The TRUSTY
SERVANT
NO.120
NOVEMBER 2015
The Headmaster writes:
We print here the address the Headmaster
gave on Goddard Day 2015:
What a Wykehamical King Arthur
Monty Python gave us:
‘Stop. What is your name?’
‘It is Arthur, King of the Britons.’
‘What is your quest?’
‘To seek the Holy Grail.’
‘What is the air-speed velocity of an
unladen swallow?’
‘What do you mean? An African or
European swallow?’
‘Huh? I don’t know that. How do you
know so much about swallows?’
‘Well, you have to know these things
when you’re a king, otherwise people
won’t take you seriously.’
ISIS, called by the commentariat ‘a dark
and medieval vision’. The word is also
commonly applied to severe punishment
(‘these medieval beheadings’), out-of-date
technology (this ‘medieval typewriter’)
and all illiberal attitudes. Or, alternatively,
there is the Monty Python view: the
Middle Ages are allied with ignorant
wickedness, as well as comic derision:
knights immobilised in their armour, fat
monks panting after lascivious nuns,
damsels locked into chastity belts.
We don’t talk about the need for
order much these days; we take it for
granted (though the pictures we see of
asylum seekers pouring into Eastern
Europe from the chronically disordered
Middle East might signal a dramatic return
of disorder into our settled patterns). We
We begin the new academic year
calling to mind with gratitude the
Founder’s gifts: the gift of this lofty and
elegant Chapel, and, even more, the gift
of the School in which we live and learn.
630-odd years is a long time, but to look
at the buildings alone, here and the great
nave of the Cathedral, we can but marvel
at the design and engineering genius of
his medieval mind. When you view these
buildings and when you read the detailed
statutes which the Founder wrote for his
school, the overwhelming impression is
that he was seeking to structure order in a
chronically disordered world.
You might have noticed that the
word medieval has had a revival recently as
an adjective applied to the atrocities of
1
talk much more about our need for, or
indeed right to, happiness. The notion of
happiness has been expressed and
embraced in different ways over time,
going back to the birth of Western
civilisation in ancient Greece. Aristotle,
one of the first to pay significant attention
to the idea, thought that happiness
consisted of being a good person. The
happy life, what the Greeks called
eudaemonia, was one lived ethically, guided
by reason and dedicated to cultivating
one’s virtues. Then, soon after, the
Epicureans connected happiness to simple
pleasure, though they were no mere
physical pleasure-seekers, because they
preached a strict regulation of desire. To be
happy, Epicurus said, he needed no more
than a barley cake and some water. Then
came the Stoics, who, if they believed in
happiness at all, associated it with a
capacity for bravery and endurance in
adversity. And then somewhere in there
was the Greek myth about Narcissus, the
beautiful young man who saw his
reflection in the pool and fell in love with
it. More of him later. In the ancient Near
East, Judaism preached that true happiness
could be found only in a personal
relationship with God the creator; and
then Christianity focused that relationship
in God’s Son Jesus Christ, who walked the
towns of Palestine teaching people about
the nature of divine love. Happiness as
divine love was certainly the framework of
William of Wykeham’s life. To him, real
happiness was discovered in a life of being
faithful to God’s commandments,
expressed in imitation of Jesus in service to
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others and the anticipation of everlasting
rest in union with God beyond the trials of
this earthly life. That heavenly vision is
what this wonderful architecture is
designed to suggest.
Then, when the classical writers of
the ancient world were rediscovered and
the origins of modern science were
developed in the 17th and 18th centuries,
Western Europe and the new world
developed the idea of happiness as a right
to be guaranteed by the social order,
something that each and every person was
entitled to pursue and attain. When
Thomas Jefferson wrote in the American
Declaration of Independence that the
pursuit of happiness was an unalienable
right, he did not just intend to say that a
man should pursue pleasure, but that the
right to happiness was connected with his
right to acquire and possess property.
Quite a range of definitions, then, has
this word happiness had over the centuries.
And now the new competitive New
Millennialist young are taught by
psychologists and personal trainers and
even educationists that to be happy we
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
need to get fit, express our true inner self,
get in touch with our deeper feelings,
follow our personal passions and the path
we set for ourselves. They are to look for
happiness through work and by being
financially successful as an end in itself.
They are expected to know their market
value, manage themselves as corporations
and live according to an entrepreneurial
ethos. But in this school we are sceptical
about this modern concept of happiness. It
leads to self-centredness, narcissism
(remember Narcissus fell in love with his
own image, condemned forever to
unfulfilling self-obsession) and treats
heartlessly those who find the demands of
life difficult to cope with. Rather, we
commend to the young a radical
definitions of happiness: better to attend,
as the Founder did, to the Proverb, that
happiness is found in wisdom; and to St
Peter’s realism, that life brings both joy
and suffering and that wisdom and
happiness are found in a creative and
compassionate response to the needs and
misfortunes of others.
The boys are here to acquire (among
other things) knowledge: and knowledge
in this world is power. But for the Founder
power on its own was not enough and was
even dangerous. He made a lot of money,
but that was not sufficient. To be fully
human, power needs love because
Christian love is service. The Founder
invites Wykehamists to put their
knowledge at the service of each other, to
our communities and in the future to
society at large. Christian leadership, in
other words. There lies wisdom-happiness,
happiness based on order and selfdiscipline, where curiosity and learning
and spirit can flourish, and where
knowledge and power lead to
compassionate, creative, prophetic social
action. That is the kind of prophetic
happiness we see in the life and work of
William of Wykeham and enjoy in the
School today. What a prophet he was: his
school has nourished fifteen generations of
young men and looks set to do so for
generations to come.
So thank you, William, of happy
memory, resting over there in your chantry
chapel; your practical medieval mind and
generous heart still inspire us and point us
to where true happiness can be found. ■
1,000mph Bloodhound and a new
generation of scientists and engineers
Richard Noble OBE (C, 59-64) writes:
‘We can’t recruit scientists and
engineers into the MoD. I want
Bloodhound run through every school in
the country to inspire a new generation of
engineers.’ Lord Drayson, Minister of State
for Defence Equipment and Support, was
unequivocal. The inference was that, if
Bloodhound could deliver on education,
we might just get our Eurofighter jet engine
for the 1,000mph land-speed-record
Bloodhound Supersonic Car (SSC).
How did this happen? Back in 1997
we had broken the sound barrier on land
for the first time with Thrust SSC and our
website was the fifth largest in the world. It
was a desperate fight for survival in a
country no longer renowned for
innovation, risk-taking and engineering
excellence. But in 1993 we had a new ally:
web technology enabled us to achieve the
first UK end-to-end electronic trading and
also allowed us to crowd-fund our aircraft
fuel at 30,000 gallons every day, apparently
the first ever crowd-funded project.
With the supersonic record under our
belts, there was a fine legacy: the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers awarded
2
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Thrust SSC Global Engineering Landmark
Status – the same as for the Space Shuttle,
Lunar Module and Saturn V launchrocket. 400,000 people a year still come to
see the car in its museum in Coventry: it
was a fitting end to the project and we all
swore we would never ever do it again.
Of course, having been beaten in the
supersonic race, the Americans were
quickly challenging: we could either reply
immediately or let it pass. We decided to
raise the bar so high that the Americans
would have difficulty responding: the
team’s chosen target was 1,000mph/Mach
1.4, an unprecedented 31% increase on the
existing record. The car was named
Bloodhound SSC after our aerodynamicist
Ron Ayers’ 1960s SAM missile. It would
cover the measured mile in 3.6 seconds,
some 200mph faster than the Eurofighter
in the thick air at 3,000ft altitude.
So the new project would have to
have a parallel educational element,
designed to inspire primary and secondary
schoolchildren. This would also offset
BBC television’s obsession with the arts,
and the consequential dismal lack of
science and engineering programming
that was skewing the ambitions of a whole
generation.
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Bloodhound education has been a
considerable success, providing inspiration
to more than 6,000 UK schools: they all
seem to be building rocket cars now, and
the fastest school car goes at 535mph.
Once children have been given the
opportunity and technology, there appears
to be a huge consequential development
in their power. In fact, we have every
reason to get worried – the school cars
could get to 1000mph before we do! Just
ask your children if they know about
Bloodhound. In the University of the
West of England they had to close
admissions to their 2015 Engineering
course early because of unprecedented
demand, which they put down in part to
inspiration from Bloodhound: they now
need to fund new buildings and capacity.
We totally underestimated the
Bloodhound research design and build
process – it was to take over 160 manyears. To achieve this with a small team,
our company had to grow 50% every year
and 100% this year. All of this is
extremely difficult if you are dependent
on sponsorship funding at £1m a month,
but in September we displayed the
completed car at Canary Wharf, and in
two days 7,700 people came to get their
3
first glimpse of Bloodhound SSC.
Back in 2008 the project experienced
a life-changing moment when the RollsRoyce board decided to support the
programme and the MoD lent us three
early-development engines. But we still
had a power problem – designer Ron Ayers
had specified a hybrid rocket as the booster
to be fired when the car reached 350mph.
Rocket-engine development died in
Britain in the 1970s and so we were on our
own with the development of our own
motor. We ran development units in the
US Mojave desert but quickly realised we
were out of our depth. However, by 2014
we were working with the Norwegians and
their Nammo hybrid rocket is a
masterpiece: a mature design, 98.5%
efficient and with a very clean exhaust.
Low-earth orbit launches are going to be
considerably cheaper.
Of course, there were plenty of
nagging doubts, finance was a constant
worry and we needed somewhere to run
this incredible car. Our first choice was the
Black Rock Desert in Nevada where we
had run Thrust 2 and Thrust SSC, but in
recent years the rains had failed and the
activities of the annual Burning Man
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event, which attracts 70,000 revellers, had
ruined the desert surface. An intense
survey threw up Hakskeen in South Africa
– a truly wonderful place with an eightmonth weather-window and at optimal
altitude. But there were problems: a road
on a causeway had been driven across the
desert and there were 21 million square
metres of surface stones. Not to be put off,
our partners the Northern Cape
government signed up the entire
population of the Meir district, who picked
up 15,800 tonnes of stones by hand – it
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
took 450 man-years. We aim to run
Bloodhound SSC there at 800mph in 2016
and 1,000mph in 2017, driven by Andy
Green (who also drove Thrust SSC), and
powered by the Eurofighter engine and
three Nammo rockets.
There is one last innovation, resulting
from direct input from teachers at the BET
education exhibition. Bloodhound is being
followed in 220 countries and the
unprecedented idea is to export 500
channels of live data for each of the 30
runs in 2016 and 2017, so that schools and
followers can receive the data live and
manipulate it to establish exactly how
Bloodhound is developing. This will be the
world’s first example of open big data.
Public support has been brilliant: 7,000
people have joined the 1K supporters club
and 30,000 followers have put their names
on the tail fin. Daily updates are available
on the Bloodhound website. Reports that
British engineering and innovation are
dead are greatly exaggerated!
■
Sliding Down the Slippery Slope –
the Cresta Run and its Inventor
Stephen Bartley (H, 61-66), Hon. Archivist
of the St. Moritz Tobogganing Club,
London, tells the tale:
Old Wykehamists have done many
extraordinary things in the past, perhaps
none more so than William Henry
Bulpett (G, 1869-74), who now lies in the
churchyard of St. Mary’s, Old Alresford.
His family were from local yeoman
farming stock in the neighbourhood and
his grandfather had invested in a local
bank in Winchester – Bulpett & Hall –
which was subsequently run by his uncle,
William Whitear Bulpett. After an
undistinguished academic career in Phil’s,
Bulpett, the youngest of three brothers,
entered the Army. He was commissioned
into the 3rd Royal Surrey Militia based in
Kingston, close to his parents’ home in
Chertsey.
Quite why he ended up in the Swiss
Alps one winter is unknown. Very likely,
he had gone there for health reasons, as
the dry air and altitude were considered
helpful for anyone suffering from a
respiratory illness, TB in particular.
Bulpett became devoted to alpine
pastimes, whether climbing, skating or
The First Grand National Race on the Cresta Run showing the winner Charles Austin round the 3rd Upper Bank
below the Church. Photo: Unknown; courtesy of the SMTC Archive, London
recreational tobogganing. In the winter of
1884/85 he joined a group of three British
sportsmen in St. Moritz, along with an
Australian, the famous cricketer George
Pringle Robertson, to build a toboggan
4
run for a timed race between competitors
from Davos and St. Moritz. Three years
previously, the Davosers had organised
the first timed toboggan race in
Switzerland, the International on the old
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T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Run was rebuilt from
scratch. The infamous
corners of Battledore and
Shuttlecock were added
lower down to encourage
more skilled riding and to
provide added interest for
the spectators.
In order to finance the
annual building and
maintenance costs, a club
was formed in November
1887 – the St. Moritz
Tobogganing
Club. Bulpett
Capt. W.H. Bulpett (rt.) constructing the bank of Battledore c.1894
was elected unanimously as
Photo by Capt. Bligh – SMTC Archive London
its first president, a post he
held until 1919. He stood down for
post-road to Klosters, and the British
military duties during the Boer War and
visitors in St. Moritz were keen to
the club was disbanded for the duration of
establish a race of their own.
the Great War.
Bulpett and his four colleagues,
Bulpett’s other contributions
assisted by workmen provided by the local
included
the development of the modern
hotelier Peter Badrutt of the
steel
toboggan,
known as the ‘skeleton’.
Engadinerkulm, had fashioned a track
After
the
1887
Grand
National, in which
down a steep narrow valley from St.
another
Australian
had
tried to ride the
Moritz Dorf, joining a footpath that
Cresta
Run
head-first
with
mixed results,
ended up below, by the village of Cresta.
the
traditional
Swiss
toboggan
was soon
Navigating the ‘Upper Banks’ was
replaced
by
a
low-slung
Boston
coaster,
particularly hazardous, as, at Bulpett’s
the
wooden-sided
‘America’.
Bulpett
had
suggestion, they were covered with water
the
idea
of
dispensing
with
the
wooden
to allow the night frost to transform the
sides and creating a steel-framed machine,
surface into solid ice; otherwise, the
with
a padded wooded platform to lie on.
runners of the wooden luges, known as
Narrow
‘knives’ were added at the rear of
Swiss Schlittli, carved ruts into the soft
the
runners,
to allow better steerage when
snow. The first contest on what was to
the
rider’s
weight
was moved back.
become known as the Cresta Run – the
Combined
with
metal
rakes on his boots,
Grand National – was held on February
the
Cresta
rider
could
now
take the iced
16th, 1885. Although the St. Moritzers
banks
with
speed
and
control,
moving his
had had the benefit of practice on their
weight
forward
when
on
the
straights.
home run, a degree of over-confidence led
Throughout the 1890s, the velocity of the
to their downfall. One of their number,
riders rose to speeds in excess of 70mph,
Charles Metcalfe, an Old Harrovian, was
making them among the fastest men and
knocked unconscious and spent three
women on the planet at the time. The
weeks in the local clinic. Robertson, an
skeleton is now included as part of the
Old Rugbeian, was the highest-placed St.
modern Winter Olympic Games.
Moritzer, with Bulpett finishing a
disappointing 9th. The winner, riding in a
Bulpett married in 1892 and he and
more conservative manner, was Charles
his wife Lily produced two daughters,
Austin, an Old Etonian.
Helen and Geraldine. Tragically, shortly
after the birth of the second child, Lily
The event was the highlight of the
died and Bulpett brought up his daughters
St. Moritz season and the following year,
with the help of his sister Lucy and a
with Bulpett in sole charge, the Cresta
5
house-keeper at their home in Surbiton.
He was never to re-marry. His own
tobogganing career, and almost his life,
came to an abrupt end when he badly
injured himself in a fall on his own
skeleton toboggan at one of the corners
he had created just below the road
junction, travelling at some 65mph. The
location is still to this day known as
‘Bulpett’s Corner’. Fortunately, he soon
recovered from this self-inflicted injury.
On the death of his uncle William in
1899, the newly promoted Major Bulpett
inherited an estate and a large house in
Old Alresford. When not in the Engadine
designing and building his beloved Cresta
Run, he spent the summer months in
Hampshire. Having created numerous
President of the St. Moritz Tobogganing Club c.1894
Photo: Capt. Bligh - SMTC Archive, London
earth banks and diverted the Brattas
stream down the Cresta Valley, he now
embarked on ambitious landscape projects
in his large garden by the church in Old
Alresford. In his final years, when he was
no longer able to travel to St. Moritz, he
down-sized to a small cottage in the
village, where other gardening projects
soon took shape. He died in 1929, aged
74, after a long illness. His grave was
restored by the St. Moritz Tobogganing
Club in 2013 and plans are currently
being made to erect a fitting memorial to
this pioneer of winter sports.
■
Further details can be obtained from the
web-site: www.crestarun.com
NO.120
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Graffiti in Chapel Roof…
Suzanne Foster, College Archivist, assisted
by Dr Geoffrey Day, former Fellows’
Librarian, becomes a steeplejack:
names which have provoked the most
interest. Clearly written twice was the
name ‘Harmar’ alongside others dating
from the 1570s, plus a host of other names
from the late 1560s and 1570s. Was this
Warden Harmar?
Memories are sparked by all sorts of
things and can lead both to surprising
discoveries and to an unusual working day
for the College Archivist. In April this
year, Sir Roger du Boulay (Coll, 35-40)
contacted me after seeing my photograph
in the Wykeham Journal, taken on
Muniment Tower stairs: clearly shown are
names scratched into the stonework. It
was this graffiti which reminded Sir Roger
of war-time wanderings as Prefect of
Chapel. He wrote:
‘In September 1940 I was Cap Prae,
charged with the responsibility to devise
and execute all the measures necessary to
preserve the life of the Chapel and its
users. This involved not only rapid but
orderly evacuation plans (and rehearsals –
I enjoyed pushing the dons around), but
also regular and meticulous inspection of
every nook and cranny. I was given the
keys to ensure access. The bombs on
Portsmouth and Southampton were all
too frequently audible.
‘Thus it came about that I found
myself one day in the roof spaces of the
Muniment Tower and the east end of
Chapel. There I came upon a window
overlooking Chamber Court. On the sill
were carved the initials of a person –
presumably a scholar – and the date,
1395. I think the initials were WJ. To
these I added my own, DuB, 1940.
I wonder if they are still there?’
So, a challenge had been presented
and the prospect of finding graffiti as early
as 1395 was a particular draw. I spent a
day in early April checking every window
in Muniment Tower and Chapel Tower –
and found nothing. If it was a window
over-looking Chamber Court, how could
One of these examples is adjacent to
the names of Thomas Wygmore, who
became a scholar in 1565, and of John
Favor, who entered College in 1571. They
neatly bracket John Harmar, who was
second on Roll in 1569. This conjunction
suggests very strongly that the two
‘Harmar’ graffiti are indeed by the future
Warden. Wygmore and Favor are unlikely
to have been in the School at the same
time, so it would appear that they and
Harmar each made individual
expeditions.
the window be in Chapel roof?
Then a flash of inspiration: I
remembered the two tiny windows
situated above the east window of Chapel
which overlooked the Warden’s garden.
Might this be what Sir Roger
remembered?
A call to the Works Department led,
about a month later, to a visit into Chapel
roof wearing a safety harness and
clutching a torch and a camera.
Straightaway I could view the names of
workmen from 1822 painted onto the roof
beams and, as soon as we crawled along
the walk way towards the east end, I could
clearly see a great many names scratched
into the stonework around the two little
windows.
It was only once I worked through my
photographs that I spotted Sir Roger’s
initials – but it was actually the other
6
Their first problem would have been
getting onto Chapel roof. There were
two routes: up a 99-step spiral staircase in
the Muniment Tower, which was lit by
five unglazed slit-windows, varying from
three-and-a-half to four inches wide and
34 to 48 inches high, fitted with oak
shutters with leather edgings to keep out
the weather – and, of course, any light –
and which would have necessitated first
going through Chapel to get to the foot
of the stairs in the vestry. The other
route was via the equally dark Chapel
Tower spiral stairs, which were accessed
via an external door on the south side of
the building. Once up on the roof, it
would have been necessary to climb
across the lead slope and lift a hatch,
through which the boy would have
dropped onto the upper side of the
timber ceiling of chapel, constructed of
wood panels nailed from below: thus
there would have been a constant danger
of crashing through. It is more likely that
the graffiti artists took the Muniment
Tower stairs, as the hatch is on the north
slope of the roof, and the Chapel Tower
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T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
must have been both
physically active and
rather courageous: not
only was the location a
dangerous one to access,
but it would have
required time away from
his chamber and the
possibility of being
caught.
route would have necessitated a crawl up
and over the roof ridge.
The roof-space would have been in
almost total darkness: such light as there
was would have been admitted by the
newly-opened hatch, and two small trefoil
windows at the east end. This could only
have been ventured on moonlit nights in
the summer months, and even so might
have required a candle; the young Harmar
would then have needed to make his way
carefully across the upper side of the
ceiling. He needed to negotiate the
narrow spaces between the tie-beams and
the king-posts and their diagonal struts
until he got to the east end, where there
was a massive tie-beam just in front of the
windows. This would have been the one
moment of relative comfort, as it is
possible to sit on this beam while carving.
The first example of his name is in a
scratched rectangle on the upper-left
spandrel of the left-hand window and is
rather sketchily incised, suggesting that it
may have been a first attempt. He then
elected to carve his name on the righthand splayed reveal of the same window.
The window is small and unglazed. There
are iron bars. Harmar scratched a straight
line on which he inscribed his surname in
capital letters. In view of the difficulty of
carving into stone, this exercise would
have required more than one expedition
up onto the roof and down onto the top
of the Chapel ceiling. Young Harmar
I couldn’t find any
names from the 1390s –
most of the names were
Collegemen from the
1570s, the mid-18th
century, a flurry of names from the 1940s
from boys presumably on the same
mission as Sir Roger, and then a small
group of names of Hopperites from the
1970s. The names of several generations
of workmen are also included.
Another visit to Chapel roof is
needed to check the names and to take
more photographs. Perhaps we will yet
find a name from the 1390s?
…and other memories
of wartime Winchester
Anthony du Boulay (C, 43-46) writes:
Since it was wartime, we did not have
early-morning school. Instead, on rising,
it was cold tin baths. In winter 1944 these
iced up; and Jun Men naturally had to
break the ice by going in first. This was, of
course, training not only for fighting the
war, but also, more importantly, for going
out to rule an Empire and being tougher
than those to be ruled. For the first two
weeks we were made to learn Notions and
Domum and were afterwards tested and
allotted to a Prefect as a ‘Sweater’.
Up to books, we joined the
appropriate class for our exam results: I
was up to the Jacker (HA Jackson, who
had started his education at Winchester
under Queen Victoria). But when, in the
summer of 1944, I was able to take School
Certificate (which then automatically
gave me entrance to Oxford, provided I
7
had enough credits and distinctions), I
switched to Modern Languages and
started learning German. While we were,
for the period, casually dressed in tweed
jackets and grey flannel trousers, we
always wore straw hats outside. We had to
walk with our books tucked under our
arms and only 3-year men and those in VI
Book were allowed to step on the flints of
Chamber Court. Permission was needed
to go up town; our sweet ration was spent
in Tuck Shop and we used our bogles to
get round the licet parts of town and
nearby countryside. We were secure with
the rules being quite clear and the risks
known for breaking them: while the
prefects had powers to beat, lesser
punishments were often handed out, such
as marking out the tennis court.
In the summer of 1944, because of
the risk of flying bombs, we had to sleep
in the basement, although I sometimes
managed to slip back to the gallery if I was
not able to sleep, until I heard that the
ceiling of my bedroom at home about 12
miles away had been brought down. We
had Chapel every morning before lessons,
except on Saturdays and Sundays, when
we had both a morning and evening
service, religious education being an
important part of the curriculum.
Today the entrance exam for
Winchester is harder than for most, if not
all, other schools and gaining a
scholarship requires excellence of mind,
good teaching and hard work. In 1943,
Greek and Latin were still paramount. I
can remember one task, which was to
translate into Greek elegiacs a poem
which began ‘What boots the ruddy
apple?’ This I apparently managed, unlike
the Mathmā in which I only got 5% today’s questions would probably have
totally stumped me.
While I was not very happy during
my time at Winchester, this was a
personal dissatisfaction in that I always
felt I should have done better. After I left,
I knew that I had had the great advantage
of being better educated than most of
those who had been elsewhere.
■
NO.120
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
The man who ate an elephant’s trunk
and other Wykehamical naturalists
Ian Alexander (G, 67-72) writes:
Waterfowl at Fallodon, by Edward Grey, 1926
Britain was the first country to
undergo an Industrial Revolution. New
arrivals in the smoky cities longed to
escape. Their hunger for nature made two
extremely dissimilar books into bestsellers:
Gilbert White’s perfect-place-in-thecountry The Natural History of Selborne
(1789); and the first-ever field guide, with
Thomas Bewick’s sharply insightful wood
engravings of birds and country life, A
History of British Birds (1797-1804).
Two centuries later, 80% of us live in
cities; and we still pine nostalgically for
nature. Edward Grey, Viscount Grey of
Fallodon (C, 1876-83) put it like this in
The Fallodon Papers:
‘In those dark days I found some
support in the steady progress unchanged
of the beauty of the seasons. Every year, as
spring came back unfailing and
unfaltering, the leaves came out with the
same tender green, the birds sang, the
flowers came up and opened, and I felt
that a great power of nature for beauty
was not affected by the war. It was like a
great sanctuary into which we could go
and find refuge for a time from even the
greatest trouble of the world…’
Grey gives voice to a very English
and indeed Wykehamical love of nature.
He found time even while a wartime
Foreign Secretary to enjoy nature,
whether fishing, birdwatching, or
enjoying some rare Lady’s Slipper orchids
from his cottage at Itchen Abbas. He later
described his delight in nature in The
Charm of Birds. He was born at Fallodon
Hall in Northumberland, and ran the
Northumbria Natural History Society; the
Fallodon nature reserve in the School
grounds is named in his memory.
GEM Skues (Coll, 1872-77) loved
watery nature. This may sound
contemplative, but he created the sharpest
dispute ever to muddy the quiet waters of
trout-stream fly fishing. Skues advocated
the use of nymphs that sank below the
surface, imitating the young of mayflies
and stoneflies. This went against the dryfly technique, using imitations of adult
flies that fall on the surface, championed
by his friend Frederic M Halford: they had
fished together on the Itchen. In Minor
Tactics of the Chalk Stream, Skues wrote:
in the field. He spent his life wrestling
with contradictions, as both a leading
churchman (he became Dean of
Westminster) and a pioneering
palaeontologist (President of the
Geological Society).
William Buckland
Skues continued to press the use of
nymphs with his admired book, The Way
of a Trout with a Fly, published after
Halford’s death.
In the tradition of Natural Theology,
Buckland tried to reconcile the evidence
of geology with Christianity, arguing in
his Vindiciae Geologiae that sedimentary
rocks had been laid down in the biblical
flood. On discovering hyena fossils in the
Kirkdale Cave, he argued that these dated
from before the Flood. He was further
troubled by the first dinosaur,
Megalosaurus, which he described in 1824,
since the existence of extinct animals
implicitly contradicted the Bible’s
account of creation.
The distinctly eccentric Revd
William Buckland (Coll, 1797-1801) was
fascinated by nature in quite different
ways, including zoophagy, the eating of as
wide a variety of animals as possible.
Among his oddities was the habit of
wearing an academic gown when working
Buckland was even more disturbed by
the miles-thick layers of sediments – clays,
silts, sands, gravels and chalk – that span
the English shires. Buckland saw that
these could hardly have been laid down in
a single flood, which would have dumped
the gravel at the bottom, with sand and
‘Now, the dry-fly purist is quite
entitled to his own opinions…, but if
there be other anglers who are willing to
vary their methods, who can and do catch
their trout, …and if their methods spoil
no sport for others, who shall say that
they are wrong in availing themselves of
all three stages of a rise of duns?’
8
NO.120
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
William’s son, Frank Buckland (Coll,
1839-44), was no less keen on nature. His
mother recorded the visit of a Devonshire
priest, excited by some fossils he had
found. William called in the five-year-old
Frank and asked him what they were.
‘The vertebrae of an ichthyothauruth’,
lisped the child to the unfortunate priest.
William Buckland discovers a hyena den.
Cartoon by William Conybeare, 1822
silt above. Instead, he suggested a series of
not-quite-biblical floods. This
Catastrophist theory, however, left the
sequence of different fossils in successive
strata unexplained. In his 1836
Bridgewater Treatise, Geology and
Mineralogy considered with reference to
Natural Theology, he proposed, in addition
to his floods, repeated divine creation of
animals. He was eventually weaned off
floods by Louis Agassiz, who showed him
the effects of ice on the landforms of
Switzerland, and he switched to a theory
of geological eras including an ice age.
While at Winchester, Frank trapped
field mice on St Catherine’s Hill and
roasted them: ‘a splendid bonne bouche for a
hungry boy’. In later life he enthusiastically
ate exotic body parts, such as elephant’s
trunk, and founded the Acclimatization
Society to bring new species to Britain; a
Society dinner in 1862 offered kangaroo,
curassow and sea-slug. This diet may have
contributed to his remarkable figure,
described as ‘four-and-a-half feet in height
and rather more in breadth.’
At Oxford he caused a stir by dressing
his pet bear in academic cap and gown for
a visit to the British Association. He
trained as a surgeon, but switched to
natural history, becoming a popular
columnist, lecturer and author of books
such as Curiosities of Natural History and
Notes and Jottings from Animal Life.
Fossil-hunting, zoophagy,
birdwatching, fly fishing and keeping
unusual pets are among the activities in
which Wykehamists have led the way,
encouraging the English to enjoy nature.
Whether religious or secular, sporting or
scientific, solitary or sociable, many of us
find nature utterly fascinating.
■
Ian’s latest book, ‘The English Love
Affair with Nature’, was published in 2015.
Silhouette of William Buckland in academic gown, his
wife, and Frank Buckland as a boy
Gunner’s Hole in the 1950s
Dr John Gunner (Coll, 58-63) dips into the
past:
‘Gunner, as in the Hole’, I would reply
when asked my name as a new man. This
usually generated a response, not
infrequently ribald. My grandmother was
clear that it was my great-great-great-uncle
who had been responsible for the bathing
place that bore our name. There seems
little doubt that the name is correct: the
Revd William Henry Gunner was a
Collegeman, don and chaplain and
resident of Blackbridge House in College
Walk. The Register for 1836-1906
describes him as the donor of Gunner’s
Hole. However, the dates don’t seem to fit:
WHG died in 1859, but the records show
that the bathing place was constructed in
1872. The solution may perhaps be found
in the obituary of his widow in The
Wykehamist of 1907, which states that the
original Gunner’s Hole was another pool
in the river; this ceased to be available
with the disappearance of barges from the
canal, after which the hatches were
allowed to fall into disrepair. So maybe the
name was transferred to the Win Coll
bathing place on its completion, over ten
years after WHG’s death.
The approach to Gunner’s bore little
hint of the charms within. The exterior
was forbidding – clapboard walls
surmounted by thatch, with a narrow
entrance on the north side in permanent
9
shadow. On entering, one was struck by
the spaciousness, the green of the grass
and the sparkle of the stretch of water, as
yet unpolluted by the city upstream. The
thatched changing areas that occupied
the perimeter gave the place a rustic
charm and the bronze of a pensive
Hermes sitting on a tree stump conferred
an element of timelessness. I believe that
he later graced the PE Centre – is this still
called Ekker Mecca?
Gunner’s was presided over by Geoff
Hodges - a barrel-chested presence, always
in the buff, like the rest of us. Seen
through fond memory’s filter, the air is
warm, the sun always shines, and the wind
does no more than flutter the leaves of the
NO.120
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Commoner notion for a prefect’s cane.
The idyll was soon to end. Early in
the ’60s housedons let it be known that
bathing trunks were not forbidden. Soon
much Grecian beauty, together with some
adolescent embarrassment, was covered
up. Only a hard-core minority of dons and
men continued to enjoy a naked plunge,
Rupert Brooke style.
majestic tree that overhangs the upstream
end; clothes were superfluous. Geoff
occupied a small office by the entrance,
which had the only door in the place.
One activity that was popular with
my contemporaries was Gunner’s cricket.
This was played with an old tennis ball
and a bat whose dimensions I forget,
though I don’t recall it managing to loft
the ball over the surrounding fence. The
stumps were painted on the office wall
and the wicket was the stretch of grass
between there and the water’s edge. The
objective was to get the ball into the
water, whereupon the fieldsmen would
charge in to retrieve it before too many
runs were scored. A 1930s photo shows a
figure at the same location crouching
fieldsman-style at what would have been
silly mid-on.
Like most Wykehamical institutions,
Gunner’s attracted notions. One of the
more improbable was that on Sunday
afternoons the senior boarders at St
Swithun’s would congregate on St
Catherine’s Hill with binoculars, hoping
to view the assembled talent below. I
suspect that the only male flesh visible
would have been on Sen-Sen – in the ‘50s
Gunner’s had three diving boards: Jun a
couple of feet off the ground, Sen rather
higher and Sen-Sen at a dizzy 12 to 15
feet. They were solidly built wooden
structures, green-painted and with the
walkways covered with an open-woven
fibre matting that had a
distinctive feel. Letters to
The Wykehamist in the
1870s record a succession
of requests for coconut
matting on the boards;
perhaps this was it. There
were also two springboards,
named rather
unimaginatively Big Willy
and Little Willy, Willy
being at this time also a
Meanwhile the Bursar, Ruthven Hall,
was increasingly worried by the upkeep
costs of Gunner’s. An attempt to purify
the water by filtering the input stream,
Roush, through sandbags resulted only in
more deposition of the rather comforting
mud which one felt when one touched
the bottom. And mounting concern
about the risks of water- and rat-borne
disease meant that sooner or later a
modern replacement would be needed.
So Gunner’s is no more, except that
if you look closely at a satellite view you
will still see a diagonal path just south of
New Hall which leads to a crescent of
trees, the biggest of which once watched
over Sen-Sen.
■
Win Coll and Bridge
Jonathan Davis (Coll, 67-71) shows his
cards:
The death earlier this year of RA
Priday (A, 36-41) prompts some
reflections on Win Coll’s ambivalent
attitude to what, by near-universal
consent, remains the finest and most
stimulating card game ever invented. As
well as being a gentleman in every sense
of the word, Tony was also one of the
10
finest English bridge players of his
generation and a worthy recipient of
many of the game’s highest accolades.
Nobody I know who played with or
against him during the course of his long
NO.120
life failed to comment on his exemplary
manners and sportsmanship at the card
table.
But wait, I hear you say, bridge a
sport? And the finest card game of all
time? A Wykehamical education might
not have instilled in you a proper
awareness of these universal truths, as I
think it is safe to say that few generations
of Winchester men will have been
offered anything but discouraging (and
possibly dyspeptic) noises about this
most illustrious of games during their
time at the School.
As Tony himself noted in a piece for
The Trusty Servant a few years ago, dons
and Housedons have generally poured
cold water on the aspirations of any
young man showing an interest in bridge,
believing it, in his words, to be ‘a
dangerous invention of the devil’. He
recalled how Spencer Leeson, then the
Headmaster, refused to allow him to
include one of Ely Culbertson’s books in
a list of books he won as a school prize.
I may be accused of being unfair.
Antony Milford (Coll, 54-59), another
fine player who represented England at
bridge on more than one occasion in the
late 1960s, tells me that Tom Howarth,
the then Second Master, readily gave
him permission to start a regular bridge
game with three other enthusiasts. The
general stance over the years, however,
has been one of hostility. I still treasure a
school report of mine in which the
normally affable Martin Scott felt
obliged to warn my parents that bridge
was ‘the Vanity Fair of all intellectuals’.
Is bridge a sport? You may have read
recently about the High Court case in
which the English Bridge Union sought
a judicial review of the decision by
English Sport, the quango that dispenses
taxpayers’ money to a wide range of
competitive activities, not to accord
bridge the status of a sport. Nobody can
claim that bridge involves a huge
amount of the physical exertion which
some people regard as a necessary
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
condition for an activity to be classified
as sport. There is no dispute, however,
that it does stimulate the brain and
research suggests it may also have a
positive effect in delaying the onset of
dementia and other forms of mental
deterioration.
The Charities Act of 2011 already
includes bridge and other intellectual
activities such as chess in its definition of
sport, and if English Sport can recognise
model-aircraft flying and snooker as
sports, as it does, who can realistically
gainsay the claims of bridge, chess and
other games of that ilk? There is clearly
scope for philosophical discussion on this
point. However, Mr Justice Dove has just
ruled against the EBU; there may be an
appeal.
One of the great merits of bridge is
that it is capable of being played with
enjoyment both as a social game and in
serious competition. If sportsmanship
means anything, Tony Priday, urbane
and polite to a fault, was an exemplar.
Sadly in recent years bridge has been
corrupted by wealthy sponsors who hire
top professionals to play in their team in
international championships. In some
cases, it is said, the best pros can earn
upwards of $200,000 a year – not quite
on a par with poker, but handsome
enough.
Unfortunately, as well as killing the
high-stakes rubber-bridge games that
used to provide the best tournament
players with some kind of living, this has
created malign financial incentives,
culminating in seemingly well-founded
accusations of cheating at the highest
level of the game. No fewer than three of
the world’s top teams were obliged to
withdraw from the World
Championships in India this September
after being accused by their fellow
professionals of exchanging illicit
information.
What, though, is the case for
schoolmasterly disapproval of bridge? Not,
I am sure, the fear that it will encourage
11
cheating. Presumably it rests on the fact
that bridge can be a distraction from other
endeavours deemed more worthy. Like
certain substances, the game can move
from being absorbing to mildly addictive.
But does that make it any more
objectionable than the many other
enthusiasms which can lead schoolboys to
stray from the path of academic virtue?
It has always seemed illogical to me
that chess is often encouraged in
schools, while bridge is not. It is easier
to make a case for the value of solving
(and composing) sophisticated
crosswords, a notable Wykehamical
tradition. Any activity, however, that
requires logical reasoning, numeracy and
a mastery of probabilities should, one
feels, be of value in schools. The real
problem may be that those who have
never played bridge, and know of it only
through the filter of a Somerset
Maugham short story or some other
stereotype, may simply not understand
how skilful and mentally demanding
bridge at a higher level can be.
Be that as it may, a handful of
Wykehamists have demonstrated that it
is possible to persist with the game into
later life without suffering serious adverse
consequences. One of that number,
Simon Stocken (Coll, 82-87), has been
approached to be the lead instructor of a
new initiative to take the teaching of
bridge into primary schools. The
initiative is funded by a handsome
bequest from the estate of a successful
City fund manager who died two years
ago. Maybe one or more of the
beneficiaries of the David Davenport
Trust will one day find their way to a
bursary at Winchester. Will they still
encounter disapproval and
discouragement too?
■
NO.120
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Christian inspiration from Rembrandt
An introduction from Vicky Rutherford,
Headmaster’s Secretary 2003-14:
During the year before I retired, the
Headmaster asked me if I would be
interested in helping to communicate the
activities of the Winchester College
Christian Fellowship (WCCF), the
Winchester College Parent’s Prayer
Group (WCPPG), the Society of Our
Lady at Winton (SOLAW) and the
Winchester College Christian Union. I
am exploring ways that this can best be
accomplished, but readers of the Trusty
Servant may be interested in seeing one
collaboration already at work.
At its meeting just before Leave-out in
February this year, Renée Killian-Dawson,
Chairman of the WCPPG and a current
parent, asked Mark Stephens (F, 55-59),
who heads up the WCCF, if he would give
a talk to the assembled parents – a
shortened version is reproduced below.
Mark has run WCCF since its inception 11
years ago and is in the process of trying to
find a younger OW willing to take over the
reins. If any reader would like the full
version of his talk or would like to join the
WCCF, please contact him at
[email protected].
Readers may also be interested to
know that the next service of Christian
Unity, which is to be run by the School’s
Christian Union, will be held in Michlā
on Sunday 17th January at 1030. This has
proved to be a very special occasion in the
past and all are welcome.
The Return of the Prodigal Son – A
Meditation on Fatherhood
Just before he died in 1669,
Rembrandt painted a picture, The Return
of the Prodigal Son, which has hung in the
Hermitage in St Petersburg since it was
acquired by Catherine the Great in 1766.
The scene is of the Prodigal kneeling at
the feet of his father; his father’s hands are
on his shoulders in blessing; and his elder
brother watches from a distance. These
are the key characters in the parable: each
of them has his own story to tell. Each of
us in the audience is likely to identify
with either the elder or the younger but,
regardless of which, the father sought
them both out.
In my address, I dwelt solely on the
father: the loving, forgiving, welcoming
father and the figure most ignored. I
focused solely on fatherhood because the
WCPPG is about being a parent, about the
School being in loco parentis, about the
dons who take a parental role, and
godparents, friends and grandparents who
fulfil that role too.
Rembrandt was a father: he had two
sons and three daughters, among whom
only one daughter survived him: the four
others died, his son Titus in 1669, just
before Rembrandt himself. He lost the
three most important women in his life
too. Consequently, you would have
expected him to be bitter, angry and
unbelieving. How many people have we
known who are angry with God and,
therefore, with the Church?
In his inspirational book The Return
of the Prodigal Son, Henri Nouwen writes:
‘In the father of the picture The Prodigal
Son, we can see how many tears it must
have cost Rembrandt. Believing and
trusting that he was created in the image
of God, Rembrandt had come to
discover, through his long, painful
struggle, the true nature of this image of
God the Father. It is a picture of a nearblind old man crying tenderly, blessing
his deeply wounded son. Rembrandt was
the son who became the father.’
So come with me in your
imagination on a tour round the figure of
the father in this picture based on this
12
much loved parable.
Notice the face. There is nothing
handsome about it. It isn’t imposing and it
doesn’t bear any likeness to Rembrandt’s
face – an important point because no one
else painted more self-portraits. He was
reaching out to believers to reassure them
and to unbelievers to convert them. As
Van Gogh wrote about Rembrandt, ‘Alone
among the many painters, Rembrandt has
been able to render this grieving
tenderness, this superhuman infinity,
which seems so natural. One cannot look
at Rembrandt without believing in God.’
Notice the eyes. The father is nearly
blind. For an artist who was particularly
good at painting eyes, viewed by many as
‘the windows of the soul’, this must have
been a special sacrifice, holding special
significance.
Notice the stillness. The father had
run to meet his younger son. Then he was
so exercised by his elder son not joining
the feast that he left it to seek him out to
persuade him to ‘return’ too. But here is
stillness - something akin to silence, if you
can possibly portray silence in a picture
when there are many people around.
This is a remarkable act of forgiveness.
The younger son had not just left home in
the way with which we are all too familiar.
He had demanded his share of his
inheritance, his share of the estate. In
other words he had wished his father dead.
Notice the hands. They are quite
different. The father’s left hand touching
the son’s shoulders is strong and muscular.
The fingers are spread out and cover a large
part of the prodigal son’s back. The father’s
right hand is refined, soft and very tender.
So, a masculine hand and a feminine hand
– a father’s hand and a mother’s hand; a
masculine hand to support and confirm and
a feminine hand to comfort and console.
NO.120
Notice too that the caressing,
feminine hand of the father parallels the
bare wounded foot of the son, while the
strong masculine hand parallels the foot
dressed in a sandal. ‘Is it possible,’ asks
Nouwen, ‘that the one hand protects the
vulnerable side of the son, while the other
reinforces the son’s strength and desire to
get on with his life?’
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
• Parental forgiveness should require no
apology and no explanation. In the
parable the father ran to greet the
younger son and in the painting the
father blesses him before he has kitted
him out for the feast. The father’s
welcome and his forgiveness is
spontaneous, heartfelt, comprehensive
and unconditional.
Is this why Rembrandt
put a figure of the woman
with eyes full of compassion
in the centre of the picture?
It would appear that
Rembrandt is saying that
God the Father is both male
and female. On that basis we
should really be talking
about parenthood, not
fatherhood.
Notice the red cloak or
rather the two red cloaks.
Red represents warmth; the
tent shape represents
protection, the sheltering
wings of the mother. The
second red cloak is on the
shoulders of the elder son. Is
Rembrandt expressing the
hope that the elder son will
come to recognise that in the
end he too will become the
father?
The extraordinary thing
is that Rembrandt was
financially broke in 1666
and his son Titus was given
full power of attorney. He
was the most famous painter
in Holland but was barely
willing to accept any
commissions. Yet at 8ft high and 6ft wide
The Return of the Prodigal Son was by far the
largest painting of his final years not
commissioned. Why? Because the only
thing that Rembrandt wanted to do was to
communicate to future generations that
everybody had a loving, heavenly Father.
So what does the picture of the
parable lead us to conclude?
inadequate we feel ourselves to be, our
heavenly Father sees us as lovable and
worth rescuing.
• The soul is more important than the
intellect. In the atmosphere of a school
like Win Coll, downgrading the
importance of the intellect is not easy to
take. It means not comparing our
children or ranking them as more or less
successful, but rather
believing that they are
‘hidden in the shadow of
God’s hand’ and ‘engraved
on his palm’ just as they
are, having never won a
prize, having never been
in a school team, never
having made real friends
or bearing the terrifying
label ‘Could have done
better, so, so much better’.
• We have to accept that, as
our children leave home
and set sail in a squally
world further and further
away from help and
protection, the only
authority left to us is the
authority of compassion.
This is the authority of
unconditional love – a
love which we are always
undervaluing – a love
which represents real
power.
• Our job as parents is to help our children
move step by step towards the kind of
parenthood represented by the father.
But we can only help them as parents, or
in loco parentis, towards this
transcendent goal if we have accepted
that as lost sheep our loving Father has
found us in the first place – and that
means accepting that, however
13
We know that as
Christians the gold standard
of fatherhood is the person
of Jesus himself. When the
apostle Philip says ‘Show us
the Father,’ Jesus responds,
‘Anyone who has seen me has seen the
Father’. The test for us as fathers and the
School in loco parentis, therefore, is
whether we can see that all our children
without exception are, in the words of the
psalmist, ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’.
If we can, then we may also be able to see
that the hands of the father in Rembrandt’s
picture seek only to bless and to heal. ■
NO.120
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Wiccamica
Do Co Ro: Avete et Vale
We offer a warm welcome to this half’s
new cohort of dons: Dara Alizadeh
(Sports); Thomas Bird (Classics);
Alexander Clayton (Geography); Joseph
Cole (Physics); Alexander Graham
(Mathmā ); Anna Kashlach (French);
Poppy Lambert (Biology); Hettie Podger
(Geography); Poppy Rimington-Pounder
(Classics); and David Thomas (Master of
Music). We wish them well as they
grapple with the notions, and hope that
their time with us will be happy.
We also bid a fond farewell to Susan
Atwill (Art, since September 2011) and
congratulate her on her new post at
Harrow.
Dr Timothy Hands
Dr Timothy Hands, Master of Magdalen
College School, Oxford, since 2008, has
been appointed Headmaster of the School
on the retirement of Dr Ralph Townsend
from September 2016. He publishes on
19th- and 20th-century literature,
especially Thomas Hardy, and is a devotee
of music and sport. We look forward to
welcoming him and his wife, Jane.
Mens Sana…
Guy Cheng (Coll, 10-15) represented the
UK in the International Biology
Olympiad held in Aarhus, Denmark, in
July, winning the top international silver
medal and proving the best-performing
UK team member.
Also, in the Cambridge Chemistry
Challenge for Lower Sixth Min Hyuk
Choi, Michael Smith and Jim Jeon (all
Coll) won the highest prize and have been
invited to give a presentation on a chemical
element during a prize-giving ceremony at
the Wellcome Collection in London.
Dr Timothy Hands
…in Corpore Sano
Alexander Wythe (Coll), Tobias
Schröder (Coll), Luke Robinson (C) and
Hugo Durward (E), coxed by Kelvin Pak
(B), formed the stern half of the Great
Britain J16 VIII, which defeated the
French champions by an impressive five
lengths at the London Regatta Centre in
July. The last Wykehamists selected for
this annual match were Charlie Wilson
and George Nash (both K, 02-07) in
2005; the latter now rows in the GB
coxless IV.
Soccer XI followed a 5-0 win against
Harrow with a rare away victory against
Eton, triumphing 4-3. Tae
Uahwatanasakul (E), who scored two of
the goals, has been selected for the ISFA
U18 squad.
Building Works
The College’s focus on edification has
been interpreted rather literally in recent
months, with much of the School
14
resembling a building site. Hopper’s has
been renovated; an Astroturf pitch has
been constructed in Kingsgate Park; Bull’s
Drove, Doggers and Gater Field have
been drained. Jun and 1-Year Collegemen
now have freshly painted surroundings in
which to be exhorted discere, discedere or
caedi while doing their toytime in School,
although the building is still shrouded in
scaffolding while the roof is replaced.
Similarly enveloped are the Warden’s
Stables, as the Museum project advances;
an intriguing 17th-century witch’s mark
(to ward off miscreant sorceresses) has
been discovered over one of the doors.
And we are now producing less hot air, at
least of the CO2 variety, thanks to the
connection of all the ancient buildings to
our biomass boiler behind New Hall.
Apologies to OWs visiting the School
while it is not looking its best, but plaudits
to the Works Department for managing
such a range of concurrent projects.
■
NO.120
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Old Wykehamist News
Academic
PMJ Cambrook (H, 77-82) is studying for
a PhD in International Relations at
Wolfson College, Cambridge.
Dr AG Christy (Coll, 76-80), a geologist
based in Canberra, has recently received
the honour of having a newly discovered
mineral named after him. Andychristyite is
a tellurate of lead and copper,
PbCu2+Te6+O5H2O and is very rare. So far,
it has been found only as a few tiny
bluish-green crystals in one vug in a
quartz vein, in a single piece of rock. A
secondary electron micrograph of a cluster
that is about 80 × 50 microns in size has
been false-coloured to restore the
greenish-turquoise colour that you would
see in a light microscope.
during the writing-up phase. He has
recently returned to London as a
Research Fellow at the London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Appointments / Elections
CJ Wheeler (E, 90-95), currently
Principal at Hillcrest International
School in Kenya, has been appointed
Principal of Monkton Combe School
from January 2016.
J H Davies (Coll, 70-75) is posted from
September 2015 as First Secretary to the
British Embassy in Amman in a new
position dealing with regional politics.
Livery Company Appointments
EDJ Goodchild (F, 78-83) has pointed out
that Skinners’ Company is a Win Coll
hot(bed), as Past Masters and current
Court members also include HG Ashton
(E, 43-48), CHD Everett (Coll, 46-51),
Dr AFB Crawshaw (C, 47-53), RN Dobbs
(D, 50-55), PCB Pockney (H, 53-57),
MA Loveday (H,57-62) and GB
Thompson (K, 59-63). OJ Colman
(G, 46-51), Professor Helena Gaunt (née
Oakeshott) and Caroline Roe (wife of
AFJR) have in the past been extra
members of the Court. There are also
countless OW Liverymen.
Can any other livery company report a
similar OW dominance of its court?
Books
EJM Joy (F, 01-06) has been awarded his
doctorate, having written his thesis titled
Dietary mineral deficiencies in sub-Saharan
Africa. He was jointly sponsored by the
University of Nottingham and the British
Geological Survey. His field research was
mainly conducted in Malawi, although he
moved to Ethiopia with his wife, Camila,
IF Alexander (G, 6772) has just published
The English Love Affair
with Nature. It explores
why our country is so
obsessed by nature. It
began in earnest with
the Industrial
15
Revolution in the 18th century. The
flames were fanned by paintings and
engravings; then by the animal-cruelty
and conservation movements, gardening,
the back-to-nature movement, dinosaur
discoveries, the great explorers, and much
else besides. YouCaxton; 320 pages;
ISBN: 978-1909644465. See his article
above.
Dearest Mother is a remarkable book
edited by AFS Baines (G, 57-61) and
Joanna Palmer, with a foreword by
General Sir Hugh Beach (G, 36-41). It
contains the letters of
JS (John) Baines (Coll,
1908-12) to his mother
from the front line
during the First World
War. John was on
active service as a
young Royal Engineers
officer in France and
Salonika. The letters
give extraordinary insights into the dayto-day existence of First World War
servicemen. He obviously enjoyed all the
challenges he faced and writes about
them with a delightfully light touch.
Through these letters we are able to share
in his military career, his personal and
political views, his sense of humour and
above all in the love, care and
responsibility he felt towards his mother
while serving King and country. These
letters have been brought to life by the
editors, who are his grandchildren, in a
refreshing and unusual way. Carefully
researched photographs, illustrations and
maps are included of the topics, people
and places John writes about. There are
frequent references to Win Coll and the
book includes an appendix with obituaries
of all the OWs John mentions. A distinct
and noteworthy account of the First
World War, which will be of special
NO.120
interest to Wykehamists. Helion and
Company Limited; ISBN: 9781910294574.
It may be of amusement to some OWs
that A J Beevor (K, 60-64), who failed his
History and English A Levels, has just
been declared by The
Bookseller to be the
‘bestselling British
historian of the
Bookscan era’ and has
produced Ardennes
1944: Hitler’s Last
Gamble. On 16th
December, 1944,
Hitler launched his
‘last gamble’ in the snow-covered forests
and gorges of the Ardennes on the
Belgian/German border. Although his
generals were doubtful of success, younger
officers and NCOs were desperate to
believe that their homes and families
could be saved from the vengeful Red
Army approaching from the east. The
Ardennes offensive, with more than a
million men involved, became the
greatest battle of the war in Western
Europe. Viking; ISBN: 978-0670918645.
Dr FJA Bettley (E, 71-75) has just
published his two volume Suffolk East
(Yale University Press; 800 pages; ISBN:
978-0300196559) and
Suffolk West (Yale
University Press; 680
pages; ISBN: 9780300196542) in the
re-edited Pevsner
Architectural Guide to
the Buildings of
England series. This is
a magisterial
achievement and has
taken seven years work (he has already rewritten Essex and is now embarking on
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Hertfordshire). A special discount is
available to readers of The Trusty Servant:
£54 when ordering both copies online at
www.yalebooks.co.uk, using the promo
code Y1504. Single copies may be ordered
for £28 using the code Y1503.
PdeF Delaforce (B, 37-42) has produced
what he asserts will be his last book, The
Fourth Reich and Operation Eclipse, which
examines the final weeks of the Second
World War, after the Yalta Conference,
when the question to be asked was not
who would win, but
how to prevent the war
dragging on and also
how to stop Hitler from
implementing a
scorched-earth policy
across the Reichland.
Fonthill; ISBN: 9781781554005.
Dr EJ Feuchtwanger (A, 39-43) has
written an important first-hand account
of the early days of the Third Reich, I Was
Hitler’s Neighbour: the author grew up
living in a flat opposite Hitler’s private
home in Munich. In this book eminent
historian Edgar
Feuchtwanger recounts
his Jewish boyhood, his
narrow escape on
Kristallnacht and how
his family fled to Britain
in 1939 just weeks
before the outbreak of
war. In the later stages
of the book the author
recalls his frequent visits to post-war
Germany and the changes he
encountered between Germany now and
in Nazi times. Bretwalda Books; ISBN:
978-1910440001.
The latest novel of PEHS Gale (A, 75-79),
A Place Called Winter, tells how Harry
Cane, a privileged elder son, yet
stammeringly shy, has followed
convention at every step. Even the
beginnings of an illicit, dangerous affair
do little to shake the foundations of his
16
muted existence – until
the shock of discovery
and the threat of arrest
cost him everything. In
this exquisite journey of
self-discovery, loosely
based on a real-life
family mystery, Patrick
has created an epic,
intimate human drama, both brutal and
breathtaking. It is a novel of secrets,
sexuality and, ultimately, of great love.
Tinder Press; ISBN: 978-1472205315.
RAC Haig (A, 73–77) has written Knight
Errant: Lord Craven and the Court of the
Winter Queen. It is an exciting tale of
17th-century plots, intrigues, battles,
family quarrels and
court cases; a
compelling and
exhaustively
researched account of
the public and private
travails of the exiled
queen and her faithful
admirer. Fonthill
Media Ltd; ISBN:
978-1781553244.
JWS Macdonald (G, 50-55) has produced
a brief monograph, Ronald’s War, about
his uncle RM Macdonald (G, 1904-09),
describing the experiences of a young
regular officer in the first three months of
the First World War until his death, partly
through his correspondence home.
Ronald’s letters and Sgian Dubh are
currently on display at the Queen’s Own
Highlanders Museum, Fort George. Blurb
Incorporated; ISBN: 978-1320784658.
CM Manley (B, 61-65) has written a
second edition of British Moths. This
expanded guide covers 2,147 species,
illustrated by 3,200 photographs of live
moths (all similarly aligned for easy
comparison, and with a bar showing
actual size). It includes succinct text
covering size, status, flight period, habitat,
identification tips and larval food-plants.
It also shows distribution maps for all
NO.120
resident species. The
definitive
photographic guide to
British Moths: a visual
feast and a must for all
macro and micro fans.
Bloomsbury; ISBN:
978-1472907707.
RJM Southam (G, 59-64) has written a
South American love story, The Snake and
the Condor. In Santiago, Chile, at the
height of Pinochet’s reign of terror in the
late 20th century, Julieta, the Juliet of this
Romeo-and-Juliet story and the daughter
of a senior government official, is to be
married to the army officer of her father’s
choice. She attempts to escape with the
boy she loves to the Peruvian Andes, but
her father’s tentacles reach across South
America and even as far as England. The
young lovers are caught up in a series of
gripping adventures and narrow escapes.
They are helped by a courageous priest,
whose mission is to save opponents of
Pinochet from the prisons,
torture chambers and
executions of the military
régime. The Snake and the
Condor is more than a
retelling of one of the
great love stories of world
literature: it also studies
the cruel effects of
colonization, forced
conversion and economic exploitation on
non-European civilizations. It evokes the
fear, suspicion and uncertainty on which
tyranny and dictatorship thrive.
Roundfire; 482 pages; ISBN: 9780954503840.
In the small hours of the morning of 3rd
June, 1914, a woman and her husband
were found dead in a sparsely furnished
apartment in Paris. It was only when the
identity of the couple was revealed in the
English press a fortnight later that the full
story emerged. The man, Henry
Sackville-West, had shot himself minutes
after the death of his wife from cancer;
but Henry’s suicidal despair had been
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
driven equally by the failure of his claim
to be the legitimate son of Lord Sackville
and heir to Knole. The Disinherited, by RB
Sackville-West (F, 71-75), reveals the
secrets and lies at the heart of an English
dynasty, unravelling the parallel lives of
Henry’s four illegitimate siblings, in
particular his older sister, Victoria, who,
on becoming Lady
Sackville and mistress
of Knole by marriage,
consigned her brothers
and sisters to lives of
poverty and
disappointment.
Bloomsbury; ISBN:
978-1408824825.
TCH Sharp (B, 90-95) has recently
published a book on Loetz Art Nouveau
glass: Lötz. Die Passion / Loetz. The
Passion. The book focuses on the
emotional side of Loetz glass and
examines the
relationship between
collector and
collection. With
numerous colour
photographs of 50 of
the very best Loetz
vases, the book also
features insight into
how the condition of
Loetz glass affects value and helpful tips
on storage, maintenance and insurance.
The text is in both English and German.
Copies are available on Ebay for a fixed
price of £42. NBVD; ISBN: 9783939028451.
Lord Terrington (E, 60-64) has just
published a book entitled Adolescent
Urology and Long-term Outcomes under his
professional name of Christopher
Woodhouse. Fully covering disorders
related to sex and genital development,
the kidney, bladder, ureter and urethra,
Professor Woodhouse, a world-leading
expert and global pioneer in this field,
systematically outlines the best clinical
practice in the surgical and medical
management of these complex and
17
extremely challenging
conditions, as well
covering the long-term
outcome for the
patient. WileyBlackwell; ISBN:
978-1118844816.
Business and Commercial
On Saturday 6th September, 2015, a
dinner was held at the Venice Mining
Complex, Kadoma, Zimbabwe. Those
present included Alex White (G, 01-06),
Finance Director of Venice and Maygel
Mines and host of the dinner; and Nick
Ferguson (C, 61-66), Director of Maris
Ltd, owner of Venice. A very small hot
was held, and rather more wine was
enjoyed.
Charitable
WAN Muir (K, 92-97) is co-founder and
executive director of Equal Community
Foundation, an action-research charity
based in Pune, India. Through its field
programmes, ECF builds peer groups of
men aged 14-17 to tackle violence in
their community.Will has also involved a
number of other OWs in his work.
Honours
PA Darling QC (Coll, 73-77), for services
to safety at sports grounds and horse
racing – OBE.
DJR Davidson (H, 88-93), lately Special
Adviser to the Foreign Secretary, for
public service – OBE.
AH Duberly CBE DL (I, 55-60), Lord
Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire – KCVO.
SP Halsey (A, 71-75), Chorus Director of
the City of Birmingham Symphony
Chorus and of the London Symphony
Chorus – CBE. In March, HM The
Queen awarded Simon Her Majesty’s
Medal for Music 2014.
WA Kerr (K, 71-75), for services to
heritage – OBE.
NO.120
Prof HJ Macdonald (Coll, 52-58), for
services to French music - Chevalier de
l’Ordre National du Mérite.
Media
The government has appointed Sir David
Clementi (E, 62-67; Warden, 08-14) to
carry out an independent review into the
way the BBC is governed and regulated
amid increasing criticism of the existing
BBC Trust. David, a former deputy
governor of the Bank of England who was
chairman of Virgin Money and
Prudential, is expected to present his
proposals by early 2016 ahead of a white
paper renewing the BBC charter which
runs out at the end of next year. He has
previously reviewed the regulation of legal
services in England and Wales.
Musical
Sansara, a choir set up and run by Tom
Herring (I, 07-12), Jack Butterworth
(Coll, 07-12) and Ben Cunningham
(K, 07-12), won first prize at Peter
Phillips’s London International A Capella
Choir Competition at St John’s, Smith
Square, also winning the audience prize.
They were up against The Gesualdo Six
and the Epiphoni Consort in the final.
See www.sansarachoir.com.
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Politics
The following were elected MPs in the
May 2015 General Election:
NE Boles (Coll,79-83) – Grantham and
Stamford;
AJG Chalk (D, 91-95) – Cheltenham;
MJH Fysh (Coll, 84-89) – Yeovil;
R Sunak (H, 93-98) – Richmond, Yorks;
JFL Whittingdale OBE PC (A, 73-77) –
Maldon; Secretary of State for Culture,
Media and Sport.
SPC Milne (Coll, 71-74) has been
appointed the Labour Party’s Executive
Director of Strategy and
Communications.
Services
At a recent visit of the Queen’s Dragoon
Guards trustees to the Regiment, Lt MA
McKechnie (E, 02-07) instructed Capt
FDS Rosier (I, 64-69) and Capt AFJ Roe
(G, 72-75) in the use of the SA80 rifle
and the Glock 17 pistol. The Range
Safety Officer did not allow a hot.
Sport
George Nash (K, 02-07) was in the VIII
that won the final of the Grand
Challenge Cup at the Henley Royal
Regatta, defeating the Olympic
champions from Germany.
At the Queen’s Club on Saturday 2nd
May, 2015, Christian Portz (H, 05-10)
and partner Alex Titchener-Barrett beat
Hopton & Coyne 15/12, 15/6, 15/6 to
become the new Rackets World Doubles
champions
Old Wykehamist Sporting
Societies
Clay Pigeon Shooting
Following the School’s victory over both
Eton and Harrow for the annual Land
Plate last November at Bisley, they were
challenged by their coach and Estates
Bursar Robin Chute to a match against a
team of OWs. This took place at
Compton Manor Shooting Ground on
June 9th, when a team of OWs – Robin
Chute (E, 61-65), Richard Priestley
(A, 60-65), Charles Brims (K, 63-68),
Alex Roe (G, 72-75) and Julian Spencer
(Co Ro, 09-) shot against Winchester A –
Harry Goaman (E), Freddie Lawlor (E),
Jamie Colvin (A), Rupert Kettle (G) and
James Summerfield (G), as well as
Winchester B – Alex Krespi (E), Alex
Rulke (I), Charles Erwin (G), Hughie
Fagan (B) and Bertie Cammack (A).
The match consisted of five individual
stands of ten clays, followed by a team
flush of 60 clays in windy conditions. The
OWs’ chances faded when one member
missed all ten rabbits, mumbling that he
paid someone to shoot rabbits. The match
was deservedly won by Winchester A
with 215, followed by the OWs with 189
and Winchester B with 188. Top Gun was
Jamie Colvin with an excellent 39,
closely followed by his captain Harry
Goaman with 38. The OWs consolation
prize was winning the side-by-side
competition. The afternoon was
organised and hosted by John Cavendish
(OE, sadly) and was so enjoyed by all that
it will hopefully become an annual event.
OW Golf
Kennyite golf at New Zealand Golf Club:
on Saturday June 27th, 2015, David
Durnford-Slater (D, 51-55) invited
18
NO.120
Kennyite golfers of the 1955 vintage to a
round of golf, followed by lunch. It was a
beautiful English summer day as the eight
players set forth, often struggling with the
long carry over the heather to the fairways
which are lined by rhododendrons and
azaleas. Many suffered in the deep and
treacherous bunkers and the heather.
Conditions were exhausting, but the
camaraderie and the intense competition,
which finally finished in results on the
18th, was enjoyed by all. Those attending
were John Roskill, Chris Mallett , Roger
Wellesley-Smith, Noel Dobbs, Raymond
Freshfield, Jonathan Silley, John Vintcent
and Anthony Pattison.
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
OW Sailing Club
Seaview Weekend 2015 – Sir Reginald
Bennett Trophy
The annual Seaview sailing weekend took
place on 19/20th September, 2015. First,
two fleet races in the morning as part of
the charity event, Bart’s Bash, with Noel
Dobbs at the front of the fleet in both
races, and then, after lunch, the serious
team-racing started. Current
Wykehamists beat Radley and the OWs
beat Old Radleians, winning respectively
the Mermaid and the Duke of Wellington
trophies. After this Wykehamists and OWs
raced against each other, with the School
comfortably winning the Sir Reginald
Bennett Trophy. OWs sailing were David
Anderson (Coll, 69-74; Commodore),
Calum Sillars (A,72-76; Rear
Commodore), Noel Dobbs (D, 50–55),
Alastair Morley (B, 93-98), Duncan Byatt
(D,75-80) and Michael Toogood
(H, 78-82), with the addition of Dr Jamie
Barron (Co Ro, 13-).
Freshfield/Wellesly-Smith/Roskill/Pattinson/Silley/
Durnford-Slater/Vintcent/Dobbs/Mallett.
Not content with just playing golf, on
20th October, Noel Dobbs then followed
up by gathering 15 Kennyites of his
generation for lunch at Skinners’ Hall.
Winchester College sailing team receives trophy.
Cowes: Arrow Trophy
On Saturday 3rd October 12 OWs gathered
in Cowes to regain the Arrow Trophy,
which we had last won in 2013. The Arrow
is held every year for public school old-boy
teams, with crews of 10-12 in the Sunsail
fleet. Saturday’s racing is a series of fleet
races; the top four then match-race on the
Sunday for the Arrow Trophy. We had a
successful day on Saturday in light airs,
comfortably winning the day with two
firsts, a second and a third in the four
races. On Sunday in a slightly stronger
breeze we won the match-racing, winning
all of the five races in which we sailed.
The other three finalists were Bradfield
(2nd), Dulwich and Abingdon.
Any OW interested in joining WSC should
contact the Commodore, David Anderson,
on [email protected].
Alastair Hall (D, 95-00), James Markby (C, 93-98), Alastair Morley (B, 93-98), Charles Somerset (G, 94-99), David
Anderson (Coll, 69-74), James Pinder (Coll, 08-13), Duncan Byatt (D, 75-80), David Clementi (E, 62-67), Alastair
Moye (Coll, 78-83), George Leicester-Thackara (K, 92-97), Tom Clementi (K, 92-97), David Hobson (D, 92-97)
19
NO.120
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Old Wykehamist Tolling Club
Obiter Dicta
OW Tolling Club is recruiting for the
annual highlight: the Alumni Race on
December 12th, 2015. The race is hosted
by Thames Hare & Hounds on the
historic Blues course over Wimbledon
Common; the distance is 5 miles, suitable
for a full range of fitness and athletic
ability, with age categories up to V60 (and
beyond). Any interested runners should
send an email to Anthony Doolittle at
[email protected].
John Darling (cont’d)
Water Polo
HLC Frere-Cook (B, 00-05) writes:
The winning OW team at Winchester
Match, posing with the Tom Noyce
shield. The game finished 6-1, bringing to
an end a three-year winning streak for the
current men. Tom returned to referee and
managed a tense match with
magnanimous skill – whilst passions ran
high, no one was permanently excluded
this year. Next year will be the tenth
iteration: we will have a few new recruits
from this crop of leavers and I hope many
more OWs will be able to make it to
Winchester Match 2016.
TN Hone (F, 68-72) writes:
Andrew Orange has not got it quite right
(TS119). Jo Darling used to say, ‘[X] was a
verra verra remarkable man, verra
remarkable’, followed by a sound that defies
description using letters of the alphabet.
My happiest memories of Jo were during
Physics lessons about electricity. We were
equipped with lengths of cable with
crocodile clips on the end to make circuits
of various kinds. These, surreptitiously, we
used to attach to the tail of Jo’s jacket
while he passed about the div room
expounding on diodes or transistors (in
our day it was almost valves – I exaggerate
a little) or whatever. The more
adventurous would add lengths of cable to
previously attached ones so that he trailed
longs leads about the room. He was so
enthusiastic about the subject that it took
him a long time (and some long cables) to
notice. Eventually he would and, in an
exasperated voice, say, ‘Now look here,
you men’ (the “e” in “men” was hardly
pronounced). I have no memory of awful
retribution for this tiresome behaviour.
Heaven forbid that Andrew ever
daydreamed during one of Jo’s lessons.
Surely not.
Happy days indeed. He was a great man.
All flesh is as grass but his passing is sad.
AMF Orange (E, 68-72) concurs:
Yes, the routine after the ‘verra’ was
something like a loud gulp/swallowing
sound, followed by a very broad smile!
The routine after ‘You see, [name]’ was
similar but generally omitted the sound. I
do remember the crocodile-clip game and
agree the riposte was just ‘Now look here,
you men!’ He was a kind man.
There was also a very old video machine.
Didn’t we always clamour for a film of a
suspension bridge falling to bits, as it
experienced aeroelastic flutter in a high
wind?
Jo was never boring and actually I think
that’s a great quality for a teacher.
L-R: Alex Lijka (E, 08-13), Korn Chatikavanij (D, 78-82), Eden Forter (H, 09-14), Hugh Frere-Cook (B, 00-05),
Sam Dunning, JD Dunning, Jackie Chau (A, 08-13), James Mok (E, 11-13)
20
NO.120
75th Anniversary of the
Battle of Britain
Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding GCB
GCVO CMG (G, 1895-99) wears the
laurels.
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
avoid puncturing the ball, which only
results in general concussion and the end
of a perfect day. One last invaluable tip for
beginners: do not get underneath the ball
when it is on the ground, as this prevents
others getting a place in the mud. You will
find that goals are scored in Push-Ball, as
in life, not by underhand methods but by
overhead charges.’
Denise Patterson
Denise Patterson, née Woosnam, died on
27th July, 2015, aged 97. She was the
daughter of the celebrated all-round
sportsman Max Woosnam (F, 1906-11):
in the 1920s he was captain of
Manchester City, played tennis at
Wimbledon, led the Davis Cup team, and
scored a century at Lord’s.
Research shows that Push-Ball was
invented in 1891 by an American who
wanted a soccer-like game where
spectators could more easily see the ball –
hence his idea to create a game using a
ball measuring 6ft in diameter and
weighing about 50lbs. One wonders if this
American had very poor eye-sight.
Following the death of her RAF fiancé in
the Battle of Britain, she became the
muse of another pilot, Richard Hillary,
one of the best known of Sir Archibald
McIndoe’s ‘Guinea Pig Club’ and author
of The Last Enemy. See Times obituary, 6th
August, 2015.
Dr. Ralph Townsend – a tribute from
Hong Kong
2005 saw Ralph arrive
With Winchester in need
Of someone who with vision new
Would Wykeham’s College lead.
From the Archives: Push-Ball
The College Archivist writes: In 1932, the
rather bizarre sport of ‘Push-Ball’ was
briefly trialled at Win Coll. The game was
introduced by RLG Irving (Coll, 1890-96;
Co Ro, 1900-44). We might never have
known about this event were it not for
the evidence of three photographs in a
collection of memorabilia belonging to
Geoff Hodges (B, 22-27; Co Ro, 29-68)
given to the College Archives by his son
Harley (I, 51-56) earlier this year.
For probing press had caused distress
Not many years before,
When liberal rules had tempted fools
To break the rule of law.
Cookson’s tenure had eased the pressure
And set things well to right;
But higher norms, despite reforms,
Would not come overnight.
With Cathy his wife a balm for strife,
Sound judgement he applied.
Win Coll revived and since has thrived,
Admired and loved worldwide.
The photographs show a match on Meads
between the dons and a group of boys. We
know very little about this contest – Irving
wrote a piece for The Wykehamist in
November 1932 giving some hints on the
game but telling us nothing as to the score.
Irving writes: ‘The golden rule is “keep
your eye on the ball”: you will then know
when you are giving it a push in the right
direction. There is only one thing more
fatal than to lose sight of the ball, and that
is to lose touch with it. Do not kick the
ball: the joint of the big toe is very fragile.
(This is a rule as well as a hint.) Try to
But 10 years on this learned don’s
Decided now’s the time
To turn his view to pastures new P’raps dizzier heights to climb?
In Hong Kong here, let’s give a cheer
To Trusty Servant Ralph.
Wykeham’s College, we humbly
acknowledge,
Has never felt more safe.
Richard Wallace (Coll, 68-72)
21
■
NO.120
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Obituary
If you would like a copy of any press obituary referred to, please contact the Winchester College Society office. You can request either by
email to [email protected], telephone +44 (0)1962 621217 or by sending a stamped addressed envelope to the Director, 73 Kingsgate
Street, Winchester SO23 9PE. ‘Obit’ indicates that a copy of some other tribute is also available.
Peter Ellyatt Cattermole (Co Ro, 76-00):
died 16.3.2015. Father of HAC (A, 91-92).
Educated at Canford; Exeter University, 1
Chemistry 1970; he went on to take a PhD
in Chemistry, followed by a Post Graduate
Teaching Certificate. He taught at Millfield
School 1974-76 before arriving at
Winchester in 1976. He was Head of
Chemistry 1977-99 and Head of Science
1986-99. On leaving the School, he bought
a house in Bridgwater, which he returned to
its former glory, doing most of the work
himself. He always retained an interest in
railways, becoming Chairman of the
Somerset and Dorset Railway Trust and a
Director of West Somerset Railway. He was
curator of a small railway museum at
Washford Station; he coordinated the
rebirth of the Blake Museum; and he
became vice chairman, Bridgwater Civic
Society. For his work for Bridgewater he was
awarded the Bridgwater Cup 2009. He is
survived by his wife Ann and their three
daughters and a son.
John Sumner Townsend Gibson (Coll, 2934): died 3.5.2015 aged 99 as Second Sen
Man. Son of HOSG (Coll, 1897-01) and
father of PJTG (I, 63-64). War Scholar,
Drawing Prize. New College, Oxford, 3
Zoology 1938, MA 1947. He acquired his
interest in mountaineering on the Oxford
University Greenland expedition 1936.
RAFVR 1940, Flying Instructor Canada
1942-44 and Transport Command in the
UK 1945. He first worked as a biologist for
the Fisheries Research Board of Canada
1947, then as a commercial salmon
fisherman 1948-67 on the board of the
Prince Rupert Fishermen’s Co-op. In 1967
he bought a property in Cowichan Station,
where he lived until 2005. One of his
proudest moments was celebrating his 80th
birthday climbing Merry Widow Peak near
Port Alice with his son and grandson. His
accurate pen-and-ink sketches of the
mountains of Vancouver Island have been
used in guide books and his oil paintings
can be found on many walls. He was an
active member of the Society of Friends
(Quakers). Survived by Dorothy, his wife of
70 years, and their son.
Peter Wilson Ward-Jackson (G, 29-33):
died 15.2.2015 aged 99 as Fourth Sen Man.
Brother of WAW-J (G, 23-27). Born in
Johannesburg. Holgate Prize 1931. Captain
of Fencing. He left Winchester early and
went to Mr Webber’s School at Bonn.
Thereafter he spent 18 months in Italy and
a year in France, hence he was fluent in
German, Italian and French. Magdalene
College, Cambridge, 2 Modern Languages
1938. RMAS and commissioned in
Worcester Regiment 1940, with whom he
served in the Middle East. Mentioned in
Despatches. After the fall of Tobruk he
made a miraculous escape back to Cairo. He
then worked for MI6 in Italy and Germany
until he was demobbed as a captain in 1946.
He then began a long and successful career
with the V&A Museum, first as Assistant
Keeper, Woodwork Department 1948-53,
then Assistant Keeper, Engravings,
Illustration and Design Department 195363 and finally as Deputy Keeper, Prints and
Drawings Department 1963-76. His
crowning achievement was his two-volume
catalogue of the V&A’s Italian Drawings,
published in 1980, which was described by
Anthony Blunt as a task performed ‘with
love, scholarship and modesty’. He retained
an interest in English and Continental
literature and on one memorable occasion
he was seen packing Voltaire’s Candide in
his rucksack for a lengthy hike on the South
Downs. He retired first to Battersea and
then to South Wales where he was strongly
supported by his wife. Married (1) 1959
Joan Schellenberg (died 1963), (2) 1983
22
Shaunagh Fitzgerald, who survives him with
the two sons of his first marriage. Obituary
The Guardian.
George Robert Acworth Conquest (D, 3135): died 3.8.2015 aged 98 as Fourth Sen
Man. He was born on 15th July, 1917 just
after the Bolsheviks’ first fumbling attempts
to take power in Russia. Bisley, just one
point away from winning the Ashburton
Shield. Magdalen College, Oxford, 2 PPE
1939. Commissioned 1940 Ox and Bucks
Light Infantry, with whom he served in Italy
and the Balkans 1943-46. On joining the
Foreign Office, he worked first in HM
Legation Sofia in 1946. During this time he
helped two people escape from Russiancontrolled Bulgaria. He joined the Foreign
Office’s Information Research Department
1948. First Secretary, UK delegation to the
UN in New York 1950. He was appointed
OBE 1955. On leaving the Foreign Office
in 1956, he subsequently became Fellow
LSE, Literary Editor, The Spectator and
Senior Fellow, Columbia University 1964.
He was impatient with all manner of bienpensant thinking, political correctness and
theorising and was determined to tell the
truth about Stalin’s genocide as he saw it. In
1968, a month after Soviet tanks crushed
the Prague Spring, he published his
masterpiece The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge
of the Thirties. He was the historian who
played a leading role in stiffening Western
resolve in the Cold War by chronicling the
horror of Soviet Communism: he was an
adviser to Ronald Reagan and Margaret
Thatcher and was awarded the US
Presidential Medal of Freedom 2005. In
1990 he visited Moscow and was invited to
inspect the Lubyanka: it was, he said,
‘extraordinarily nice to have lived to see it
all, to have been vindicated completely’.
Married (1) 1942 Joan Watkins (marriage
dissolved), (2) 1948 Princess Tatiana
NO.120
Mihescu-Mihailov (marriage dissolved), (3)
1964 Caroleen Macfarlane (marriage
dissolved), (4) 1979 Elizabeth Neece, who
survives him with his two sons and a stepdaughter. Obituaries in The Times and the
Daily Telegraph.
Roderick Cairns-Terry (B, 33-38): died
9.9.2008. Brother of HMC-T (B, 31-36)
and JCC-T (B, 35-39). Lords, Boxing
1936-38. Bristol Aeroplane Company as a
student 1938-42. Commissioned Royal
Artillery 1942, with whom he served in
North West Europe 1944-46. He later
worked for Harry Ferguson/Massey
Ferguson (export) in Southern Europe. He
is survived by April, his wife of 56 years,
and their son and two daughters.
Hubert Charles Houssemayne du Boulay
(Coll, 33-38): died 17.7.2015 aged 94.
Brother of RWHduB (C, 35-40) and
AJHduB (C, 43-46). In 1938 during a visit
to Berlin he heard Hitler speak and realised
how dangerous this man was. Oriel College,
Oxford PPE 1938-40. Commissioned
RNVR 1941, he served with the MTB
flotilla in Home Waters 1941 and Sicily,
Italy and Dalmatia 1943-45. He was
awarded his DSC for getting a left and a
right – sinking two boats with his two
torpedoes; and, when his MTB was holed by
a spent torpedo, he ordered his second-incommand to sit in the hole to plug it and
motored into Brindisi Harbour at full speed.
After the war he worked first for Iraq
Petroleum Group of Companies 1946-57
and then for West Midlands Engineering
Employers Association 1959-81. In
retirement he shot, earning his bottle of Bols
by shooting two woodcock with another left
and right, and enjoyed fishing, which he had
learned at Winchester on the Itchen.
Married 1951 Marjorie Watt (who died
earlier in 2015 after 63 years of marriage).
He is survived by their three daughters.
Edward Laurence Ashton (A, 35-40): died
21.7.2015 aged 93. Brother of AGRA
(A, 40-44). Soccer XI 1939-40, Lords (12th
Man) 1940. Played in winning Arthur
Dunn Cup Team 1948. King’s College,
Cambridge, Army short course, Engineering.
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Commissioned Royal Engineers 1941,
Captain and Adjutant 1944, BAOR 1945,
Mentioned in Despatches. New College,
Oxford 1946-47 (Exhibitioner 1940), 2
Classics 1947. He then pursued a successful
career as a Chartered Accountant,
becoming a partner of Hodgson, Morris and
Co (Liverpool) 1951. FCA 1955. He retired
as the senior partner 1986. President,
Liverpool Society of Chartered Accountants
in their centenary year 1970/71. Magistrate,
Liverpool City bench 1966-92. A keen
sportsman, he played football for Liverpool
Ramblers AFC 1946-51 and cricket for
Northern Cricket Club 1946-62. He was
Captain, West Lancashire Golf Club 1971.
Regarded as a true gentleman, an
embodiment of the school motto ‘Manners
Makyth Man’. He is survived by Elizabeth,
his wife of 63 years and their two daughters
and a son.
Christopher Hanby Baillie Reynolds (Coll,
35-40): died 3.4.2015 aged 92. Son of EBR
(Coll, 06-10), brother of FMBR (F, 46-51)
and father of THBR (C, 67-71). Co Prae,
Moore Stevens Prize. He was the first person
to perform a piano concerto with the School
orchestra. Scholarship New College, Oxford
1940 2 Classics Mod 1942. Commissioned
Rifle Brigade 1942, with whom he served in
Italy 1943-45, and then later on the staff of
Supreme Allied Commander South East
Asia in Ceylon 1945. He returned to New
College 3 Lit Hum 1948, MA 1951. School
of Oriental and African Studies, London
1949, 1 Sinhalese 1953. He remained on the
staff at SOAS as a lecturer 1953-57. In 2003,
at the age of 81, he published A Maldivian
Dictionary, all prepared in the Maldivian
Dhivehi font ready for the printers. He was a
bass in the Bach Choir for 54 years, a record,
from 1949-2003. It was whilst attending
Music Camp that he developed his single
most outstanding skill as an accompanist,
covering over the mistakes of the singer with
never a word of criticism. Yet he wore his
learning lightly. He never made one feel the
less because he knew so much more about
any cultural subject. Married 1952 Jane
Willett-Batten (died after 56 years of
marriage in 2008). He is survived by their
three sons and a daughter.
23
Christopher Roy Pinsent (D, 36-40): died
19.8.2015 aged 93. He joined the RAF
1941, with whom he served until 1945.
Camberwell School of Art 1946-48. He
embarked on a career teaching Art: first
taught at Charterhouse and finally as a
lecturer back at Camberwell 1962-86. He
succeeded his father as the 3rd Baronet in
1978. He is survived by Susan, his wife of
63 years.
Philip Arthur Whitcombe (B, 36-41): died
11.8.2015 aged 92. Son of PSW (B, 1907-11)
and father of RJW (B, 69-73). 3rd
generation of Wykehamists, father to son.
Head of House, Lords 1940-41. Royal
Artillery Course Edinburgh University
1941. Commissioned, Royal Artillery 1942
and served with 6 RHA on D Day and NW
Europe 1944; he joined 6th Airborne
Division and went right through Germany
to the Baltic, where they met up with
Russian soldiers. Christ Church, Oxford
1947-49, History War BA 1949, MA 1954.
Oxford University Cricket 1947-49, OU
Fives 1949. Gentlemen v Players 1948. In
1948, he bowled out Len Hutton twice in a
week before he dismissed Don Bradman for
6. Later in life he was a member of the
winning Cricketer Cup side against the Old
Tonbridgians in 1970. He first worked for
P&O Steam Navigation Company 194958, serving in the Far East 1950-54. He
then became a highly successful sheep
farmer in Surrey and Hampshire. Suffolk
Sheep Society 1970-80. Hon Treasurer,
National Sheep Association 1973-89.
President, Southdown Sheep Society 2005.
President, Free Foresters Cricket Club
1992-2004, for whom he wrote the History
of The Free Foresters 1856-2006. His last
word on earth was, memorably, ‘Bradman’.
Married 1954 Rosemary Colville (died after
55 years of marriage in 2009). He is
survived by their son and daughter.
Henry Kenyon Padfield (D, 37-41): died
8.4.2015 aged 91. Father of NLP (D, 66-71).
French Prize, School IV (cox). Gonville
and Caius, Cambridge 1942. Commissioned
Welsh Guards, with whom he served in
France and Belgium 1944. POW for the last
five months of the war, when he perfected
NO.120
his German. Retired Major 1947. Rather
than returning to Cambridge he visited the
USA to learn about insurance. Member of
Lloyds 1950. He returned to join Bevington
Vaizey and Foster. He became a reinsurance
broker: Chairman and Managing Director
Henry K Padfield & Co from 1969. He
ended his career as a board member of
Wigham Poland. He suffered from the
Lloyds crash but stuck it out. An excellent
golfer playing off 3, he was a member of the
Royal and Ancient Golf Club and Royal St
George’s. He served on the Rogate Parish
Council. He lived his life by the phrase ‘My
word is my bond.’ Married (1) 1950
Elizabeth Griffiths (died 1984), (2) 1985
Daphne Kyke, who survives him with two
sons from his first marriage.
Nigel William Lillingston (K, 38-42): died
2.7.2015 aged 91. Son of GGL (K, 06-10)
and brother of HAL (K, 39-43). Gold
Medal for Gymnastics. RMC OCTU (Belt
of Honour). Commissioned Royal Scots
Greys 1944, Normandy 1944 (seriously
wounded), BAOR 1945, Staff Captain
GHQ India under Field Marshal Sir Claude
Auchinleck. Demobbed 1947. Before
emigrating to Canada in 1952 he farmed
and worked for Fisons Pest Control Ltd
1950-52. From 1954-66 he ran a successful
yacht-chartering business in Nassau,
Bahamas, during which time he was
shipwrecked in the middle of a hurricane.
In 1969, whilst on holiday in New Zealand,
he suffered an aneurism, from which he
only partially recovered. But he built up and
ran a very successful waste-paper business,
which he ran on his own and was able to
make substantial donations to local schools
to enable then to send their pupils to
overseas athletics events. He is survived by
Mary, his wife of 60 years.
Michael William Drury Brace
(E, 38-43): died 8.7.2014. Son of AGB
(A, 1899-04). Head of House, Athla
Colours 1942. After a serious illness he
served in the RAFVR 1943-47 and later
with the Pembrokeshire Yeomanry 1952-58.
He attended Agricultural College before
becoming a farming student in Eversham
and then farm manager at Cosheston Home
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Farm. In 1959 he took the tenancy of
Thomas Chapel farm and set up a dairyfarming enterprise, which he ran until his
retirement in 1994. Branch Chairman of
Narberth NFU. He was also founder
member of Narberth Grasslands Society. He
was deeply involved with the Council for
the Protection of Rural Wales, of which he
was Chairman. In 1990 he published a
definitive history of CPRW. He is survived
by Daphne, his wife of 60 years, and their
two sons and a daughter.
Ian Claude Montgomerie Beckwith (K, 3843): died 28.2.2015 aged 90. RAF 1943-47
earning his wings before the war ended. New
College 1948. Qualified as a solicitor 1951.
As a friend and adviser to all his clients he
was much loved by his partners and office
workers. His love of the Dorset hills and
coastline continued throughout his life. The
son of a priest, he was appreciated as a
sidesman and church warden. Survived by
Kay, his wife of 60 years.
Ronald (Ronnie) Patrick Thorburn (A, 3943): died 11.4.2015. Brother of AMT (A,
33-38) and proud grandfather of APR Holt,
who arrived in A House in 2012. He
developed osteomyelitis in his hip aged
seven and he underwent another operation
when he was 14, which was no more
successful. This disability meant that he
could not take part in organised sport, but it
gave him the opportunity to indulge in
what was to become a lifelong passion –
fishing. Pembroke College, Cambridge
1944, 2 Estate Management 1947. He first
worked as Assistant Factor to the Duke of
Buccleuch before becoming a self-employed
land agent and farmer. His other passion
was racing. He was not only a successful
owner and a steward at several Scottish
racecourses but also chairman of Perth
Racecourse for six years 1991-96. During
this time he oversaw a considerable
improvement not only in the standard of
racing but also in the facilities at the
racecourse. For six years he was a member of
the Perth Council. He valued his
friendships with local shepherds and
farmers. Married (1) 1964 Margaret
Mitchell (marriage dissolved) and (2) 1987
24
Rosie Leveson-Gower, who survives him
with two daughters and a son.
John Alastair Fergusson (H, 40-45): died
8.3.2015. VI, Duberley Prize. RNVR 194547. Magdalen College, Oxford, 3PPE BA
1950. He first worked for Thomas Ferguson
& Co in Northern Ireland 1950 and then
Helbert Wagg & Co bankers 1952-56. He
then embarked on a career in the Stock
Exchange, partner with Read, Hurst-Brown
& Co and Rowe & Pitman. Following a
very successful career in the City he retired
at the ludicrously early age of 49. His great
passion was his garden: he was particularly
proud of his vegetables and his scissorperfect grass tennis court. He was a keen if
stylishly unusual skier and was described as
determinedly politically incorrect, mildly
eccentric, loyal and incredibly funny.
Married 1952 Judith Barry, with whom he
celebrated a Golden Wedding Anniversary
before she died in 2007. Survived by their
three daughters.
Ralph Jordan Dodds (F, 41-46): died
24.5.2015. RMAS 1947-48. Commissioned
into 13th/18th Royal Hussars, with whom
he served in MELF 1948-49 and Malaya and
Korea 1949-53. Mentioned in Despatches
1953. BAOR 1954. Adjutant Warwicks
Yeomanry 1955. Resigned 1958. He then
worked as an insurance broker, first with
Bray Gibb & Co from 1958. Underwriter,
Lloyd’s 1964-97. With Stewart Wrightson
until 1983. Joined Willis Faber & Dumas
1983, director 1989. Retired in 1990. He
succeeded his father to the baronetcy in
1973. He engaged with his community and
was always attentive to people and friends.
He is survived by Marion, his wife of 60
years, and their two daughters.
Michael Cope Lloyd (B, 43-47): died
2.5.2015. RMAS 1948, Commissioned
13th/18th Hussars 1949 but he left the
Army early. An uncertain business career
followed, reaching its most bizarre moment
when working for the Greater London
Council: he was put in charge of the
entirely theoretical plan to build a
motorway slap through the centre of
London. He learned to love the horse and
NO.120
rode in the Grand National, only to pull up
at the second fence; he continued to ride
out for the Balding stables well into his 70s.
Every year he would tackle the hardest runs
in the Alps and the Rockies into his 80s
until no insurance company would cover
him. But still there was something quite
different that appealed to him too –
stillness, quiet and his own company.
Photographing birds was a strong centre of
gravity. And then there was sculpture –
horses mainly but also human figures.
Always a gentleman, he became ever more
so in his 80s. He never married.
David Kingston (Coll, 43-48): died
19.6.2015. He was brought into this world
by a young gynaecologist, Bill Gilliott, who
29 years to the day later did the same for the
Prince of Wales. He sang Bach under the
formidable direction of Sydney Watson.
National Service, Royal Signals. Scholar,
Christ’s College, Cambridge, 2 Natural
Science BA 1952. He then embarked on a
long and successful career with the Medical
Research Council, first with the Central
Public Health Laboratory 1953-67, then the
Rheumatism Unit 1967-76 and finally the
Clinical Research Centre 1976-93. He
commuted 30 miles on a motor bike for 10
years and drove to Moscow for a medical
conference. On retirement he undertook a
Fine Art course at the Open University. In
his final years he attended church at St Mary
Magdalene Church, Great Hampden, where
he had pumped the organ as a boy. Married
1970 Anne Hohler (died 1981). He is
survived by their two sons and a daughter.
David John Buckley Rutherford (D, 44-48):
died 26.6.2015. VIII 1947-48 President.
National Service, 9th Lancers 1949. Trinity
College, Cambridge, 3 History 1953, MA
1960. He rowed for 1st and 3rd Trinity and
was a member of Leander Club. He joined
the wine trade in 1953, working for
Rutherford, Osborne & Perkin, taken over
by Martini & Rossi in 1969 when he
became Director of External Affairs.
Chairman, Wine and Spirit Association
1974-76 and 1988-89. Appointed OBE for
services to the wine trade 1987. Chairman,
Fédération International des Vins et
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Spiritueux 1989-91. Master of the Vintners’
Company 1994-95. For his services to the
European wine trade he was rewarded with
the French Ordre National du Mérite 1976
and the Ordre du Mérite Agricole 1991. He
joined the City of London Yeomanry and
had memories of serving sausages to the
Queen Mother and falling off Safety Pin, his
horse, at a rehearsal for the Lord Mayor’s
Show. He drove sports cars and motor bikes
round tracks, looped the loop with the Red
Arrows and skied with the Kandahar. In his
retirement, he was a strong supporter of his
wife’s activities – Art for Youth and the Art
Fund. Married 1959 Elisabeth Thierry-Mieg,
who survives him with their three daughters.
Andrew Neil Paterson (E, 45-50): died
18.4.2015. Brother of JBP (Coll, 42-47). He
set up a dance band which played at the
School Leavers’ Dance during the
professional band’s breaks. National Service,
RASC in Austria, where he was in charge of
a civilian transport platoon 1951-53.
Pembroke College, Cambridge, Modern
Languages, MA 1960. He then began a
career in advertising and marketing, first as a
trainee with Reckitt & Colman (Overseas)
Ltd 1956. Then Senior Marketing Executive
Pritchard, Wood & Partners 1960, followed
by Marketing Manager Charles Kinloch &
Co 1966, and then his own one-man
business operated from his home. Managing
Director National Carpet and National
Furniture Index 1970. He was Governor,
later Clerk, Thomas Martyn’s Foundation,
an educational charity, 1978-2011. He was a
Freeman of the City of London and of the
Company of Watermen and Lightermen of
the River Thames 1989. He was made an
Honorary Member of Lady Elizabeth Boat
Club (Trinity College, Dublin) 1974 and of
King’s College Boat Club (University of
London) 1976 for services and coaching. He
always retained his interest in music and
rowing and made his own 8mm films of his
holidays abroad and of rowing events. He
did not marry.
Nicholas Mrosovsky (H, 48-52): died
22.2.2015 in Canada. Exhibitioner, Sen Co
Prae. Art and Duberly Prizes. Captain of
Gymnā . Scholarship Honoris Causa
25
Magdalene College, Cambridge 2(1)
Chemistry, MA 1962. PhD Psychology,
University College, London. In 1967 he
joined the University of Toronto where he
remained as a member of the departments
of Zoology, Psychology and Physiology. A
member of the Royal Society of Canada, he
was recognised internationally for his
contribution to understanding the biology
of sea turtles. Field work on sea-turtle
nesting beaches was one of the greatest
pleasures of his many-faceted research
career. He was the author of numerous
scientific works, including Conserving Sea
Turtles 1991. He was an avid squash player,
a talented painter and lover of opera.
Married 1967 Sara Shettleworth, who
survives him with their son and daughter.
Richard Peter Booth (B, 48-52): died
22.6.2015. Senior House Prefect. He was a
linguist and during his National Service
with the Intelligence Corps he completed a
Russian course 1953-55. County
Scholarship, Gonville and Caius College,
Cambridge, 3 Econ and Law 1958. MA
1962. Before working for the International
Institute for Strategic Studies 1968-72, he
was an export executive with WogauBrameast Ltd 1961-64 and for British
American Optical Company Ltd 1965-69.
He then worked for the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute
1972-78. He was a Financial Planning
consultant 1979-92. Then, as part of his
service with the TA, he competed two tours
in Bosnia during the 90s. Married 1963
Claude Neyret (died 2008). He is survived
by their two daughters.
Rupert Henry George McCarthy (I, 48-53):
died 25.7.2015. Brother of NFMcC (I, 4550) and DRMcC (I, 50-55). Co Prae.
Commissioned into the 15th/19th Hussars
1954, with whom he first served in Malaya,
where his troop was selected to escort the
Chinese Communist leader Chin Peng to
peace talks with the High Commissioner,
and later in Northern Ireland and Cyprus,
where he commanded the regiment. He was
an instructor at the Staff College where he
was also Master of the Staff College
Draghounds 1973-75. He was the last
NO.120
Commander of the Training and Advisory
Team in Iran, to which he drove out right
across Europe and the Middle East, having
many of his possessions stolen from the car
en route, only to arrive shortly before the
revolution which toppled the Shah. He
organised the evacuation of the British
Embassy, which the mob were trying to set
on fire. His final posting was as Chief
Military Adviser to the UAE Armed Forces.
He retired as a Brigadier 1989. Throughout
he played cricket, captaining the Royal
Armoured Corps XI and playing for the
MCC, Yorkshire Gentlemen, Free Foresters
and I Zingari. He indulged his love of horses:
hunting, eventing, polo, point-to-points,
racing on the flat in Malaya and Germany
and the Hunter Chase at Sandown. Struck
down by a stroke aged 59, he did not allow
that to prevent him hacking out locally and
even touring India last year, with another
operation on the horizon. His optimism and
determination never deserted him.
Although he had a reputation for not
suffering fools gladly, he was very
understanding towards those that worked for
him. Survived by Annette, his wife of 55
years and their two daughters and a son.
Mark Ferguson (G, 49-54): died 2.3.2015.
Son of RF (G, 1911-15). Mons Officer
Cadet School VIII. National Service
1954-56 with the Royal Horse Artillery in
Egypt, where he was alleged to have
shelled his own headquarters due to a
mathematical error. He worked as a
stockjobber with Ferguson and Clark 1956
(amalgamated with CD Pinchin and Co
1961). Partner Pinchin Denny & Co.
Stock Exchange Council 1983-86. Retired
1986. Outside the City he had many
interests – most notably he was appointed
OBE 1990 for raising a phenomenal sum of
money for Great Ormand Street Hospital.
He then worked for the Samaritans. He
also worked for the Salmon and Trout
Association. He faithfully supported the
local community, serving as chairman of
the parish council. His garden was a
delight, to which he added the purchase of
an adjoining field, enabling him to plant a
deciduous wood, encouraging wild plants
and rare butterflies. He is survived by
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Celia, his wife of 49 years, and their
daughter and two sons.
Rupert Hugh Wilkinson (E, 49-54): died
21.12.2014. 3rd generation of
Wykehamists, father to son. He was
interned by the Japanese in the
Philippines 1942-45. National Service,
RAF Regiment 1955-57. Harvard, AB
(cum laude) 1961. Stanford, PhD History
1970. He was appointed to a lectureship at
Sussex University in 1966, became
Chairman of American Studies 1977 and
Professor in 1989, before retiring in 1999.
During his time at Sussex University he
set up a year-abroad scheme for American
Studies students. Published his first book,
The Prefects, 1964, of which The Times
review noted ‘similarities between the
wearers of the old school tie, Imperial
China’s Confucian system, the Jesuits and
the advertising tycoons’. He later wrote
several books about the American
character. In 2014 he wrote Surviving a
Japanese Internment. Throughout his life
he had an enquiring mind. Married 1965
Mary Pulman, who survives him with
their son and two daughters. Obituary in
The Guardian.
Christopher Ronald Sinclair (E, 49-51):
died 16.4.2015. He completed his education
at King’s, Canterbury. Exeter College,
Oxford. He worked in theatre management,
first with Birmingham Rep, Liverpool
Playhouse and then with the Royal Court,
London 1960-66. Then with broadcasting
and the media with Telex Monitors 196686. Finally he was director of Adcomm Ltd
1986-96. He was a keen golfer and loved his
cricket. Member of MCC. Married 1969
Penelope Springett (died 2015). He is
survived by their daughter.
Robin Stuart Colquhoun (C, 51-55): died
23.6.2015. Clare College, Cambridge, 2
Mechanical Science 1958, 3 Law 1959.
MA, FICE, FASCE, MIngF (Denmark). He
then embarked on a career as a civil
engineer of distinction in Africa, Denmark,
Norway, Sweden, the UAE and the UK.
For 32 years a specialist in offshore oil and
gas submarine pipelines. Chemical engineer
26
Danish North Sea Gas pipelines 1981.
Head of Marine Pipelines Division, Danish
Hydraulic Institute and board member
Naturgasgruppen, Copenhagen 1982-83.
Various companies in Norway, in Bergen,
Stavanger and Oslo 1983-88. European
Vice-President Wellstream Corporation,
Houston 1988-89. Subsea consultant,
Aberdeen 1990-2003 and in the UAE from
2003. He was a workaholic who was still
working until the day of his heart attack.
He set standards that are still used to this
day. Married (1) 1962 Vibeke Marsted
(marriage dissolved) (2) 2011 Wang Jing.
He is survived by the son and daughter of
his first marriage.
Arthur Edward Robin Manners (G, 51-56):
died 23.6.2015. Son of AGM (G, 21-27).
National Service, 10th Royal Hussars 195658. He later served with the Staffordshire
Yeomanry 1958-68, of which he later
became Honorary Squadron Colonel.
Trinity Hall, Cambridge 1958-61, 2(1)
Natural Sciences Part I 1960, 2(2) Law Part
II 1961. He then embarked on a long and
successful career in the brewing industry,
joining Bass, Mitchell & Butler in 1961.
During his time with Bass he was President
Bass Belgium 1979-81, Director of Brewing
1981-83 and finally as Director 1983-95.
Subsequently he served on the Employment
Appeal Tribunal 1995-2008. He was
Deputy Lieutenant, Staffordshire 1994 and
High Sherriff of Staffordshire 1998-99.
President, Staffordshire Agricultural
Society; Chairman, Young Enterprise in
Staffordshire, encouraging those in schools
to develop their entrepreneurial initiative,
and Chairman of Trustees for the William
Salt Library, during which time the appeal
far surpassed the target set for the
conservation of their precious books. He
was an awesome skier and long-time
member of Shifnal Golf Club. His core
values were that it was not just about
business, but also about people and their
wellbeing and being happy at work. Married
1966 Judith Johnston who survives him
with their two sons.
George William Richardson (I, 51-56):
died 18.2.2015. Son of AWR (I, 20-24).
NO.120
Fives 1955 and Lords 1956. National
Service, Royal Artillery 1956-58. He
played cricket for Derbyshire 1959-65
(Captain 1963). Best bowling figures of 8
for 54 against Kent and 14 wickets in the
match. Highest score 91 – he got out
because he had been told that he had six
balls left to score the fastest century of the
season! His son, Alastair, later played for
Derbyshire; in doing so he became the 3rd
generation of Richardsons to represent the
county. His grandfather captained the
team in the only year that they won the
County Championship, 1936. After
retiring from cricket he worked as a
partner in the family firm, W & J
Richardson, tanners and leather dressers in
Derby. He led the business until it was
closed in 1984. He was a member and
Chairman of Derbyshire County Cricket
Club. Chairman of Quarndon Parish
Council. Having retired early he
continued to enjoy classic sports cars, golf,
shooting and fishing. His approach to life
was summed up at Winchester when he
was asked to write a poem about cricket.
He wrote, ‘Rain stopped play, no game
today’. Married 1963 Margaret Train (died
2012). He is survived by their two sons.
David Eldon Scott (H, 52-57): died
16.6.2015. Son of HES (H, 20-26). He was
the 3rd generation of Wykehamists, father
to son. Cirencester Royal Agricultural
College, Diploma Agriculture. He was a
farmer, first at Encombe and then at
Blashenwell. He hosted the Great Fête at
Encombe House raising, many thousands
of pounds for the diocese and the parish.
For many years a magistrate at Wareham
and Wimborne. He always worked for the
community; he ran an excellent shoot and
he was a keen golfer. He was a fine country
gentleman who wanted to do things
because they were good things to do.
Unbeknownst to his family he won the
lottery and he used the winnings to pay for
a new boiler in the church. When asked if
he believed in God, he would say, ‘Well, I
do find that He can be a great help.’
Married 1966 Clover Noakes, who
survives him with their two sons.
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Hugh Rupert Courtenay, later Rt Hon the
Earl of Devon (H, 55-60): died 18.8.2015.
Son of CCC (I, 30-34). 3rd generation of
Wykehamists, father to son. Born on the
night after the Luftwaffe Baedeker Blitz on
nearby Exeter. Shooting VIII, Country Life
Cup. Magdalene College, Cambridge 196164, 2 Estate Management. Master of the
University Drag Hounds. Chartered
Surveyor (ARICS). Trained as land agent
with Lothian Estates. He then worked as an
agent of the Monteviot, Blickling Hall and
Broughton Castle estates, before returning
to Devon to work for Stratton & Holborow
in Exeter and take over the management of
Powderham. He worked tirelessly to make
Powderham Castle a viable commercial
operation. He restored the Victorian kitchen
and servants hall, for which he won the first
Lottery grant awarded to a private home. He
returned Powderham’s garden and deer park
to their 18th-century splendour and
developed a range of business ventures,
including the Powderham Country Store.
As a result Powderham became one of
Devon’s leading tourist attractions and
events venues. In 1993 it was chosen for the
filming of Remains of the Day. A galaxy of
star-studded performances followed,
including Sir Cliff Richard, Sir Tom Jones
and Sir Elton John. He became Honorary
Colonel of the Royal Devon Yeomanry, in
which he had served 1971-77. He was
President of the Devon Young Farmers and
Chairman, the Exeter Cathedral
Preservation Trust. Appointed Deputy
Lieutenant for Devon in 1991, he was ViceLord Lieutenant 2002-08. He succeeded his
father as 18th Earl of Devon in 1998. A
kindly and generous man, he could be seen
driving a combine harvester to relieve his
farm hands for a lunch break. Married 1967
Diana Wathertson who survives him with
their three daughters and a son.
Charles John Rice Nicholl (D, 56-57): died
20.3.2015. He completed his education at
Gordonstoun. He made his life in
Northumberland and became High Sherriff
of Northumberland in 1988-89. He is
survived by his wife Fiona Trotter.
27
Francis David Waddington Clarke (Coll,
59-64): died 5.4.2015. Nephew of WF
Oakeshott. Jun Cap Prae. K Freeman Prize.
Exhibitioner, King’s College, Cambridge,
2(1) Economics 1967. Liverpool University,
postgraduate degree, MCD, town planning.
He first worked as a planning assistant for
Luton County Borough Council. Assistant
solicitor, Trower Still & Keeling, Lincoln’s
Inn 1974-78. He then worked in the
Department of Transport as a legal assistant
before ending up as Senior Legal Assistant
1978-86. He then joined the Treasury
Solicitor’s Department as Senior Principal
Legal Assistant 1986-2005. A lifetime of
service to the Government legal system,
advising on legislation for the Channel
Tunnel, electricity privatisation and the
National Lottery. He had his first brush
with oesophageal cancer in 1991, but he
saw it off until it returned with a vengeance
23 years later. Married 1980 Susan Kelly,
who survives him.
We are aware of the following deaths and
will be including further information in the
next issue:
John Richard Manley (Co Ro, 78-98)
died 5.9.2015;
Michael James Ryall (I, 39-44)
died 2.9.2015;
Richard Edward Geoffrey Howe,
Lord Howe of Aberavon (E, 40-45) died
9.10.2015;
George Hamilton Ernle Money (G, 43-48)
died 16.9.2015;
James Frank Lafone Blamey (I, 44-49)
died 30.8.2015;
Henry Gerard Mather Leighton (K, 46-50)
died 26.8.2015;
Peter Hamilton Fulke Bullard (G, 47-51)
died 29.4.2015;
Robert Nicholas Philipson-Stow (F, 50-55)
died 28.9.2015;
James Anthony Vaughan Dobbs (D, 51-56)
died 4.9.2015;
Nicholas Arthur Hugh Wright (G, 53-58)
died 31.8.2015.
■
Erratum:
TS119: JAC Maitland (G, 68-72): Susanna
Maitland’s correct maiden name was Helm
Barker.
NO.120
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Winchester College Society
Office
73 Kingsgate Street
Winchester
SO23 9PE
Telephone:
01962 621217
01962 621215
Facsimile:
E-mail:
[email protected]
Web site:
www.wincollsoc.org
Directors:
Lorna Stoddart
Alex Roe (G, 72-75)
Dep. Director: Tamara Templer
Don Assoc:
Michael Wallis
(also Director of The Friends )
The Council
Simon Toynbee (D, 57-62)
Nat Hone (F, 68-72)
Alex Roe (G, 72-75) – Director of Win
Coll Soc
Winston Ginsberg (I, 81-85)
Paul Cleaver (H, 85-90)
Alasdair Maclay (Coll, 86-91) - Chairman
Michael Humbert (B, 90-95)
Mark Toone (E, 90-95)
Ed Matthews (K, 91-96)
Freddie Bjorn ((H, 95-00)
Conrad Griffin (I, 04-09)
Dr Ralph Townsend - Headmaster
Lorna Stoddart - Director of Development
Tamara Templer - Deputy Director of
Development
Michael Wallis - Don Associate and Director
of The Friends
From the Director
The Goddard Legacy Society
Win Coll Soc is on the move!
After 15 years as Chairman, RT Fox
(A, 50-55) has handed over the baton to
DWL Fellowes (I, 63-67). There are
now 253 members of ‘Goddard’, with
135 members and partners attending a
most enjoyable Goddard Day on 12th
September (see below). This record
turnout bears witness to Robin’s hard
work and success at creating and
growing this vital part of Win Coll Soc.
The School is most grateful and, indeed,
delighted that Robin should have
accepted the rather less arduous role of
Honorary President of the Society.
Since time immemorial Win Coll Soc
and its predecessor Wyk Soc have
inhabited parts of 17 College Street,
above Cornflowers, and Wellington
House. We have now moved to the
recently-refurbished 73 Kingsgate Street
(known to previous generations as
Vince’s Shop). All OWs are most
welcome to test out our brand new coffee
machine and, with a little notice, the
Director can probably be persuaded to
procure some of KPO’s excellent
doughnuts!
All OWs, parents and other readers who
are thinking of leaving a legacy are
encouraged to make contact with the
Director or David Fellowes; the process
is almost completely pain-and-tax-free!
Any who have already included the
School in their will, but have not yet
joined Goddard or informed Win Coll
Soc, are asked to consider doing so
Telephone numbers and email addresses
remain unchanged; snail-mail address is 73
Kingsgate Street, Winchester, SO23 9PE.
TEN SEN MEN
AGCF Campbell Murdoch (C, 24-29)
Lt. Col. The Lord [GNC] Wigram
MC (H, 28-34)
BB King (Coll, 30-35)
TA Bird DSO, MC (E, 32-36)
JI Watson OBE, DL (F, 31-37)
MJP Martin DFC, AFC (F, 32-38)
CJD Haswell (K, 32-37)
Dr AI Spriggs (D, 33-38)
PNB Howell (D, 32-38)
PM Juttman-Johnson TD (C, 33-38)
Old: 17 College Street
Outgoing Chairman, Robin Fox
28
New: 73 Kingsgate Street
NO.120
The 2015 Telephone Campaign
Winchester College is immensely
gratefully to the OWs and parents who
took part in this summer’s Telephone
Campaign. Over £220,000 was raised in
support of the Annual Fund, with 14
young OW callers, who were based in
Science School, speaking to nearly 1,000
OWs, parents and past parents. The
money raised will help to support a variety
of projects in the forthcoming year,
including bursaries.
It is important to remember that it is not
only the School that benefits from the
Campaign: it also provides a wonderful
opportunity for the callers, all recent
leavers, to take full advantage of the wealth
of experience on offer when talking to
members of the Wykehamical community.
This year, a Fellow, Andrew Joy (C, 70–74)
was our generous challenge donor and
‘Campaign Champion’ who visited the call
room and motivated the young OWs.
As in 2014 the most successful caller
received a week’s internship at Sky, thanks
to Nick Ferguson (C, 61–66). This helped
significantly with the recruitment process
and of course added an element of focus
and healthy competition! This year
Marcus Scott (F, 10–15) was the welldeserving recipient.
Thank you so much to all of you who rose
to the challenge for supporting the work
of the School; and to the callers for
working so hard.
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Visiting Win Coll – security
arrangements
OWs and Don Soc members are always
most welcome, but we have been asked by
the Security Committee to remind those
who wish to visit the School (other than
for an event, when the instructions issued
may be different, and also when visiting as
a spectator at matches) that they must
telephone in advance of their planned
visit: 01962 621227, [email protected].
They should arrive at the Porters’ Lodge
and not enter by any other gate and will
be asked to produce identification and
sign the OW or Don Soc Visitors books;
they will be issued with a Visitors’ badge
and lanyard, to be worn conspicuously
during their visit, please, and returned as
they leave through the same gate, and a
map showing areas of the School that may
be visited. Unfortunately times have
changed: Safeguarding and Child
Protection regulations become ever
tighter and OWs and ex-staff are no
longer allowed to come and go at will.
Formal tours can be arranged through the
Enterprises Office:
[email protected].
WoW
A sister of one of the guides made this
woollen likeness of the Founder. It used to
sit on top of the Xmas tree in the
Enterprises office!
Win Coll Soc Events June 2015
to mid-October 2015
Parents’ Summer Party: on 27th May,
months of hard work by the Parents’
Events Committee, headed by Aisling
Sykes and her deputy Helena Stranack,
bore fruit when 300 gathered in a huge
beautifully decorated marquee in Meads.
After welcoming speeches from the
Director, Tamara Templer and the
Headmaster, the guests tucked into a
delicious dinner while being cajoled into
bidding for the auction, with gadgetry
29
A Potty Question
The Archivist enquires: Can anyone help to
determine what a chamber pot found in
Hopper’s and labelled as the ‘Win. Co. Ba.
Ba. Po.’ was awarded for? It was in
Hopper’s when Rob Wyke took over as
Housedon – we know nothing about it.
Possibly the ‘Ba. Ba. Po’ was awarded as a
House
prize of
some sort,
hopefully
nothing
relating to
the
original
purpose of the pot! If anyone has any idea,
please could they contact the archivist,
Suzanne Foster by email at
[email protected].
NO.120
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
provided by Jumblebee, and the 11 House
raffle prizes, all generously donated.
Entertainment in the shape of a singing
cook and two waiters (we were fooled for
but a moment) stirred up the audience – a
conga was danced and napkins waved. All
agreed that it had been an excellent
evening and £58,000 was raised towards
the improvement of the School’s sporting
facilities.
Above: Libiamo ne’ lieti calici
Left: Aisling Sykes…
Below: … and her Parents’ Events Committee and
Tamara Templer
30
NO.120
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Winchester Match: on Saturday, 20th
June, 2015, the third Winchester Match
proved a huge success, despite the humid
and overcast conditions, with thunder
clouds swirling around. ‘That was an
amazing day with such variety and all
beautifully organized – a very good
development’, wrote one OW, summing
up the views of many who appreciated all
the activities and the delicious lunch for
200 served up by Viv, Jun and Joyce from
the Win Coll Catering Team. Hubert
Doggart managed to sell out of Cricket’s
Bounty; Lords (282) beat OWs (175),
with Captain Dan Escott (Coll) scoring
179; and 2nd XI, a side who had only
passed 100 on two or three occasions this
season, won a remarkable match by one
wicket with three balls to spare, scoring
262 in reply to 259. 18th June 2016 is a
date for your diary.
Dan Escott
A proud Malcolm Archer
Hubert finds new readers
31
NO.120
Parents’ Domum Dinner: on Saturday,
4th July, 2015, 260 Leavers’ Parents
enjoyed drinks in the Warden’s Garden
with their sons, the Warden, Headmaster
and dons, while Cornflowers Shop stall
did excellent business selling memorabilia
to Leavers’ mothers. The Warden and
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Headmaster briefly addressed the
gathering before attending Domum
Dinner with Leavers in College Hall; and
the Parents dined with their sons’
Housedons, wives and matrons in the
marquee on Meads, where they were
welcomed by Alex Roe, Director of the
Heather and Clare from Cornflowers do good business
32
Winchester College Society. They then
gathered silently in Chamber Court to
listen to ‘Domum’ being sung by their
sons, who then descended College Hall
staircase for the last time to mark an
emotional end to their career in the
School.
NO.120
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
10 Years-on in Peckham: when he is not
the OWFC 1st XI Captain, Dave Prichard
(I, 00-05) is also a mighty good partyorganiser! On Friday, 31st July, 28 intrepid
members of the Class of ‘05, plus the
Director who had previously thought that
Peckham Rye was a whiskey, made their
way to south-east London to a pop-up
restaurant at The Old Bakery, Barry Road.
All were agreed that it was an excellent
and extremely relaxed evening and a
format that should be repeated.
Goddard Day 2015: on 12th September
a record number of Goddard members
and their partners assembled for Chapel,
drinks and lunch in the recently
refurbished New Hall. They were
welcomed by outgoing Goddard
Chairman Robin Fox (A, 50-55), who has
now handed over the baton to David
Fellowes (I, 63-67), and by the
Headmaster, whose address in Chapel and
speech after lunch gave much food for
thought. Food of a physically rather than
morally nourishing kind was, as ever,
supplied by Viv Nutbeam and her team.
Robin Fox and Graham Hill
Julia Van der Noot and Shane Gough
Jonathan Taylor and David Hannay
Cathy Townsend and Peter Luttman-Johnson
33
NO.120
40 Years-on Reunion: on Tuesday, 22nd
September, 41 OWs from the classes of
’74, ’75 & ’76 gathered at the Cavalry and
Guards Club. On one of his first public
outings in his new post, the Second
Master Nick Wilks gave an amusing
account of his first impressions after two
weeks in the job. David Anderson (Coll,
69-74), hotfoot from running a successful
Win Coll vs OWs sailing weekend at
Seaview, replied on behalf of the guests.
David was also keen to point out that,
although he was mentioned twice on the
1974 Long Roll (on show for the
evening), he had actually left the School
by then – was this a record? A most
enjoyable evening closed with Professor
Francis Pott (C, 71-75) playing a few bars
on the Club piano.
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Wesley Kerr and Simon Taylor
Above:
Martin Owton and
Simon Smith
Above:
Charlie Kirwan-Taylor and David King
Left:
Adam Thynne and
Andrew Dyckhoff
Left:
George Tindley and Philip Blackwell
34
NO.120
50 Years-on Reunion: on Tuesday, 29th
September, 42 OWs from the classes of
’64, ’65 & ’66 gathered at the Cavalry and
Guards Club. Charles Sinclair (B, 61-66) ,
Nick Ferguson (C, 61-66) and Robert
Woods (G, 60-64) provided a strong
representation from GoBo, with Robert
speaking on behalf of the home team to
encourage all OWs to become involved in
the management of their local schools as
well as supporting Win Coll. Bruce
Dinwiddy (C, 59-64) replied on behalf of
the guests.
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Nick Ferguson and Chris Mallows
David Jenkins and Willaim Northcott
Charles Mitchell and Clive Tulloch
Charles Sinclair
35
NO.120
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
OW Brooks’s Club Members Dinner:
thanks to the generosity and
organisational skills of John Robins (G,
52-56) and Simon Thorn (D, 79-84; Co
Ro, 92-93; 15-), 40 members of Brooks’s
and their OW guests gathered on Monday
5th October. The Warden, Charles
Sinclair (B, 61-66), addressed the
assembled company about the state of the
School: a lively debate ensued on the pros
and cons of admitting girls!
25-45s Dinner: on Tuesday, 6th October,
a grand night was had by some 50 OWs in
the Cavalry and Guards club. A double
whammy of superb speeches from Nick
Salwey (B, 82-86; Co Ro 02-) and André
Sokol (D, 85-90) lit up the evening. The
highlight of the occasion, however, was a
lusty yet dirge-like rendition in true up-tohouse style of ‘Happy Birthday’ sung to
Nikhil Venkateswaran (I, 84-89). Let’s do
it all again next year!
Happy Birthday Nikhil !
Rahul Mehta and James Menhinick
Mathew Tsui and William Gregory
Coralie Ovenden
Charles Coles and Tom Reid
36
NO.120
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
OW Annual Guild Dinner: on
Wednesday, 21st October, 51 OW guild
members gathered at the Cavalry and
Guards Club and were welcomed by Alex
Roe. Guest speaker Charles StewartSmith (G, 74-79) entertained the
assembled company on ‘START UP,
BUILD UP, SELL UP – Lessons from a
Philite who built and sold some PR
businesses’. A good discussion followed
and there was a consensus that this Guild
Dinner is a very worthwhile event.
OW Bristol & Bath Dinner: on 23rd
October, 2015 the OW Bristol & Bath
Dinner was held for the first time at the
magnificent Merchants’ Hall in Clifton,
Bristol, chaired by Dayrell McArthur
(I, 59-64) and organised by George
Fellowes (G, 93-98). Fine wine and food
were served under enormous glittering
Charles Stewart-Smith, OW Guilds Dinner guest speaker
37
NO.120
chandeliers and the Warden spoke after
dinner on the current strategy, successes
and challenges of the College. His finely
constructed speech provoked much
thought and discussion amongst the 47
guests, among whom were ladies, for the
first time in the dinner’s over-200-year
history. We greatly enjoyed their company
and welcome them back for the Bath
Dinner 2016, further details to follow.
Please come and join us.
Hong Kong Guild
Paul Tao (I, 1980-85), Chairman, reports:
The Guild has been busy this year: on 3rd
April we had a Sotheby’s pre-auction event,
hosted by Alex Kaung (A, 86-91), and on
13th May a whisky tasting at Bonham’s, run
by Fergus Fung (E, 89-94).
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Antipodean OW Dinners
Patrick Medley (G, 70-74) records:
OWs who have made it to the Antipodes
and now call Australia home have been
gathering at a couple of recent dinners.
The first, very kindly hosted by Jonathan
Sanders (A, 70-74) at the Royal South
Yarra Lawn Tennis Club in Melbourne on
17th September, 2015, was attended by
Michael Parkinson (D, 56-61), Simon
McCall (B, 58-63), Steb Fisher (B, 67-71),
and James Laing (D, 86-91). A wonderful
evening of reminiscing, good food and
great wine was enjoyed by all. A second
dinner was held at the Royal Sydney
Yacht Squadron in Sydney on 24th
September, 2015, and was attended by
Martin Tattersall (C, 54-59), John
Swainston (G, 63-67), Mike Harrison
(I, 68-72), Julian Crawford (K, 70-75),
Following a Golf Day on 19th June,
chaired by Harold Ma (E, 86-91), dinner
was held at the the DwB clubhouse. It was
fascinating to see OWs from different
generations sharing stories and
experiences under different Headmasters
and Housedons, with the topics ranging
from Win Co Fo and House Pussies to
Sen Co Praes. The wives who attended
must have been wondering what we were
going on about!
We have also received a couple of OW
visitors during their trips to Hong Kong
and put them in touch with members.
Nicholas Robb (E, 73-77), Huw Jones
(A, 77-82), Ian Greet (Coll, 79-84),
Simon Readhead (A, 89-94), Alex
Maycock (B, 91-96) and Stephen Tang
(A, 92-97). With the reasonable split
between Houses and Commoners at the
Sydney dinner, a hot was held. At both
dinners, we were joined by a number of
spouses, who were able to get a brief feel
about our time at the School. In the
reminiscing during the dinners, everyone
commented on the power of the broad
education that the School gave us – not
just the sports, arts, handicrafts and CCF,
but also the real value of Div.
A further dinner of OWs based in New
Zealand was held at the Royal New
Zealand Yacht Squadron on 22nd October,
2015. In attendance were Bryden Black
(C, 64-68), Nigel Blake (E, 68-72), Bill
L to R in Sydney: Crawford, Readhead, Jones, Tang, Maycock, Tattersall, Medley, Robb, Harrison, Greet, Swainston
The dinner at the the DwB clubhouse
It’s hot in Sydney!
38
NO.120
Baldock (G, 70-75), Richard Worker
(G, 72-75), Toby Fiennes (D, 74-78), Matt
Robinson (H, 81-86) and Peter Hadden
(D, 88). Again, a wonderful evening of
reminiscing that was enjoyed by everyone,
including the many spouses who attended.
As three of the OWs in attendance had
flown in from Christchurch, and one from
Wellington, there was some debate as to
where the next dinner should be held. The
Rugby World Cup was not discussed! A
hot was held, though with the significant
bias towards Commoners, it was agreed
that some participants should ‘cross the
floor’. Patrick Medley (G, 70-74), the
nominal coordinator of the Australasian
Guild, attended all three dinners.
Chapel Choir news
Angus Benton, one of our Quiristers, has
won the 2015 BBC Young Chorister of
the Year competition. The final was at St.
Martin-in-the-Fields on Monday, 12th
October.
Forthcoming Chapel Choir events:
Thursday, 12th November – John Rutter’s
70th Birthday concert, together with The
Temple Church Choir, at The Temple
Church, London. 7.30pm; recorded by
Classic FM.
Recording of the Classic FM Carol
Concert in the College Chapel, for
transmission over the Christmas period.
Monday, 14th December – The Quiristers
broadcast the BBC Radio 4 Daily Service
from Emmanuel Church, Didsbury,
Manchester and record Benjamin
Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols for future
transmission on BBC radio.
Friday, 12th February – Bach’s St. John
Passion: Winchester College Chapel
Choir together with Eton College Chapel
Choir and the Academy of Ancient
Music in St. John’s, Smith Square,
London. 7.30pm; tickets from Box Office
020 7222 1061.
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
New Zealand OWs from L to R: Black, Worker, Baldock, Robinson, Blake, Hadden, Medley, Fiennes
Cantores Episcopi:
Cantores took part in the King’s Singers
Summer School at Royal Holloway in
July: this was after two successful days of
recording in the College Chapel – a new
CD is due out for Christmas, entitled Steal
Away Home: Folksongs and Spirituals. This
will be a lovely disc of some wonderful
arrangements, celebrating the folksong
and spiritual tradition.
Winchester College Register – or
Wykehamist Who’sWho
If you have not already bought a copy of
the Seventh Edition of this hard-back
volume, which contains career details, if
provided, of all living OWs and dons,
excluding the most recent arrivals, now is
the time to put this right and discover
what your contemporaries got up to!
these make excellent presents for
Wykehamists of all ages, including leavers.
The books themselves are available at
£10, to those wishing to
complete their
set, as is the
slip-case,
though should
you wish to
purchase the
full set of books
and the slipcase, this will
cost only £35.
The cost of
postage will be
assessed with each order. Please contact
Kate Ross should you wish to place an
order ([email protected]).
Please read the following carefully:
To order a copy please send a cheque for
£40, payable to Winchester College, to
Kate Ross at the Win Coll Soc office.
All from the Same Place
We have full sets of Malcolm Burr (C, 4651)’s superb trilogy of books: All from the
Same Place, More from the Same Place and
Yet More from the Same Place, bound
respectively in blue, red and brown – and
also a useful and appealing slip-case to
hold all three editions. We are finding that
39
CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT
All data on Old Wykehamists, parents and others is
securely held in the Winchester College Society
database and will be treated confidentially for the
benefit of the Society, its members and Winchester
College. The data is available to the Win Coll Soc
office and, upon appropriate application from its
membership, to recognised societies, sports and other
clubs associated with the School. Data is used for a full
range of alumni activities, including the distribution of
Win Coll Soc and other School publications,
notification of events and the promotion of any
benefits and services that may be available. Data may
also be used for fundraising programmes, but may not
be passed to external commercial or other
■
organisations, or sold on auction sites.
NO.120
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Dates for your Diary
2015:
10th December – Illuminā: on Meads.
2016:
29th January – Under 25s Dinner: at the
Army & Navy Club, Pall Mall.
27th February – XVs: Commoners vs.
OTH: kick off at 2.30pm on College
Canvas.
27th February – 40 Years-on Reunion
Dinner for the Classes of ’75,’76 &’77: in
Winchester after XVs; tea, Div hour in
Chantry, drinks, Chapel etc.
12th March – VIs: Commoners vs. OTH:
kick off at 2.30pm on College Canvas.
12th March – 50 Years-on Reunion
Lunch for the Classes of ’65,’66 & ’67: in
Winchester after a Div hour in Chantry;
Drinks and Lunch before VIs, followed by
tea.
13th March – Laying up of Life Guards
Standard – parade and Chapel service: in
Winchester.
17th March – 20 Years-on reunion Dinner
for Classes of ’95, ’96 & ’97: at the
Cavalry and Guards Club in London.
20th March – OW Win Co Fo
Tournament: in Winchester.
24th April – Don Soc Lunch: in
Winchester.
9-12th May – OW Great War
Commemorative visit to the Somme
battlefield.
26th May – Parents’ Summer Drinks
Party: in London.
18th June
Winchester Match:
Ticketed lunch on New Field;
OWCC v. Lords and 2nd XI.
2nd July – Domum.
9th September – Wykeham Patrons
Annual Dinner: in Winchester.
10th September – Goddard Day: in
Winchester.
22nd September – 30 Years-on Reunion
Dinner for the Classes of ’85, ’86 & ’87:
at the Cavalry and Guards Club in London.
24th – 28th September – Wykeham
Patrons trip to Spain: in the footsteps of
George Steer.
11th October – 65+ Years-on Reunion
Lunch for the Classes of 1951 and
onwards: at the Cavalry and Guards Club
in London.
11th October – Reception for Parents of
JP and MP men: at the Royal College of
Surgeons of England in London.
18th October – 25-45s Reunion Dinner:
at the Cavalry and Guards Club in London.
TBC – OW Bristol & Bath Dinner.
10th November – 60 Years-on Reunion
Lunch for the Classes of ’55, ’56 & ’57:
at the Cavalry and Guards Club in London.
TBC – Edinburgh Dinner.
1st December – Win Coll Soc Council
Dinner: at the Cavalry and Guards Club in
London.
9th December – Illuminā: on Meads
2017:
20th January – Under 25s Dinner: at the
Army & Navy Club, Pall Mall.
9th February – OW Guilds Dinner: at the
Cavalry and Guards Club in London.
27th April – 20 Years-on Reunion Dinner
for the Classes of ’96, ’97 and ’98: at the
Cavalry and Guards Club in London.
Future House 150th
Anniversaries:
In 2018: Kenny’s and Freddie’s,
In 2019: Chawker’s, Phil’s, Trant’s and
Hopper’s
You can register and pay online
for events
You can register and pay online for events. All
payments are processed through Blackbaud
Merchant Services which ensures the highest levels
of security are applied. You should be a registered
user of the website to book online for events. New
user registrations can take up to two days to be
processed if registration is completed over a
weekend. Register at www.wincollsoc.org
40
OW Great War
Commemorative visit
to the Ypres Salient
11th to 14th September,
2017
Michael Wallis (Chairman of the
WW1 Commemoration Committee) is
leading this trip and has already had to
make a provisional hotel reservation!
He has chosen the Hotel Ariane at the
heart of Ypres and a mortar shell
trajectory from the Cloth Hall and the
Menin Gate. However, the hotel can
hold these rooms only until 1st April,
2016: the pressure on all forms of
accommodation in and around Ypres is
extraordinary, given the up-coming
hundredth anniversary of the 3rd Battle
of Ypres and the taking of
Passchendaele. Even more
Wykehamists fought and died in the
battles around Ypres than on the
Somme in 1916.
The tour will cover all the main
Wykehamical battle sites: we will look
at the 2nd Battle of Ypres, the Messines
Ridge mines and 3rd Ypres. We will also
visit the largest German cemetery in the
Salient, retracing parts of Adolf Hitler’s
visit there in late June of 1940. Further
outline details are available from
[email protected].
Should you wish to be included in the
2017 Ypres battlefield tour, Michael will
need a non-refundable deposit of £50
per head so that he can secure this
accommodation. He appreciates that
asking for a deposit two years in
advance may seem over the top.
Cheques should be made payable to
‘Winchester College’ and sent the Win
Coll Soc office. A maximum of 50
places will be filled on a first-come, firstserved basis; from past experience of
such battlefield tours, they can be filled
within just a fortnight!