, 2010); (co-ed.) Religious Voices in Public Places
(Oxford University Press, 2009); Aiming to Kill: the Ethics of Suicide and Euthanasia (DLT, 2004);
(ed.) Burying the Past: Making Peace and Doing Justice after Civil Conflict (Georgetown UP, 2001,
2003); (co-ed.) The Revival of Natural Law: Philosophical, Theological, and Ethical Responses to
the Finnis-Grisez School (Ashgate, 2000); Good Life: Reflections on What We Value Today (SPCK,
1997); The Hastening that Waits: Karl Barth’s Ethics (OUP, 1993, 1995); and Cities of Gods: Faith,
Politics & Pluralism in Judaism, and Christianity & Islam (Greenwood, 1986).
He is currently President of the Society for French Studies, and was Co-Director of
the Centre for the Study of International Slavery, 2010-13.
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National Heroes-International Icons
Homelands
A recital of piano music from Russia, Germany, Poland, Spain and Norway
Do historical films form national identity?
Béla Hartmann
Professor Hans Henning Hahn
7.30pm-9.30pm, Music School (This concert is free for Canford pupils but parents and the general public must reserve seats
9.45am-10.45am, Layard Theatre
for £10.00 or £14.00. These can be bought on the website, www.canfordmusic.ticketsource.co.uk)
UPPER AND LOWER SIXTH GEOGRAPHY, UPPER AND LOWER
SIXTH ENGLISH
ALL MUSIC SCHOLARS, GCSE AND AS MUSICIANS, ALL PIANO STUDENTS
A prize-winner of both national and international competitions, the
Czech-German pianist Béla Hartmann has established a reputation for
lively and individual interpretations of a wide repertoire, ranging from
Rameau to Luciano Berio. Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven form the
core of this extensive range, and
he was both prize-winner in the
International Schubert Competition,
Dortmund (1997), and winner of the
Beethoven Medal of the Beethoven
Society of Europe (1995). In 2000,
he was a semi-finalist at the Leeds
International Piano Competition.
Tchaikovsky:
Beethoven:
Chopin:
Albeniz:
Grieg:
Stravinsky:
PROGRAMME
Dumka, Op.59
Sonata in C Major Op.53 “Waldstein”
Allegro con brio
Introduzione: Adagio molto
– Rondo. Allegretto moderato
INTERVAL
Mazurka in B Minor, Op.33 No.4
Polonaise in A, Op.40 No.1
Asturias, from “Suite Espagnole”
3 Lyric Pieces
Three Movements from Petrushka
Russian Dance
In Petrushka’s Room
The Shrovetide Fair
In 2005 Béla Hartmann performed the complete piano sonatas and dances by
Schubert at Steinway Hall, London. Other programmes include the complete
first book of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier, works by Dvorak and Smetana and
contemporary composers such as Birtwhistle, Berio and Peter Eben. He has
given recitals at prestigious venues in London, across the UK and in Europe, as well
as in the USA, where he appeared at the Carnegie Recital Hall, New York. He has
performed concertos by Brahms, Prokoviev, Dvorak, Beethoven and Mozart.
Béla Hartmann is also a keen musical essayist and has published in print and online on areas such as performance
practice and artistic identity.
Saturday18th October
Why History Never Ends
Watch out for the Germans, Czechs, Slovaks and the Poles!
Eva Hahn
8.30am-9.30am, Layard Theatre
UPPER SIXTH HISTORY, ALL AS AND A2 MODERN LINGUISTS
Eva Hahn was born in 1946 in Prague. She left Czechoslovakia for Germany
during the Russian invasion in 1968. She studied Political Science, Sociology
and Modern History at the universities of Prague and Stuttgart and then at
the London School of Economics and Political Science. From 1977 to1980 she
was Lecturer in Modern German History and Politics at the Polytechnic of the
South Bank in London. Since 1981 she has worked as an historian in Germany.
She is author of numerous studies in the field of intellectual history in Central
Europe, published mainly in German and Czech languages. Eva is married to
Hans Henning Hahn and their son is the pianist Béla Hartmann.
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Hans Henning Hahn was born in 1947. He is professor for East European
History at the University of Oldenburg, Germany. His main topics of
research and teaching are Polish history, collective memory, national stereotypes and the representation of history
in feature films. He has many publications in German and Polish, some in English and French.
A Question of Identity
The keynote lecture
Professor A.C.Grayling
11.30am-12.30pm, Layard Theatre
ALL UPPER SIXTH, LOWER SIXTH, AND FIFTH FORMS (except those leaving for away matches)
Anthony Grayling MA, DPhil (Oxon) FRSL,
FRSA is Master of the New College of the
Humanities, and a Supernumerary Fellow of
St Anne’s College, Oxford. He is chair of this
year’s Man Booker Prize , the winner of which
will be announced on Tuesday 14th October.
Until 2011 he was Professor of Philosophy at
Birkbeck College, University of London. He
has written and edited over thirty books on
philosophy and other subjects; among his most
recent are “The Good Book”, “Ideas That Matter”, “Liberty in the Age of Terror” and “To Set Prometheus Free”. For
several years he wrote the “Last Word” column for the Guardian newspaper and a column for the Times. He is a
frequent contributor to the Literary Review, Observer, Independent on Sunday,Times Literary Supplement, Index on
Censorship and New Statesman, and is an equally frequent broadcaster on BBC Radios 4, 3 and the World Service.
He writes the “Thinking Read” column for the Barnes and Noble Review in New York, is the Editor of Online Review
London, and a Contributing Editor of Prospect magazine.
In addition he sits on the editorial boards of several academic journals, and for nearly ten years was the Honorary
Secretary of the principal British philosophical association, the Aristotelian Society. He is a past chairman of June
Fourth, a human rights group concerned with China, and is a representative to the UN Human Rights Council
for the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He is a Vice President of the British Humanist Association, the
Patron of the United Kingdom Armed Forces Humanist Association, a patron of Dignity in Dying, and an Honorary
Associate of the National Secular Society.
Anthony Grayling was a Fellow of the World Economic Forum for several years, and a member of its C-100 group
on relations between the West and the Islamic world. He has served as a Trustee of the London Library and a
board member of the Society of Authors. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal
Society of Arts. In 2003 he was a Man Booker Prize judge, in 2010 was a judge of the Art Fund prize, and in 2011
the Wellcome Book Prize. He is the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.
He supports a number of charities including Plan UK, Greenpeace, Médecins Sans Frontières, Amnesty International
and Freedom from Torture. He is also a sponsor of Rogbonko School in Sierra Leone.
Anthony Grayling’s latest books are “The God Argument” (March 2013) and “Friendship” (September 2013).
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Monday 20th October
FUTEBOL: The Brazilian Way of Life
Alex Bellos
Is the real you just waiting to be discovered or is it just an illusion?
Julian Baggini
4.45pm-5.45pm, Layard Theatre
11.50am-1.00pm, Layard Theatre
ALL UPPER SIXTH
ALL FOURTHS AND FIFTH FORMS, PHYSICAL EDUCATION AS AND A2
“…in the everyday world we can and must distinguish truth and
falsity, right and wrong, even if on close examination these terms do
not mean what we thought they did. Science may not be God-like
in its objectivity, but it is not just another myth. Moral values must
be questioned, but if discrimination against women, homosexuals or
ethnic minorities is wrong here, then it is wrong anywhere else in
the world…”
Alex Bellos will tell the story of how a British sport became the greatest symbol of
national identity of the world’s fifth largest country and ask if Brazil’s self-image will
change after the humiliation of this year’s World Cup.
Alex was born in Oxford and grew up in Edinburgh and Southampton. He studied
mathematics and philosophy at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he was the
editor of the student paper Cherwell.
During a five-year stint (1998-2003) as South America correspondent of The Guardian, he wrote the book Futebol:
the Brazilian Way of Life.The book was well received in the UK, where it was nominated for sports book of the year
at the British Book Awards. In the US, it was included as one of Publishers Weekly’s books of the year. They wrote:
“Compelling ... Alternately funny and dark ... Bellos offers a cast of characters as colorful as a Carnival parade”. In
2006, he ghostwrote Pelé: The Autobiography, about the soccer player Pelé, which was a number one best-seller in
the UK. Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life has been revised and updated with a new chapter for the 2014 World
Cup.
His first maths book was Alex’s Adventures in Numberland, which in the US was called Here’s Looking At Euclid.
It has been translated into more than 20 languages. The Daily Telegraph described
the book as a “mathematical wonder that will leave you hooked on numbers.” The
book was shortlisted for three awards in the UK, including the BBC Samuel Johnson
Prize for Non-Fiction 2010. The Guardian reported that Bellos’s book was narrowly
beaten into second place. Chairman of the judges Evan Davis broke with protocol to
discuss their deliberations: “Bellos’s was a book everyone thought would be nice if it
won, because it would be good for people to read a maths book. Some of us wished
we’d read it when we were 14 years old. If we’d taken the view that this is a book
everyone ought to read, then it might have gone that way.”
The UK title of his latest maths book is Alex Through the Looking-Glass. The US
version of this book is The Grapes of Math. More information about Looking-Glass/
Grapes is contained on favouritenumber.net.
Alex presented the BBC TV series Inside Out Brazil (2003), and also authored the
documentary Et Dieu créa…le foot, about football in the Amazon, which was shown
on the National Geographic Channel. His short films on the Amazon have appeared
on BBC, More 4 and Al Jazeera. He also appears frequently on the BBC talking about mathematics. His Radio 4
documentary Nirvana by Numbers was shortlisted for best radio programme in the 2014 Association of British
Science Writers Awards.
Alex is based in London, where, as well as writing books, he blogs about maths for The Guardian.
8
Finding Your Self
Julian Baggini is the author of several books, including Welcome to
Everytown: A Journey into the English Mind (Granta), Complaint
(Profile) and, most recently, The Ego Trick(Granta). He has written
for numerous newspapers and magazines, including the Guardian,
the Financial Times, Prospect and the New Statesman, as well as for
the think tanks The Institute of Public Policy Research and Demos.
He is editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Philosophers’ Magazine.
He has also appeared as a character in two Alexander McCall-Smith novels.
He is also the author of several books on philosophy for the general reader, including:
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Making Sense: Philosophy Behind the Headlines (Oxford University Press)
New British Philosophy: The Interviews (with Jeremy Stangroom )
Atheism A Very Short Introduction (Oxford)
Great Thinkers A-Z
What’s It All About? Philosophy and the Meaning of Life
The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: And Ninety Nine Other Thought Experiments
Do You Think What You Think You Think? (with Jeremy Stangroom, Granta Books, Oct 2006)
Welcome to Everytown, A Journey into the English Mind
The Virtues of the Table: How to eat and think (2014)
His books often link philosophy to the concerns of ordinary life, an interest also demonstrated in his 2007 book
Welcome to Everytown, in which he explores the ideas of the inhabitants of the most typical postcode in England.
He was a founder-member of the Humanist Philosophers’ Group (HPG) in 1999, and has participated in HPG
conferences and contributed to BHA’s philosophical web resources Countering Creationism and So you think you
can live without God? He has also contributed to HPG publications including:
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For your own good? – paternalism re-examined (2001)
Religious Schools: the case against (2001)
What is Humanism? (2002)
The Case for Secularism: a neutral state in a neutral society (2007)
Julian Baggini was one of the 43 scientists and philosophers who signed and sent a letter to Tony Blair and relevant
Government departments, concerning the teaching of Creationism in schools in March 2002. He fronted a BBC
schools programme on “Secular Beliefs” in March 2006, and contributed an article on “The rise and fall and rise
again of secularism” to an issue of Public Policy Research on religion. He was also one of the signatories to a letter
supporting a holiday on Charles Darwin’s birthday, published in The Times on February 12, 2003, and also sent to
the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary.
9
Patriot Games?
Alastair Hignell
7.30pm-8.30pm, Layard Theatre
UPPER SIXTH AND LOWER SIXTH PHYSICAL EDUCATION, SPORTS
SCHOLARS, SHELLS (either this talk or Tuesday at 7.30pm for Professor
Margaret Cox)
Muscular Christian, reluctant propagandist, star of reality TV and international
sportsman, documentary maker and commentator, Alastair Hignell gives his reasons
why playing for England has never been straightforward.
Alastair Hignell’s father was born in South Africa but represented England at athletics. Alastair played rugby for
England and, as a journalist, presented a documentary series, Rugby Warriors, which attempted to show what rugby
meant to the different nations that played it. In recent years more and more players perform under so-called Flags of
Convenience. Alastair is fascinated by the recent studies regarding the aura of the All Blacks and by Stuart Lancaster’s
attempts to replicate that sense of identity in an English context. Then there’s the current controversy stirred up by
the Olympics which raises some bizarre prospects of Englishmen, South Africans and Samoans suddenly qualifying
for France. International sport is no longer a simple matter of patriotic encounters on the field of play.
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Born: 4 September 1955, Cambridge, England
Represented Cambridge University and Gloucestershire at cricket, as well as winning 14 caps for the England rugby
union team.
Weeks after his England rugby debut in 1975 (a ‘brutal’ encounter with Australia in Brisbane), Hignell was staring down
the crease at fast bowler Imran Khan in the Varsity cricket match.
First person from Cambridge University to captain both rugby and cricket teams, winning blues for four years running
in both sports.
Worked as a teacher in Bristol and Dorset while playing rugby for Bristol and England in the winter and cricket for
Gloucestershire during the summer.
Scored 11 first-class centuries in 170 matches, averaging 29.48 and posting a top score of 149*.
Began career in journalism after his retirement, as well as continuing to teach, working for BBC radio.
Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999; works to raise funds and spread awareness about the disease.
After his final commentary for BBC Radio, the retiring Wasps captain Lawrence Dallaglio dedicated his side’s Premiership
final win to Hignell.
Awarded Honorary Master of Arts degree by Bristol University in 2004 and the Helen Rollason award at the 2008
BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards.
Soldiering and the Sense of Self
A Sort of Englishman
Tuesday 21st October
‘If the war goes on I believe I shall find myself a sort of Englishman, though neither poet nor soldier.’
(Edward Thomas, August 1914)
Hattie Morahan
11.50am-1.00pm, The Library
UPPER AND LOWER SIXTH ENGLISH AND DRAMA
A celebration of three writers, friendship and marriage
In November a group of Canfordians will perform The Dark Earth and the Light Sky,
a moving play by Nick Dear about the friendship of Edward Thomas and Robert Frost,
Thomas’ discovery of himself as a poet, his death in the
Battle of Arras and the complexities of his relationship
with two women who loved him, his wife, Helen, and
the children’s writer, Eleanor Farjeon.
We are privileged to be joined by the award-winning actress, Hattie Morahan, who
played Helen Thomas in the first production of The Dark Earth and the Light Sky at
the Almeida Theatre. She will lead some of the Canford cast in readings from Robert
Frost, Edward Thomas, Helen Thomas and Eleanor Farjeon.
From a family of actors and directors, Hattie Morahan made
her debut aged seventeen, in the BBC adaptation of The
Peacock Spring (1996). She won a student award for her
performance in A View from the Bridge while at Cambridge University. She has also won
critical acclaim as a stage actress in productions including Chekhov’s The Seagull (2006),
Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot (2008), David Hare’s Plenty (2011) and Ibsen’s A Doll’s House
(2012-13). Notable television credits include Jane in Outnumbered (2007-11).
For her performance as Nora in Ibsen’s The Doll’s House at the Young Vic which transferred
to the West End and New York, Hattie was awarded the Best Actress prize at the Critics’
Circle Awards 2013 and the Natasha Richardson Award for Best Actress at the Evening
Standard Theatre Awards 2012. Hattie was also nominated for the Best Actress award at the 2013 Olivier Awards .
She has played the roles of Laura Knight in the film Summer in February and Elinor Dashwood in the BBC’s Sense
and Sensibility.
Oli Coryton (OC, Franklin House 1992-1997)
10.00am-11.00am, Layard Theatre
ALL FOURTH FORM AND FIFTH FORM, ALL NCOS
Oli will discuss the role of ethos in the Royal Marines. What drives ordinary
people to do extraordinary things in times of war? He will speak from his
own experiences from school to Afghanistan.
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From Canford Oli Coryton went to the University of Leeds where he studied
Psychology and Philosophy. The Royal Marines offered him the challenge,
excitement and travel that he craved. A desk job was not attractive. After
13 months of Royal Marine Young Officer training he deployed almost
immediately to the Middle East for the imminent invasion of Iraq. He has
served now for 13 years all over the world, with an inevitable focus upon
Afghanistan in recent times. He is married to a Naval Barrister and they live
in Cornwall.
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A Report from the Referendum
Tom Panton (OC, Court House 2005-2009)
4.45pm-5.45pm, The Library
and the UK’s first MSc in forensic anthropology three years later. Margaret is also an experienced ‘osteo-archaeologist’
and has worked on archaeological sites around the world, the best known in the UK being the crypt beneath Christ
Church, Spitalfields, London.
Wednesday 22nd October
ALL UPPER AND LOWER SIXTH POLITICS
Tom read Politics at Exeter University and has been working as assistant to Jo Swinson, Liberal Democrat MP for
Dumfries. He spent the weeks leading up to the referendum on the campaign trail in Scotland.
Being a Man in 21st Century Britain
Tom has just spent months working on a campaign where one side is seeking to end the idea of Britishness and he
feels very strongly about the shared identity we have in the United Kingdom. He will discuss issues of citizenship
and democratic engagement that have emerged in light of the referendum. He will offer some thoughts on Scottish
independence and explain his own personal view that nationalism is an ugly trait and bad for the future of our
country.
11.50am -1.00pm, Layard Theatre
Naming the Dead
The Lost Soldiers of the Battle of Fromelles, 1916
Professor Margaret Cox
7.30pm-8.30pm, Layard Theatre
UPPER AND LOWER SIXTH BIOLOGY, CHEMISTRY AND HISTORY
SHELLS (either this or Monday at 7.30pm for Alastair Hignell)
The unique Fromelles Project has witnessed the excavation of 250 Australian and British
soldiers buried by the German army near Fromelles village in northern France in 1916.
Remarkably, 144 of these unknown soldiers have now been identified using modern
technologies, including DNA.
Margaret Cox will explain the aims and scope of the project and explore the challenges around identifying the dead
from one hundred years ago. She will consider some of the issues of cultural and genetic identification and consider
some of the ethics involved.
Professor Margaret Cox, forensic anthropologist, writer, researcher and TV contributor specialises in aspects of life
and death in the past and in recent conflicts, particularly those from World War I. Recently retired from her post
as Professor of Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology at Cranfield University, she now undertakes freelance
consultancy in her area of expertise. Well known as the human bone specialist for Channel 4’s Time Team for
over ten years she has also appeared in BBC’s Meet the Ancestors and numerous TV documentaries and radio
programmes. With over 100 publications to her name she is an internationally acclaimed specialist in her field.
Margaret regularly undertakes work for the UK MoD and Australian
Defence Department and is currently Scientific Advisor to the UK
and Australian Governments for the Fromelles Project. She was
honoured with the European Union’s Woman of Achievement
Award (Humanitarian section) in 2002 for her work investigating
violations of human rights in such areas as Rwanda and Kosovo.
An internationally experienced forensic anthropologist she has
also worked in such places as Iraq, Cyprus, Italy, Belgium, UK and
France.
Founder and now President of the Inforce Foundation, Margaret
initiated and was author and editor of their seminal work: The
Scientific Excavation of Mass Graves, published by Cambridge University Press in 2008 (Cox et al.). In her academic
career, she designed and directed the world’s first degree in forensic archaeology (1996) at Bournemouth University
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Gavin Knight
ALL FIFTH FORM, UPPER AND LOWER SIXTH GEOGRAPHY
Non-fiction author Gavin Knight will look at identity and masculinity in inner-city
crime groups and Cornish Fisherman. He will tell compelling stories from these
closed and secretive communities.
Gavin Knight is a journalist who has written for The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Prospect, Newsweek, New
Statesman, Esquire, Monocle and many other publications. He has also appeared on CNN, ITN, BBC, Channel Four
news and Sky News.
He is currently writing his second book on the Cornish fishing
community, the last frontier men doing the most dangerous civilian
job in Britain. This will be published by Chatto & Windus, part of
Penguin Random House. His first book HOOD RAT was shortlisted
for the prestigious Orwell Prize 2012 and
the Crime Writers’ Association Non-fiction
Dagger Award. It was BBC Radio Four’s
Book of the Week, serialised in the Daily
Telegraph and is currently being developed
into a TV series. Over the two years prior to the publication of HOOD RAT he was
regularly embedded with frontline police units in London, Manchester and Glasgow as
well as spending time with dozens of violent criminals involved in gun and gang crime.
He accompanied detectives on a manhunt, firearms and drugs raids and was embedded
with a CID unit over a lengthy drug surveillance operation.To source the powerful human
stories at the centre of HOOD RAT, he spent time with criminals, inmates, gang members,
heroin addicts, social workers, youth workers, charities, trauma surgeons, victims of violent
crime and their families.
A Nation of Cloudspotters
Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society
1.45pm-3.00pm, Layard Theatre
SHELLS, UPPER SIXTH AND LOWER SIXTH FORM GEOGRAPHY, UPPER
AND LOWER SIXTH CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS
The Cloud Appreciation Society has more members here in the UK than in any of the
other 94 countries where their membership extends. Britain is a nation with plenty of
clouds and ever-varied skies. But is there a deeper reason why a society in appreciation
of clouds should be so popular here? Perhaps there is an aspect of ‘if you can’t beat
them, join them’? From Glastonbury Festival to the Wimbledon Tennis Championships,
from Jubilee celebrations to the Ryder Cup, we as a nation have had to develop a
philosophical attitude to outdoor events because nothing is ever reliable about our
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weather. While you might think we’d be a nation of cloud haters, there is something in the British identity that likes
to find the positive in a negative.
Clouds also challenge our concepts of identity on a more physical level.
A cloud looks like a thing, but it isn’t. It is a collection of countless tiny
things: water droplets or ice crystals. Leonardo da Vinci described clouds as
‘bodies without surface’, on account of this rather paradoxical quality. The
ancient Greek playwright, Aristophanes, called them the ‘patron goddesses
of idle fellows’. Members of The Cloud Appreciation Society just call them
the most diverse, evocative and poetic aspect of Nature.
Gavin Pretor-Pinney, A TED speaker, with over 1 million views, and a Visiting
Fellow at the Meteorology Department of Reading University, is the
author of the bestselling books The Cloudspotter’s Guide and The Cloud
Collector’s Handbook. Gavin’s book about waves, The Wavewatcher’s
Companion, won the 2011 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books,
considered the most prestigious prize in popular-science publishing. The
judges said, “We were given an almost poetic vision of a dynamic universe.
It is a book of old-fashioned charm and wit, provocatively organised and
illustrated, and marvellously deft with its presentation of hard modern science.” Gavin co-founded The Idler magazine
and recently wrote The Ukelele Handbook with fellow idler, Tom Hodgkinson.
“Gavin Pretor-Pinney remains a uniquely brilliant guide to the physical world… It’s a magical formula.”
Mail on Sunday
“Pretor-Pinney reminds me of the best kind of science teacher – clever, passionate, indomitable in his determination
to share his knowledge.”
Daily Telegraph
“His style is genial, his enthusiasm uplifting… nothing less than a subtle but glorious mantra for a way of life.”
Metro
Books for sale in the School Library
Julian Baggini
The Virtues of the Table: How to Eat and Think
The Pig that wants to be eaten
The Ego Trick
Without God, Is Everything Permitted
Alex Bellos
Alex’s Adventures in Numberland
Alex Through the Looking-Glass
Futebol
Robert Frost
Selected Poems
Matthew Hollis
Now All Roads Lead to France:The Last Years of Edward Thomas
Gavin Knight
Hood Rat
Gavin Pretor-Pinney
The Ukelele Handbook
The Cloudspotter’s Guide
Edward Thomas
Collected Poems
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Notes
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Notes
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