The Ship 2010/2011 - St Anne`s College

Transcription

St Anne’s College Record 2010 – 2011 - Number 100 - Annual Publication of the ASM
The Ship
2010/2011
St Anne’s College
Late 1950s: students outside 31 Banbury Road
2010 - 2011 St Anne’s College Record
Number 100
Annual Publication of the ASM
2010 - 2011 Committee
President: Jim Stanfield
Vice-President: Lesley Evans
Honorary Secretary: Pam Jones
Honorary Editor: Judith Vidal-Hall
Fellows’ Representative: Dr Francis Szele
Recent Graduates’ Representative: Jamie
Ballin
Ex Officio: Tim Gardam, Christine Foard,
Gina Beloff, Kate Davy
Until 2011: Simon Dumbill
Until 2013: Elisabeth Salisbury
Regional Development: Linda Richardson
Bristol & West Branch: Ann Revill
Cambridge Branch: Sue Collins
Kent Branch: Valerie Dean
London Branch: Clare Dryhurst
Midlands Branch: Jane Darnton
North East Branch: Gillian Pickford
North West Branch: Maureen Hazell
Oxford Branch: Jackie Ingram
South of England Branch: Ruth Le
Mesurier
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Contents
From the Editor
Wall plus the outbreak of World War II and all
importance of protecting the planet in this
that implied for the university. This year we
UN Decade of Biodiversity, someone is there.
have the gift of the centenary not only of The
A VERY PROPER ANNIVERSARY
Ship itself but also of the creation of the ASM
But anniversaries are not simply a matter of
Anyone looking at the past two issues of The
whose brainchild it was. It would be churlish
cosy nostalgia. As we celebrate 100 years of
Ship could be forgiven for thinking it’s
not to celebrate both. I enjoy the longer
our Association, we also look to the
obsessed with anniversaries. Not entirely
magazine.
challenges of the future, once again, as so
often in the past, centred around funding.
untrue: when some of the more obvious
ones present themselves, the temptation to
And then there are the extraordinary tales
The links between College and its members
take advantage of such events is
told by members of St Anne’s: whether it’s in
are as strong as ever; we shall do whatever is
considerable: it adds pattern and coherence
the theatre of war, at the cutting edge of the
necessary – as the Kitchen Suppers project
to an issue. Last year was a gift: the
latest developments in the media or
demonstrates so well.
twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin
engaged in raising our awareness of the
Judith Vidal-Hall (Bunting 1957)
Contents
Graduate degrees 2010
Gaudy and Alumni Weekend 2011
Oxford revisited
Nicola Blackwood
Changing course
Gaudy seminar 2010
Saving the earth: return to Ponmudi
Saving the earth: why bees matter
Saving the earth: after Darwin
Spring Event 2010
Humanities & Science: bridging the gap
Science & religion: of gods and men
Marjorie Reeves memorial lecture
Where it all began
Celebrating 100 years
1911–2011: Across the decades
From the Editor
ASM President’s report
From the Principal
From the Librarian
Thoughts on entering Oxford
From the Development Office
Governing Body
Fellows’ honours and appointments
Three poems
From the JCR
From the MCR
Finals results 2010
1
2
3
5
7
8
9
10
11
13
14
15
16
17
19
21
22
24
29
30
33
36
37
46
49
54
55
59
ASM regional branch reports
Kitchen Suppers
We were there: heroes to zeroes
Still there: Afghanistan
We were there: Ingram gift
Kazakhstan
A year in politics
New media meets old
Prize winning short story
On becoming Dorothy Sayers
Memories of my daughter
The Russell Taylor column
Alumnae news
Obituaries
Thanks to donors
71
75
76
78
81
82
84
86
88
90
93
96
99
103
112
Photographs (not credited inside):
THES; Page 2 – The Dining Hall designed by Gerald Banks; Page 7 – 1957
hostel rooms, 2 Bevington Road; Page 83 - Nazarbayev University Campus;
Unless credited otherwise, all archive images are from the St Anne’s
Gaudy celebration; Page 14 – The opening of Hartland House, May 1952; Page
Page 95 – Hartland House – the first stage; Back cover – Hartland House (full
collection
41 – Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster in the 1931 film Frankenstein;
image); Back cover top (from left to right) – 16 Ship Street, the Common
Cover and Header photo captions:
Page 59 – Outside 33 Banbury Road; Page 61 – Special degree day for women,
Room, Miss Ruth Butler with Anna Amrose in 1910, Students exiting Hartland
Front cover – Students outside the entrance to St Anne’s in 1959 Courtesy
1920; Page 63 – St Anne’s Tutors in 1943; Page 64 – Students studying in their
House in 1959, An undergraduate room in the Wolfson Building in the 1960s.
w w w. s t- a n n e s . ox . a c . u k
. 1
ASM President’s report
The way we were
The ASM goes from strength to strength
As you will have read in the editor’s
introduction, this is the one hundredth
edition of The Ship so firstly many thanks
and congratulations to all those who
have worked so hard on this magazine
over the years. Special thanks of course
to Judith Vidal-Hall who has worked
tirelessly to make this edition so special.
those now involved in the various
branches up and down the country. It is
equally certain that with our current
branch structure there are more ASM
events organised than ever before and
many thanks to all those involved. I’m
even aware of one or two men involved
with branch committees, part of the
ever-evolving nature of the organisation,
although I don’t think the men are quite
pulling their weight just yet.
The Gaudy in 2010 was for the first time
held in September to coincide with the
Oxford Alumni weekend, which has now
established itself as a popular part of the
Oxford calendar. This led to more people
attending the Gaudy events than for
many years and clearly the ability of
people to stay overnight in college is a
big advantage. We are going to repeat
this timing in 2011 but are very interested
in hearing people’s views on this.
I am quite sure that the women who set
up the ASM were every bit as
knowledgeable, energetic and
formidable as those whom I first met on
the committee in the mid-1980s and
The other key upcoming event to
mention is the Kitchen Dinner and
Auction on 2 July. The urgent need for
funding for the new kitchen has been
brought to everyone’s attention by
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
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THE SHIP
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Finally, on a personal note, if there are
any ASM members living or working in
the Atlanta, Georgia area I would dearly
love to hear from you! Another branch in
the offing?
Jim Stanfield (1979)
One hundred years of The Ship also
means 100 years of the Association of
Senior Members; the magazine has
always been the vehicle of the ASM or as
it was first known, Old Students’
Association. What prompted the women
of the Society of Home Students 100
years ago to form the association and
start the magazine? And what were their
aims?
2.
Gillian Reynolds (Morton 1954) starting
with the Kitchen Suppers in May 2010.
The Dinner will be a magnificent college
event so make sure you get your tickets.
2010-11
Jim Stanfield, ASM President
© Keith Barnes
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF
MUTUAL AFFECTION
College news
From the Principal
A VERY HAPPY INVENTION
It made itself up as it went along and St
Anne’s will need to rediscover that skill
if it is to continue to thrive in hard times
Few St Anne’s students today, dropping
into a cheap student café between Turl
Street and Cornmarket, will be aware that
they are sitting in the building where their
College first set up a Common Room for
its undergraduates. Ship Street gave this
magazine its name and The Ship remains
the link that ensures the origins of the
College remain embedded in its collective
memory. St Anne’s has always made itself
up as it has gone along; the Society of
Home Students moved to the current St
Anne’s site and built Hartland House
library in 1938. By 1952, we were a College;
in 1979 we admitted men as well as
women; in the past five years we have
become as much a graduate as an
undergraduate community. Our capacity
to reinvent ourselves rests on the clear
principle, on which the College was first
imagined, to open up Oxford to those who
would benefit from it the most but who,
for lack of opportunity, might be denied
the chance.
With the current turbulence in the
future funding and shape of Higher
Education, that principle should define
us more than ever. Three issues now
intertwine to challenge Oxford’s future
identity, and, on all three fronts, St
Anne’s has, by dint of its slightly counter
cultural position in the University,
something particular to offer.
The increase in student fees to £9,000 a
year will demand of us the commitment
to ensure that those with the greatest
academic potential, regardless of where
they come from, are not deterred from
applying. We will not only have to ensure
that maintenance bursaries guarantee
students from poorer families the means
to live here – Oxford is too academically
demanding to expect students to work
to earn money in term time – we will
also have to offer some means tested fee
waiver. Otherwise, the level of future
debt may well, in the eyes of a 17-yearold, seem too daunting. However, even
with a £9,000 fee, Oxford will spend on
average £7,000 more per year on each
undergraduate’s education than it
receives in income. We also remain the
cheapest University in the country for
Tim Gardam
.3
From the Principal
students on full bursaries, thanks to the
level of support and the subsidized
accommodation and food.
As a condition for allowing us to charge a
higher fee, the government will impose
targets for the social background of the
students we admit. We should always be
prepared better to identify the hidden
potential in socially disadvantaged
applicants, whose talent can easily be
obscured by lack of opportunity at home
and at school, but we should never do
this at the expense of selecting each
candidate on her own qualities as an
individual. No student at St Anne’s would
wish to have been admitted on any other
basis than on merit.
Finally, there will be pressure from
government for the balance of Oxford
degrees to privilege those courses that
advance professional careers. This is an
argument that we should treat with
scepticism. Academic freedom rests on
the concept of the University as a public
good, beyond a market definition of
consumer benefit and service provider.
We should demonstrate we spend our
resources efficiently but should not allow
the arguments to be framed in the
deadening language of regulatory jargon;
we must set out, as did the Victorian
4.
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
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THE SHIP
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idealists who founded St Anne’s, the
principles behind our purposes, ideals
based on reasoned, independent
academic judgment, robust in the face of
economic scrutiny, but refusing to be
reduced to some politically convenient
equation.
In this debate, St Anne’s has particular
strengths that Oxford can place to the
fore. We admit more students on Oxford
Opportunity Bursaries than any other
College: 54 of our 335 UK undergraduates
qualify for full bursaries, which means
that their joint parental income after tax
is under £25,000 a year. Some come from
private schools as the bursaries now
offered by the independent sector are
propelling an increasing number of
motivated teenagers from poor families
towards Oxford. Our challenge is to
attract more applicants who have not
had such an advantage. Dr Anne Mullen,
our Tutor for Admissions, last year ran 40
events across the country for teachers
and potential students and invited over
1,000 students to St Anne’s. This was only
possible because of the generous
financial support of the Drapers’
Company. We are now the University’s
main point of contact for schools in
Newcastle, Sunderland, Tyneside and
Northumberland, and the London
2010-11
boroughs of Hillingdon and Southwark,
and have contacts with schools and
colleges across the country. At the same
time, the number of international
students from mainland Europe and
beyond increases each year. We have
established particular links with schools
in Singapore and Malaysia. We have
always been an international college; in
1912 over half our students were born
outside Britain. Looking out across the
Dining Hall, one has a snapshot of what,
in the twenty-first century, a cohesive,
tolerant and interconnected community
of different cultures and experiences,
bound together by a desire for learning,
can be.
The breakneck speed of the changes to
University funding in the past year has
been at times alarming; for an academic
institution, defined by its regard for
considered and carefully evidenced
judgements, it has been quite a challenge
to respond to policy being made on the
hoof. It has however had one benefit; the
uncertainty has forced us to articulate to
ourselves, our alumnae and our
supporters what it is that matters most
about St Anne’s and what we need to do
to ensure that this endures.
Tim Gardam Principal
College news
From the Librarian
THE LIVES OF OTHERS
The librarian turns archivist to tell a
fascinating story
Here the Librarian is also the Archivist (though in
the case of the present incumbent, entirely
without qualifications in archive work!), and with
my colleagues I deal with numerous archival
inquiries in the course of the year, often from
people wanting to establish whether their
grandmother or great aunt really was a Home
Student in the 1890s or was just spinning a yarn.
An inquiry last October from a journalist and
writer based in Kalamazoo, Michigan – Sonya
Bernard-Hollins – opened up the fascinating and
distinguished life of one of our graduate students
from the 1930s. From her story I move to an
archival acquisition from one of our more recent
distinguished former students.
Merze Tate was born in 1905 to a family of
African-American settlers in Blanchard, Michigan.
From the start she was an educational prodigy,
despite having to walk four miles to and from
school every day, a school that burned to the
ground during her time. She trained as a teacher
at Western Michigan Teachers’ College (later
University), and returned there to be its first ever
African-American BA. Barred from teaching in
Merze Tate Courtesy Western Michigan
University Archives and Regional History
.5
College news
Michigan because of her colour, she
taught in a high school in Indianapolis,
but her ambitions were in higher
education, and while teaching she took a
part time Master’s degree at Columbia.
With an Alpha Kappa Alpha scholarship
she headed to Oxford in 1932 to study for
the graduate degree of B.Litt. in
International Relations, matriculating as
a Home Student and becoming the first
African-American woman member of
Oxford University. The B.Litt., achieved in
1935, was Merze Tate’s training in
research, and was followed by a Ph.D. at
Harvard (Radcliffe), and a distinguished
academic career at Morgan State and
Howard Universities. Her books include
studies of the disarmament movement
and of relations between Hawaii and the
United States.
Sonya Hollins has a mission to inspire
modern-day African-American teenage
girls by showing them the astonishing
aspirational model Merze Tate
represents. She has herself used an idea
from Tate’s teaching years and set up a
Travel Club for this cohort in Kalamazoo.
So far their travels have not taken them
beyond the US, but these days distance
can be defeated in other ways, and in
November the group interviewed me by
Skype – which I had never used before –
6.
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
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THE SHIP
about Oxford and the Home Students in
the 1930s and how it might have
appeared to their first female AfricanAmerican. Adults were strictly in the
background, and the whole interview
was conducted with great aplomb by the
teenagers themselves. Perhaps the most
telling thing, to them and to me, was
that in the quite extensive file of
correspondence I found about Merze
Tate, none of her tutors so much as
mentioned race, either to her or to each
other; to the Misses Butler, Miss Hadow
and their contemporaries, to have done
so would doubtless have been both bad
manners and a distraction from that
generation’s rigorous and steely pursuit
of learning.
Helen Flint Courtesy John Lawlor
Helen Flint read English at St Anne’s
1972-75. Later, she was the author of
several highly regarded novels, short
stories, and collections of poems. Her
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2010-11
first, semi-autobiographical novel, Return
Journey, won the Betty Trask Award. With
the sort of bitter irony which features
often in her excellent writing, at the
moment when she heard of this
prestigious award, she also heard that
she had inherited from her mother, who
appears vividly in the novel, the cruel
degenerative disease cerebellar ataxia,
from which, after several valiant years of
active writing and living, Helen died in
2000. A small collection of Helen’s notes
– including literary notes taken while she
was studying at St Anne’s – manuscripts,
drafts and correspondence with
publishers and others, which has lived
for some time with a friend at
Southampton University, has now been
donated to St Anne’s by Helen’s widower
John Lawlor, and will be held in the
Library. It is a rich and fascinating
collection, and we hope people will come
and use it here.
As always, a list of kind donors to the
Library can be found towards the stern of
The Ship. I conclude with the traditional
reminder that former students of St
Anne’s are permanently entitled to use
the College Library for reference.
David Smith Vice-Principal & Librarian
College news
Thoughts on entering Oxford
On the way over to Oxford Merze Tate
wrote the following sonnet:
The poem is recorded on a tape made by
Tate for Radcliffe in 1978 in which she
speaks about her time in Oxford. She got
the idea of Oxford from a history teacher
who had spent a summer in Oxford. Tate
was a member of the Black Sorority
Alpha Kappa Alpha and in 1933 won its
fellowship of US$1,000. She then had to
be recommended to Oxford by the
American Association of University
Women, which at this time did not
accept black women. Having taken the
entrance exams, which she did in Oxford,
there was a final hurdle: to be accepted
by one of the colleges for women. Not
surprisingly, many of her friends back
home were betting that she would never
make it. She had only enough money for
one year so enrolled in the Diploma of
Economics course. Thereafter, she pieced
together through loans, the sale of her
house in Indianapolis and summer
earnings tutoring a French girl, enough
to fund her B. Litt.
Her oral history recalls how she learned
to ride a bicycle, joined the punting club
and learned how to punt, became
addicted to tea and tea parties, attended
the Oxford Debating Society and a
famous OUDS production of A
Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by
the Viennese director Max Reinhardt. Her
greatest friend was Margaret Hunter
Johnson, also OSHS, from New Zealand.
Margaret’s family kept open house on
Cornmarket St: ‘We never had to be
invited. It was just open house for tea in
the afternoon or coffee in the morning or
at night.’
Tate makes no mention of discrimination
against her in Oxford; it was in the US
she encountered it, failing to win the
prestigious Bancroft prize for her book,
The United States and the Hawaiian
Kingdom: A Political History, and being
denied a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. In
a speech at Radcliffe in 1979, when she
was awarded the Alumnae Recognition
Award, she concluded her talk with the
following: ‘Is it fair for Divine Providence
or Destiny to make a woman black, then
bid her write?’
Research by Jane Knowles (1957),
formerly archivist at the Schlesinger
Library, Radcliffe Institute
.7
College news
From the Development Office
TRUE TO ROOTS
A new team takes over in the
Development Office
The Development Office has changed
considerably over the past few months,
with a five strong team now in place,
a relief to me and Liza (now Senior
Development Officer) after our twowoman band last summer! We have
welcomed a new Senior Development
Officer, Wouter te Kloeze, a new Alumnae
Relations Officer, Kate Davy, and a new
Development Assistant, Anna Fowler.
There are significant challenges ahead
for the Development Office to respond
to, both within College, with the ongoing
need to secure teaching posts, support
for students and, not least, to raise £3
million for a new kitchen; and external
changes to Higher Education funding.
Yet in many ways, development at St
Anne’s has not changed at all. As I write I
look out over the quad and sense the
changes and the continuity that
characterizes St Anne’s. I am writing this
from the library in Hartland House with
Wolfson and Rayne on my left, and the
Claire Palley Building and the Mary
8.
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
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THE SHIP
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Ogilvie Lecture Theatre in front, across a
quad scattered with colour from
crocuses and daffodils. The College
nursery sits beyond and the Gerald Banks
Hall on the right. Behind me lie the Ruth
Deech building and the Bevington Road
houses. An eclectic mix of buildings
which somehow holds the College
together harmoniously. All are visible
examples of how St Anne’s evolves to
ensure its vibrant academic community
continues to thrive. The spirit and
determination of friends, students and
Fellows, past and present, enabled the
creation of these facilities, despite the
challenges of funding or what was to
come next.
As a result, world-class lectures take
place and students can live in College for
all three years, a rare privilege at Oxford.
Fellows carrying out groundbreaking
research and students from all over the
world, graduate and undergraduate,
meet and eat together in the Hall. The
Library continues to be the most used
and best stocked of any Oxford College.
The Ruth Deech building has enhanced
the conference business, which widens
2010-11
the St Anne’s community and provides
much needed income to sustain the cost
of providing an Oxford tutorial system.
All this has been made possible by the St
Anne’s community: time and again, in
addition to their financial contributions,
Senior Members give generously of their
time, energy and expertise. The thriving
network of former students in the ASM
gives current students a sense of
belonging to a wider community and
access to advice on what they might go
on to do once they graduate. Friends,
Fellows, parents of students, and Senior
Members alike, all continue to give to our
Student Support Fund, which provides a
vital and significant contribution to the
provision of the tutorials, facilities,
bursaries and scholarships, ensuring that
we attract and support talented people.
It is this community that makes College
what it is, and it is a privilege to be part
of facilitating its work through our work
in the Development Office. We enter the
new phase of challenges, both funding
and otherwise, with great confidence
and deep gratitude for your constant
generosity. Thank you all for your
support.
Gina Beloff Director of Development
College news
Governing Body
2009 - 2010
Principal
 2004 Gardam, Timothy David, MA
Camb, MA Oxf Chairman
Fellows
 2006 Banister, David, BA Nott, MA Oxf,
PhD Leeds, MCIT, FRSA, CMILT ¶ ‡
Reader in Transport Studies, Professor
of Transport Studies, Tutor in
Geography
 2009 Barnett, Michael, BS Columbia,
MBA St Louis, M Phil PhD New York, ¶
Professor of Strategy, Tutor in
Management
 1988 Bowles, Nigel, BA Sus, MA DPhil
Oxf, ¶Tutor in Politics, Balfour Fellow in
Politics
 2003 Briggs, George Andrew
Davidson, MA Oxf, PhD Camb ‡
Professor of Nanomaterials
 1990 Chard, Robert, MA Oxf, PhD
California ¶ Tutor in Chinese
 2000 Christian, Helen Clare, BSc PhD
Lond, MA Oxf ¶ Tutor in Biomedical
Science
 2005 Cocks, Alan, BSc Leic, MA Oxf,
PhD Camb ‡ Professor of Materials
Engineering
 1991 Crisp, Roger Stephen, BPhil MA
DPhil Oxf ¶ Professor of Moral
Philosophy, Tutor in Philosophy,
Uehiro Fellow in Philosophy
 2000 Davies, Gareth Bryn, BA Lanc,
MA DPhil Oxf ¶ Tutor in American
History
 1996 Donnelly, Peter James, BSc
Queensland, MA DPhil Oxf, FRS ‡
Professor of Statistical Science
 2009 Flyvbjerg, Bent, BA MS PH.D
Aarhus, DR.TECHN DR.SCIENT Aalborg
‡ Professor of Major Programme
Management
 1996 Foard, Christine, MA Oxf College
Secretary
 1981 Ghosh, Peter, MA Oxf ¶ Tutor in
Modern History, Jean Duffield Fellow
in Modern History
 2009 Goodwin, Andrew, BSc Sydney,
PhD Camb ¶ Tutor in Chemistry
 2009 Goold, Imogen, BA LLB PhD
Tasmania, MBioeth Monash ¶ Tutor
in Law
 2006 Gottlob, Georg, MA Oxf, Dr phil,
Dipl Ing Vienna University of
Technology ‡ Professor of Computing
Science
 2006 Grønlie, Siân, BA MSt DPhil Oxf
¶ Tutor in English, Kate Durr Elmore
Fellow in English
 1990 Grovenor, Christopher Richard
Munro, MA DPhil Oxf ¶ Professor of
Materials, Tutor in Materials
Science
 2000 Hambly, Benjamin Michael, BSc
Adelaide, MA Oxf, PhD Camb ¶
Professor of Mathematics, Tutor in
Mathematics
 1989 Harnew, Neville, BSc Sheff, MA
Oxf, PhD Lond ¶ Professor of Physics,
Tutor in Physics
 1984 Harris, David Anselm, MA DPhil
Oxf ¶ Tutor in Biochemistry
 2008 Harry, Martyn, BA Camb, PhD
City Lond ¶ Tutor in Music, Dorset
Foundation Lecturer in Music,
Annie Barnes Fellow in Music
 2005 Hazbun, Geraldine, BA MPhil
Camb, MA Oxf ¶ Tutor in Spanish
 2005 Hotson, Howard, BA MA Toronto,
MA DPhil Oxf ¶ Professor of Early
Modern Intellectual History, Tutor in
Modern History
 1996 Irwin, Patrick, MA DPhil Oxf ¶
Reader in Physics, Tutor in Physics
 2001 Jackson, Martin Lawrence, OBE,
MA Oxf Domestic Bursar
 1999 Jeavons, Peter George, MSc Leic,
MA Oxf, PhD Lond ¶ Professor of
Computer Science, Tutor in
Computation
 2007 Johnston, Freya, BA PhD Camb,
MA Oxf ¶ Tutor in English
 2007 Klevan, Andrew, BA Oxf, MA PhD
Warw ¶ University Lecturer in Film
Studies
 1999 Lancaster, Tim, MB BS MSc
Harvard, MA Oxf ‡ ¶ Reader in General
Practice
 2000 Lazarus, Liora, BA Cape Town,
LLB Lond, MA DPhil Oxf ¶ Tutor in Law,
Dean
 1997 Leigh, Matthew Gregory
Leonard, MA DPhil Oxf ¶ Professor of
Classical Languages and Literature,
Tutor in Classics, Dean of Degrees
 2000 Lyons, Terence John, MA Camb,
MA DPhil Oxf, FRS, FRSE ‡ Wallis
Professor of Mathematics
 1996 ρ MacFarlane, S Neil, AB
Dartmouth College, MA MPhil DPhil
Oxf ‡ Lester B Pearson Professor of
International Relations
 2010 Marzari, Nicola, Laurea Trieste,
MA, PhD Camb ‡ Professor of
Materials Modelling
 1998 McGuinness, Patrick, MA DPhil
Oxf ¶ Professor of French and
Comparative Literature, Tutor in
Modern Languages (French), Sir Win
and Lady Bischoff Fellow in French
 2005 Mullen, Anne Winifred, BA
Strath, MA DPhil Oxf Senior Tutor
 1989 Murray, David William, MA DPhil
Oxf ¶ Professor of Engineering Science,
Tutor in Engineering Science
 2002 O’Shaughnessy, Terence Joseph,
BSc BE Adelaide, MPhil PhD Camb, MA
Oxf Tutor in Economics
 2003 Porcelli, Donald Rex, BSc Yale,
MA Oxf, PhD Camb ¶ Tutor in Earth
Sciences
 1972 Priestley, Hilary Ann, MA DPhil
Oxf ¶ Professor of Mathematics, Tutor
in Mathematics
 2006 Pyle, David, BA PhD Camb, MA
Oxf ¶ Professor of Earth Sciences, Tutor
in Earth Sciences
 1997 Reynolds, Matthew, MA PhD
Camb, MA Oxf ¶ Tutor in English,
Times Lecturer in English Language
 2009 Rosic, Budimir, MSc Dipl Ing
Belgrade, MA Oxf, PhD Camb ¶ Tutor
in Engineering Science
 2005 Shuttleworth, Sally, BA York, MA
Oxf, PhD Camb ¶
 2001 Sibly, Michael David, MA Camb,
MA Oxf ¶
 1988 Smith, David Francis, MA DPhil
Oxf, MCLIP Librarian, Vice-Principal
 1978 Speight, Martin Roy, BSc Wales,
MA Oxf, DPhil York ¶ Reader in
Entomology, Tutor in Biological
Sciences
 1996 Sutherland, Kathryn, BA Lond,
MA DPhil Oxf ‡ Professor of
Bibliography and Textual Criticism
 2007 Szele, Francis, PhD Pennsylvania
¶ Tutor in Medicine
 2003 Talmon, Stefan, MA LLM DPhil
Oxf ¶ Professor of Public International
Law, Tutor in Law
 2007 Trend, Roger, MSc Keele, PhD Exe
¶ Tutor in Education
 2009 Vyas, Paresh, MA DPhil Oxf ‡
Reader in Clinical Haematology
 2007 Waters, Sarah, MA Camb, PhD
Leeds ¶ Tutor in Mathematics
 2006 Watkins, Kathryn, BA Camb,
MSc PhD Lond, MA Oxf ¶ Tutor in
Psychology
 2006 Wigg, Christopher, BSc Lond,
MA, FCA Treasurer
 1996 Wilshaw, Peter Richard, BA
Camb, MA DPhil Oxf ¶ Reader in
Materials, Tutor in Metallurgy and
Science of Materials, Wolfson Fellow in
Materials Science
Note on symbols
¶ Holder of a university post (including
CUF appointments) other than a
statutory professorship or readership.
‡ Holder of a statutory professorship or
readership.
ρ Former Rhodes Scholar
A date in the left-hand column
indicates the year of election to the
current fellowship (or other position)
held.
.9
College news
Dr Imogen Goold, Fellow and Tutor in
Law, has been awarded two research
grants. The first is an Oxford-Melbourne
Law School Research Partnerships grant
for her project ‘Legal principles
underlying the law on storage of human
tissue’. This is a joint project with
Professor Loane Skene of Melbourne
University. The second is a joint project
grant with colleagues from Oxford and
Delft University. They have been awarded
€600,000 for a three-year project
looking at the implications of cognitive
enhancement technologies for the
concept of legal responsibility.
Fellows’
honours and
appointments
Professor David Banister, Fellow and
Reader in Transport Studies, Professor in
Transport Studies and Tutor in
Geography, was awarded the transport
policy prize at the World Conference on
Transport Research in Lisbon (July 2010)
for ‘the most influential paper’ published
between 2007 and 2009.
Professor Georg Gottlob, Professorial
Fellow in Computing Science, was
elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Dr Helen Christian, Fellow and Tutor in
Biomedical Sciences, Dr Martyn Harry,
Tutor in Music, Dorset Foundation
Lecturer in Music, Annie Barnes Fellow in
Music and Dr John Murphy, Royal
Academy of Engineering/EPSRC Research
Fellow and Junior Research Fellow in
Materials Science, have received
University Teaching Excellence Awards.
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
.
THE SHIP
Lord Weidenfeld of Chelsea, Honorary
Fellow of St Anne’s, was awarded an
Honorary Degree by Oxford University at
Encaenia. George Weidenfeld has been a
great benefactor of St Anne’s over many
years, most notably as the founder of the
Weidenfeld Visiting Chair in Comparative
Literature, whose lectures take place
each year in College. Lord Weidenfeld has
also endowed the Weidenfeld
Translation Prize, which is awarded each
year in a ceremony at St Anne’s. He has
also been awarded the Knight Grand
Cross of the Order of the British Empire.
Professor Terry Lyons, Wallis Professor of
Mathematics, Oxford, Director of the
Wales Institute for Mathematical and
Computational Sciences (WIMCS), has
been made an Honorary Fellow of
Aberystwyth University.
Dr Andrew Goodwin, Fellow and Tutor in
Chemistry, received the 2010 Royal
Society of Chemistry Harrison-Meldola
Memorial Prize ‘for his pioneering work
in materials with negative thermal
expansion, and in the field of total
scattering methods’.
10 .
Shrouded Turbine Rotor Using an AirCurtain’. Dr Rosic has also been selected,
together with his co-authors, to receive
the 2009 Gas Turbine Award from the
ASME.
Dr Budimir Rosic, Fellow in Engineering
Science, was awarded Best Paper Award
by the Turbomachinery Committee of
the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers (ASME) Turbo Expo 2009 for
‘Controlling Tip Leakage Flow Over a
.
2010-11
The Office in the Clarendon Building into which the
library has overflowed, 1898
College news: three poems
Three poems
LIVIU CAMPANU
The Fly
Leaving Do
Another of your letters, Cilea, and the paper goes
An ordinary day at work, except that it’s your last:
for weeks in my pocket, folded, unfolded, becomes soft as cotton
the pull of the new job, the new house… you’ve only been half-here,
as the words fade and have to be guessed at;
living out of suitcases – sometimes with me, sometimes
or, better still, replaced with words I wish you’d written,
with the husband who does not know I borrowed you.
wish you’d write. As for the envelope, I’ve licked the flakes
Someone’s head talks platitudes over warm Ukrainian fizz;
of gum along the seal, and fancied I tasted you: the candy
they present you with the card we signed using that biro on a string of your lipstick and a haunting of Duty-Free smoke.
that’s been hanging from the calendar since before either of us came.
You tasted of airports, Diplomatic Clubs, Politburo shopping malls,
I’ll tune out, become the centre of my own leaving do, because,
well, that’s what your leaving does.
while I’m the bluebottle on his flypaper turnstile, pumping
the sugar from the poison, twisting in the dead breeze,
Later, from a dip of broken
riveted by glucose hits… I’m sinking deeper and deeper
slats on the beer garden bench, I’ll face the tram stop where
into the white shallows of the page, what I remember of your eyes.
you carefully missed your last ride home, and watch something
indistinct that’s been hanging in the sky all day,
and longer than all day: this morning’s taut blue air fattening
into cloud, choking on a filler of lemon-coloured haze.
. 11
College news
From The Book of Afternoon Sleeps
That dream again: I’m hooked up to a transparent drip
full of hours, to replace the lost hours spent watching
the rain bead up the window, feeling the sex
dry on the thigh like the second skin it soon became:
the aggregate of all those public holidays we spent in bed
while your fat-fingered husband (he’s lightfingered too – how does he manage that?)
Liviu Campanu (1932-1994) was a poet and
university lecturer from Bucharest who fell
out of favour with the Ceausescu regime.
Poems from his The Ovid Complex (1989)
and City of Lost Walks (1985) can be found
in Patrick McGuinness’ Jilted City
(Carcanet 2010)
Translated by Patrick McGuinness
inspected troops or tractors, collecting his Politburo
arse-blisters, his parade-ground pins and needles.
He’d sit in Capsia after a hard day’s delegating,
blow his nose on the embroidered napkin
he’ll wipe his mouth with later,
and put a two-man tail on the House Special.
While we – two boats cresting the same slow wave, or,
to put it more prosaically, two bodies carried by the same long fuck –
‘d enjoy our all-day docking at the jetty that kisses the water.
This winter, I have each gone minute of our time
stored up like city heat in bricks; in other words,
they’re seeping out faster than I can hold them in.
In yet other words, they’re not stored up at all.
Send more.
12 .
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
.
THE SHIP
.
2010-11
Student news: JCR
From the JCR
Getting Engaged
The 2010/2011 JCR Committee made an
excellent start to the year with a
fantastically well-organized Freshers’
week. Thanks are due to David Blyghton
for a jam-packed (but cheaper than ever)
week, which served its purpose
extremely well. A particular emphasis for
this year in general – but Freshers’ week
more specifically – is and was the
integration of St Anne’s extensive and
diverse international community. Our
International Rep, Xuewei Loy, did a
spectacular job during the week; and
indeed the imminent BYOB (‘Bring Your
Own Brit’) Formal is further testament to
her ongoing enthusiasm and hard work.
The Browne Review of Higher Education
Funding and Student Finance, and any
and all subsequent fallout, has, naturally,
coloured this year significantly so far.
Indeed, I expect that the changes in
university funding will continue to
dominate JCR agendas for the
foreseeable future. Despite a good deal
of controversy, the JCR voted to support
financially St Anne’s students wishing to
attend the student protests in London.
Needless to say, no St Anne’s students
were involved in anything untoward –
though one or two people did make it
onto the BBC website! As have all college
JCRs, the St Anne’s JCR has had to work
closely with the Oxford University
Student Union to coordinate protest
activity. The OUSU is staffed by
passionate sabbatical officers all of
whom work tirelessly to improve the
lives of students across the University.
Unfortunately, students in all the
colleges know far too little about the
work of OUSU. The JCR committee has
made attempts to remedy this by, for
instance, inviting the OUSU President,
David Barclay, to talk to members, but
there is definitely more to be done!
Alongside ongoing JCR commitments to
improve the environmental impact of
college life and, of course, accurately and
consistently to represent student
opinion to College, the 2010/2011 JCR
committee is devoting a good deal of
energy to improving the sports facilities
available to Anne’s students. We are still
in a ‘consultation phase’ of sorts, trying
JCR Hartland House 1950s
to ascertain how best to proceed, but we
hope either improvements to current
facilities, or subsidised commercial gym
membership, are in the offing.
In line with last year’s efforts to increase
JCR participation from all Junior
Members, this year’s committee has
been fortunate enough to secure the
services of goFIQ.com for free. Though
the website is still in its infancy, it
provides a really excellent and speedy
platform through which members can
communicate with the JCR committee.
This enables us to represent students
and their needs more effectively to
College officers. We hope the 2010 /2011
JCR committee‘s legacy to next year’s
intake will be a more highly engaged JCR
community.
Rachel Duffy (2008) JCR President
. 13
Student news: MCR
From the MCR
From strength to strength
The MCR continues to grow, metaphorically
and quite literally. In 2009 and 2010, for the
first time ever, College admitted more
postgraduate freshers than undergraduate
freshers; our graduate community now
totals more than 250 people.
The refurbishment of the communal
areas in the graduate accommodation
centre in Summertown, Robert Saunders
House, has been completed. Thanks to
the efforts and enthusiasm of the
students and wardens who live there,
this year has seen an increased use of
the RSH common room and a stronger
sense of community than in recent years.
What was previously a television room
has been transformed into a study room
with computer facilities.
Socially, the MCR termcard has remained
as rich and varied as ever with the remit to
inform, educate and entertain as best
possible. Events this year have included a
Spanish food and drink evening complete
with an imported leg of Jamón serrano; a
Scotch whisky tasting which attracted
whisky lovers and whisky sceptics, of
whom a few were converted; and, most
recently, an overnight exchange dinner in
which we hosted, and were subsequently
hosted by, our Cambridge sister college,
Murray Edwards (formerly New Hall), for
which all varsity rivalries were set amicably
aside. Exchange dinners with other Oxford
colleges continue to be a bedrock of the
termcard alongside the college-organised
wine tasting, splendidly compered by the
College Bursar and Treasurer.
14 .
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
.
THE SHIP
Eleanor Plumer House continues to serve
us well as the heart and soul of the MCR.
Be it early morning or late at night it is rare
to find either the computer room or the
MCR lounge unoccupied. EPH has been the
venue for numerous meetings, gatherings,
talks and the now incredibly popular
Sunday afternoon teas and brunches.
longest-serving theatre critic and even
physics poster-boy and personal hero of
mine, Professor Brian Cox. These
discussion groups started out as an
MCR-only endeavour but are now open
to JCR members, giving an opportunity
for JCR and MCR members to mix in
what is a cerebral but informal setting.
The second edition of the St Anne’s
Academic Review (STAAR) is now on the
MCR website at http://www.st-annesmcr.org.uk/. The Subject Family Evenings,
split into Arts & Humanities and
Sciences, continue to attract diverse and
interesting speakers.
My thanks go to the SCR and the college
staff for their continued support of our
many projects and events, and to the
MCR members themselves for making
the MCR the welcoming, engaging and
dynamic place that it is.
Johnny Drain (2009) MCR President
The MCR enjoy an evening tasting Scotch Whisky
From an academic perspective, the Arts
& Humanities and Sciences lunchtime
discussion groups continue to go from
strength to strength. Through these
sessions we have attracted a roster of
speakers, including winners of the Nobel
Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Britain’s
.
2010-11
Student news: Finals results
Finals results
Trinity Term 2010
Results are shown below for
those students who gave
permission to publish. A total
of 124 students sat finals.
Ancient and Modern History
Jenner, Hannah
2/1
Biochemistry
Christensen, David
Guilhamon, Paul
Morrison, Andrew
Royle, Andrew
Biological Sciences
Crawshaw, Alison
Cross, Timothy
Law, Jessica
Mamuneas, Diamanto
Chemistry
Fraser, Henry
Metens, Sebastien
Suchett-Kaye, Ivo
2/1
2/1
2/1
2/1
2/1
2/1
1
2/1
1
2/1
2/1
Classics & English
Johnson, Lauren
2/1
Computer Science
French, Thomas
Leighton, Jonathan
Gulla, Yuri
2/2
2/1
1
English
Denhoed, Andrea
Foxon, Christopher
Freeland, Henry
Hurford, Hannah
Knight, Louise
Kynaston, George
Lagou, Gloria
Lloyd, Jacob
Wakefield, Olivia
Zigmond, Joseph
2/1
1
2/1
2/1
2/1
1
2/1
2/1
2/1
1
Economics & Management
Jefferies, Joseph
2/1
Nur, Adnan
2/2
O’Leary, Oisin
2/1
European & Mid. Eastern
Language - Spanish/Arabic
Turner, Amy
1
English & Modern Language Spanish
Ford, Lindsey
2/1
Johnstone, Owain
1
English & Modern Language French
Muldrew, Lynn
2/1
Engineering Science
Findlay, Sian
1
Engineering, Economics &
Management
Hicks, Mark
2/1
Engineering Science
Hindle, Stuart
Wan, Rachel
2/1
1
Experimental Psychology
Brown, Alexander
Evans, Kyla
Lloyd, Alexander
Shakespeare, Tim
2/1
2/1
1
2/1
Geography
Davies, Lauren
Piech, Agata
Sidhu, Jasveer
Tucker, Samuel
2/1
2/2
2/1
2/1
Earth Sciences
Chalk, Tom
2/1
Jurisprudence
Akram, Alia
Couchman, Hannah
Davies, Helen
Szolnoki, Leo
Urwin, Charles
Waksman, Alexander
2/1
2/1
2/1
2/1
2/2
1
Literae Humaniores
Bralsford, Louise
Harman, Ross
Paterson, Charlie
Seligman, Henrietta
Literae Humaniores
Course 2
O’Duffy, Luke
Mathematics
Stevens, Christopher
Caple, David
Forrest, Ben S
Fox, Ryan
Lin, Zi
Lowe, Andrew
Packwood, Samuel
2/1
2/1
1
2/1
Modern Languages - French &
German
Jones, Rebecca
2/1
Monaghan, Craig
2/1
Modern Languages - French &
Spanish
Levy, Ben
2/1
1
2/1
2/1
2/1
1
2/2
1
2/2
Modern Languages & Linguistics
- German
McDonagh, Sorcha
1
Mathematics & Philosophy
Robertson, Jack
2/1
Mathematics & Statistics
Xia, Yi
3
Mathematics & Computer
Science
Scott-Johns, Alexander
2/1
Music
Semmens, Anjula
Thompson, Amy
Medical Sciences
Do, Il
Macdonald, David
Majumdar, Moon-Moon
May, Michael
McKinnon, Katie
Pearson-Stuttard, Jonathan
Thayabaran, Darmiga
Willson, Rhian
Thompson, James
Tsang, Joshua
Wu, Wendy
Yeoh, Lou
2/1
2/1
2/1
2/1
2/1
2/1
2/1
2/1
1
1
2/2
2/1
Oriental Studies - Chinese
Hunter, Matthew
1
Jackson, Peter
2/1
Popescu, Edwina
1
History
Chow, Ven
Dayan, Mark
Jardine, Nicholas
Munro, Robyn
Tusa, Felix
2/1
1
2/1
1
2/1
History & Politics
McCloskey, Bronagh
White, Alexander
2/1
2/1
2/1
1
Physiological Sciences
Lim, Chloe
1
Physics
Maxwell-Stewart, Simon
Biffin, Alun
Cooling,Chris
Crossley, Michael
Moeller, Johannes
2/2
1
1
1
1
Philosophy, Politics & Economics
Batcheler, Richard
2/1
Chowla, Shiv
2/1
Lockton, Thomas
1
Obeng, Adam
2/1
Patel, Portia
2/1
Powell, Matthew
2/1
Smith, Micah
2/1
Modern Languages - Italian &
Spanish
Dick, Laura
2/1
. 15
Student news: graduate degrees
Graduate degrees 2010
250 graduates were in residence at the beginning of Michaelmas Term 2009
BM
Goodfellow, Edward
Grabowski, Victoria
Grosvenor, Laurel
Ling, Rebecca
McCurdy, Kathleen
Nezamivand-Chegini,
Soudeh
Reid, Juliet
Solomon, Daniel
Spacie, Robin
B Phil
Hutchinson, Michelle
Schmidt, Andreas
Worsnip, Alexander
BCL
Berry, Anuj
Cary, Joseph
Jayasinghe, Manohara
Sen, Tulika
Cert Ed
Bailey-Watson, William
Bennett, Taryn
Callaghan, Laura
Calvert, Jennifer
Chatfield, Rosemary
Clarke, Adam
Davies, Jonathan
Farrar, Alice
Farrell, Laura
Hickman, Katherine
Hughes, Emma
Jesson, Christopher
Larkin, Rachel
Madher, Amandeep
Manby, Rosemary
McLean, Anton
16 .
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
.
THE SHIP
.
20010-11
Nicholas, Christopher
Porter, Jessica
Pye, Rhian
Reid, Christopher
Shelley, Amy
Snowdon, Lucy
Tomblin, Naomi
Watson, Samantha
D Phil
Anderson, Helen
Amoako, Emefa
Carasso, Helen
Dutton, Vaughan
Fenn, Daniel
Fraser, Keith
Friis, Lone
Hinni, Aleka
Howes, Simon
Jiang, Qi
Jin, Lei
Kroll, Mary
Lui, Andrew
Mexi, Maria
Muthoora, Priscilla
Nwokora, Zim
Rahman, Najib
Ritter, Robert
Sun, Xin
Sykes, Nuala
Taroni, Michele
Williams, Michael
Williams, Thomas
Wong, Mou-Lan
Youdell, Michael
EMBA
Gordon, Orin
Kulyabichev, Andrey
M Phil
Belton, Joshua
Cheng, Hoi-Wai
Ho, Kelvin
Janos, Alexandra
Leavitt, Ruben
Luchinskaya, Daria
Randel, Nicholas
Tang, Jie
M SC
Schenck, Marcia
Baleta, Hannah
Bowyer, Stuart
Driscoll, Rebecca
Eichler, Isabella
Franas, Katarzyna
Hafer, Nina
Handou, Alvine
Hoang, Nga
Jong, Young
Kayes, Fiona
Langhout, Wouter
MacGregor, Hannah
Musakwa, Tendai
Newton, Benjamin
Nwosu, Chukwunonso
Pierre, Jonathan
Plint, Lucy
Schaub, Max
Schaupp, Anna-Lena
Schwingshackl, Philipp
Solnica, Kamil
Treharne, Olivia
Van der Togt, Kim
Villanueva Rance, Amaru
Wang, Yue
Xie, Cong
M ST
Amir, Maria
Andelic, Patrick
Ardrey, Caroline
Bazley, Joanna
Bowers, William
Carcasci, Guia
Chin, Huilin
Egan, Grace
Eichhorn, Kelsey
Eyjolfsdottir, Olof
Gillett, Simon
Harris, Margaux
Hobbs, Arabella
Jamieson, Gavin
Machulak, Erica
Matthews, Rachel
Mayer, Nicholas
Minshull, Tara
Murphey, William
Poling, Jane
Rennie, Morag
Roberts, Owen
Thirani, Neha
Wesley, Jamie
MBA
Dao-Bai, Melissa
Kandasamy, Guhanesan
Katya, Muswagha
Gaudy announcement
Gaudy and Alumni Weekend
16 –18 September 2011
This year the St Anne’s Gaudy will take
place in September on Saturday 17 and
Sunday 18, to coincide with the Oxford
University Alumni Weekend. This enables
College to provide bed and breakfast
accommodation to those attending the
Gaudy and Alumni Weekend celebrations.
Please note that booking information for
the Gaudy will therefore be included in
the next edition of our College
newsletter STANCE in June 2011. For
details on the Alumni Weekend Lecture
and Gaudy Seminar, please see below.
Tony Judt Memorial Lecture: Britain since
the War: in search of a master narrative
by David Kynaston
Saturday 17 September, 2pm
Mary Ogilvie Lecture Theatre, St Anne’s
College
The coming of the welfare state, the end
of Empire, relative economic decline, the
freedoms of the Sixties, the overmighty
unions, the triumph of the market, the
rise of multiculturalism, the overmighty
City - over the years there have been
many ‘master narratives’ seeking to
characterize our times. David Kynaston
explains how, faced by the challenge of
writing a history of post-war Britain, he
has sought to establish his own ‘master
narrative’, and he discusses whether that
pursuit has an intellectual validity or is
merely a literary-cum-rhetorical device to
give an illusory shape to the ceaseless
rush of events.
David Kynaston, who read Modern
History at New College in the early 1970s,
has written a four-volume history of the
City of London and is currently engaged
on Tales of a New Jerusalem, a multivolume history of Britain between 1945
and 1979. Two volumes have so far
appeared: Austerity Britain 1945-51
(chosen by the Sunday Times in 2009 as
its Book of the Decade) and Family Britain
1951-57.
Gaudy Seminar: ‘Because we’re worth it’:
the battle for funding – Arts meet
Sciences
Sunday 18 September, 11am
Mary Ogilvie Lecture Theatre, St Anne’s
College
Family Britain 1951-57 (Bloomsbury 2009)
When cuts in funding start to bite, who
and what will lose out? ‘Not us,’ say the
scientists, ‘we are far too useful.
We provide cures for cancers and help to
save the planet from human
depredations.’ Regardless of the fact that
science contributes hugely to the latter,
they consider themselves worth their
cost. ‘What about us,’ ask the poets and
philosophers? We humanize the world
and make it a better place in which to live.
Come and hear the experts battle it out.
. 17
The Ship: news and feedback
The Ship: We want your feedback
Please let us know what you think of this issue of The Ship. We would be delighted to hear what you have enjoyed or where
you think we could improve the publication. Is there a feature you would like us to include, or is there a way in which you
think we could develop the content? We would welcome your comments to ensure that The Ship continues to reflect the
interests of our Senior Members. You are welcome to include your name and matriculation year below or remain
anonymous. If you prefer to email your comments, please do so to [email protected]
‘Class Notes’
for The Ship 2011/12
Please complete and return to the
Development Office, St Anne’s College,
Oxford, OX2 6HS, or email
[email protected]
Full name (caps)
Former name
Matriculation year
Address
Email
Personal News for The Ship 2011/12
Fill in your news in the sections below, so that we can update your friends in next year’s edition of The Ship, or alternatively
email: [email protected]
Personal News/Honours & Appointments/ Publications (please mark as appropriate)
18 .
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
.
THE SHIP
.
2010-11
Tel
 Please subscribe me to the college
e-Group at the email address above. Our
2,400+ members benefit from a monthly
e-newsletter and updates on the latest
news and events at St Anne’s and the
University.
Oxford letter
Oxford revisited
RUTH DEECH
In business they say ‘No change is not an
option.’ That does not apply to Oxford
city: I am the one who has changed.
For some years, as an insider academic, I
wrote a regular letter for The Ship about
town and gown. Now, although I still live
in Oxford, I have left the university and
have joined the thousands who commute
from the city to London, where I spend
most of the week. So I see the city and the
university in a different light, and
sometimes it is uncomfortable. College
appears as exciting and successful as ever,
but I feel like a ghost and visit rarely. As I
age, it is discomfiting to see my portrait
there becoming ever more youthful; but I
do feel proud to see it in the building
named after me.
Living here is still more attractive than the
London alternative, even assuming that
the sale value of a house in Oxford would
enable one to buy something equivalent
in London, which it would not. Oxford is
the second most expensive city per
square metre for housing in the UK, and
within Oxford the most expensive area is
OX2, i.e. around St. Anne’s.
St Anne’s finds itself much closer to the
centre of the university area following the
sale – for more than £40m – of the old
Radcliffe Infirmary to the university for
transformation into important university
buildings. When I was an undergraduate
the view was that trekking to St Anne’s
was to go way out of the centre. Now the
mountain has come to Mahomet. College
is facing the extensive area of the
Infirmary (10 acres), which is now a
building site. After expenditure of some
£200m, the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter
is going to contain a library, maths and
humanities institutes, surgeries, student
accommodation and university offices. Its
best original features, the façade and the
chapel, will be retained and refurbished.
Planning the new frontage of St Anne’s to
match the prestige of the buildings across
the road is a challenge.
Keble College has come further north to
join us as well. The Acland Hospital,
adjacent to College on the Banbury Road,
was sold in 2004 for £10.75m to Keble,
which financed it in part by selling its
outlying houses in Oxford. There was a
bidding war between at least two
Ruth Deech by Bob Tulloch, 2004
colleges which drove the price up, but
competition law prevents colleges from
cooperating to keep prices down. St
Anne’s, which had had designs on the
Acland site, decided that a similar sum
was better used to build purpose-built
accommodation and conference facilities:
the Ruth Deech Building was completed
in 2005 while Keble is still trying to
refurbish the Acland site today.
Jericho is set to become a conservation
area, so all in all, to be at St Anne’s is to
inhabit one of the most attractive parts of
. 19
Oxford Letter
maintenance grant and ending selective
education, that has placed obstacles in the
way of bright youngsters who wish to
enter the professions.
the city and the country. The southern end
of Woodstock Road has seen many new
small cafes and restaurants, and the
nearby residents are spoiled for choice if
popping out for a fresh baguette and a
skinny latte macchiato at the weekend. I
have always thought that one’s attitude
to university studies is shaped extensively
by the beauty and appropriateness of
one’s surroundings and that the
experience of living and working in Oxford
is so much more conducive to thought
and development than, say, a modern
concrete university in a less attractive
urban setting. One of the most serious
effects of the cuts in university funding
and the rise in tuition fees is their impact
on student mobility. While attention has
been fixed on the hike in tuition, the
expense of moving away from home has
been overlooked. If more students live at
home, their experience of university is
entirely different from those who can
afford to go to a residential one. For the
homebound student, the opportunity to
reinvent oneself, shake off one’s
background and meet diverse young
people of similar aspirations from all parts
of the country is lost. I find it hypocritical
on the part of the last government, and
this one, to complain to the professions
about hindering social mobility when it is
government actions, in limiting the
20 .
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
.
THE SHIP
In some unfortunate ways, the city has not
changed. We are cursed with complicated
and infrequent rubbish collection and it
has been said that you need a PhD to
master the system of sorting, recycling
and collections. Borders has closed and
been replaced by Tesco, to the detriment
of the ambience of Magdalen Street.
Palm’s, the delicatessen, has closed after
57 years. The Covered Market, however, is
thriving and open on Sunday, but with
rather more fashion shops than butchers.
The station is still too small and plans for
re-siting it have vanished with the
recession. Visitors often mistake the
adjoining Saïd Business School for the
station. More and more city centre streets
are given over to nightclubs, with long
queues of underdressed youth waiting to
get in on Friday and Saturday evenings.
Hythe Bridge Street and Park End are lined
with cheap restaurants, the antiques
emporium and some art galleries have
closed down. The New Theatre desperately
needs restoring and Glyndebourne
Touring Opera no longer comes there
because of its inadequacies. The University
.
2009-10
failed to get planning permission to build
a book store at Osney Mead and has taken
it to Swindon instead. And now there is a
plan to place a mobile telephone mast
next to the War Memorial at the northern
end of St Giles’.
There are also welcome changes, and
cultural life is thriving. The restyled
Ashmolean Museum has won awards
and has plans for more expansion;
Oxford foodies are very excited about the
Ashmolean Dining Room, its new
restaurant on the fourth floor, with
spectacular views over the rooftops of
Oxford. Musical life in particular is
almost as rich as London’s and our
Oxford Philomusica is of national stature.
Conductor Marios Papadopoulos puts on
stunning concerts in the Sheldonian,
Christ Church and the Town Hall, and
brings to Oxford international names
such as Nicola Benedetti and, for the
summer Piano Festival, Fou Ts’ong and
Andras Schiff. It is a tradition of the
Berlin Philharmonic to welcome the
Spring in a different European city every
year and Oxford was the fortunate
choice for 2010. Early on May morning
the revellers were finishing their pints
and the Morris Dancers were winding
down outside the Sheldonian as we
queued for the best seats. Barenboim
Nicola Blackwood
conducted, and Alissa Weilerstein played
the Elgar Cello Concerto, taking the place
once held by Jacqueline du Pré. It was the
greatest musical event I have ever
attended in Oxford.
Politically, Oxford West has defected
from the LibDems and elected a new
Conservative MP, Nicola Blackwood. She
has a First in Music from St Anne’s, a
matter of pride for the college. She was
sympathetic to the college’s struggles to
stop English Heritage trying for the
second time to list the Gatehouse, the
worst college building. I am thrilled that
there is now permission to demolish it
and I have asked to be allowed to be the
first to detonate the explosive or wield
the sledgehammer. I look forward to
seeing the front quadrangle of college
made visible once again as the dust
settles.
Ruth Deech, Baroness Deech, DBE
(Fraenkel 1962) studied Law at St Anne’s
and returned to College in 1970 as a
Tutorial Fellow in Law. In 1991, she
became Principal of the College. She
retired in 2004 and became a life peer in
the following year.
Nicola Blackwood
A first in Music seems an unlikely
preparation for a life in politics, but
Oxford’s newest MP continues to find
music a consolation. Nicola Blackwood,
Conservative MP for Abingdon and West
Oxford, was interviewed by The Ship in
March 2011
Were you ‘political’ when you were at
St Anne’s? What activities did you take
part in then?
No, not in the traditional party political
sense. At St Anne’s I was a true musico,
spending my free time rehearsing with
the Oxford University Orchestra or doing
recitals. It’s strange but it turns out
music is a good preparation for politics.
In an Oxford music degree you dovetail
the academic and the practical in exactly
the same way as in politics, and then you
go out and communicate what you’ve
learnt in front of a critical, hard to please
audience.
to visit family in South Africa – I had
watched as apartheid was swept away
by Mandela and the 1994 elections – I
saw how politics and a deep belief in
human rights had certainly changed
that country for the better. I still
remember the moment when I was
reading an article about the 2005
general election when I thought maybe I
should be doing this. Not long after that
I began working for Andrew Mitchell,
now International Development
Secretary, and realised that it was too
late: I had caught the politics bug.
What was your first feeling on hearing
you’d been elected?
Complete surprise! You have to
What made you go into politics?
Watching my parents working in the
NHS under Labour, it was inevitable I
would form quite strong opinions about
UK policies. And with fairly regular trips
. 21
Changing course
remember it was a very close thing: I was
elected with a majority of just 176! It’s
not very fashionable to say it, but once I
had got over the shock, the two feelings
that were uppermost were duty and
privilege. It is an extraordinary feeling to
be right at the heart of this time in our
country’s political history. I just hope I do
a good job...
Changing course
FRANCES CAIRNCROSS
How much time can you spend in the
constituency?
I am usually in the constituency from
Thursday evening until Monday
morning. While I would always like to
spend more time in the constituency,
during the parliamentary term I’m
required to be back in Parliament to start
the legislative week. But I am on the
phone with constituents and handling
casework, so I never feel too removed
from what is occurring in Oxford.
.
THE SHIP
‘Are you enjoying it?’ my friends all asked
when I migrated from The Economist
magazine to become Rector of Exeter
College in 2004. ‘And what exactly do
you do?’
Third, I was lucky in my predecessor.
Professor Marilyn Butler had been the
first woman to be in post as head of one
of the ancient Oxford (or Cambridge)
colleges. Her warmth and academic
reputation had created an atmosphere
that was both welcoming and serious,
with none of the internal feuds that CP
Snow famously described at Cambridge.
I came to the job with three advantages.
First, my father had been a Head of
House – of St Peter’s College in the 1970s
– and so I had seen the problems and the
Nicola Blackwood (2000)
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
privileges from within. Second, in Ruth
Deech, my contemporary at St Anne’s in
the early-1960s and my friend, I had a
guide and enormously experienced
adviser. ‘Get your portrait done early,’ she
told me – and many equally useful
things besides.
These were questions I had never been
asked in any previous job. But then, most
people assume that journalism is fun
and think they know what journalists do.
It is not at all surprising that the same
does not apply to running an Oxford
college. After nearly seven years in the
role, I just about understand what a
Head of House does.
How do you relax in your time off?
I’ve recently discovered the Speaker has a
grand piano in his parliamentary
lodgings, and he’s kindly given me
permission to use it. Getting a chance to
practice while waiting for a late vote
feels like a real indulgence.
22 .
It’s all about substance not style and it’s
probably a good thing to get your
portrait done in good time. Nor do you
hold the ultimate power. Being a Head
of House in Oxford is a long way from
being a journalist on the UK’s leading
weekly
.
2010-11
That was just as well, because journalists
and academics do not always admire
each other. Journalists who think that
somebody is making a tedious and
pernickety argument tend to
characterize it as an ‘academic point’,
whereas academics who feel that a
colleague’s writing is all about style
rather than substance are apt to sneer
about a ‘journalistic approach’.
Changing course
The Portrait, 2008. Oil on canvas reproduced
courtesy the artist Mark Roscoe.
www.markroscoe.com
Besides, Oxford colleges are curious
institutions – effectively, workers’ cooperatives, owned and run by the
community of Fellows, sitting under the
chairmanship of the College Head. There
is a College Office and College Staff, but
the Governing Body has the final word
on all decisions of importance. Exeter
College has a relatively small Governing
Body – 41 Fellows, compared with 55 at St
Anne’s and even more at some colleges.
But on each Governing Body, everyone –
the head of the College included – has
one vote. So I can be outvoted on any
decision, however important, by the
youngest academic in the room.
It is important for a College Head always
to bear this in mind. I remember the
head of another college explaining to
me, soon after I arrived, that there were
two ways to run a college: as a chief
executive or as the head of a family. ‘I
have always regarded myself as the chief
executive,’ he said. He left shortly after.
So what does the job involve? First,
inevitably, there is an element of
leadership: but leadership of a delicate
sort. ‘Frogs in a wheelbarrow,’ said one of
my fellow Heads of House about the task
of trying to get his academic colleagues
to reach a single view. Everyone says that
academics are like this – but in the case of
a college, it often reflects the
understandable fact that many people
want to take part in making a decision,
rather than leaving it to a faceless
administrator, as happens in some other
universities.
Secondly, there is a stream of small but
important decisions, often shared with
the administrative staff. How do we
explain the debate about fees to the
students? When can we hold the
interviews for the new History Fellow?
Who is going to speak at the next Gaudy?
How far have we got with planning
celebrations for our seven-hundredth
anniversary in 2014? Colleges cannot
afford lavish back offices, although the
endless stream of new regulations, laws
and codes of practice has forced more and
more work onto the small and versatile
teams that keep a college running.
Third, there is an ambassadorial role. I
meet a student’s parents who have come
to visit him; I introduce the speaker at a
college seminar; I talk to visitors at dinner.
Above all, I lead the fundraising effort,
which is managed by our determined and
effective Development Director. The
College relies on annual donations for
almost 10 per cent of its annual spending,
and on gifts of larger sums to finance
buildings, teaching posts and scholarships.
So persuading our alumni, parents and
friends to support us each year is a key
part of the job.
In addition to all this, there are contacts
with student life. In a typical day, a student
might come to see me about something
(often, career advice); I might go to
evensong in the Chapel for the pleasure of
hearing our fabulous student choir; and I
might talk to a group of students at a
seminar or over dinner. Talking to and
learning from some of the world’s
cleverest young people is what makes it
such a privilege and a delight to be the
head of an Oxford college.
Frances Cairncross (1962) has been Rector
of Exeter College since 2004. Before that
she was at The Economist for 20 years,
most recently as management editor. She
was at the Guardian from 1973 to 1984, and
has also been on the financial staff of The
Times, The Banker and The Observer
. 23
Gaudy seminar
a monetary figure on the value of a
habitat such as, say, an ancient
woodland, so decision makers have
tended to ignore these values. The
development and management of land,
water and the oceans has tended to
result in serious losses of biodiversity
and degradation of ecosystem resilience.
Marsh Fritillary on Milkwort Courtesy Martin Warren/Butterfly Conservation
Costing the earth
SUE COLLINS
It’s not simply a matter of leaving a
better world for future generations,
looking after the earth’s resources
makes sound economic sense
matter? That was the subject of the
seminar held at the September Gaudy in
2010. Biodiversity – the variety of life, the
planet’s genes, ecosystems, habitats and
species – is undervalued and at risk. The
importance of our ecosystems to human
economic and social wellbeing is not
properly understood. It is difficult to put
One hundred years from now – the year
2111 – what kind of natural world will our
great grandchildren inherit? And does it
24 .
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
.
THE SHIP
.
2010-11
Imagine a world without birdsong such
as that predicted in 1962 in Rachel
Carson’s Silent Spring; picture ever
encroaching concrete replacing
meadows and pastures; think of more
roads fragmenting habitats and cutting
off animals from the territory they need
to breed and feed. Watch David
Attenborough’s exploration of the
remaining wildlife treasures of
Madagascar and see how much has
been lost in the 50 years since he first
filmed there. Know that the human
population is growing inexorably from
about 6 billion now to some 9 billion by
2050; that consumption continues to
increase; and ask yourself: where will the
space for nature be and will the lifesustaining services it supplies still be
available?
Do we still have time to change before
the damage becomes irreversible? Yes, if
we act decisively now. Probably not if we
Costing the earth
wait another decade before acting on
the warning signs. Is there enough
political will to give the necessary lead
and drive enough changes in the way we
all invest and consume? No, not yet: the
evident determination of governments
to restore growth in GDP as a response
to the banking and financial crisis
suggests that thinking about
sustainability has not yet become the
mainstream priority. Can a greater
acceptance of our ethical duty to respect
the intrinsic value of nature help us all to
modify the way we live and reduce our
footprint on the planet? Are there new
ways for companies, governments and
individuals to appreciate the true value
of nature to human beings? And can we
start to look after the common good
rather than being driven mostly by
private, short term profit and the notion
that increases in GDP are the only thing
that really matters?
Pavan Sukhdev, the keynote speaker at
the seminar, gave an inspiring
presentation answering some of these
questions and reporting on the results of
the international study he has led on the
“Economics of Ecosystems and
Biodiversity” – the TEEB study. This
analyses how current decision making is
failing the poorest, who depend most
deeply on biodiversity, and resulting in
progressive degradation of the
environment on which we all depend.
The TEEB Reports set out a new
paradigm for assessing the value of
nature and acting more for the common
good.
Linked to this, Dr Pam Berry from
Oxford’s Environmental Change
Institute, showed how ecosystems,
climate change and human wellbeing
are intimately linked. There is an
imperative to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions and sustain the natural assets
that act as sinks to soak up carbon if we
are to avoid damage caused by climate
change and the adverse consequences
for people and wildlife. These include
losses of coastal communities due to sea
level rise; mass human migration from
low lying land subject to flooding in Asia;
desertification in some areas; conflicts
over water; and further losses of
biodiversity.
Over the next 100 years, the
consequences could be calamitous for
mankind if the global temperature rises
continue unabated. Sir Nicholas Stern’s
Report on the Economics of Climate
Change has shown that it makes
economic sense to invest now in climate
change mitigation and adaptation
measures to avoid the devastating costs
and consequences of the temperature
rises predicted on a ‘business as usual’
scenario. The international Cancun
Agreement of 2010, calls for a number of
actions, including the reduction of
greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per
cent from 1990 levels worldwide and by
80 per cent from 1990 levels in
industrialised countries by 2050. The
objective is to keep global temperature
rise to only 2 degrees above preindustrial levels. Meanwhile, Cancun also
set out a strategic framework countries
could use to adapt their economies and
land uses to increase their resilience in
the face of the expected impacts of the
climate change that will result from the
predicted rises in temperature.
Pam showed how climate change is
already impacting on species: as
temperatures rise, some butterflies and
other species that live in high mountain
areas will have nowhere to go. For other
species, warming can lead to extensions
of their range. Climate change
predictions depend on estimates of the
scale of global greenhouse gas emission
and the extent to which carbon is
absorbed by the vegetation growing in
peatlands, forests, grasslands and
. 25
Gaudy seminar
coral reefs with all their wonderful
marine wildlife and run the risk of
catastrophic change. We are learning all
the time but we already know enough
about things we can all do to reduce
these dangers. What we need is the
political will, personal commitment and
international governance mechanisms
to make the changes required.
saltmarshes. The most significant source
of emissions is the burning of fossil fuels
in power stations, homes and for
transport. Investment in mitigation
measures to alter fuel mixes and to
reduce oil, gas and coal use is crucial.
Cutting down and burning tropical
forests contributes some 12 per cent to 17
per cent of global carbon dioxide
emissions and must stop. Some
conservation measures offer win-win
solutions for wildlife and mitigation of
climate change: forest conservation,
urban tree planting and green roofs are
all examples. The latter reduce water run
off, insulate, store carbon and provide a
habitat for wildlife. Climate change
mitigation and adaptation measures
that support biodiversity and ecosystem
resilience need to go hand in hand. And
the scale of the investments needs to be
commensurate with the scale of the
challenges posed.
Pavan outlined the critical services
nature can provide: clean air, clean water,
climate regulation, flood prevention,
pollination. These services are often
hidden, but we all depend on them for
our environmental security, for our food
and to underpin our livelihoods. Their
connection with biodiversity is not
always apparent but in some instances is
clear. The collapse in bee populations, for
instance, threatens the pollination on
which so much of our cropping depends
and is extremely expensive to substitute
for by hand; in some cases it is
impossible. Ecosystem services are
common pooled resources and
constitute public wealth. Degradation is
a loss to us all.
If we do not invest enough effort in
changing our ways to limit carbon
dioxide and methane emissions and
protect the ecosystems that take up and
store carbon, then we shall incur further
irreversible losses of natural capital,
devastation of low lying coastal
communities, loss of our magnificent
26 .
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
.
THE SHIP
Pavan illustrated a more rounded
approach to assessing the economics of
such developments and taking proper
account of their effects on biodiversity,
.
2010-11
by referring to the case of Indonesian
shrimp farming. Firewood from
mangroves contributes little to the local
economy, so it appears attractive to cut
mangroves down and for small farmers
to make bigger profits from using the
area for farming shrimps. But since most
of their money is derived from
government subsidies, the real profit is
much smaller. Once you subtract the free
benefits from the intact mangrove
ecosystem, which provides a nursery for
local fish stocks and offers some
protection from storms and cyclones,
then the balance of economics comes
firmly down on the side of looking after
the mangroves. Furthermore, shrimp
farming can only continue in the same
area for about five years as it degrades
the soil; the apparent gains to
individuals are short term and the losses
to the community long lasting.
The TEEB study has identified many more
similar cases, particularly from India,
Brazil and Indonesia. The TEEB for Policy
Makers Report has several practical
recommendations for change. It cites
ways of capturing the value of
ecosystems and the benefits of
rewarding people through payments for
ecosystem services, either locally, for
Costing the earth
example, for water provisioning, or
globally through the REDD+ (Reducing
Emissions from Deforestation and Forest
Degradation) mechanism for rewarding
reductions in greenhouse gas emissions
from deforestation and degradation.
Market-related measures, such as
product certification, green product
procurement and labelling, can all help to
green supply chains and reduce adverse
impacts on natural capital. Reforms of
environmentally harmful subsidies are
long overdue. Implementation of the
‘polluter pays’ principle through robust
regulatory frameworks that establish
environmental standards, and liability
regimes based on full cost recovery
principles must become more
widespread.
Supporting sustainable management of
protected areas on land and extending
their coverage in marine areas will pay
dividends and help the poorest. This is a
key priority. In addition, investing in recreating ecological infrastructure where
feasible offers the hope of a cost-effective
reversal of some of the losses incurred so
far and can make a contribution to
increasing resilience in the face of
climate change. These measures can also
help to reduce environmental risks – by
supporting flood plains to reduce flood
Indri, Andasibe-Mantadia National Park, Madagascar: one of at least 100 recognised species and subspecies of
lemur found only in Madagascar Courtesy Karen Coppock
risks, for instance. And the social benefits
of restoration can be several times higher
than the costs.
Biodiversity is ethically, economically and
emotionally important. It is an indicator
of the health of the environment and
monitoring shows the scale of some of
the losses in Europe. Fieldwork by
Butterfly Conservation Europe partners
has shown that there has been a decline
of 70 per cent in the European grassland
butterfly indicator since 1990, farmland
birds have declined significantly and 60
per cent of European fish stocks are
outside safe biological limits. At the
global level, 60 per cent of ecosystems
are degraded and in Asia the few tigers
left are confined to isolated areas.
In March 2010, during the International
Year of Biodiversity, European heads of
. 27
Gaudy seminar
connection between people and nature
and enhance wellbeing.
EU policy reforms are also essential. The
incentives in the current EU Common
Agriculture Policy (CAP) need to be
changed so that public money is spent
on supporting public goods. CAP
resources should be shifted to support
the sustainable management of High
Nature Value farmland – often-grazed,
semi-natural grassland with high
biodiversity and landscape value. Much
of this has been lost to either
intensification, in Western Europe, or
abandonment, in Eastern and Central
Europe. Such support is also vital to the
economic viability of many small farmers
and large areas of rural Europe.
Left to Right: Pam Berry, Sue Collins, Pavan Sukhdev
government endorsed a new biodiversity
target for the EU: to halt the loss of
biodiversity and to restore, in so far as
feasible, biodiversity and ecosystem
services and step up the contribution to
global biodiversity, all by 2020.
How can this be achieved? Habitat and
species protection and sustainable
management need to lie at the heart of
Europe’s strategy. The Natura 2000 and
Emerald Network protected area
networks are essential. But they are not
enough: we also need to invest in green
infrastructure – restoring mosaics of
habitat and creating new ecological
connections across the landscape. We
can all play a part in supporting
biodiversity in urban areas: in gardens,
parks, green corridors, river and canal
sides, and on green roofs. Sustaining this
nature, close to where most people live
and work, will help to restore a better
28 .
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
.
THE SHIP
Threats to Europe’s marine biodiversity
can be reduced and recovery of fish
stocks and other marine wildlife could be
facilitated through reforms of the EU
Common Fisheries Policy. We need
Marine Protected Areas, which can act as
fish nurseries and wildlife refuges and
there needs to be a big reduction in
fishing pressure.
Maintaining stocks of natural capital
allows the sustained provision of future
flows of ecosystem services and thereby
.
2010-11
helps to ensure human well being. So
national governments need to draw up
Natural Capital Accounts, reform
taxation policy and raise charges on
unsustainable practices like landfill,
using the revenues to support
environmental recovery. Paying for
ecosystem services will have an
increasing role to play in saving forests
and peatlands around the globe as their
function in storing carbon and so
reducing net greenhouse gas emissions
is increasingly recognised.
But none of this will happen on the scale
needed or at the pace necessary to
reverse the losses in biodiversity and to
restore ecosystem services unless we
develop a new mindset and more
citizens recognize what is happening
and why and start to act differently. In
the West we need to reduce the amount
of energy and goods we consume;
nurture nature; and demand of our
politicians that they reform the CAP and
CFP; and give the lead in making the
other changes in policy required to set
Europe on the path to environmental
recovery and a more secure
environmental future for all.
Sue Collins (Blandford 1969)
Saving the earth: Ponmudi
Return to Ponmudi
SARAH STEPHEN
As the UN initiates its new Decade of
Biodiversity, our correspondent in India’s
‘biodiversity hotspot’ reminds us of what
is at stake
Political states generally have defined
boundaries, with those on each side
conscious of this inked line – sometimes
manifested physically – and tending not to
trespass. Visits, if any, are only after the
right documents have been secured from
the authorities. Forested lands, by and
large, enjoy no such system.
Such is the case in the Ponmudi forest in
India’s Western Ghats where there are no
definite borders except those to be found
in dusty old maps. Fences, which once
upon a time existed to curb forays by wild
animals, were deftly pulled down by
settlers: a subtle annexation of forest
territory provides land for new settlement
and farming. This results in further
disturbance of an ecosystem already upset
by plantations which have reduced the
natural habitat of wild animals and,
consequently, their food sources. During
lean times, mostly during erratic weather
and climatic patterns, the animals’ quest
for fodder leads them to the fenceless
transition zone – the front line of the war
zone in the civilization-forest conflict.
Residents of Kallar village, at the base of
Ponmudi, often find their agricultural crops
– jackfruit, plantain, tapioca, sweet potato,
and yam – harvested by wild animals,
notably by wild boars, bears and elephants.
There have been unfortunate
consequences where residents ventured
into the forests: most recently, three
women, who went collecting Maranta
leaves (Schumannianthus virgatus),
escaped with severe injuries after being
attacked by a gaur (Bos gaurus). A deeper
incursion, also aimed at collecting forest
products, resulted in the death of one man
and the serious injury of his two
companions. In separate incidents, two
others have been killed by elephants.
television crew. Such escalating conflicts
are evidenced in the roads and railway
lines which cut through forests and animal
corridors. The defeated are usually the
fauna, either injured or killed – an apt
example being a herd of seven elephants,
which in September met their maker on
collision with a train in North Bengal.
Although there is no doubt over who are
the true inhabitants of forests, the sad fact
remains: when the human factor enters
the equation (directly or indirectly), the
delicate ecosystem is unhinged.
Sarah Stephen (2004) continues to work in
Ponmudi. You can read her blogs at
http://gossamerplanet.blogspot.com and
http://ecoratorio.blogspot.com
Ponmudi’s Bonnet Monkey shows his face
Sarah Stephen
Elsewhere in Kerala and in other Indian
states, the human reaction sometimes
assumes the form of a witch-hunt in
which the wild visitor meets a terrible end.
In Orissa in January, a leopard, which had
apparently inflicted ‘mere bruises’ on two
individuals, met a gory end at the hands of
villagers, fuelled by the presence of a
. 29
Biodiversity
Me and my life with bees
enthusiast finally made me take the leap
of faith.
MARTHA KEARNEY
There have been ups and downs in the
relationship and she has thought about
walking away from the whole business,
but Martha Kearney shows no serious
signs of terminating her love affair with
bees just yet
If you decide to get married at Beehive
Cottage, there’s bound to be a certain
theme to your presents so I wasn’t too
surprised to get a table cloth embroidered
with bees and hives and a variety of honey
pots. More of a shock was a giant box
containing the components of a WBC hive
– named after its designer William
Broughton Carr – veil, gloves and smoker
gun. We made good use of the linen but
the beehive kit stayed in the shed. Was I a
fit and proper person to look after several
thousand living creatures? What if they
swarmed and attacked the young children
next door? What if they swarmed and
attacked me?
It took two or three years to get my act
together and assemble the hive. For the
first six months it stood empty at the
bottom of the garden, a rustic folly. But
then a chance encounter with a bee
Credit: David Montgomery
30 .
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There’s something about bee
enthusiasts… they’re a bit like a cult but
without the unpleasant bits. Jan gave
me my first colony and I happily signed
on as her apprentice beekeeper. My
husband, who was stung twice on the
first day, decided he would have nothing
to do with them.
The first year I made several mistakes
including drowning hundreds of bees in
sugar syrup. At least they died happy. The
hive was also robbed by wasps. All that
weakened the colony and it didn’t
survive the winter. So Jan sent me off to
an apiary near Norwich to buy a nuke –
an alarming idea if you’re brought up in
the nuclear age. The ‘nuc’ is a box of new
bees with their little antennae fluttered
through the mesh at the top. Driving a
hatchback with a nuc full of
disorientated angry bees in the back seat
is a disconcerting experience. ‘Don’t
worry if any escape,’ we were told, ‘just
wind down the windows and they will be
blown to the back.’ Chris didn’t look
reassured. ‘And they can only sting you
once.’ We drove back very gingerly.
Saving the earth: why bees matter
With my new colony installed I started to
get overconfident. One day, I inspected
the hive in a rush and ended up with six
stings through my jeans. I felt OK and
headed off on a bike ride. One mile in, I
felt terrible and ended up in bed with
violent stomach problems. The following
day, I had to travel up to Blackpool for the
Conservative party conference. The
stings were still very swollen so I went to
see a local GP who was impressed by
their size! He told me to check they
weren’t getting infected by drawing
round the swellings with a biro. So at the
Winter Garden conference centre I
disappeared into the Ladies to draw
large ovals on my thighs.
Another time, I accidentally left the zip
to my veil open and suddenly noticed
that the buzzing was alarmingly close.
Several bees were inside and were in my
hair. That is bad news because they think
you are a predator with fur like a bear
and have a greater tendency to sting. I
ended up with two stings on my face
which got worse overnight. By the time I
reached the studios of The World at One,
I provoked a lot of laughter from my kind
colleagues, one of whom greeted me as
‘The Elephant Woman’.
The incident did lead to an unusual
birthday present from a GP friend who
presented me with a beautiful round
brown velvet box. Inside:
antihistamines, Imodium®,
paracetamol and an EpiPen® in case
of anaphylactic shock. At that point
I began to wonder about beekeeping as
a hobby but then there is the honey.
Most years we manage to get about 30
jars but there is always the possibility
of disaster.
Ten friends were due for lunch when
my husband rushed into the house
shouting, ‘The bees have gone berserk.’
I dashed out and could hear the noise
before I saw them swirling ferociously
in a black cloud high in the air above
the hive. In a panic I rang Jan who
dashed over. The good news was that
the swarm settled in our garden. The
bad news was that they were about 20
feet up hanging from a hawthorn
branch. Thousands of bees clustered
together forming a wobbling, molten
sack high above us.
I was sent up a ladder precariously
propped against the hawthorn armed
with a giant pair of secateurs. I was to
cut the branch, hold out a box for the
swarm while somehow hanging onto
the ladder. When I reached the top, the
sound of the bees was ferocious, the
ladder was wobbling and I made the
mistake of looking down. Not to put too
fine a point on it, I bottled it.
My exasperated husband decided to
intervene. His only experience of the
bees had been the two stings on his
head and honey on breakfast toast, but
heroically he put on the veil and some
gardening gloves and headed up the
ladder. At this point we were joined by an
audience of lunch guests. I was barely
coherent with adrenalin. Parents of small
children headed for cover. The rest were
fascinated until one got stung on the
lips. Despite the pain, he kept inviting
everyone to admire his ‘beestung lips’,
which had swollen up in true B celeb
fashion.
Up in the hawthorn tree Chris attempted
to shake and brush the quivering
wobbling mass of angry bees into a
swarm box held by Jan. Somehow he
managed to recapture most of the
swarm before half falling off the ladder –
white as a leaf – muttering that he’d
rather keep piranha in the pond.
The bees are still there at least for now
but I confess to having had mixed
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Biodiversity
feelings about my new found hobby. I
love the honey, I love the spirit of the
beehive but there are moments of sheer
unadulterated terror and the constant
thought that one unlucky sting in the
face would turn me into a gargoyle and
give late night appearances on The
Review Show a Gothic effect.
Sometimes you don’t even get the honey.
For the very first time since I began to
keep bees, last summer I was unable to
harvest any honey myself. I had two
thriving colonies but both came a
cropper. The first hive was robbed by
wasps in search of food late in the
season after most of the fruit had gone.
They killed all the bees. The second hive
seemed to be thriving. On bright winter
days I would watch the bees flying
around and so assumed that all was well.
But when we opened up the hive in the
Spring, there was no brood – eggs –
which meant that my queen had gone. I
made several panicky phone calls to see
if I could buy a new queen but it was too
early in the season for an English one.
After much research I managed to track
down an imported queen which was an
Italian-New Zealand cross. She arrived by
post in a little yellow cage surrounded by
attendant bees. The entrance was
stopped by a block of sugar which my
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bees ate their way through and so
learned to get used to the scent of the
new queen. I don’t know whether it’s the
Italian or the New Zealand genes but
she’s been an absolute delight, laying
the most mild mannered bees you can
imagine. However, there is an adage in
beekeeping which is that in the first year
you get either bees or honey and so I
decided to let them keep all the stores
for themselves to get through the
winter, as well as feeding them up with
sugar syrup myself. I was very relieved
when I took a peek inside this February
to see that there were bees in both hives.
There are, of course, the more serious
benefits of beekeeping. Apis Melliflora,
along with many other insects, are
responsible for pollinating the majority
of our crops. Honey bees have been dying
out at an alarming rate in recent years.
The threat comes from the Varroa mite, a
parasite which feeds on bees and
spreads disease. Modern farming can
also mean that the habitat for bees is
not as productive as it once was. They
need a variety of plants throughout the
year for pollen and nectar. Some people
blame pesticides and there is a
campaign against neonicotinoids at the
moment. Certainly more research is
needed and it is good that more
2010-11
government money has gone into this. It
would be truly sad and very damaging
for the economy if we were to see Colony
Collapse Disorder, which has been so
destructive in the United States, appear
here.
Martha Kearney (1976), broadcaster and
journalist, is the lead presenter of BBC
Radio 4’s current affairs programme,
The World At One, a former presenter of
Woman’s Hour and former political
editor of Newsnight.
In the steps of Darwin and beyond
JANE DARNTON
When members of the public were asked
in 2010 what biodiversity was, the most
common answer was ‘some kind of
washing powder’. The current UN
‘Decade of Biodiversity’ aims to further
our understanding of the incredible
variety of life that has evolved on our
planet over billions of years. Jane Darnton
describes her own excursions into some
magical endangered places
St Anne’s marked the 2010 UN ‘Year of
Biodiversity’ by making it the subject of
the Gaudy seminar. For me, the year
marked one more trip in my pursuit of the
‘one hundred animals to see before they
die’. It has been a privilege to have seen so
many ways of life: animal, vegetable and
human and to have been able to ponder
the global situation for myself. Francis
Bacon said: ‘Travel, in the youngest sort, is
a part of education; in the elder, a part of
experience.’ Darwin had his big travel bug
early on in life as he circled the globe
before settling stolidly in Kent. I have had
my big chance later in life, though my
career did involve overseas conferences. I
am thrilled once to have talked on my
specialist cancer subject in the great hall
in which the original Kyoto Conference
met in 1997.
One fifth of animal and plant species are
under threat of extinction and I have been
successfully chasing several of them. The
proportion of species facing extinction is
rising but there are some good stories in
conservation to tell. I make a point of
paying back the carbon of my travel to
conservation projects that help the
animals but also the human society in
which they are found.
Species loss is sometimes caused by
climate change but more often is due to
disturbance of the environment caused
by that insidiously successful species,
Homo sapiens (P29). Governments are
now paying attention to global
biodiversity problems as well as to those
of climate change but international
cooperation is painfully slow. New
research suggests that a relatively low
rise in global average temperature will
still lead to devastating rates of extinction
and that the most devastating effects will
be in the tropics rather than in the polar
regions: since the tropical regions provide
habitats for the greatest richness of
species, the losses will be greater there.
We need to care about the protection of
the life on earth not just for its interest
and beauty but for sound economic
reasons too. The natural environment is
suffering as coral reefs die, fish stocks are
depleted, forests are destroyed for
agriculture and habitation, and water is
polluted. We shall all end up footing the
bill but it is the poor who will suffer most.
My own ‘Zoo Quest’ has been as a
follower of Darwin, who was fascinated
by zoology and botany as he travelled
but also by anthropology and
ethnography. There are biodiversity
hotspots around the world that need the
most urgent protection. Eco-tourism,
when carried out thoughtfully, can be a
positive asset to these environments.
Small tour groups, responsible behaviour
and use of local facilities all help. Hard
currencies feed into local schemes and
the education of travellers and local
communities increases environmental
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Biodiversity
In India, the tigers desperately need
protection. Over the past century, world
wild tiger numbers have fallen from about
100,000 to an estimated 3,500. The illegal
trade in tiger parts has led to more than
1,000 wild tigers being killed over the past
decade alone. Western tourism inputs
hard cash to ensure precious habitat is not
further reduced. By educating and
supporting local populations they become
curators of these wonderful primates and
big cats. Many former poachers have
become skilled conservators and guides.
Virunga Mountains, Rwanda: silverback gorilla at ease in his forest / Jane Darnton
hearing the first grunt and sighting the
first enormous silverback in the mountain
forest terrain is a truly amazing
experience. The said silverback later
winked at me and slumped on his day bed
looking for all the world like my own
father relaxing on the sofa after Sunday
lunch. One locks eyes with the intelligence
in the eyes of mammals such as gorillas,
chimpanzees, whales and dolphins. I
suspect they are ‘people-watching’ much
as we are there to watch them.
awareness. Protected areas such as
natural parks are one of the most
effective ways of safeguarding plants,
animals and ecosystems. I have been
lucky enough to travel to reservations in
the Galapagos Islands, India,
Madagascar, China, Romania, Tasmania,
Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. In the
Virunga volcanoes of Rwanda, the last
600 mountain gorillas are in protected
areas, without which we’d lose them
altogether. The magic moment of
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Islands are frequently biodiversity and
evolutionary hotspots because insular
isolation drives diverse speciation – the
formation of new and distinct species in
the course of evolution – of plants and
animals. Tasmania and Madagascar both
have amazingly complex endemic wildlife.
These two islands have been isolated for
some 180-200 million years since the
split of the original huge Pangaea
supercontinent. For a biologist, walking
through prehistoric forests of immense
ferns in Tasmania and seeing lemurs
swing and dance through tropical forests
in Madagascar beats a walk in an English
suburban park any day. But tree
clearance for firewood and agricultural
space has reduced the natural forest
habitat of these unique lemurs.
Subsequent erosion of the thin volcanic
soil has rendered much of the island
unsuitable for cultivation. Rare timbers,
ebony, rosewood and pallisander, have
been illegally logged from the National
Parks for export to furniture
manufacturers. The people are among
the poorest in the world and the political
situation is unstable. The desperation of
the population is creating a no-win
situation for the preservation of
biodiversity.
The Galapagos are islands formed by
volcanic eruption, barren at inception
but populated by ocean-carried species.
These ancestral species were then
isolated and evolved by natural selection,
and are, indeed, still evolving. The islands
are of vital scientific interest and inspire
the modern naturalist as they did
Darwin. Isolation has made the animals
not tame but unafraid. Crawling along
through long grass to come face to face
with a giant tortoise and snorkelling
with playful young sea lions diving
between ones legs are personal
experiences beyond any natural
history film.
The Galapagos are home to 23,000
Ecuadorians, originally poor farmers and
fishermen who have come as economic
migrants. Their presence poses threats in
terms of pressure on food and water
resources, and the introduction of
domestic and alien wild species such as
feral goats, cats and rats are a terrible
threat to the formerly pristine local
ecology even though valiant efforts are
being made to eradicate them. National
and local governments are educating
people to respect the environment and
training them in the hospitality business,
which can be a major source of income.
Yet more tourists mean more pollution
and tourist number quotas should not
be allowed to drift ever higher. The
islands are over 500 miles from the
mainland and provision of supplies and
removal of waste are problematic. The
Marine Reserve is targeted by illegal
fishing, notably that of sea cucumber
and shark finning.
The year 2010 also brought us the
fascinating BBC 4 radio series A History
of the World in 100 Objects narrated by
Neil MacGregor of the British Museum.
Darwin hypothesised that early man
evolved in Africa and the second and
third objects in the series were a stone
chopping tool made 1.8 million years ago
and a hand axe made 1.2-1.4 million years
ago, both excavated in the Olduvai Gorge
in the Rift Valley where human evolution
begins. Important prehistoric skeletons
were excavated in East Africa as I was
doing my A-levels and a visit was a longheld ambition. The Rift Valley runs
thousands of miles in a north-south cleft
where the parted sedimentary rocks
expose the history of millions of years of
life on earth. The tiny, dusty museum at
Olduvai, Tanzania, has more man-made
tools dating from 2 million years ago.
Their surfaces are so tactile, made to fit
the grasping hand. Of course we cannot
touch, but how we can relate. What a
privilege to have seen these tools in the
same place as the skeletons of their
makers with the dramatic scenery of the
Gorge as a backdrop.
I knew that Homo habilis – the early man
who was the first tool maker – was small
but it is truly impressive to see the
actual bones and realise that these
ancient relatives, half our height, were
making and using implements to cut
carcasses and prepare vegetables. The
later hand axes allowed early men to
modify the environment as they started
their first colonisation across and away
from Africa. The Olduvai museum has an
even earlier fragment of our history: the
cast of the solidified foot-prints of an
adult and young Australopithecus
afarensis who walked side-by side in soft
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Biodiversity
single call. My most recent trip saw the
Ethiopian Orthodox Epiphany Timkat – a
ritual re-baptism in a sacred pool of
blessed water – procession in Gondar
being coordinated by mobile phone.
mud 3 million years ago makes the hairs
stand up on the back of one’s neck. The
National Museum in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia, has a replica cast of ‘Lucy’ the A.
afarensis so memorably named after the
Beatles song ‘Lucy in the Sky with
Diamonds’ which was playing when she
was brought back to the archaeologists’
camp. The museum also has skeletons
from the genus Ardepithecus dating back
5.8 million years: bipedal yet with an
opposable big toe and certainly a link
between ancestral chimpanzees and
early men.
‘The world is a small joint’ as a US
surgeon once memorably said to me. In
lands where distances are huge and
telephone land lines could never be allinclusive the mobile phone is the great
provider. Solar power is free in the
tropical latitudes and the invention of
ever cheaper and more efficient solar
capture panels will be the driver for lowcarbon industrial and sociological
progress. The technology may even save
the planet from the polluting effects of
our fossil-fuel dependency. The poor of
the world have paid the price for the
lifestyle of the West. It is good to see
them getting something back.
African travels have also brought home
to me the power of the BM’s one
hundredth chosen item: a solar lamp and
charger with its extension – the mobile
phone. The mobile is ubiquitous in the
developing as in the developed world
and has enabled a revolution in
communication. Maasai morans in their
red capes guard their flocks and plan
movements of their herds. Their phones
seem as permanently attached to their
hands and ears as they are to those of
English teenagers. The guards on the
Virunga Mountains communicate as
they protect the mountain gorillas in
their care. Street vendors in Madagascar
sit under huge umbrellas with mobiles
hung from the spokes, rentable by the
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Jane Darnton (Baker 1962)
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2010-11
Cyd Charisse and Fred Astaire in ‘Dancing in the Dark’
from The Band Wagon
Spring Event
2010
Dr Andrew Klevan, Non-Tutorial Fellow
and University Lecturer in Film Studies,
entertained us with a well illustrated
lecture entitled ‘Internalising the
Musical’. He showed, though anlaysing
film sequences in detail, how The Band
Wagon (Vincenti Minnelli, 1953, US)
maintains a quality of musicality and
choreography in non-musical sequences
which might at first appear to be merely
interludes, or simply preparatory or
inconsequential to the main action of
the film. Our only regret was that we
could not immediately lower the lights
and settle down to watch the entire film.
Arts and sciences: friends or foes?
HELEN CHRISTIAN
It’s not about having a different brain,
but simply about how one chooses to
use it – and science has its own art too
In my view and from conversations with
colleagues, bioscientists do not perceive
a gap between science and arts. Indeed,
the two merge throughout our daily life.
Although the perception of science may
simply be that of learning new facts, the
thought processes involved in scientific
research are no different from those
involved in the arts: questioning new
and established ideas, observing, writing
and presenting findings, critically
assessing our own and others’ work,
imagination, design, curiosity, originality,
the ability to put our findings in the
context of a bigger picture to improve
understanding of the world around us.
All of these processes are common to the
two disciplines. Scientists have always
used images and visual media to show
results and observations. Creating
images of biological specimens to learn
about their structure and function is a
major feature of biomedical research and
this process is highly creative. A recent
exhibition at the Royal Society ‘Seeing is
believing? The art of science’ brought
together some of the most beautiful
biomedical imaging, from the work of
Robert Hooke, the first to publish
engravings of objects he viewed with his
microscope in the 1600s, to modern day
electron microscopy, which allows
detailed viewing of living tissues.
Being a successful scientist does not
exclude strong interests and talents in
the arts. Einstein, for example, was a
talented violinist, the novelist CP Snow a
physicist. Tom Lehrer, well known for his
Periodic Table song, combined a love of
music and science throughout his career.
There are an astonishing number of
online music blogs written by scientists
exploring their relationship with music.
In contrast, how are scientists
represented in art? Scientists feature
rarely in literature and despite science
having given birth to cinema, scientists
are typically portrayed as the cliché of
cold, dull, maverick, villainous, cruel and
‘Muscle man’ from Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica
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Oxford ASM anniversary debate
album Here Comes Science for children
with the help of scientific consultants.
Arts directly merge with the sciences in
the conservation of art works. The
National Gallery in London has had a
scientific department since the 1930s
which is part funded by the Engineering
and Physical Sciences Research Council
(EPSRC). A recent exhibition ‘Close
examination: fakes, mistakes and
discoveries’ at the National Gallery in
summer 2010 was dedicated to
demonstrating the use of gas
chromatography, mass spectrometry and
microscopy to analyse and date
components of the artwork to shed new
light on it. These techniques have
allowed the National Gallery to identify
fakes, date modifications to paintings
and determine authorship. Infra red
analysis revealed that parts of the
National Gallery’s The Virgin and Child
with Two Angels by Andrea del
Verrocchio, one of the leading fifteenthcentury artists in Florence painting were
in fact by his assistant Lorenzo di Credi.
obsessive individuals. William Styron’s
Sophie’s Choice features Nathan, a
paranoid, cruel and obsessive scientist,
deluded that he will win a Nobel prize;
Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein, a
scientist obsessed with imbuing life into
inanimate objects, creating a monster in
the process; Dr Strangelove, the nuclear
war expert whose uncontrollable hand
apparently has a Nazi mind of its own.
However, there are films that provide an
accurate portrayal of science and that
often anticipate the ethical concerns of
society about new scientific
developments, such as genetic screening,
powerfully portrayed in the film Gattaca.
Arts and science successfully merge in
academic departments around the UK
which explore music from a variety of
scientific perspectives, be it the study of
the cognitive neuroscience of emotional
responses to music or the physics of
sound generation. It is claimed that JS
Bach was fascinated by numbers and
that the beautiful symmetry of his music
was influenced by Leibniz, the inventor
of calculus, who claimed that ‘music is a
secret arithmetical exercise’. Béla Bartók
was also very interested in nature and
science and used Fibonacci numbers in
some of his music. More recently, the
band ‘They Might Be Giants’ wrote the
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Indeed, in renaissance times science and
art were one. The idea of separating
academic disciplines into groups known
as science and humanities is no older
than the nineteenth century, and the
term ‘scientist’ was only coined in 1833.
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2010-11
Leonardo da Vinci began his career
working with Andrea del Verrocchio and
went on to become a talented painter,
sculptor, architect, musician,
mathematician, engineer, geologist,
inventor and anatomist. This polymath
was representative of ‘renaissance man’
and scientific knowledge was
fashionable. To be an artist during the
Renaissance was, for many, to be an
anatomist. In the engravings for his 1543
De humani corporis fabrica (On the Fabric
of the Human Body), Andreas Vesalius
drew the intricate anatomical detail of
muscular bodies displayed as if they
were sculptures to create a complete
textbook of human anatomy. In
academies of art across Europe from the
1600s, artists and anatomists worked
together to investigate the body through
dissection. Even today, Ruskin College
students learn to draw the intricacies of
muscle and bone in the dissection rooms
of the medical school, and Ruskin staff
teach basic drawing skills to medical
students to enhance the learning of
anatomy and spatial awareness. Gunther
von Hagens controversially revisited the
anatomical arts in his ‘Bodyworlds’
exhibition, which displayed dissected
cadavers in various scenarios, preserved
by plastination.
However, one place where a strong
arts/science divide does exist is in
schools where stereotypes and discipline
specialisation is often established early.
In 1955, CP Snow in that year’s Rede
lecture ‘The Two Cultures and the
Scientific Revolution’, took as his theme
the dangerously wide gap opened up
between scientists and literary
intellectuals. He argued that the UK
education system forced children to
specialise at an unusually early age:
typically, arts or science subjects start to
be segregated from the early teenage
years, limiting the ability to combine arts
and sciences. The International
Baccalaureate does allow both
disciplines to be followed to 18. At
university level it is difficult to study arts
and sciences. In a 2005 survey of British
teenagers by the Oxford Cambridge and
RSA exam board, over 50 per cent
thought science classes boring,
confusing and difficult. Science is now
compulsory at GCSE level but the exams
watchdog Ofqual reported in 2010 that
the papers were too easy to be fit for
purpose. The new science GCSE was
designed to persuade more students to
take science at A level and university by
making it more interesting and relevant.
However, it has been argued that it
treats science as a branch of media
studies because of its emphasis on
discussion of topical issues and media
coverage rather than new knowledge
and concepts. A gender gap in discipline
choice is well known, with girls opting
for arts and boys science. Fewer women
than men pursue a scientific education,
and fewer still pursue a scientific career.
Boys outperform girls in science, and this
gender gap has been found to be bigger
in Britain than in any other developed
country. However, in science careers such
as medicine, dentistry and veterinary
sciences there is a roughly even gender
distribution, so the belief that women
don’t choose science subjects or shy
away from difficult courses is not in itself
true. Organisations such as WISE
(Women into Science, Engineering and
Construction), aim to encourage girls to
consider careers in science, technology,
engineering and maths.
Perhaps as a result of the experience in
school, science knowledge in the public
as a whole is generally accepted as poor.
The public exposure to science is largely
through newspaper and television
headlines. Although scientific reporting
in the media can be excellent, more
often it is at best inaccurate, at worst
misleading and sensationalist, as
highlighted by Ben Goldacre’s book and
Guardian column ‘Bad Science’. As a
result, there is, unsurprisingly, a public
distrust of science and general scientific
illiteracy. Part of the problem is that
scientists have been generally reluctant
to communicate with the public about
their science – be it the time involved,
fear of misreporting or lack of skill to do
so. In addition, ‘over-specialisation’
among scientists has reduced their
motivation to engage with science
outside their own discipline. Fortunately,
this is changing and every year there is
an increasing number of science festivals
around the UK supported by funding
councils that provide scientists with the
platform to inform and engage the
public. High-profile scientists in the
media, including the physicist Brian Cox,
clinician Alice Roberts and physicist
Kathy Sykes, present interesting and
accessible science on television and
radio. Science funding bodies such as the
Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society
have many initiatives with the goal of
improving public understanding of
science and use the arts to attract public
interest. Last summer, the Royal Society
celebrated its three hundred and fiftieth
birthday, with ‘See Further’, a 10-day
festival of art and science at the London
Southbank Centre. The Wellcome Trust
also funds awards to support
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imaginative and experimental arts
projects that explore biomedical science
to stimulate interest, excitement and
debate about science. Many interesting
projects have emerged from such
initiatives. The developmental biologist
Professor Kate Storey collaborated with
her sister, the artist Helen Storey, to
create a fashion collection chronicling
the first 100 hours of human embryonic
development. Magic Forest by the artist
Andrew Carnie and developmental
neurobiologist Richard Wingate, was a
collaboration that traced the
development, proliferation and
organisation of neurons in the growing
brain. Projects such as these challenge
the commonly held belief that science
and art are unable to communicate with
one another, but such funding initiatives
will suffer in times of recession.
Building bridges
admiring gaps
PATRICK MCGUINNESS
The arts and the sciences aren’t at war
and we shouldn’t be worried about the
gaps between them or be in any rush to
bridge them.
When I saw the flyer from the Oxford
ASM for the ‘Bridging the Gaps between
Arts and Sciences’ debate I enjoyed the
way the evening was billed as a kind of
conflict, a boxing match. In the Red
corner, The Artist, capital A, trained by
poetry, music, painting and with an
unbeaten – mainly because
unchallenged – record. In the Blue corner,
trained by Physics, Chemistry, Biology etc,
we have The Scientist, who always wins
on points because she’s the only one who
can add them up.
To conclude in the words of Einstein: ‘All
religions, arts and sciences are branches
of the same tree. People turn to science
and arts alike to escape from everyday
life with its painful crudity and hopeless
dreariness.’
That billing evokes the old and quite dull
debates about the usefulness and impact
of the sciences versus the uselessness
and lack of impact of the arts: the arts
proudly claiming to cater to ideas and
ideals, while science is concerned with a
Helen Christian is Fellow and Tutor in
Biomedical Sciences
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palpable and limited world. We are each
other’s straw targets, and I’m not going
get into all that.
My own experience of the sciences is
limited to school, where I definitely did
perceive there to be a gap, and where I
felt imposed on to garner compulsory O
levels in physics, chemistry, biology and
maths, despite being useless at all of
them, when I could have been learning
another language or doing something
really useful like art history…
And yet, I clearly remember finding many
of my science classes interesting. They
fired my imagination. Mostly this was
because I simply didn’t believe any of it:
what I learned in science classes seemed
about as plausible as Macbeth or King
Lear. Particles and atoms, DNA, cells,
thermodynamics, all of it felt remote and
far off, as oddly otherworldly as, say,
things I was reading at the time like TH
White’s Once and Future King, or Jules
Verne. I liked and responded to the idea
of stories, how things became other
things, or changed, or disappeared and
were replaced, or fell apart, went into
crisis, stopped working. And though I was
inept at all my science subjects, it was
pretty clear to me that I used as much of
my imagination in those classes as I did
in my literature or art classes.
What I found exciting was the whole idea
of transformation and process. I liked
those chemistry classes when we’d dress
up in goggles and lab coats, take out our
Bunsen burners and, once we’d finished
singeing each other’s trousers or
earlobes, get down to creating
something. Usually it was a foul-smelling
mess, often an unnecessary accident, but
sometimes a beautiful crystal or an
unearthly but actually totally earthly
colour. These were my first experiences of
creating and making. I hadn’t started to
write or even to read in any active way, or
thought especially about language
transforming feelings and thoughts into
words, so the idea of transformation
came to me through science lessons.
What I learned was how beautiful it
could be to understand how things
worked: that you add to – you don’t
detract from – the sum total of beauty
and pleasure by understanding them.
I read recently a strange book by Jules
Verne, Paris in the Twentieth Century.
Written in 1863 and rejected by Verne’s
publisher, it appeared only in 1994. It’s
Verne’s most pessimistic work, about a
world where artists are the helots, the
underclass, while scientists and moneymakers of various kinds – bankers,
capitalists, managers, engineers – are the
ruling class. It’s set in 1960 and tells the
story of a young artistically minded
character called Michel, the only pupil in
his school who graduates in arts. He’s
also a poet, and in books like this, being a
poet is always a sign that bad things will
happen to you.
Michel’s contemporaries have chosen
engineering, science, maths or
economics. At the school graduation, as
he goes to receive his certificate, he’s
shouted at and abused and mocked –
another useless dream-peddling poet,
what a waster, what a waste, they say.
Verne’s 1960 Paris is a place of industrial
growth, positivism, laissez-faire
capitalism and unstoppable technology.
There are no governments as such, just
multinational corporations that have
abolished nation state and national
culture. Paris is a megalopolis, full of
things that Verne predicted but no
longer surprise us: skyscrapers,
computers, calculators, high-speed
trains. Electricity, an exciting and
relatively recent development in Verne’s
time, illuminates great advertising
slogans, runs trains, lights up the city, but
is also, already, being used for executions.
The electric chair is one of Verne’s
terrifyingly accurate predictions – here
we have art imagining science: it starts
as science fiction, then becomes… well…
fact.
The scientists and engineers have
measured out the seas, forests,
underground resources of every kind and
parcelled them up according to what can
be extrapolated from them. The oceans
have been inventoried. Art, literature, and
music have pretty much disappeared.
The only way a writer can get a job is by
joining what’s known as the Great
Drama Warehouse, which produces
worthless, repetitive entertainment
which today we’d call daytime TV.
Education has been ‘purified’, stripped of
all that’s useless or non-impactdemonstrating (that’s the jargon today),
and turned into pure vocation.
Michel has a disgraced uncle, the
family’s black sheep, who introduces him
to music and art, and Michel becomes
part of a sort of artistic underground,
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cold-heartedness of a world dominated
by technology and which has squeezed
out the arts.
Verne’s dystopian worldview is also quite
plausible, and I don’t just mean electric
chairs, metros, computers and so on.
These days, when terms like ‘impact’ and
‘use’ are all buzzwords in the postliterate jargon of successive
governments that no longer believe in a
humanities education or even education
itself as a public good, the arts have
ended up apologising for being, trying to
defend themselves according to other
people’s standards, usually the standards
of the sciences. If we do that, we’re going
to fail, and sometimes I think we’re
failing already. As a discipline we’re on
the back foot and the reason for that is
that we’ve let our agenda get dominated
by standards and measures that simply
don’t apply.
Electron micrograph showing intracellular structure of
growth hormone secreting cells in the anterior pituitary
reviled and hated, impoverished and
mocked by a society Verne describes as
obsessed with profits and a narrowly
defined idea of usefulness. He meets a
girl, the daughter of the world’s last
university professor of literature (he is
soon fired), and they have a generally
miserable life. This society believes
uncritically in Progress, and
fundamentally doesn’t understand that
technological and scientific progress in
no way implies moral progress. (Indeed,
one definition of barbarism might well
be a failure to see the gap, the chasm,
between the two orders: technology
moves and changes; we as human
beings stay the same.) Paris in the
Twentieth Century ends in a sort of ice
age climate disaster where temperatures
plummet to minus 20°C. The climate
disaster for Verne is global freezing not
global warming, but it’s a symbol of the
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The biggest mistake we’ve made in the
humanities recently has precisely been
to worry about bridges: we’ve allowed
our research and teaching work to be
measured by systems borrowed from the
sciences, hence the catastrophic attempt
to evaluate humanities research
according to, say, the citation system or
the reference system used in sciences: to
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have our research funding decided on
the basis of systems devised to measure
scientific disciplines. Our problem hasn’t
been the lack of bridges between arts
and sciences it’s been the lack of gaps. It
is, in other words, the artificial bridges
that we’ve suffered from, not the natural
gaps. This doesn’t mean we should resist
the idea of ‘impact’ or ‘usefulness’, but
that we should define them for
ourselves, within our disciplines, and not
outside them.
The classic arts and sciences face-off is
the CP Snow Rede lecture of 1959, ‘The
Two Cultures and the Scientific
Revolution’. More than 50 years ago,
Snow made a central and well meaning
if badly argued call for the arts or
humanities to understand science. He
was trying to build a bridge, and the
implication of his lecture was that we,
the artists, were the ones at fault. Most
scientists could recite a bit of
Shakespeare, he said, but no arts
academics or writers could explain the
second law of thermodynamics. Snow’s
lecture was a call to arms: a call to arms
for artists and writers to take
responsibility for scientific knowledge, to
enlarge their horizons by letting science
into their cloistered world.
Snow, of course, has an agenda: he
believes in progress and in the way in
which science and technology can
allegedly deliver a better world. He may
be right, but Snow’s big problem is that
his argument is highly selective. He
claims that artists and intellectuals – the
traditional culture he calls them – are
‘natural Luddites’, whereas the scientist
‘has the future in his bones’. Snow also
works with false analogies – he has what
I’d describe as the false bridge syndrome:
the idea that knowing the law of
thermodynamics is the equivalent of
knowing a particular Shakespeare poem
or Dickens novel. The idea is attractive,
because we love the idea of equivalence,
we always prefer a bridge to a gap, but
it’s also rubbish if we want to make an
argument with it. Why is it rubbish?
Because there is no equivalence: the two
kinds of knowledge have nothing in
common. It’s not that they don’t want to
be bridged, it’s that they simply don’t
need to be.
In any case, the so-called gap is much
exaggerated: the arts have a strong
record, despite what Snow says, of
feeding off and using and being
imaginatively inspired by science. Poetry,
fiction, painting, music are
extraordinarily hungry arts, always
looking for new things to feed into
themselves. Paul Valéry, one of the great
French poets, was obsessed by maths and
by medicine. Indeed, he lectured to
scientists and surgeons on how poetry
and maths had more in common than, say,
poetry and fiction. Lynette Roberts, the
great modernist poet of World War II, took
old Celtic myths and updated them for the
nuclear age; the US novelist David Foster
Wallace understood technology’s
irreversible impact on our lives. The list of
artists responding to science, constantly
keeping up with it, goes on. I certainly
wouldn’t buy into the gap thesis in that
respect: science is part of what we have to
know, but we have our own ways of
knowing it, our own applications for it.
Snow can also be quite stupid: he quotes
approvingly a ‘scientist of distinction’ who
claimed that literary writers were ‘not only
politically silly, but politically wicked.
Didn’t the influence of all they represent
bring Auschwitz that much closer?’ asks
Snow. Snow mentions Yeats, Wyndham
Lewis and Ezra Pound, claiming that ‘ninetenths’ of the great literary figures of the
early-twentieth century are politically
extreme or naive. The ‘culture’ of science,
on the contrary, is optimistically forwardlooking. Well, we can all find examples of
scientists inventing new ways of killing,
Howard Hodgkin, black and white plate for Artplate,
initialled HH, 1986, diam 26cm Gagosion Gallery
sedating or incarcerating people. In any
case, let’s not pretend that all scientists
are looking for cancer cures or AIDS
vaccines. Some are dedicating their lives to
keeping medicines expensive, or finding
new ways of keeping your skin looking
younger, or experimenting on animals.
Uselessness or triviality is not solely the
artist’s domain.
The best thing that came out of the CP
Snow lecture was the extraordinarily
vitriolic response it elicited from FR Leavis.
Leavis, who, since we’re talking about
bridges, might be described as literary
criticism’s most ardent bridge-arsonist,
laid into Snow with quite delicious malice,
mocking Snow’s ‘panoptic pseudow w w. s t- a n n e s . ox . a c . u k
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categories’ and his ‘preposterous and
menacing absurdity’. It gets worse: Snow
is ‘utterly without a glimmer of what
creative literature is, or why it matters’.
‘[N]ot only is he not a genius,’ Leavis
concludes, ‘he is intellectually as
undistinguished as it is possible to be.’
have forgotten that, and forgotten, as a
consequence, how to explain what we do
and why we do it.
The big question that underpins the
oppositionality of the Leavis/Snow debate
is the idea that arts and sciences are
wholly distinct. Often it isn’t like that at all:
there’s a grey area, or a mutuality, and
that’s the interesting bit.
Why does Leavis attack Snow in such a
vicious way? It’s not just because he thinks
Snow is a representative of a certain kind
of genteel belle-lettrist English
establishment. It’s because Leavis has been
busily defending the very existence and
value of English studies – by which I mean
literary studies. We have to remember in
this context that the formal university
study of English literature is relatively
recent, here as elsewhere. Leavis was not a
charming man, but he did believe in the
absolute crucial human importance of the
arts: ‘I don’t believe in any literary values,
and you won’t find me talking about them;
the judgments a literary critic is concerned
with are judgments about Life’.
I go along with that, because in essence
what Leavis is saying is that literature or
the arts are not concerned with
accumulating knowledge, but with what
he calls ‘necessary thought’. He says the
arts are concerned with ‘discovery, or a
new realisation’. It seems we in the arts
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The first thing to remember is how much
the world of science is experienced by
writers and artists through the
imagination: Balzac described the
palaeontologist Cuvier as the greatest
poet of them all. Why? Because Cuvier
could take a few bones and construct the
animal around them; because Cuvier could
take a part and make from it a whole. But
also because he could, imaginatively,
scientifically but with artistic licence, use
the little that we know and turn it into
something plausible and convincing. In
fact the nineteenth-century novel owed a
great deal to science not because it did
what CP Snow suggested and learned a lot
of scientific rules, but because it used
science – zoology, evolution, medicine – as
new ways to tell stories. Hence Edison
turns up in a novel about androids by the
poet and playwright Villiers de l’Isle-Adam,
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depicted as some kind of mage-figure – a
scientist yes, but as mysterious and occult
a figure as Mephistopheles. The scientists
in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth
centuries become part of the fiction: their
job is to make the world more mysterious,
not less. Long may that continue into the
twenty-first century.
Then there’s the story about the
playwright Maeterlinck, who was an
occultist and spiritist, played with tableturning and séances, but also saw all this
as essentially rational and scientific
enquiry. When the telephone was invented,
he refused to buy one, saying it was a
waste of money as we’d all be using
telepathy in a few years and the phone
would just be a white elephant on our
desks.
What’s interesting here is that Maeterlinck
cannot see the chasm between science
and the occult. Today we have Skype and
the Internet, but we’re no better able to
know what someone else is thinking. It’s
not because Maeterlinck’s stupid that he
can’t see this; on the contrary, Maeterlinck
wrote books about insect life and physics
so he knew more science than most
writers.
That seems to me to be where the bridge
between arts and sciences exists, not
based on any kind of solid demonstrable
foundation, but in the fluid, hesitant space
where neither of us knows what’s going to
happen next.
A different example of the odd
science/occult relationship is Arthur
Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle was, as we
know, the creator of the hyper-rational
Sherlock Holmes, the ultimate assembler
of evidence, applier of logic. But Conan
Doyle himself was one of the most
credulous occultists of his period: he spent
time authenticating fake pictures of fairies,
trying to communicate with the dead,
having séances and table-turning sessions.
I’ve always been fascinated by the Conan
Doyle/Sherlock Holmes duality. Like
another famous duo that isn’t really a duo
but a single entity, Jekyll and Hyde, the two
halves seem to amount to something, but
it’s not necessarily a balanced whole. It’s
more a kind of fluid, unbalanced, dynamic
space between things that only seem
incompatible. A culture in love with
rationality and technology like the latenineteenth century is also a culture in love
with the mystical and occult. We want to
re-mystify the world in almost exact
proportion to how much we want to
explain it.
The real gulf is not about arts and sciences
it’s about that word Progress. The great
French poet Baudelaire said it in the 1850s:
science and technology are transforming
the world, making things better, easier,
smoother, safer. That’s Progress. Human
beings are just as basic, selfish, stupid and
violent as ever, but also as irregular,
interesting, quirky and unpredictable.
There’s been no Progress there, thank God.
The job of the artist, if he has one, is to
remind us of our inexhaustible
unimprovability, and to remind us above all
that there are no bridges between the
moral and the technological or scientific
realm: just because we have the knowhow to cure, it doesn’t mean we’ll stop
wanting to kill.
So my view is that the gaps between
arts and sciences will always be there,
and need to be there. I’d rather we
both contemplated the same real gaps
than tried to build artificial bridges out
of faked consensus and service
industry newspeak.
Patrick McGuinness is Professor of
French and Comparative Literature, Sir
Win and Lady Bischoff Fellow in
French, Tutor in Modern Languages.
His most recent collection of poetry
Jilted City appeared in 2010 and his
novel The Last Hundred Days, about
the final months of the Ceausescu
regime, appears in May 2011.
The arts and the sciences aren’t at war; we
don’t need to sign any treaties. We
shouldn’t be worried about the gaps
between us, or be in any rush to bridge
them. We do different things, and we in
the arts have been too defensive, tried too
hard to justify ourselves in terms that are
not our terms. If we go on playing that
game, we’ll be preparing a future that
doesn’t need us.
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Enemies of the Faith
JAMES HANNAM
Everyone has heard about the alleged
conflict between science and religion. We
tend to assume that the Victorian crisis of
faith was caused by Darwinism and that
clergymen fought against evolution every
step of the way. But historians today have
rejected the thesis that the Church held
back science. Instead, they have realised
that it was the study of history itself, as
well as archaeology and philology, that
dealt the deadliest blows to traditional
belief. Perhaps Christianity’s most
dangerous enemy has been the
humanities and not science after all.
Critics and Poets
In the year 1860, Christian society in
England was scandalised by a new book
that threatened to undermine the basis of
the Established Church. That book was not
On the Origin of Species. It had the
innocuous title Essays and Reviews. Each of
the seven contributors had written a
substantial essay that attacked
conservative Christianity. These writers
were not the new breed of agnostics led by
TH Huxley, Darwin’s bulldog. They were
pillars of the church and professors at the
ancient universities.
Ever since the age of Darwin, the
conventional view has it that science is
the great enemy of religion or vice versa.
Think again says James Hannam: could it
be the humanities that dealt the death
blow to belief?
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The impact was as if the present
Archbishop of Canterbury had written The
God Delusion. Not much, if anything, in
Essays and Reviews was new. Most of it was
well known to academics able to read the
works of German higher critics, who had
been systematically dismantling the
historical basis of the Bible for years.
Philologists had broken the Gospels down
and exposed the contradictions between
them, throwing doubt on the historicity of
the resurrection and virgin birth.
But for this material to be promulgated
from within the Church of England was
not just a scandal: for many it was a
betrayal. In his chapter in Essays and
Reviews, Cambridge don Rowland Williams
showed how the prophecies of the Old
Testament did not seem to predict
anything very much when examined
objectively. Baden Powell, an ordained
mathematician whose son founded the
Scouting movement, went further and
denied the very possibility of miracles.
Two of the contributors were convicted of
heresy and lost their jobs. After they were
reinstated on appeal, the conservative
wing of the Church of England, led by
Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, was
outraged. But they could not stuff the
genie back into the bottle. Indeed, the first
God’s philosophers
chapter of Essays and Reviews was the
work of Frederick Temple who, in 1896,
became Archbishop of Canterbury.
Today, Matthew Arnold’s poem, ‘Dover
Beach‘, stands for the entire late-Victorian
crisis of faith. Arnold eloquently wrote of
the ‘melancholy, long, withdrawing roar‘ of
the once mighty ‘Sea of Faith‘. Although
published in 1867, the poem was composed
perhaps 25 years previously, so it predated
Essays and Reviews. But Arnold was part of
the same intellectual circle as the
contributors to the controversial volume –
his father had been headmaster at Rugby
school, a position later held by Frederick
Temple. The poem reflects a sadness that
Christianity, shorn of the miraculous and
supernatural, might fail. And then Christ’s
central message, to love one another, must
fail too.
Myths of conflict
Less refined critics were also at work. As
parts of the Bible were reduced to the
status of myths, non-believers began to
construct their own legends centred
around an imagined history of science.
During the eighteenth century, French
philosophes such as Voltaire and Jean Le
Rond d‘Alembert had attacked the Catholic
Church for suppressing science and reason.
Building on Protestant propaganda, they
painted a picture of the Middle Ages as a
priest-ridden era of superstition when all
progress was held back by the Church.
D’Alembert summarised the position in
the ‘Preliminary Discourse‘ to the great
Encyclopedia of 1751 that he was editing.
Science, he explained, flowered under the
ancient Greeks before being crushed by
the weight of Christian dogma. Only in the
last century had the yoke of the Church
been thrown off so that men now lived in
an era Emmanuel Kant would dub ‘an age
of enlightenment’. The philosophes’
dispute was with the political power of the
Church in ancien-régime France, but it
suited them to use history as a weapon in
contemporary arguments.
To English-speaking Protestants, it had
always been self-evident that papists were
enemies of reason. As the Duke of
Wellington drove the 1929 act
emancipating Catholics through
Parliament, the concerns of the French
philosophes began to seem highly relevant.
Even in the United States, waves of Irish
and Italian immigrants made Catholicism
a live issue in a way that it had not been
before.
A US chemist by the name of John William
Draper rose to the challenge of
demonstrating to his countrymen that the
Catholic Church had always and
everywhere been an opponent of science
and, hence, of progress in general. His book,
The History of the Conflict between Religion
and Science (1874) was hugely influential.
Draper had already carried the debate to
England, where, in 1860, he took part in the
famous discussion between Darwin’s
bulldog, TH Huxley, and Bishop Wilberforce
on Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Huxley was also an energetic exponent of
the conflict between science and religion.
His review of On the Origin of Species
contained the famous and inaccurate
observation that ‘Extinguished
theologians lie about the cradle of every
science, as the snakes beside that of
Hercules.’ He was not so much bothered
with Catholics as with the Church of
England. Clergymen still enjoyed huge
influence in English society, including in
the scientific institutions. Huxley wanted
scientists to be professionals who enjoyed
respect in their own right. He attacked
religion as a way of loosening the
essentially benevolent grip that the
national church had over science.
But Huxley and Draper faced a problem.
They could milk the Catholic Church’s
catastrophic error over Galileo for all it was
worth, and they did. But otherwise,
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examples of real conflicts between science
and religion were hard to come by. To solve
this problem, it was necessary to rewrite
history. Heretics who had suffered for their
faith became freethinking radicals.
Fraudulent alchemists transmuted into
pioneers of chemistry. A papal bull,
intended to stop crusaders sending their
bones home for burial, was retooled into a
ban on human dissection. The flat earth
became Christian dogma even though
hardly anyone had ever believed it.
Whenever a man of the cloth objected to a
scientific theory, this was held up as an
example of religious obstruction,
notwithstanding that the objection might
be of a strictly scientific nature.
real dispute arose over the evolution of
human beings, everyone already knew
the parts they were expected to play.
The stones stay silent
History had invented the conflict
between science and religion, formalising
a divorce that neither side knew they
wanted. And through the twentieth
century, the humanities continued to
undermine traditional religious beliefs.
The new field of archaeology was the
next to disappoint.
William Albright founded the discipline
of biblical archaeology. His pioneering
digs in the Holy Land had the explicit aim
of confirming the accuracy of scripture.
Draper received able assistance in his task With a trowel in one hand and the Bible
of denigrating Christianity from Andrew
in the other, he searched for evidence of
Dickson White. White had founded Cornell Moses, David and Solomon. At first he
University in New York State without any
thought he had found it. But more
clerical presence on the governing body. He recently, the evidence has proved to be
developed his theme that churchmen were more confused and elusive. For instance,
an impediment to learning in his twoin the 1930s, the collapsed walls on the
volume A History of the Warfare of Science site of Jericho were identified with those
with Theology (1896). White was a better
that had tumbled down at the behest of
scholar than Draper: he documented his
Joshua. But by the 1950s, it was clear that
book with a mass of footnotes and
the destruction layer at Jericho is far
moderated Draper’s strident tone. As a
older than the events recorded in the
result, the claim that religion held back
Bible and provides no independent
science went from slander to established
verification of them.
fact. It is still widely believed. Thus, when a
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Today, archaeology has thrown the entire
Pentateuch into doubt. The current
generation of archaeologists working on
the ancient Near East, such as William
Dever – they now reject the label of
biblical archaeologists – do not think the
Exodus through Sinai happened at all.
They see no evidence of a new race of
people entering Palestine at the time
that the biblical chronology demands.
The ancient Hebrews are now portrayed
as a hill tribe that gradually infiltrated
the lowlands, not exiles from Egypt.
So it is that, while the discoveries of
science have been assimilated into
mainstream theology, the humanities
have thrown up more difficult challenges.
But perhaps, by making a literal reading
of the Bible impossible, history and
archaeology have also helped Christianity
adapt to the modern world.
Dr James Hannam (1989) is the author of
God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval
World Laid the Foundations of Modern
Science (Icon, 2009) which was
shortlisted for the 2010 Royal Society
Prize for Science Books
Alumnae weekend: Marjorie Reeves memorial lecture
Florence Nightingale: the truth behind the legend
MARK BOSTRIDGE
At times in the past few decades we have
been in danger of losing the historical
Florence Nightingale, replacing her with a
one-dimensional saint or monster. A
century after her death, her latest
biographer untangles fact and fiction
In August 2010,the world marked the
centenary of Florence Nightingale’s death.
Florence Nightingale died at her home in
South Street,Park Lane on 13 August 1910.
‘Though there was no suffering,there was
increasing weariness,’ reported Elizabeth
Bosanquet,Nightingale’s companion,of
her final hours,‘& she was latterly quite
unable to give her attention to
conversation.She dozed a good deal &
during Friday night ...the watchful nurse
noticed a very slight change in her
breathing while asleep....This semicomatose condition continued till she
quietly passed away at 2pm & we sent for
the relations.’
Nightingale’s funeral was held a week
later at St Margaret’s, East Wellow, the
thirteenth-century church close to the
family’s Hampshire home at Embley Park.
Her relatives, and in particular one of her
executors, Louis Shore Nightingale, were
scrupulous in observing her wish that she
should not be given a public funeral of any
kind. In ‘Cassandra’, her essay from the
early-1850s, in which she describes the
frustration of women of her class who can
find no opening for a life of action, she had
concluded with the following passage: ‘Let
neither name nor date be placed on her
grave still less the expression of regret or of
admiration; but simply the words, “I believe
in God”.’
The tombstone is inscribed with her
initials and her dates. But if, as was
confidently expected in the press, her
family were offered a state funeral for her,
this offer was politely declined. There was
something of a compromise. On the day of
the funeral in Hampshire, a memorial
service was held at St Paul’s Cathedral,
overseen by the War Office. The demand
for tickets was so great that the allocation
of 2,500 could have been distributed
several times over. The royal family, Asquith
the Prime Minister, members of the
Cabinet and the Archbishop of Canterbury
were represented in absentia. The only
Cabinet figure mentioned by The Times as
Florence Nightingale from her Carte de Visite circa
1850s Credit: H. Lenthall, London
being present was John Burns, the working
class President of the Local Government
Board. As the historian RE Foster has put it,
the absence of some of these official
figures may be attributed to the fact that
the grouse season had just begun.
Meanwhile, Nightingale’s coffin was
transported to the small market town of
Romsey and from there to the plot at St
Margaret’s Church. In persistent rain, the
cortege of five coaches reached the church.
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To the slight alarm of her family,
photographers and cameramen were
lining the route. And at the graveside,
following a short service, it became even
more difficult to reconcile Nightingle’s
wish for privacy ‘with the universal desire
to show honour to her’, for the churchyard
turned out to be filled with a large crowd,
mostly local people, come to pay their
respects. So great was the crowd that
police had to block the porch.
promoted in scores of poems and pictures
at the height of Florence-mania during the
Crimean War. Even where the legend isn’t
directly alluded to, it’s still there in essence.
At St Paul’s, Canon Newbolt identified
Nightingale’s transcending quality as
‘simple goodness’, and although her
favourite hymn ‘The Son of God Goes Forth
to War’ was included in the service,
another chosen hymn, ‘Lead Kindly Light’
must have seemed even more apposite.
The most striking aspect of the occasion
for many was the flowers. Over 500
wreaths surrounded the grave, including a
large wreath shaped in a ‘B’ from survivors
of the Light Brigade. Another memorable
feature was provided by John Kneller, a
one-eyed octogenarian and former private
in the 23rd Royal Welch Fusiliers (and very
recently, Kneller’s great-grandchildren
were present at a commemorative service
held at East Wellow). He told reporters that
he had spent three months at the Barrack
Hospital at Scutari, and that while there he
‘often saw Florence Nightingale carrying
out her nightly visits to the place’.
Almost alone among the tributes in
getting closer to the real Nightingale was
the article written by Dr Arthur Longhurst,
who went out to the Crimea in 1854, in the
Hampshire Chronicle. He observed that
‘perhaps the chief point in her character
was her wonderful power and capacity for
organisation. ... She even overcame official
red-tapeism.’
One hundred years after Nightingale’s
death, have things really changed so
much? The legend of the Lady with the
Lamp is still very much with us, only now
there is also a counter myth, conjured up
by Lytton Strachey and later writers, of a
woman consumed by demonic energy,
whose dominating will conceals a
fundamental inhumanity in her power
over others. In its treatment of Florence
Nightingale in the press, on television, in
What we find to a very large extent being
commemorated in the vast expanse of
newsprint that accompanied Florence
Nightingale’s death in 1910 is her legend,
the legend of the Lady with the Lamp,
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books scholarly and popular, the pendulum
still swings constantly between these two
extremes. It’s as though the only way to
overcome the entrenched simplicity of
that sentimental myth is to go to the
opposite extreme – and produce a
pantomime villain. At times in the past
few decades we have been in very real
danger of losing the historical Florence
Nightingale, replacing her with a onedimensional saint or monster. The new
Florence Nightingale Museum in London
will, hopefully, educate the present and
future generations about less well-known
aspects of her work – for India, or
workhouse reform, for example – which
will enable them to savour something of
the extraordinary range and scope of her
achievement. At a more scholarly level, we
have the Collected Works of Florence
Nightingale in 16 printed volumes,
masterminded by Lynn McDonald, which
will make accessible much of Nightingale’s
known writing, and make it impossible for
anyone in the future to claim that they
don’t know what Nightingale actually said.
So in what ways has our understanding of
Nightingale changed in the past 100
years? What of her relationship with her
family, for instance? In August 1910, her
death was used to celebrate the ideal of
the family in various local accounts of her
funeral. This had been a part of her legend
Florence Nightingale
from the beginning. In October 1854, as she
made her way to Scutari, The Examiner had
published a famous article, ‘Who is Miss
Nightingale?’ in which it was reported that
‘her happiest place is at home ... in
simplest obedience to her admiring
parents’.
But we have learned since that there was a
lot more to Florence’s relationship with her
family than this sentimental image
suggests, and that for a long period
preceding the Crimean War, she was
engaged in a struggle of her own against
what she later called ‘the tyranny of the
English family’. Her parents and possessive
elder sister refused to allow her to pursue
the goal she’d set her heart on: to train as
a nurse. For many years she tried to
overcome their objections and an
atmosphere of unpleasantness at home
which culminated, in 1852, in Parthenope
Nightingale’s breakdown.
We can go too far down this path of a
tyrannical Nightingale family constantly
obstructing the younger daughter of the
household. And when we do so what we
end up with is a caricature of the family
that does justice to none of its members.
As an example of this tendency to
caricature a familiar story that’s been
retold many times, I’d single out a book,
published in 2004, by Gillian Gill, entitled
Nightingales: Florence and her Family,
which opens on a dramatic scene in the
autumn of 1849. Fanny Nightingale,
Florence’s mother, is screaming at her
daughter ‘like a cockney fishwife’ for
having rejected Richard Monckton Milnes’
umpteenth proposal of marriage. Never
mind that the evidence suggests
something to the contrary. According to
Florence herself in her Lebenslauf – her
curriculum vitae, written when she entered
the deaconesses institution at
Kaiserswerth – her mother had never
attempted to influence Florence in Milnes’
direction, whatever the disappointment
that Mrs Nightingale must have felt at her
daughter’s failure to make this brilliant
match. Reading scores of family letters at
Claydon House, where Parthenope
preserved an extraordinary archive of
material after her marriage in 1858 to Sir
Harry Verney, I was struck time and again
by the amount of effort that the
Nightingales put into trying to understand
their unconventional daughter and her
ambition. And one letter in particular
stood out, as a very moving attempt by
Fanny Nightingale to move closer to her
daughter’s point of view. It was written
during Florence’s second stay at
Kaiserswerth. Fanny hoped that ‘This time
will have been a real happiness for you & a
rest to your spirit ... & that there are
happier things in store for you at home,
even tho’ our opinions may differ with
yours as to what the right way always is, as
well as the way of doing it ... Yes, my dear,
take faith & love with you, even though it
be to walk in a path which leads you
strangely from us all.’
And so on in a similar vein. This letter, I
think, overturns the one-dimensional
caricature of Fanny Nightingale, portrayed
by generations of writers as an uncaring
parent, motivated solely by fears about
what the outside world might think.
Our understanding of one important
aspect of Nightingale’s life, which has had
to be radically revised, is of the illness
which overtook her in her late 30s and
which kept her bedridden for many years.
For decades, many commentators
questioned whether she was suffering
from an organic illness at all, arguing
instead that her symptoms were the
product of neuroses. One historian went so
far as to argue that Nightingale feigned
illness and lied about her health in order to
protect herself from people she didn’t
want to see, particularly her mother and
sister. However, in 1995, David Young, a
former principal scientist at the Wellcome
Institute, put forward a compelling
. 51
of war. And although, inevitably, this
experiment was fraught with difficulties,
Nightingale established a blueprint for
military nursing which came into its own,
just four years after her death, with the
outbreak of World War I.
argument for Nightingale as a sufferer
from chronic brucellosis, which she
probably caught from drinking goat’s milk
in the Crimea. At once, her symptoms – the
insomnia, palpitations and severe spinal
pain – fall into place as indicators of
serious disease. Of course Nightingale was
able to use her illness strategically at
times. The fact that on a number of
occasions it was confidently expected that
she would die, gave her work a great
urgency and allowed her to live in the
seclusion necessary for the achievement of
her Herculean tasks. Yet she worked
relentlessly on, affected by another byproduct of brucellosis, serious depression
and irritability. She was ‘often cold & dry,
some might say cross’, wrote the aunt who
cared for her, though this aunt remained
surprised that, in the circumstances, there
was not ‘more revulsion & irritation’.
What did Florence Nightingale achieve in
the Crimean War? Most importantly she
ensured that the hospitals at Scutari did
not fall apart in the first months after her
arrival there. She wasn’t primarily a nurse:
her nursing experience was limited to a
couple of months of training in Germany
before the war. After the first hectic weeks
at Scutari, she did little practical nursing,
but was more concerned with larger
problems of superintending her staff and
attempting to set up some kind of system
for patient care at the Barrack and General
Hospitals at Scutari, and later at hospitals
in the Crimea itself. She acted as a
purveyor, keeping them supplied with
essential goods, such as clothing and food,
and cutting through the bureaucratic
incompetence of the Army Medical
Department. However, her contribution to
reducing the terrible mortality in the
hospitals, from disease not battle wounds,
is more difficult to assess: the death rate
reached a peak of 52 per cent in the first
winter she was there. Nightingale and her
38 nurses at Scutari introduced new
Florence Nightingale’s part in the Crimean
War, during which she superintended an
official mission of mercy to nurse the
wounded and dying, first at Scutari and
then in the Crimea itself, became the stuff
of legend, which in its turn gave her the
power on her return to England to work
decisively behind the scenes on manifold
projects of public health reform. It was a
vital new experiment – to introduce
women on an official footing to a theatre
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standards of hygiene and improved the
soldiers’ diets. But the momentous
introduction of the sanitary commission,
which found that one of the hospitals was
built on top of a cesspool and introduced
new standards of cleanliness, emanated
not from Florence Nightingale but from
the government at home.
But the appealing sentiment of the Lady
with the Lamp legend has obscured some
equally, if not more, important landmark
achievements. To single out just one:
across four decades, from the 1860s to the
1890s, the final decade of her working life,
Nightingale struggled hard to introduce
trained nurses into workhouses. This was a
bold step, replacing the care of sick
paupers by other workhouse inmates with
proper humane treatment. It stands as a
ringing declaration of the principle,
brought to fruition in the foundation of
the National Health Service some 40 years
after Nightingale’s death, of free health
care provision for those who can’t afford it.
A national system of hospitals wouldn’t
have been possible had the existing
infirmaries still been staffed by pauper
nurses with the availability of only
minimal medical care.
The Nightingale School of Nursing was
founded 150 years ago. On 9 July 1860 the
Florence Nightingale
School opened with 15 probationers at St
Thomas’s, then, of course, still on its original
site near London Bridge. Its first decade was
fraught with problems. There was a
dramatic drop-out rate, a problem in
attracting good candidates and an
inadequate system of instruction. But
when, in the 1870s, Nightingale became
actively involved in the administration of
the school bearing her name, things began
to improve, and by the beginning of the
1880s, Nightingale had obtained the
superintendence of a large number of
London and provincial hospitals, which
were spreading her doctrines.
I am not sure that calling Florence
Nightingale the founder of modern nursing
is very useful. Nursing reform would have
happened without her, and indeed, the
foundations of some of the most
important innovations in reformed nursing
were laid in the decade before the Crimean
War, the 1840s, by the new Protestant
sisterhoods. Perhaps it’s more accurate to
describe Nightingale as the founder of
professional nursing. For although she
might have had problems with the term
‘profession’, preferring the word ‘calling’,
she was undoubtedly the first individual
who sought to make nursing a paid
profession for women. Nursing was to be
an independent health care profession,
with a specific function of patient care,
different from medicine and requiring its
own distinctive training. The work should
be paid, not voluntary, and the
qualifications trained experience, not
religious commitment.
While ceasing to believe that Florence
Nightingale transformed nursing with a
shaft of light from her famous lamp, we are
able today to take a broader view of her
achievements: as a pioneer in formulating
a coherent policy of public health in Britain
and India, as an adviser in hospital design,
an originator of the use of statistics in
health and social policy, as a radical
theologian, a great travel writer, as the
author of a memorable essay about what is
was like to be an upper middle-class
Victorian woman, based on the sense of
frustration she undoubtedly experienced as
a brilliant young woman whose ambition
was thwarted by her family, and much,
much more.
‘There was a great deal of romantic feeling
about you ... when you came home from
the Crimea. And now you work on in
silence, and nobody knows how many
lives are saved by your nurses in hospitals ...
how many thousands of soldiers ... are now
alive owing to your forethought and
diligence; how many natives of India ... have
been preserved from famine ... by the
energy of a sick lady who can scarcely rise
from her bed.’
I am indebted to RE Foster for permission
to use material from his unpublished paper
‘Heroic Womanhood: Florence
Nightingale’s Funeral’.
© Mark Bostridge (1979) Florence
Nightingale. The Woman and Her Legend
(Penguin Books, 2008) was awarded the
2009 Elizabeth Longford Prize for
Historical Biography and named a Wall
Street Journal Best Book of 2008.
Scutari: hospital ward
Myths often obscure, but they can also help
spread important change. Such is the case
with Florence Nightingale. However, history
has an important duty to recover the reality
from behind the legend. Benjamin Jowett,
Master of Balliol College, Oxford, was
perhaps saying something similar when, in
a letter to Nightingale in 1879, he observed:
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Where it all began
In her informal history of the college
Marjorie Reeves explains that before that
date the students met in the house of
Bertha Johnson, the first Principal, over
cups of tea. There had been no other
place to meet before then except the
common room of the Association for the
Education of Women in Oxford (AEW),
which by then was meeting in the
Clarendon Building and was open to all
women students in Oxford. Marjorie
makes the point that the ship was a
fitting symbol for the Society because
until then they had ‘for a considerable
time floated around from place to place’.
The ‘little entrance hall’, she says,
provided them with ‘their first
opportunity to satisfy their craving for
notice-boards and notices’.
And it was here, too, their
first place in which to
gather and chat on a daily
basis, that The Ship, along
with the Old Students
Association, later the ASM,
was born.
Ship Street
ANN SPOKES SYMONDS
The Society for Oxford Home Students,
as St Anne’s was known at the time, had
its first premises at 16 Ship Street, a
turning off Cornmarket. It was the first
time the students had enjoyed their own
common room or meeting place and it
consisted of a small common room and
entrance hall on the first floor. Its
location gave the magazine, officially a
record of the doings of past students and
a vehicle for keeping them in touch with
each other, its present name.
16 Ship Street: the Common Room
Like so many of the older
streets in Oxford, the name
of the street has changed
many times over the years.
In the thirteenth century, it
was known as Dewy’s Lane
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after a family of that name who lived
there. By 1385, it was Somenor’s Lane
after a man who rented the Blue Anchor
Inn. It was also known as Lawrence Hall,
which was situated at the east end of
the street. Ship Lane, after the alehouse
of that name, first came into use in
about 1762. There was also, at one time, a
sheep market in the lane and it is
possible that the word ‘ship’ is a
corruption of ‘sheep’. In the early days,
the street was much longer than it is
today and ran through Catte Street, the
city wall at the Eastgate. Fortunately,
many of the original houses, from the
sixteenth, seventeenth and earlyeighteenth centuries survive and are
listed Grade II.
For many years from the second issue of
The Ship in 1912, lines from ‘The Building
of the Ship’ by Longfellow appeared in
the magazine.
‘Sail on. O ship!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!’.
Ann Spokes Symonds’ (Spokes 1944)
most recent book is The Origins of Oxford
Street Names
Change in continuity
JUDITH VIDAL-HALL
In 1911, a small group of former students
of the Society of Home Students,
gathered in their new Common Room in
Ship Street, made a momentous decision:
to create an Old Students’ Association
and an annual magazine to record its
doings. One hundred years on and it’s still
going strong
The OSA was the brainchild of a Miss Ruth
Butler, who became first editor of The Ship
and continues to frequent its pages in
one guise or another until her death at 101
in 1982. After each AGM in November, its
founding committee determined in its
new constitution, members would receive
a publication containing:
 The annual report of the Association
 The rules of the Association
 An Oxford letter
 Letters from old students
 Other matters relating to the interests
of the Association
All put together by an editor ‘appointed by
the Association’. In essence very much the
magazine we still have 100 years later.
Its first issue in that same year recorded:
‘By far the most important fact to be
recorded is that an Old Students’
Association is now actually in being and
that it has held its first AGM. There are
already 108 members, and the initial
expenses have been almost entirely met
by donations.’ The costs of the OSA,
mainly the production of The Ship, was
to be a recurrent cause of alarm for
many years until the College eventually
took it on in the 1970s. It had its ups and
downs over the years: wars saw it shrink
to little more than a dozen thin pages, at
times it drifted in the doldrums,
unexciting and apathetic, at others it
sparkles with life and tales of the
unexpected. The 1980s, under the
professional care of Michèle Brown, was
a high point since unsurpassed.
1911 was also the year, the magazine
observes, in which the University
Delegacy for Women, on which the
Society’s Principal Mrs Bertha Johnson
sat, was created and the Society itself
‘received very special recognition’ and an
‘increase in prestige’ by being granted by
the University ‘the same recognition that
has been granted to other Colleges and
Halls’.
Miss Ruth Butler (left) with Anna Amrose in 1910
Apart from that, 1911 was not, in most
respects, a particularly remarkable year.
The only thing that appears to have
roused much excitement in the press
was Scott’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition
– and by the end of the year, they knew
the Norwegian Amundsen had beaten
him to it. It was a good year for music:
Richard Strauss’s Rosenkavalier and
Mahler’s ‘Das Lied von der Erde’ caused a
flurry of excitement, and technical
progress in the motor car industry and
flight was considerable. A new king,
George V, was crowned in June and the
Mona Lisa went missing from the Louvre
for a couple of years. Thoughts of
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‘This account of the Home Students’
headquarters,’ the article continues (in
parenthesis), ‘is perhaps sufficient
explanation of the title of this
publication, which has been a matter for
long and anxious debate.’ Intriguing, but
nothing more is offered, unlike the
passionate and heated debates that
occur later in its history: over the
renaming of the Society on its accession
to full College status, for instance, or the
need for a college chapel after the
demolition of Springfield St Mary in the
early-1960s – and, of course, the ever
present issue of evening hours.
impending war with Germany went
largely unspoken though the cabinet
under Asquith was making contingency
plans; foreign correspondents were
reporting revolutions in China and Mexico
that were to change the history of both
countries and there was, as now, ‘trouble
in Tripoli’. All in all, nothing very
remarkable. Except, perhaps, though the
event is nowhere noted in The Ship, on 8
March 1911, International Women’s Day
was launched in Denmark by Clara Zetkin,
leader of the Women’s Office for the Social
Democratic Party in Germany.
Running the creation of the OSA a close
second ‘in the annals of the Society’ is the
establishment of the Common Room at 16
Ship Street. ‘This little house which is now
wholly in the hands of the Home
Students, or rather of their Governing
Body, is one of the oldest in the city and, to
the eye unlearned in building, looked, in its
pristine state, most unpromising.’ There
follows a faded, somewhat ghostly ‘view’
of this room and at some length, a eulogy
to its ‘aspect across gardens’, its motley
collection of furniture all donated by ‘wellwishers’ and the tea and scones provided
by a loyal retainer, which anyone living in
Oxford was invited to make use of for a
very modest sum and others visiting
Oxford ‘to avail themselves of it freely’.
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The rest as they say is history and there
is too little space in which to convey the
combination of energy, enthusiasm and,
yes, gratitude that charges the pages of
this little magazine and that, to a degree,
continue to inform it 100 years later. The
enduring quality of the OSA and its
magazine through two wars and
recurrent financial crises is testimony to
the role it played and continues to play in
the relationship between College and
former students.
It was a diminutive little product in its
modest pale blue paper cover, a
handspan high and even less across, but
it did exactly what it was meant to do.
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The second issue in 1912 included the
following:
‘Dear Editor,
I don’t think you have any real idea of
what Oxford means to us who live and
work in queer corners of the earth – in
provincial towns, in country villages, even
in “seaside resorts”. You who live always
amidst its joys and privileges, doubtless
think you appreciate them fully. But go
and teach in a coalpit town of south
Yorkshire, where one breathes coal dust,
eats coal dust, and walks on roads made
of coal dust…’ The angry tone dissolves:
‘As one who has had such an experience,
I would like to express my gratitude to all
those who have helped found our OSA
and so given us an annual excuse for
revisiting the serene and beautiful city, of
reviving old friendships and reviving
pleasant memories.’
And an aside: ‘It was a great hour when
we passed the various clauses of our
new constitution, drafted, I believe, after
countless hours of toil and fag of brain.
(Incidentally, I may remark that the
discussion on the wording thereof
revealed certain new and startling views
on the relation of a relative pronoun to
its antecedent!)’
Change in continuity
I include this not only as my own ‘aside’
but as a trivial instance of a more
enduring continuity reflected in the
magazine. In 1989 when I joined the
ASM, I was startled at the passion and
complexity of argument that went into
the positioning of commas in a revision of
that original constitution. It was still going
on a couple of years later when other
friends joined me. Finding strength in
numbers, the new girls finally laid matters
of syntax and punctuation to rest.
Of course The Ship reflects dramatic
change over the century: in the Society’s
change of status to fully fledged College,
its accumulation of buildings, the
exponential growth in numbers, the rise
and rise of women at work, the arrival of
men, the nature of undergraduate life, the,
at times, dramatic shift in relationships
between senior and junior members,
changes in the visible aspect of the city
itself. But with exceptions, the continuity
of tone and sentiment is striking. It is
expressed in an abiding commitment to
the place and what it represents: 100 years
ago the fight was for higher education for
women and the means of making that
possible beyond the limitations of the
privileged few; today, as the Principal says
in his ‘Letter’, its mission in these days of
raised fees and government funding cuts,
is ‘to open up Oxford to those who would
benefit from it the most but who, for lack
of opportunity, might be denied the
chance’.
In its early days, The Ship gave the
‘floating’ students a sense of belonging,
however far flung their post-Oxford lives
took them, beyond their years as
students. It kept them in touch with
each other and the Society, and enabled
them to express thanks from the
furthest corners of the globe to the
institution that had changed their lives.
And from the earliest issues, one can see
just how far flung these people were –
and how limited their range of
occupations. India, Germany, the US, New
Zealand, western Australia, Canada,
Ireland, China, Warsaw. Within the
College, too, there were already students
from Germany, a regular and numerous
contingent, from France, the US, Romania
and Russia. ‘I am very proud of our
foreign connection,’ says Bertha Johnson,
‘it is exceedingly good for us. I feel that
we are, with our foreign element, keeping
up the tradition of mediaeval times,
when the lovers of education were of the
same family no matter to whatever land
they belonged.’ The cosmopolitan nature
of the College persists.
But if they were intrepid in their travels,
the range of work open to them was not
so wide ranging. If they went as
independent women, rather than as
accompanying wives, the range of jobs
was limited: teaching or missionary work.
Back home, social work in the
settlements funded by the university,
work in hospitals, teaching and a great
number of ‘secretaries’ to academics. The
work in settlements and a tribute to the
‘heroism’ of ‘those at work in dreary
slums’, or a touching piece from
Birmingham on public education among
the poor, all challenge those who criticize
the expense but do nothing to detail the
lives of those in question.
With few exceptions, such as that of Ivy
Williams in the early 1920s, the first
woman to be called to the Bar, it was
many decades before St Anne’s women
or any women began to ignore the
advice given in ‘futile and farcical visits
to unhelpful women at the
Appointments Board’ and conquer the
media, banking, law, the City, etc etc. And
still there are only 3 per cent of them in
the boardroom the latest report on
gender equality in the workplace tells us.
It is only in wartime or moments of
national crisis such as the national strike
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never looked back. Even our own current
project, Kitchen Suppers, was first
launched in 1962, and the term Big
Society? You read it here first in 1978. The
appeals reach a peak at times of
intensive building activity – the 1960s,
1990s and 2000s – and frequently
coincide with the intrusions of
government enquiries and commissions
into the governance of the university.
These start with the Franks Report in
1965, which, among other things,
recommended that the number of
women at Oxford must be increased, and
continue over the decades with a
succession of what Ruth Deech calls with
some asperity in 1993 the ‘divisive
intervention’ and ‘growing intrusiveness
of central government and its effectively
unaccountable agents into teaching and
research … with damaging financial
consequences for Oxford’.
of 1926, or the turbulence of the
‘revolutionary’ 1960s, that the outside
world impinges on the pages of The Ship
and women go out to do jobs otherwise
closed to them. It appears to be a cosseted
world with little evidence of internal
conflict or eddies of personal emotion: the
tone of its first 50 years is more Enchanted
April than Ragged Trousered
Philanthropists. It took the austerity of the
post-war 1950s and the more relaxed
climate of the ‘swinging sixties’ to incite a
more acerbic tone – bad food, cold and
uncomfortable rooms in ill-equipped
Victorian houses, lack of facilities such as a
washing machine or TV became the
subject of frequent complaints. But above
all, it was the battle for the extension of
the hours undergraduates might stay out
or enjoy the company of their men friends
in the evenings that raged longest and
most furiously. It took the arrival of the
men in 1979 to put an end to a longfought cause.
From its earliest years, the Chairman of
the OSA claimed ‘Our Association can
claim an even higher and more subtle
bond, based as it is on purely mental and
spiritual attachments, cumbered by no
solid buildings … it may be expected that
year by year the bond binding us
together may be strengthened and the
Society go forward in good heart and
courage … feeling that their work is
But beyond all that, there is one theme
that starts earlier and persists longer
than any other: the appeals for money.
The first financial appeal to the OSA was
in 1912 and was for help in creating an
endowment fund. Interestingly, the OSA
was ‘extremely diffident’ about the
approach but did in the end respond and
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watched and promoted with interest
and enthusiasm by the loyal adherents
scattered round the world.’ A world away
from its language but in sentiment not
so very different from Gillian Reynolds’
comments almost a century later: ‘We
are not some feeble old girls and old
boys social club existing to organize the
odd dinner or the occasional tea. We are
committed to helping the College secure
its future.’
I could go on: barely three years old and
The Ship is struck by war. Its pages shrink,
the tone is sober, the annual Gaudy is
suspended, Oxford ‘rings to the sound of
the bugle’ and the decision to name and
shame those who have not paid their
subs of 1/6d for two years is reluctantly
taken. The detail and reality of the
outside world leap into the pages,
contrasting sharply with much of the
before and after.
But better to let the voices speak for
themselves across the years.
JVH
1911-2011: Across the decades
1911 - 2011: Across the decades
VOICES FROM 100 YEARS OF THE SHIP ILLUMINATE PAST LIVES
Students of Kentigern’s, the earliest hostel c.1896
1910s: Pioneers and early years
It was in the Autumn of 1878 that I and
my sister came up to Oxford as Home
Students and were duly enrolled under
the Association for the Higher Education
of Women. The lectures we attended in
that memorable autumn were all given
in a room over a baker’s shop in Little
Clarendon Street, a cold little room in
spite of the bakery. We spent some
delightful hours there, though I confess
we much approved of the change later
on to the little chapel in Alfred Street. It
was all lectures in those days and
lectures given especially for women; I
doubt whether the notion of opening
College lectures to women students had
ever been mooted. We still had a feeling
of diffidence in being students at Oxford
at all. We shrank from letting the outside
world know of our doings. I remember
how my sister and I used to stuff our
notebooks up our jackets when walking
to lectures in order not to be recognised
as that eccentric creature, a girl student.
EF Mathieson The Ship 1912
to help them learn and become part of
the university; they also met deliberate
unhelpfulness such of that of a lecturer
who used to have the blackboard slanted
towards the side of the hall where the
men sat so the women could not see it
and who made a point of addressing his
audience as ‘Gentlemen’.
Elizabeth Turner writing in The Ship 1933
My mother was a Home Student at
Cherwell Edge from 1907-1911 reading
History. Listening to her talking one
understood the enormous sense of
privilege and adventure and marvellous
joy those girls had then: they felt
themselves greatly liberated, free to be
taught by the most brilliant and aweinspiring lecturers … and free also to
explore the world, reading widely and
going for long walks in the country. And
yet they could not go out with young
men … they rarely danced and they went
to lectures with chaperones, who
embarrassed them by knitting during
the lecture. Enormous trouble was taken
1914-1918: at war
In the streets cap and gown have given
place to khaki, and to ‘Kitchener’s blue’.
For we have some 3,000 soldiers billeted
among us. Twice or thrice daily they
march through our streets, sometimes
light-footed, with whistle or song, at
others wearily shouldering pickaxe and
spade. Soldiers of all sorts are to be seen
drilling in the Parks.
Hundreds of ‘him’ depart daily to the
front, ‘she’ has her war activities as well.
She attends war lectures, to which the
knitting craze gives an odd flavour ... we
hope the three lecturers at Somerville
. 59
whole were treated with kindly
tolerance. We had to go out first thing in
the morning before lectures as boats and
coaches were otherwise occupied later in
the day; also the appearance of women
crews in the afternoon would have been
too revolutionary a step. … We wore
men’s rowing vests, Boy Scout shorts
and, in conformity with current ideas of
modesty, long, black ‘gym stockings’.
Maintaining connection between the
shorts and stockings when sliding
forward was apt to be a problem.
JEA Brown (1924)
Hall have not been disturbed by the
sound of dropping needles or by the
awesome sight of a don dashing from
the front row to recover her ball of wool!’
There are about 70 Home Students and
we have our Common Room in a small
house in Ship Street … coffee and
homemade scones made by the kind Mrs
Freeman. On one occasion Gilbert
Murray came to speak to us in Ship
Street. We were concerned that we were
doing little war work so he came to tell
us that we were helping to keep the
University functioning and that we
would be ready to help at once in the
post-war world.
Anon (1915)
At first sight, Oxford maintained its normal
aspect in the General Strike of 1926. But a
second glance revealed other facts: armed
troops going through in lorries towards
the North; clusters round various shop
windows reading wireless news; orderly
strike meetings in the Giler; cessation of
almost all lectures; and the gradual
disappearance of men undergraduates. As
for the women, there seemed nothing
which they could do. The Home Students
were the first of the women’s colleges to
send in to the Town Hall names of those
willing to volunteer. Jowett Walk was
crammed with enthusiastic first and
second years filling in forms, offering
themselves in possible or impossible
capacities ranging from secretary,
1920s: Jazz and Jubilees
The students of 1920 were the first
women to be matriculated into this male
stronghold and when, in 1921, our five
Principals went together to receive their
degrees, we watched with pride. … A
young don standing near me said
excitedly, ‘You know, we are making
history, we are making history.’
E May (Booth 1919)
In 1925, the Home Students began to
take part in rowing … we were
considered mildly eccentric but on the
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despatch-rider or driver of a milk-cart, to
VAD, canteen-worker or chauffeuse.
I lived with the dear Milford family in the
Woodstock Road for three years and with
Miss Miller in St Margaret’s Road for
another year of teacher training. Our
‘hostesses’ carefully saw that we kept
the various strict rules regarding the
wearing of the gowns, the hour of
evening return and, strictest of all, the
rules regarding meeting with MEN
friends (never BOY friends in 1927).
Another friend of the female sex must
always be present as chaperone … I was a
very serious law-abiding undergraduate
and was furious at being scolded
because I was seen on a Sunday
afternoon in a car with two dear boy
cousins, who were just like brothers to
me. It had never entered my head to ask
permission to go out with them. ‘Ruthie’
Butler said it was very easy to say one’s
friends were cousins so I begged her to
write to my aunt and finally made her
believe me!
Gwenda Lloyd, writing in The Ship 1987
The Jubilee was celebrated in 1929 in
Rhodes House with a dinner with many
speeches, then after this, tables were
quickly pushed against the wall and a
space cleared in the middle of the hall …
the floor was thrown open to all and
sundry and how we danced! ‘What
energy you must have had,’ exclaimed
the young jazzers to some of us who
were reviving old memories, though not
necessarily of 50 years ago!
The Ship 1929
1930s: Before another War
Women’s education was never a
problem in my family: my aunt, Mary
Gaunt, traveller and novelist, was the
first woman to be admitted to
Melbourne University back in the 1800s.
My three years at St Anne’s were enjoyed
in the mid-1930s. I lived in Cherwell Edge,
the Catholic hostel run by the Holy Child
nuns. We were certainly pampered. There
was almost an Edwardian style of
comfort: beds made, rooms cleaned, fires
lit to say nothing of good food and
congenial surroundings. This was a far
cry from the year I spent in the early1950s acquiring the Dip.Ed. required for
teaching in Africa. I was one of 13 30somethings all needing the same
qualification; all already with
considerable teaching experience. Our
inspiration was Mr Jacques a far seeing
educator. A room in digs with a small
electric fire was no fun: each weekend I
hived off to visit children whose
forthcoming secondary education would
necessitate leaving them in England,
which meant that I could be of use
where teachers were a vital need in the
territories which my husband, a Colonial
Administrative Officer, was ushering into
the modern world.
found ourselves socially welcome. I’d been
a debutante just before coming up and my
‘socialist’ leanings in no way clouded my
enjoyment of pomp and ceremony. Kizette,
tall, blonde, got the more exciting dates,
while I was invited to parents’ lunch as ‘the
nice girl next door’. Our first year,
chaperonage was still de rigueur.
I recently chanced across Miss Hadow’s
assessment ... ‘she is in some ways more
mature than the ordinary undergraduate...’
Yvonne Fox (Gaunt 1934)
Yvonne Fox and her husband returning to Oxford after
WWII to collect their MAs, with their two youngest
children
Miss Hadow was the Principal in my day. I
can still visualize her wrapping a rug round
her waist before carefully mounting her
bike. To me she seemed a somewhat
remote austere figure. She reproved me for
what she considered frivolity, but Reverend
Mother came to my rescue and assured
Miss Hadow I was busy getting a liberal
education. All this meant was that Kizette
de Lempicka, the daughter of Tamara, the
Polish artist, and I, with our continental
backgrounds, were at ease in whatever
company we found ourselves and, with the
then shortage of women undergraduates,
1940s: War and after
I came up to St Anne’s in September
1939. By then, many of the young men
had left before the end of their third year.
… The war hung heavily over us from the
beginning: everyone had friends or
family involved. The first thing every day
was to check the papers for the list of
deaths. (For extended reminiscences of
the war years in College, see The Ship
2009/10)
During World War II, undergraduates at
St Anne’s were expected to do War Work
every week … What would appear to be
the most spectacular form of war work
open to us was fire watching at the
Bodleian Library. This involved sleeping
on the premises so that we might be on
. 61
there are five more we have had to refuse.
The ratio of men to women is six to one. So
do not think it is your charms that are
making the men take notice of you, it is just
that you are in short supply. And do beware
the ex-servicemen; they present a far greater
danger than the ordinary undergraduate. We
are making things safer for you by tightening
our regulations, but remember, anyone
flouting these rules will be sent down,
permanently.
hand to deal with any incendiary bombs
which might fall during the night. Our
briefing for this work gave us to
understand that if a bomb fell within 20
miles of Oxford the whole city would
collapse like a pack of cards. This
information aroused some alarm and
the hope that the incendiary bomb
which we were to deal with would not
prove so devastating. Fortunately, I, at
least, was never called upon to tackle the
real, frightening, magnesium thing and
enjoyed many peaceful nights on the
camp bed in a large, bare room in the
Bodleian with four or five other young
ladies. The most disturbed night I
remember was caused by a mouse in a
wastepaper basket.
Mair Knott (James 1943)
The ex-servicewomen had not been
mentioned in the welcome, they had not
after all been monitors nor heads of school,
they were merely the first generation of
women ever to have held commissions in
His Majesty’s forces. Now they were
grouped at the back of the hall. An ex-ATS
captain, in her uniform skirt, her back ramrod straight, her voice at just the correct
pitch, was on her feet asking if we women
in our mid-twenties were really to be
locked into our digs from 9pm to 9am each
day, and we were quite experienced in
dealing with ex-servicemen who had been
our colleagues and fellow officers for some
years. The answer came back, crisp and
shrill: there was no reason at all to give us
special privileges and it would not be fair
on the second years if we had the same
latitude that they had. Later she showed a
more understanding side, but only after I
It was Freshers Week, 1946. The Taylorian
hall was crowded with about 90 girls, each
with a sheet of ‘thou shalt not’ regulations.
Miss Plumer came in, a small figure with a
dowager’s hump but a firm step and
soldierly bearing for all that, there was no
doubt she was the daughter of a general,
the way she stood, the way she walked,
and the stern way she spoke... The main
message was loud and clear. Some of you
have held important positions, been head
of school or monitors. You have come up
here to work. For every one who is here
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had stuck my neck out and been rude. I
went for permission to go out dancing with
a young man whom I had just met (and
with whom I subsequently enjoyed 60
years of happy marriage) and she asked
where I was going, saying I must never go
to a certain place because it was patronised
by the RAF. Just out of the WAAFs, I was so
infuriated by this remark that I said, ‘Oh, I
see: they are good enough to die for us but
not to dance or go to bed with us.’ Then
realising what I had said I seized the
permission she had already signed, and fled
the room.
June Knowles (Watkins 1946)
On the river in the 1950s
Cooking facilities consisted of a gas ring
and electric kettle on each landing (in
Cherwell Edge) augmented by whatever
we could provide for ourselves. It never
occurred to us to ask for any greater
luxuries. I remember once trying to cook
supper for my fiancé – to be finished of
Students in the 1950s outside Hartland House
course by 7.15pm. I had soup over-flowing
on a temperamental spirit stove in my
fireplace, peas boiling in a ring on the top
landing, and chicken vol-au-vents thawing
several flights of stairs below in a common
room. Something or other was being
toasted over an electric fire turned on its
side. Our daughters don’t know the
meaning of haute cuisine.
Anne Smith (Gane 1949)
1950s: age of austerity
The most obvious difference between
the late-1950s and today is that St
Anne’s was still one of only five women’s
colleges. The age of majority was 21, and
the college authorities stood in loco
parentis. This involved rules designed to
ensure our welfare: no men were
allowed in our rooms after 7pm, and we
had to be back by 10.30pm unless we
had signed out until 11.15pm. We were
outnumbered by male undergraduates
five-to-one everywhere except in college,
which we enjoyed hugely. Unfortunately
the Union was not open to women at
that time, though we could attend
debates. Of course we adopted the idiom
and the slang of Oxford life, and the
question of U and non-U speech
[launched in 1954 by the linguist Alan
Ross and taken up by the novelist Nancy
Mitford Ed] was a hot topic at the time.
Almost all the male undergraduates
were mature types in their twenties. In
1958, when two-year national service
finished and the freshers were only 18,
one could really tell the men from the
boys! In some respects we were quite
ladylike: we were not allowed to wear
trousers with a gown, in fact I do not
remember people wearing trousers very
much at all, and we wore dresses ‘for
best’, though there was a circular felt
party skirt in a killer shade of pink which
went the rounds of the hostel. We did
not go into pubs without a male escort,
except to the Royal Oak for a steak when
we had just received our grant cheques.
Those of you who have enjoyed what
sounds like enviable cuisine in the
Dining Hall would probably not believe
how hungry we got in post-war austerity
Oxford. Most of us smoked: it helped to
oil the wheels of social life, not to
mention staving off hunger pangs.
Those of us with rooms in 3 and 4
Bevington Road went to 50 Woodstock
Road for meals. Hostels were run on a
family basis: the warden usually ate with
us and we had a washing-up rota in the
evening. We had no keys to our rooms,
and as far as I recall there were no thefts,
though the outside doors were unlocked
in the daytime. A more law-abiding age
. 63
cryptic crosswords. Television did not
feature in our lives at all, and I think we
were the richer for it. Live theatre was
exciting in Oxford in those days; many of
the plays which made the headlines and
set the trends in London were previewed
at the Playhouse beforehand.
or a notable lack of consumer goods?
Although we did not spend much time in
college, we were very much part of a
community.
Most amenities we now take for granted
were notably lacking, although PM
Harold Macmillan announced in 1957
that we had ‘never had it so good’. Far
from having en suite facilities, seven of
us shared one bathroom without a loo
and one loo without washing facilities.
We did all our washing by hand in the
basement kitchen where there was a
Victorian-style hanging rail for drying
clothes. The two houses shared a single
phone by the front door of 3. There was,
however, an excellent College Messenger
service, which distributed mail around
the colleges at least once a day. We used
notepaper and envelopes with the
college crest, and maybe even a proper
pen and ink. Essays were written in
longhand, of course. If only I had had a
keyboard and printer, I should have
written wonderful essays, and saved
enough time to finish them before 3am!
The mass media did not impinge much
on our lives in Oxford. Some people had a
record player, some a portable wireless,
quite a lot had neither. We usually read
only the Sunday newspapers, with
occasional group sessions over the
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One feature of St Anne’s in our day was
the relatively large number of Grammar
School girls, something of a surprise,
maybe, given the currently pressing
question of how to persuade state
school pupils to apply to the prestigious
universities. In addition, all state school
pupils received a grant for higher
education, either a County Grant or a
State Scholarship, the latter awarded to
the pupils who gained the best A Level
and Scholarship Level results in the
country. The grants covered all tuition
fees, but the maintenance element was
means tested. I am aware how lucky we
were: it meant that it was at least
possible to aspire to an Oxford degree
course. It certainly did not mean that we
were well off, and some families made
financial sacrifices over a long period.
Solvency was de rigueur. We certainly did
not expect to have a ‘gap year’ or be able
to buy a car in the foreseeable future.
Our time at St Anne’s saw the beginning
of the end of our kind of life: the ‘sixties’
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were about to start swinging, St Anne’s
Dining Hall was soon to be opened and
new residential building begin.
Eventually the college would become
mixed. The Bevington Road gardens
would be reduced to be replaced by a
state-of-the art hall of residence with en
suite facilities. Does anybody still have a
room in Ruskin’s old studio in 50
Woodstock? And does the smell of toast
waft through the corridors? And are the
chestnut trees in Bevington Road still in
bloom after the Easter vac? And would
we swop our experiences for today’s? No
contest!
Anne Marie Gerlach (Wood 1956)
The Dining Hall was formally opened by HM the Queen
in 1960
group. It was very special to feel that we
had met so long ago yet were still in
touch. We are grateful to St Anne’s for
giving us so much when we were very
young, and for initiating so many years
of wonderful and lasting friendship.
Veronica Cutler (McColl 1960)
photo: L to R: Judith Altshul (Davis), Di Khursandi (Strange), Maggie Sly (Midlane), Juliet Dusinberre (Stainer),
Irene Andrews (Devonshire), Liz Newlands (Raworth), Julia Winter (Fountain), Veronica Cutler (McColl)
1960s: a celebration and not quite
a revolution
For 50 years we have been friends and we
owe it all to St Anne’s. After going down,
a number of us lived together in London,
and kept in touch with others. The house
in Cleaver Square, south of the river in
now fashionable Kennington, was shared
at different times for two years after
Oxford by Liz Newlands (Raworth), Juliet
Dusinberre (Stainer), Irene Andrews
(Devonshire), Maggie Sly (Midlane),
Christa Herbert (Baxter), Veronica Cutler
(McColl) and Di Khursandi (Strange), and
visited frequently by many other St
Anne’s friends.
Young families, and careers in a variety of
occupations – teaching, academia,
medicine, publishing, writing and
working abroad among others – meant
fewer opportunities for communal
gatherings, but a trip to see plays at
Stratford and later a summertime visit to
The Globe Theatre soon became annual
events enabling us to keep in regular
touch. In July 2010, 15 of us spent a day at
Stratford seeing Morte d’Arthur and
Antony and Cleopatra.
But we decided the fiftieth anniversary
of matriculation in 1960 called for
something more elaborate and 14 of us
arranged to spend a weekend together
in the Isle of Wight in September. We
enjoyed beautiful coastal walks, visited
Carisbrooke Castle and Osbourne House,
and celebrated the birthday of one of our
Undergraduates were very grateful [in the
exceptionally cold winter of 1963] to be
allowed to wear trousers to tutorials in
college, for extra shillings for the meters
and for the Principal’s offer of help in the
purchase of wellington boots.
JCR President (1963)
Students in the 1970s
. 65
1970s: Not all centenaries and
celebrations
There has been less obvious activity in
the JCR this year … the event which had
the greatest effect during the year was
the scouts strike in Michaelmas 1972. Not
only did it reveal a disturbingly high level
of ignorance of trade unionism at all
levels, it also created (or brought to the
surface) a great rift within the JCR. … The
tension and hostility resulting from this
had a greater long term effect than has
been generally recognized. It has
manifested itself in a desire to avoid any
issue that might, in any way, appear
contentious, and in a relapse into the
apathy that bedevils most JCRs but
which had been overcome at St Anne’s …
two major problems have to be faced by
the JCR: the lack of involvement by most
JCR members and the lack of
communication between and within all
sectors of the college. It would appear
that the volcanic eruptions of
revolutionary fervour have abated since
1970. When the wall scribblers began
again in April this year, urging ‘All Out!
May Day, Clarendon Steps’, their efforts
rallied a band of less than 20. …
Revolution as a fashion is perhaps out:
the newest generation of
undergraduates does not wear the hats
of its predecessors; but the easy
I came up to Oxford in 1968 – the year of
revolution – when students were linking
arms with workers in Paris and American
campuses erupting in violence. At St
Anne’s it was not quite like that. My first
letter home in October 1968 reads: ‘We
had a college general meeting and a JCR
meeting on Tuesday. I don’t think there
will be a revolution at St Anne’s. They
seem more concerned about getting free
crumpets instead of free bread.’ … In 1970,
things became more serious when a
group of students entered the Clarendon
Building and refused to leave until they
saw the political files which they believed
the University was keeping on us. The
shock waves reached even St Anne’s. I was
president of the JCR and was confronted
by a delegation of earnest left-wingers
who demanded that I go to the Principal
to ask if we could see our files. My letter
home recording the interview shows my
deplorable lack of political commitment.
It begins: ‘She gave me a cup of Nescafé
and showed me her new fireplace.’ I must
have been a great disappointment to the
left but the idea of Oxford University
being sufficiently organized to have
political files on its students struck me as
ludicrous. St Anne’s had its Clarendon
demonstrators but most minds remained
firmly on the crumpets.
Judith Judd (Berry 1968)
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Graffiti during the domestic staff strike 1972 / Hazel
Rossotti
unquestioning relationships between
dons and students of the fifties and early
sixties are gone.
HY Bullock Oxford Notes 1973
The perennial bickering over visiting
hours seems never to lose its appeal for
both sides. … After determined effort by
some junior members a bar has been
installed in the JCR … As is painfully
obvious there is at present no Central
Students’ Union building in Oxford … but
this is not the column for further polemic.
Rosanne K Musgrave & Caroline Kirby
(1971) writing in 1974
As far as the college was concerned it
was a fairly quiet year, but the University
had its problems. The occupation of the
Examination Schools and the attempted
occupation of the Indian Institute … it
seems that some of the junior members
who took part in the various
demonstrations considered that
questions of high principle were involved
or, at the lowest, that the excitement
was fun … the price in wear and tear on
the University staff, the misuse of time
and energy for all concerned and the
cost in money terms to the University
were, however, excessive. It is estimated
that the total bill … fell not far short of
£50,000 and this at a time when the
University is so starved for money that
there is a complete moratorium on
teaching posts.
N Trenaman Principal’s Letter 1974
The campaign for co-residence is just the
kind of enterprise which could in
principle have united the whole student
body had it not met with the usual
practical difficulties of scale and coordination which in the absence of a CSU
face any group of students wishing to
change their educational environment. …
The bar has transformed the atmosphere
of the JCR and is a clear step to making St
Anne’s a happier and more relaxed place
to live. The most obvious obstacle to
further advance in this direction is clearly
visiting hours …until the SCR officially
recognises our right to independence,
there will still be that pointless feeling of
hostility and frustration in the face of
authority that is one of the least pleasant
aspects of life at Oxford.
Elaine Ginsburg Convenor of the JCR 1974
Throughout this Centenary year, many
events have been organised within the
College … In Trinity Term the Drama
Society and the College jointly sponsored
a performance of the Mediaeval Mystery
Plays in Christ Church Meadows … the
majority of the women’s parts being
taken by St Anne’s members. Never has
there been so startling a sight as that of
one’s fellow undergraduates swathed in
white with golden wings and looking
convincingly angelic. We did in fact begin
to wonder whether the cast might not
have some supernatural power when, on
almost every night during Noah, the
second play, threatening clouds
appeared on the horizon at ‘God’s’
command and, exactly on cue, obligingly
cast down such showers that the third
and final play was consistently rained
off! However … the event that had most
impact on college was the centenary
dinner for the JCR, MCR and SCR. The
guest of honour was the Chancellor, Mr
Macmillan ... who could actually
remember some of the early years of
women students … but what was most
important on such a special occasion
was that the College felt really unified
and drawn together at a time when, as
well as looking back, we also have to look
forward to the next chapter in our
history. The most immediate
development in this new chapter will be
the admission in Michaelmas term of
male undergraduates for the first time.
All kinds of changes will inevitably follow
– not least the establishment of the
hitherto unimaginable St Anne’s Rugby
team! … It is appropriate that after 100
years of fighting for recognition of the
value of women’s education in a male
dominated society we can now abandon
those defences we have so bravely
maintained and allow men to share in
the life of St Anne’s on equal terms.
Helen Marriage President JCR 1979
1980s: Years of impossible thinking
While accepting our new situation, we
felt that it was important to remain
aware of our history as a pioneer
organisation for the education of women
in Oxford. Consequently the Founders Day
Dinner was instituted. [This was first
proposed in 1912 by Miss Ruth Butler. Ed].
. 67
In the summer of 1979 I voted for the first
time and staked my feminist credentials
by helping to return Britain’s first female
PM. A few months later, I was to take up a
place as part of the first year of male
undergraduates at St Anne’s, where
womankind would surely show me its
gratitude. … Unfortunately, rather than
being grateful for our liberating
masculine presence, the women at the
College appeared to disapprove of the
intrusion. In our second term, a motion
was proposed and debated in the JCR that
went something as follows: ‘The
admission of men has lowered the
academic and social tone of the college
and should be repealed at the earliest
possible opportunity’. … I cannot fault its
logic. … One male fresher was obviously so
desperately embarrassed by his new alma
mater that he was never known to set
foot in the building after his first day. … I
remember being rather impressed that St
Anne’s had chosen to list among its
Distinguished Old Girls Bridget Rose
Dugdale (1959), heiress and debutante
turned IRA activist, who, in 1979, was
serving a nine-year prison sentence for
armed robbery and hijacking. … Daunted
by the tough pedigree evidently required
to study at St Anne’s, the men established
a male only club called the philosophers. I
joined … because it was the only option if I
In 1979, feminism was an important issue
in JCR politics. There were two distinct
groupings within the female
undergraduates: first there were the
women who sought equality with men;
saw the intake of men as a challenge, but
as essentially right and inevitable. The
other group, much in a minority, saw men
as a threat. In the first couple of years of a
mixed intake the JCR committee turned
nearly all female to all male. … In the early
months many Fellows and female
undergraduates regarded the men as
there on sufferance, even ‘on trial’. There
was widespread disapproval of several of
the men’s light-hearted and sometimes
destructive antics around College late at
night. Mrs Trenaman addressing the 1979
entry said she would continue to refer to
College members as ‘she’ and ‘her’ in
general announcements until such time
as the men were in a majority. … We
experienced the new heterogeneity, the
reality of a mixed college. But we saw it in
contrast with the dying embers of a
successful single sex society. We were
enabled to see both cultures from outside
or to live within either. The process of
change made St Anne’s one of the most
exciting places to be in Oxford.
Ian Round (1979) writing in 1990
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didn’t want to find myself ostracised by
both sexes at my new college. …
Russell Taylor writing in 2009
‘So, Sir, the picture is exceedingly gloomy?’
An undergraduate officer of the Oxford
University Students Union was addressing
the Vice-Chancellor about the financial
difficulties facing the University as a result
of the cuts in its grant from the
government. Is the situation really so
gloomy? In a way yes, because we have
been warned that the current financial
cuts are just beginning, to be incised more
deeply in the next few years … and the
University Grants Committee has
requested that the cuts in numbers [of
students] bite twice as deeply into the arts
as into the science subjects. … Most money
from outside sources is still going to the
sciences: amongst the many thriving
topics listed in the Gazette we find:
simulation of hot gas plumes, acoustic
modelling of vowel normalisation, global
temperature patterns 6,000 years ago and
decision making (in fish).
Principal’s letter (1982)
Miss RF Butler who died on 22 July 1982 in
her 101st year was born into one of the
great Victorian academic families in
Oxford. … She entered the Society of
Home Students as an undergraduate in
1901 [and] took the papers in the School of
Modern History in 1904. When in 1906 she
became secretary to Mrs Johnson, Principal
of the Society, she began an involvement
with the cause of women in Oxford which
hardly ended even with her retirement in
1942. She was modern history tutor from
1913, Vice-Principal, 1919-1938, Dean of
Degrees and Senior Tutor from 1913. [She
was also the initiator of the OSA, later ASM
and the first editor of The Ship, which she
was instrumental in founding Ed.] She
could recall the strict discipline of early
days and the plight of the Proctor who,
when challenging a woman student
received the reply, ‘I never speak to a
strange man in the street..’ She could
describe in vivid terms the famous scene in
the Sheldonian when the first women
took their degrees in 1920. She was
involved in all the early developments of
the Society which has grown into St Anne’s
College, of which she was an Honorary
Fellow and always treasured the Beaver,
symbol of the Home Students which stood
for industry and cooperative service.
Obituaries (1983)
1990s: No more free lunches
Some colleges have great wine cellars;
others pride themselves on their pictures
or silver. At St Anne’s our greatest treasure
is our library. 1995 will mark the centenary
of one of the finest undergraduate
working libraries in Oxford. … In 1895, the
widow of Professor Nettleship gave his
library to the embryonic women’s colleges
… similar generosity led to the donation of
the Geldart Library as a law library for
women. Both collections eventually passed
into the sole ownership and
administration of St Anne’s where they are
still a treasured part of a great collection.
David Smith, Librarian 1994
There can be little doubt that today’s
generation have a much harder task
ahead of them on the road to a career
than the graduates of years past. Stories
of high achievers with first class degrees
getting strings of rejections are far more
common than those of people walking
into the first post they apply for. There are
2,000 applicants for 12 graduate posts.
[Student grants end, loans begin, fees up
to £1,000] Many students will leave with
debts of £10,000. The golden era of free
tuition and adequate maintenance which
lasted from approximately 1950-1990 has
gone for ever … St Anne’s is a blueprint for
Oxford colleges of the future – a mix of
classes, cultures, work, play and intellect.
Ruth Deech Principal’s Letter 1995/96
&1997/98
© Keith Barnes
. 69
Different people understood different
parts but no one had a good view of the
whole! For example, on the macroeconomic front, people understood we
were in for a more difficult time. But even
then the severity was underestimated. The
combination of the credit crunch and the
economic situation wasn’t fully
understood – not surprising in some sense
as we are living in unprecedented times. …
It’s an amazing time to be in banking:this
sort of thing doesn’t happen more than
once in a lifetime. Scary? No, challenging. …
Helen Weir (Luing 1980)
‘The noughties’: Things that go bump in
the night: big bangs and crashes
On 9 September 2008, two beams of
protons completed their first orbit of the
Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – often
nicknamed the Big Bang Machine – at
CERN, Geneva. This accelerator, also
referred to as ‘The Machine’, by particle
physicists, is certainly its own prototype.
Getting it to work was never going to be
easy, and it was unfortunate that on 19
September one of the final sections of the
machine failed rather spectacularly in
preparation for running at high energy.
But why do particle physicists need this
apparatus at all? … Most people relate to it
in terms of answering questions about
our origins, the state of matter and what
the universe is doing. … The LHC takes us
back to those very early times … it looks
like the very young universe but in a tiny
volume.
Jamie Ballin (2002) was there in CERN
Probably the biggest achievement of last
year’s JCR was the refurbishment of the
JCR website. The slick new site boasted
many innovative features including an
online trading place for books, tickets and
much more, which was aptly called
Stamazon. … We organised the first ever St
Anne’s Gender Equality Week in
commemoration of 30 years of coeducation. A diverse and well-attended
range of events included a meeting with
the OUSU vice-president for women, a
gender-themed welfare night, a co-ed Bop,
a speaker event with Jana Bennett OBE
(1974), director of BBC Vision and the most
senior women in British broadcasting, and
a lively stand-up comedy night in the bar.
JCR report 2009/10
Helen Weir finds nothing odd about being
a woman in a man’s world. As the most
senior woman in UK banking and in the
eye of the financial storm, she knows
what she’s talking about. What people in
the City most admire about her is her
prescience: ‘She understood what was
happening and why long before most
people in the banking world,’ says one. …
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In the past year the College has admitted
undergraduates from Russia, Moldova,
Romania, Lithuania, Poland and what was
East Germany. St Anne’s has in total 39
students from China; they come not just
from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing,
but from across mainland China. … When I
look out from high table across the sea of
faces in Hall, I see an optimistic blueprint
for an enlightened, racially and culturally
diverse modern society.
Tim Gardam Principal’s Letter 2009/10
The shape of the future: architect’s drawings for the
development of the front of College
The range of activities in our eight
regional branches continues to expand:
lectures, walks, outings, book groups and
theatre visits, not to mention the
varieties of eating experience. Branch
leaders describe local events
John Wesley’s chapel, Bristol
Bristol and West of England Branch met
for a spring talk, ‘The Life of a Faceless
Bureaucrat’, by member Alison Jackson,
who was, until 2005, the Director of the
Wales Office. It provided us with a
glimpse behind the scenes of government
policy, with intriguing insights into the
relationship between ministers and civil
servants. Our summer meeting was a
conducted tour of John Wesley’s New
Room – new in 1739 when Wesley decided
to stop preaching outside and build a
meeting house – and Charles Wesley’s
house in Bristol. Bristol, where John
Wesley first began to preach, was crucial
to the Evangelical Revival of the
eighteenth century. We followed the tour
with a cream tea beneath Wesley’s pulpit.
Cambridge members and friends enjoyed
an excellent dinner at Pembroke College,
Cambridge, in March and were intrigued
by Anne Lonsdale’s talk comparing and
contrasting Oxford and Cambridge
experiences. As a past President of New
Hall (now Murray Edwards College) and a
graduate of St Anne’s, she was well placed
to share her insights, and also persuaded
us to rebuild the old ‘sisterhood’ between
her two colleges. So, at our annual garden
party in June, in Mary Archer’s wonderful
garden in Grantchester, and again in
October, on a visit to the wartime code-
cracking centre at Bletchley Park, we were
joined by New Hall alumnae.
We were delighted with the success of
the first Sarah McCabe (McGrath 1934)
memorial lecture, delivered in College,
early in June. Armando Iannucci, a longstanding friend of Sarah’s, asked, ‘Do we
get the politics we deserve?’ and made us
reflect and laugh by turns. The money
raised (around £1000) was added to the
Sarah McCabe Bursary Fund. This fund
was founded in 2007 by Cambridge
Branch as a living memorial to Sarah.
In January this year, 11 members and
guests ventured into the dark, wild and
windy Fens to watch entranced as
hundreds of Whooper swans and
Pochard drakes came close to the hide on
the Ouse Washes to feed and jostle with
Swans follow their leader at Welney Fen
. 71
the few Mute swans there before
roosting on the water for the night. Our
outing was led by Audrey Meaney (Savill
1950), past chairman of the branch and
an expert birdwatcher.
We were able to donate £500 to the
Domus fund for graduates this year.
Midlands members met on a Saturday in
June, with family and friends, to walk and
lunch. We were in lovely country near the
site of the battle of Edgehill and covered
around four miles. A toil up a steep
ascent rewarded us with a truly amazing
view. This was our lunch destination, the
Castle Inn, overlooking the site of the first
Nine Kent members got together in June
at Valerie Dean’s (Slater 1966) house in
Rochester, where we had lunch and a
really good time. There was absolutely
nothing intellectual about the day, but
the comments afterwards were
enthusiastic. A more important event
was organised by Anne Rooke (Perrett
1965), who continued the tradition of
entertaining this year’s intake of
Freshers. We only had one Fresher, but
she was able to meet two students who
had completed their first year and were
pleased to have chosen St Anne’s.
Lunch at the Castle after the battle up the hill
In June, London had a very successful visit
to Leighton House and in November we
met for our AGM and after dinner speech
at Overseas House in St James’s. After a
very good dinner, Zinovy Zinik of the BBC
Russian Service entertained the
gathering with ‘Chekhov, Vodka and the
Japanese Toothbrush Thief’. Ann Louise
Luthi (Wilkinson 1951) excelled herself in
organising both events.
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major battle of the English Civil War.
Many renowned Warwickshire families
were involved in the battle. It proved
indecisive, but claimed the lives of more
than 1,500 men on each side.
A chilly January afternoon found us
firmly indoors with a book club
discussion followed by afternoon tea.
Midlands people like walking, talking and
eating!
(Jones 1956) supper for Freshers and the
Christmas party for branch members
hosted by Kate Wilson (Ridler 1961) were
both much enjoyed
The North East AGM and Annual Lunch
was held in March 2010 at the Bar
Convent in York with 17 members and
guests. Members voted to donate
£150.00 to the College Library Fund.
In July, we joined OUSOC York for a visit
to Burton Agnes Hall in the East Riding
of Yorkshire. The Hall is described by
Simon Jenkins, author of England’s
Thousand Best Houses, as ‘the perfect
English house’. We were treated to tea at
Boynton Hall, the home of a former Lord
Lieutenant of the East Riding, Richard
Marriott (St Peter’s) and his wife Sally.
In June 2010, North West members
enjoyed the Picasso Exhibition at Tate
Liverpool. The art was made all the more
enjoyable by informative guidance and
an excellent lunch. In September, we
enjoyed a pleasant informal lunch at
Jane Davies’ (Baxendale 1970) home. A
group of us ate together again in the late
autumn, and then winter was upon us.
The weather made meetings – even for
food, our favourite thing – quite
impossible. With the prospect of spring
comes further activity: food in
Manchester in February.
Oxford’s 2010 events included a talk by
Muriel Passey (Dinnin 1948)entitled ‘Milk
ASM South kitted out for a visit to the Materials
Recycling Facility in Alton, September 2009.
and No Sugar? The history in your coffee
cup’; a June visit to The Mead in Wantage
and The Old Rectory in Farnborough to
see the gardens of two of John
Betjeman’s homes, and a special view of
some treasures from the Ingram
collection of oriental objects at the
Ashmolean Museum (see p81). We
celebrated our tenth anniversary in
October most successfully with a pair of
lectures, ‘Bridging the gap between the
arts and sciences’ given by Dr Helen
Christian and Professor Patrick
McGuinness (see page 37).
At our AGM and lunch in November we
were both informed and entertained by
Professor Marilyn Palmer (Allum 1962)
who spoke to us about about ‘Comfort
and Convenience in the Victorian
Country House’. Elisabeth Salisbury’s
The Southern year kicked off in spirited
style with a meeting of our newly
formed book club. Discussion of Amitav
Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies divided between
those who couldn’t put it down and
those who longed to hurl it at the wall.
Fourteen members, all with strong views,
made for a very lively afternoon’s
discussion. In October we met again to
discuss Hilary Mantel’s Booker prizewinning Wolf Hall. It scored high praise
from the six members who attended, all
with strong and hugely differing views.
However, numbers were down, as other
members had disliked the book so much
they couldn’t bear to finish it, let alone
discuss it. We hope our next choice for
March 2011, Edith Wharton’s House of
Mirth, will prove more appealing.
Lured by the attraction of seeing a
working kitchen with Picasso artwork in
situ and a sitting room with Hitler’s
drinks tray on display, in June we
branched well outside our area to visit
Farley Farm House in Sussex. The home
of World War II photographer Lee Miller
and her husband, the surrealist painter
. 73
Roland Penrose, Farley Farm House near
Lewes is the family setting for some
stunning works by Picasso, Man Ray and
Joan Miro among others as well as Lee’s
iconic photos. Our group of 14 had a
private tour led by the couple’s son,
Antony Penrose.
local spread of new members. Most
welcome parties are held in the home of
a branch member, but London’s is hosted
by Accenture, who provide food and
drink in their City headquarters. The
North West meets in a pub, as Maureen
Hazell (Littlewood 1971) reports:
Our annual trip to Chichester Theatre in
August was as popular as ever. This year
we saw a double bill: Sheridan’s The
Critic and Stoppard’s The Real Inspector
Hound at the smaller, Minerva Theatre.
The Freshers Welcome evening ... was the
usual delight; we hosted six Freshers and
a similar number of second years at the
Slug and Lettuce in Manchester. We
marvelled, as ever, at how sophisticated
the undergraduates now are and saw
the newcomers grow in confidence as
the evening passed. Our event isn’t
sponsored and we deliberately earmark
surplus funds to pay for this evening,
which is clearly much appreciated by the
undergraduates. Despite the delights of
electronic contact, all are very excited to
have real face-to-face encounters and
many friendships develop.
Our final event of the year was a lecture
by Georgina Ferry, author, broadcaster
and currently writer in residence at the
Oxford University Museum of Natural
History. Her talk at the Milner Hall in
Winchester on October 30, about the
lives of scientists and the interactions
with the societies in which they live, was
attended by 28 members and followed
by a buffet lunch.
Most people who have been involved in
Freshers’ events will agree that they are
truly a delight, but they can take time; as
Ruth Le Mesurier (Armitage 1965) reports:
‘four undergraduates, nine freshers and
five committee members socialized over
a buffet lunch of cottage pie and
vegetable lasagne. The brief lunch
turned into a four-hour event.’ As Valerie
Freshers’ Welcome
Apart from bringing together graduates
in their areas, the branches also offer a
welcome to new Freshers in their areas
just before they come up, usually with
the opportunity to meet existing
undergraduates. These may involve one
Fresher or dozens, depending on the
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Dean says, this is our most important
meeting. Like the rest, it is certainly fun.
Compiled by Linda Richardson (Deer
1966) from reports by Ann Revill (Radford
1955, Bristol and West), Sue Collins
(Blandford 1969, Cambridge), Valerie
Dean (Slater 1966, Kent), Clare Dryhurst
(1979, London), Jane Darnton (Baker 1962,
Midlands), Gillian Pickford (Atkin 1979,
North East), Maureen Hazell (Littlewood
1971, North West), Jackie Ingram (1976,
Oxford), Ruth Le Mesurier (Armitage 1965,
Southern)
Kitchen Suppers
Kitchen Suppers
Kitchen suppers were first devised in 1962
in one of college’s ever more frequent
fundraising drives. Gillian Reynolds gives
a new lease of life in support of the muchneeded new college kitchen
Count the good causes you already
support: museums, galleries, libraries,
churches, colleges, schools, children,
diseases, research, disasters... The list isn’t
complete and you’ve run out of fingers.
Just contemplating charity targets makes
the head spin. Millions. Ever more millions.
To those of us brought up when a
professional wage was £1,000 a year and
the state paid for our education it barely
makes sense. To anyone younger, trying to
get a job, buy a first home, marry, start a
family, it’s hard to know how to respond.
How can people like us possibly help St
Anne’s build a new kitchen and refurbish
the Hall? Short of a major win on the
National Lottery or a big hit with the
Premium Bonds, it seems impossible. The
new kitchen alone needs at least £3
million. The Hall will take more.
Yet the need is urgent and the case is
irrefutable. To keep its doors open to
undergraduates the College must make
money from conferences. To retain its
conference trade the College urgently
needs a new kitchen and a consequent
upgrading of the Hall. The Development
Office is working overtime. What can we
do?
Kitchen Suppers, that’s what. Ask friends
to dinner, request that instead of bringing
flowers, chocolates or wine, guests donate
the same amount (or a little more) to St
Anne’s. Obviously, this will never raise £3
million. But, launched last May and
continuing through to July 2011, when the
old kitchen is scheduled for demolition,
Kitchen Suppers kicked off the appeal
which has now raised over £500,000. It’s
an astonishing response. The individual
sums raised have been considerably
boosted by several major donations
directly inspired by the initiative. There’s
something else. As everyone who raises
funds knows (and which of us isn’t a
fundraiser these days?) if you can show
major Foundations and Trusts that there is
involvement at every donor level the
chances of receiving funding are seriously
enhanced.
So if you haven’t given a Kitchen Supper
yet, please do. Don’t be scared. This isn’t
Come Dine With Me. There will be no
sarcastic voice-over when you spill the
gravy on the floor as I did. But if you’d like
to take your chances around my table, or
that of a dozen or so other Kitchen Supper
veterans, you can book via the
Development Office. It’s amazing how our
mickles are adding up.
Gillian Reynolds (Morton 1954)
The catering team at St Anne’s works daily miracles
Andy Love
. 75
Heroes to zeroes
ANDY SWISS
last June, we genuinely thought it was
true. We’d waltzed through the World Cup
qualifiers. We had a slightly scary manager,
who’d actually won stuff. We had Wazza,
we had Stevie G, we had lots of other
ludicrous abbreviations. We were real
contenders.
You build ‘em up, you knock ‘em down
they never do quite what you think. Why
do England’s teams continue to defy
expectations?
Sport has always loved a good cliché. It
used to be a contractual obligation for
footballers to be either ‘over the moon’ or
‘sick as a parrot’. Nowadays, they prefer to
plunder self-help manuals. Even after a 10nil thumping, they’ll be ‘taking the
positives’ or guffing on about ‘mental
intensity’.
So, it’s no surprise that we sports
journalists love a good cliché too. Indeed,
we adhere to the oldest in the book – the
‘build ‘em up, knock ‘em down’ principle.
As a general rule, teams are gloriously
brilliant or they’re disgracefully rubbish.
‘Quite good’ just doesn’t sell newspapers.
Which is a shame, because the England
football team is exactly that. Quite good.
Not stunning, not terrible – just boringly
competent. The eternal quarter-finalists of
the game. But despite all the evidence, we
hype them up into a cross between Roy of
the Rovers and Brazil circa 1970. And yet,
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Somehow, England scraped in to the next
round. Cue much scratching of chins. ‘Isn’t
that the classic sign of champions?’ we
mused sagely. ‘They’re playing badly – and
still getting through.’ Perhaps all that
chaos was simply an elaborate doublebluff, lulling our rivals into a false sense of
security. After all, you don’t want to peak
too early. Well, England certainly didn’t
peak too early. Unfortunately, they never
peaked at all. I confidently backed them to
beat Germany in the last 16. As the fourth
German goal rolled in, my future as a
tipster was looking shaky.
And then we arrived in South Africa.
Instead of basing themselves in one of the
big cities, England had chosen Rustenburg,
essentially a giant platinum mine in the
middle of nowhere. After the WAG-chasing
media circus in Germany four years earlier,
this monastic existence would provide the
ideal setting for bonding, composure and
ultimately world domination.
Heroes to zeroes in just one month. Even
by our usual knee-jerk standards, that was
pretty quick work. You’d think we would
know better by now – but give us three
years and a couple of scratchy wins over
Bulgaria, I’m sure we’ll be at it again.
Would it heck. First training session – and
the captain gets injured. First match
against the USA – and the goalie lets the
ball through his hands. The players are
already bored stiff. They go and play golf –
only for Wayne Rooney to be pictured
relieving himself in public. They go on a
game drive – and get chased round by the
British media. They get booed off the pitch
after drawing against Algeria. It was a
conveyor belt of calamity.
In fact we had our next chance just four
months later. England’s cricketers tend to
excite the same polarized opinions as our
footballers. We’re either biffing
mustachioed Queenslanders into the
carpark, or getting skittled out for 27. Now
it was the Ashes – and finally, England
were going to win Down Under.
This had all the ingredients for another
debacle. Long wait since previous success?
Check. Inflated expectations? Check.
2010-11
Opponents ‘past their best’? Check. The
conjoining of egg and face was simply a
matter of time.
Four years earlier, I’d travelled to
Australia amid similar hopes. What
followed was a month-long trail of
sunburn, batting collapses and the
inevitable crushing disappointment.
After wafting around the England team
like the angel of death, the BBC quite
rightly decided to send someone else
this time. Poor soul, I thought.
I listened to the first ball in the middle
lane of the M6 just north of Stafford. By
the time I got to the next junction,
England had already lost a wicket. My
annoyance was tempered by just a touch
of relief. Thank goodness I wouldn’t have
to go through all that again.
But of course, England ended up doing
rather well. As I spent the coldest
December on record shivering outside a
selection of snowbound football stadia,
my colleague in Australia enjoyed one of
the most seamlessly brilliant English
sporting displays in history. Probably
while supping a cool beer, adjusting his
sunhat and prodding a few whimpering
Aussies with a big stick. Bother.
Football 2010: Andy Swiss in South Africa before the decline & fall
So, I’d witnessed one of England’s worst
ever displays – and missed one of their
best. They always say sport is about
timing: anyone who saw me play for the
mighty St Anne’s second eleven will
know I have precious little of that.
Perhaps the key is just to keep me away
from all major English sporting events.
It’s the London Olympics next summer.
Any jobs in John O’Groats going?
Andy Swiss (1993) is a BBC sports news
correspondent.
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Afghanistan: ten years on
STEVE BROOKING
led coalition forces in Afghanistan, not to
mention the Bonn Conference that was
supposed to set the conditions for peace
in the country. Not coincidentally, it will
also see the tenth anniversary of my
arrival in the country. There will be
myriad TV debates and press articles
looking back over events; this is one of
the first!
Our man in Afghanistan recalls the ups –
and rather more downs – of the past ten
years and looks to the future
As well as marking the one hundredth
issue of The Ship, 2011 will see the tenth
anniversary of the attacks on the World
Trade Center and of the presence of US-
Last year saw a number of developments
in international thinking on Afghanistan.
Not only did we have a ‘timetable for
transition’ agreed by NATO in Lisbon
Bitter memories: victory arch of 1919 commemorating
Afghan defeat of British in Third Afghan War
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with an ideal date of 2014 for handing
over the lead responsibility for security
to Afghan forces, at the same time, a
Kabul Conference set out the objective of
putting 50 per cent of the aid budget
through the Afghan government. The
2014 date has given a number of NATO
countries facing difficulties with public
support for the war a firmer timetable
with which to try to convince their
electorates. Good timing for David
Cameron, but a problem for Barack
Obama, who still needs to insist that
summer 2011 is the high-point for the
On the edge of Kabul
Ten years on
number of US troops in Afghanistan and
that the numbers will soon start to
reduce: ‘troops will be coming home’
before the start of his re-election
campaign.
Unfortunately, not only is it in standard
military parlance a case of ‘no plan
survives contact with the enemy’, but
even more the case that ‘no plan
survives contact with the Afghans’.
Unsurprisingly, the Taliban have their
own views on the course of the war and,
although foreign forces made headway
in the south of Afghanistan in 2010 and
kept up the tempo through the winter,
even NATO admit that such gains are
‘fragile’ and the only real test will be, as
it has ever been in this country, when the
fighting season starts again as the snow
melts, in the Spring/Summer of 2011 –
just as the US is supposed to be reducing
its forces. Also, the enemy sensibly
decided that rather than take on 30,000
heavily armed US Marines in the south
they would go north and take on rather
fewer Germans and other Europeans.
New fronts were opened in what had
previously been a relatively more
peaceful area.
The new NATO commander, General
David Petraeus, following the success of
his ‘Sons of Iraq’ programme in
persuading Sunni militias to back the
Iraqi government, is now planning
something similar for Afghanistan. The
‘Afghan Local Police’ initiative is one that
seeks to incorporate a number of
previous (failed) attempts to build
community defence forces at the village
and district level. Many Afghans have a
deep distrust of the prospect of new
‘militias’ which, throughout their history,
have tended to be nothing more than
predatory, ill-disciplined, thugs loyal to
certain local strongmen. Indeed, the
international community spent millions
on two programmes disarming and
disbanding such groups between 2002
and 2010; now, in 2011, NATO are again
setting up such groups aiming at a
short-term fix, to enable, perhaps, a
temporary improvement in local security.
This will help facilitate their own exit,
but leave, again, a potential future mess
for someone else to clean up. It is clear
that local warlords welcome the
establishment of such militias and are
vying to have their ‘own’ local police in
order to bolster their positions for what
they see as a potential return to civil war
or local disputes between ethnic groups
or tribes when NATO does leave.
Up in the Panjshir: relative peace
Whereas NATO sees transition as limited
to security and as an end in itself
(transition = NATO leaves), the Afghan
government has a more nuanced
approach and argues that transition
should be part of a process that sees the
Afghan government taking full
responsibility for a whole range of issues
including good governance and delivery
of services to the population.
Unfortunately, the government has
proved incapable over the past ten years
and is unlikely to improve any time soon.
The big scandal of 2010 was the Kabul
Bank issue in which it became clear that
the Afghan elite who owned shares in
the bank, including the brothers of the
President and First Vice-President, were
helping themselves to the money for
. 79
improper purposes such as buying
property in Dubai. The estimate is that
some US$900m (£600m) of money
belonging to ordinary Afghans and, in
effect, to western taxpayers, has gone
missing. The bank was saved by an initial
bail-out of US$300m from the Central
Bank, but 2011 will need to see a severe
overhaul of the Afghan financial system:
donor countries, including the UK, will
not waste taxpayers money to enrich the
elite when their aid should be
contributing to ‘poverty alleviation’
across the country.
corruption work. Not surprisingly, the
head of the Afghan equivalent of the
KGB, who resigned in 2010, commented
that every serious corruption case led
back to a circle in the presidency or vicepresidency.
Is there a way out of this mess? Military
means alone will not work and the
central government has proved itself
corrupt and incompetent: is it any
surprise that people turn back to the
Taliban?
There may be light at the end of the
tunnel: successful special forces
operations have certainly harmed the
leadership elements of the insurgency
and there may be more of a willingness
on their part to talk peace, and on that of
the US to do the same. With central
government having largely failed, there
may be more of a chance to empower
local government and thus provide a
route for power-sharing at the local level
which grants some political
representation to the more conservative
Taliban elements without handing them
full power-sharing and a return to the
bad old days, which could lead to a
Pashtun/non-Pashtun split and renewed
fighting. A weaker central government –
sure to be opposed by those now in the
In much the same way, the anticorruption efforts, such as they were,
ground to almost a complete halt in
2010. The foreign-funded Major Crimes
Task Force made a political
misjudgement in arresting a palace
employee for allegedly taking bribes to
stop an investigation into a moneylaundering case (again western aid
dollars being taken out to Dubai in their
millions). Within hours the President had
ordered his release, a full investigation
into the MCTF – a second investigation
after the first one found the MCTF had
acted properly – banned prosecutors
from cooperating and, finally, set up a
new commission to ensure that the
palace had full supervision over all anti80 .
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centre – and more power to the regions
is, in any case, more in line with the
history of Afghanistan. Advances in
human rights would need to be
preserved, but the Taliban have already
shown some willingness to allow female
education and to renounce Al Qaeda
links, so there is a potential basis for talks.
Such talks would need a truly
representative grouping of Afghans, not
a clique who wish to preserve their own
power at the expense of certain sections
of society, to buy-in to the idea; it would
also need support from the region. If the
Taliban renounce Al Qaeda then it
should really just be Afghans talking to
Afghans, perhaps facilitated through the
good offices of the UN and with the
support of other interested parties such
as Pakistan and NATO. Progress will not
be swift or easy but ultimately, as
Winston Churchill said, ‘To jaw-jaw is
always better than to war-war.’
Steve Brooking (1982) served 20 years
with the Diplomatic Service including as
Chargé in Kabul and has spent the past
two years working as a personal advisor
to two Afghan Interior Ministers. He is
about to join the UN in Afghanistan
where he hopes to take part in the peace
process. Photos Steve Brooking
We were there
Ingram Gift on display
The Ashmolean extension has brought
many hidden treasures to light, including
those related to a St Anne’s senior
member
In 1956, my grandfather Herbert Ingram
gave a collection of more than 3,000
Japanese and Chinese objects to the
Oxford Museum of Eastern Art. In 1962,
these became part of the Ashmolean
collection. Many of them, including a
large amount of ‘Yue’ green wares from
the Song Dynasty, and some
exquisite examples of
Japanese artefacts
such as Netsuke and
Lacquer, are now
displayed to great
advantage in the
newly refurbished
galleries of the
Ashmolean Museum.
Sir Herbert Ingram Bt (18751958) was the grandson of
Herbert Ingram, founder of the Illustrated
London News and was one of a family of
collectors. His brother Bruce, who edited
the ILN for over 60 years, was a collector
of English Watercolours and Old Masters.
Much of his fine collection of
seventeenth-century Dutch seascapes he
gave to the National Maritime Museum.
Their younger brother, Collingwood, was
an ornithologist, plant collector and
expert on Japanese flowering cherries.
Herbert began to collect oriental
ceramics during his honeymoon in Japan
in 1908, at which time he was most
interested in Japanese Satsuma
ware. His wife Jane collected
ojime. He subsequently
built up a wide range
of Chinese bronzes
and ceramics. Dr
Peter Swann, Keeper
of the Department of
Oriental Art in 1950
wrote in Herbert’s
obituary in the Oriental
Art Magazine, ‘An
inquiring mind, love of
knowledge and a deep affection
for “his pots” combined to make him a
collector of the very best type.’
Jackie Ingram (1976)
1958: Sir Herbert and Lady Ingram collect his honorary
degree
Left: Grey stonewear jar and cover decorated with two
billing birds. Western Jin dynasty (AD 265-316)
Ashmolean Museum: Ingram gift
. 81
Kazakhstan
New frontier
ANNE LONSDALE
After a life spent in very old and very new
universities (including the Central
European University (CEU) which opened
in Budapest, Prague and Warsaw in 1991), I
have usually found that research
universities around the world resemble
each other more than they resemble the
cultures and countries where they find
themselves. This university is different; it
has grown up in a very unusual order.
Universities usually begin with people,
from the students in tenth century
Bologna who went out and hired
themselves teachers to create the first
European university, to the key academics
around whom we built the nine faculties
of the Central European University (CEU).
Spaces to teach in are begged, borrowed or
rented, and only reach a glorious
permanence after centuries. This time we
began with some very striking new
buildings and an idea. The people to flesh
out the idea are just beginning to arrive
and they are bringing different visions
with them. We have jump-started the
University with partners for each of our
Schools, who will power us ahead like the
boosters of a rocket from the Russian
Space Centre at Baikonur, also in
Kazakhstan has just opened Nazarbayev
University in its new, post-Soviet capital
Astana. It plans to offer a world-class
education to 20,000 students per year and
to put an end to the practice of sending
the country’s best and brightest abroad to
study
Extremes are always instructive. Moving
from St Anne’s and Oxford, where I lived
and worked for 30 years from my student
days, and retiring from Cambridge, where I
have been for the past 15 years, to a
completely new university in a new city in
a new country is an exciting watershed of
experience. I have become the first Provost
of Nazarbayev University, which was
formally opened in June 2010 and took its
first 484 students on a preparatory
programme run by UCL in September 2010.
Nazarbayev University is in Astana which
became the new capital of Kazakhstan in
1996 and is being built all around me 24
hours a day, even in winter, while
Kazakhstan itself became a country for the
first time in history on the fall of the Soviet
Empire in 1991.
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Kazakhstan. Like the boosters, they will fall
back after a time and Nazarbayev
University will continue independently.
The immediate task is to draw on the best
of the very different academic cultures of
UCL, Carnegie Mellon, the University of
Wisconsin, Duke, and the National
University of Singapore, to create a
Kazakhstani centre of excellence in
teaching and research, and, along the way,
make sure that the 484 students who took
the risk of coming to a brand new
university will get the experience they
deserve and the dreams of the founders
will take shape.
So what is Kazakhstan like? A vast and
varied country with a population of not
more than 20 million, serious oil and gas
reserves, and all kinds of rare minerals. It
has perhaps the world’s largest annual
extremes of temperature, from -40C to the
high 30s and 40s in summer. It is ringed on
the East and South by forbidding
mountain ranges, the Altai and the Tien
Shan, and on the West by the Caspian Sea.
In the hills there are wolves and bears and
snow leopards with long, fluffy tails in
which to wrap their young as well as their
own noses in subzero winters that last at
least six months. Winter is the season for
those who hunt with golden eagles.
New frontier
Anne Lonsdale with Red Diptych by Ineke van der
Wal in the background Courtesy Murray Edwards
College, Cambridge
Astana, in the centre of the country, is built
on a seemingly endless steppe; the old
capital, Almaty, to the south east perches at
the foot of the Tien Shan, magical
mountains: in Chinese mythology the
peaches of Immortality grew there, tended
by the Queen Mother of the West. So far
they have kept their magic, hidden in cloud
for all but 5 minutes on the weekend I
spent exploring Almaty.
What is Astana like to live in? First, food.
Kazakhs will tell you they are the second
biggest meat-eaters in the world – wolves
rank first. Meat includes horse, which is
delicious and the best meat on which to
wean children because it is so easy to
digest. Milk comes from sheep, goats,
horses, cows and shaggy Bactrian camels,
and provides yoghurt, sour cream, cheeses,
kefir, koumiss (fermented mares’ milk) and
shobat, the incredibly rich and creamy
camel milk. Everything is available in
supermarkets, from whose shelves I guess
that pasta or rice are staples, and bread, as
in all Russian cultures, with meat and
sausage, smoked fish, tinned and pickled
vegetables – no alternative in the long
winters unless you can afford imported
vegetables – and shelf upon shelf of tea,
drunk black with lemon or with milk and
sugar. Apartments are warm and
comfortable, a range of buses covers all
parts of the city for pence a time and you
can be assured of conversation: ‘You are a
foreigner?’ ‘Where do you work?’ ‘How do
you like Kazakhstan?’ ‘Do you like
beshbarmak (the national dish of
horsemeat and sausages on a bed of
noodles)?’ ‘Are you cold?’ Bus stops are
acutely ‘cold’ as we huddle together in a
driving wind in a temperature o f -28°C, but
they also unite us in a cheerfully shared
experience. Spring and summer will be
amazing after so long a winter, and a time
to travel in this vast space.
Why am I doing this? The chance to learn
something new; a long romantic interest in
Central Asia and the Silk Road from which
came so much of European culture; the
pleasure of working with smiling and
superbly courteous people who welcome
you and readily involve you in their lives. I
was lucky to be taken on a tour of the six
specialist hospitals which will combine
with the University to form our clinical
research base and Medical School. One
hospital is for childhood malformations,
some derived from the continuing
pollution of the old Soviet nuclear site at
Semy-Palatinsk. It is a Kazakh custom when
a toddler first starts to walk to tie a loose
woollen thread between their legs. A senior
member of the family or community – a
sort of godfather or godmother – is asked
to cut the thread; then the child will walk
safely by itself. At this hospital children are
struggling to achieve this independence at
a later stage, and when they do, a similar
ceremony takes place. I had the huge
privilege of being asked to cut the thread
for a beautiful five-year-old who had, after
many struggles, learned to walk. We walked
hand in hand between a clapping crowd of
nurses, parents and children, and now I
have a new ‘goddaughter’.
Anne Lonsdale (Menzies 1958) was
President of New Hall (Murray Edwards
College since 2008), Cambridge, 1996-2008,
and Deputy Vice-Chancellor 2003-2008.
From 1993-96 she was Secretary-General of
the CEU.
Nazarbayev University Campus
. 83
A year in politics
Elections past and present
JACKIE ASHLEY
Oxford, October 1974: a girl with long hair
in a blue duffel coat is rushing around
college, dropping a suitcase in the
modernist Gatehouse building (believe
me, it was then) before heading off to
find the tutors. She then persuades her
English tutor that she doesn’t want to
study English any more, and the PPE
tutors that despite having no maths at all,
PPE is just the right course. Job done, she
sets off at high speed in a battered old
Renault for Stoke-on-Trent.
It wasn’t hard to understand my newfound passion for PPE. Back in ‘74, politics
was fascinating. Harold Wilson had
become Prime Minister for the second
time in February of that year, after Ted
Heath risked a snap ‘Who governs?’
(Heath or the miners?) election. Heath
narrowly won more seats, but couldn’t
put together a government, so Wilson
struggled along in a hung parliament till
the autumn. His government suffered 18
defeats in six months, and he appealed
for a bigger majority in October. At the
second election of that year he won by
just three votes.
Inevitably, the current political landscape
reminds me of those exciting years in
the 1970s, and it’s not just because
students are on the march again. Above
all, politics was unpredictable: nobody
knew who would win an election.
Nobody knew whether a bill – be it on
industrial policy or VAT – would get
through the Commons. Sometimes they
didn’t. And so it seems today, despite the
Coalition agreement. No one really
knows how far each party is prepared to
compromise before detonating what
Vince Cable has called the nuclear
option. We are already seeing
backtracking on sport in schools,
prisoners voting rights, selling off the
forests and much more besides.
It may not have been the most
conventional first day at St Anne’s but it
was Election Day, and my father was then
a Labour MP. I could never resist the
excitement of the overnight count, and
stayed up all night to see him coast home,
before driving back to Oxford just after
dawn the next day. So it was that I arrived
for my second day at college somewhat
bleary-eyed, something that didn’t touch
It was a heady time for student politics
too: from the two Labour clubs (extremely
hostile to each other), to the further left
groups and the multiple women’s groups
we argued, debated and marched. We
marched for abortion rights and against
the National Front. We marched in
support of the miners and against pay
cuts. We marched because there seemed
to be a real possibility of change. Back in ‘74 we had a moderate
Conservative party, with the proEuropean Ted Heath much more in tune
with David Cameron’s detoxified Tory
party of today than with the ideological
Margaret Thatcher of the 1980s. Labour,
too, was fairly centrist under Harold
Wilson, at least in comparison with the
Bennite years that were to come. That’s
now echoed by Ed Miliband.
most people until at least their second
week.
The excitement, the uncertainty, the
action. Politics today has many parallels
with the heady days of the 1970s says a
commentator who looks back to one and
forward to the next
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Elections past and present
There was even an ‘I agree with Nick’
moment during the spring election
campaign when the Liberal leader
Jeremy Thorpe topped both Heath and
Wilson in the polls when voters were
asked who would make the best Prime
Minister. Support for the Liberal Party
soared too, as high as 20 per cent at one
point – though the 14 Liberal MPs then
are dwarfed by the 57 Lib-Dem MPs we
have now.
In other parallels, the general election
was followed swiftly by a referendum: in
‘74 the issue was Europe, today it is
voting reform. But in each case, the two
sides were not simply split along party
lines, and there are already now, as there
were then, allegations of massive
overspending and underhand practices
by each camp against the other.
Of course there are plenty of differences
too. Inflation, back in ‘74, was running at
an alarming 16 percent, rising to 24
percent a year later. Our growing worries
about inflation now seem a little
alarmist, given that the latest inflation
figure was below four percent.
The political culture was also different:
Ted Heath was a grammar school boy,
not an old Etonian; Labour MPs were
John Major took over; stable at first, but
towards the end of his time, Tory
divisions over Europe brought back that
exciting sense that anything could
happen. Inevitably perhaps, after that
period of instability, Tony Blair was
returned in 1997 with a whopping 179seat majority. The course was set for
another three elections when another
iron will ruled.
Jackie Ashley
more likely to be trade unionists than
Oxbridge educated political researchers
by background; the Liberals did a deal
with Labour (in 1976) not the
Conservatives. I could go on.
But what interests me about the
comparison between 1974 and politics
now is what follows a weak, minority or
coalition government. Not knowing
what’s going to happen next may be
great fun for journalists and students of
politics, but some argue that it makes for
bad government. By 1979, after years of
knife-edged votes, government defeats
and of course, a struggling economy,
Margaret Thatcher came to power with a
comfortable majority of 44. For 11 years,
the Iron Lady ruled with an iron will – not
much doubt about her policies going
through the Commons.
It’s too glib to say that it was simply the
voters’ dislike of instability that brought
in Thatcher and then Blair with their
large majorities, but there’s surely
something in it. Which brings us to the
question of what will happen at the next
election. The result may, of course, be
complicated by the referendum on
voting reform, but few at Westminster
are convinced that the vote will be won.
Most MPs predict a large-ish majority for
either Labour or the Conservatives next
time round. Which one will it be? Well,
that is the big question and it will
undoubtedly turn on the state of the
economy. But it will certainly be worth
staying up all through election night to
watch.
Jackie Ashley (1974) is a Guardian
columnist and broadcaster
. 85
New media meets old
Talking to Tina Brown
she became co-founder and editor of the
online news magazine The Daily Beast.
Two years later, in November 2010, in a
surprise announcement, the Beast
revealed its merger with the US weekly
magazine Newsweek to form The
Newsweek Daily Beast Company. Tina
Brown (1971) will serve as editor-in-chief
of both publications
At 25, she revived the fortunes of the
ailing society magazine Tatler. In 1983,
she moved to the US to take over as
editor of Vanity Fair (1984-1992)
followed by The New Yorker (1992-1998},
where she was the first woman to take
on the editor’s job. A decade later, in
October 2008, with a high profile TV
chat show, a spell in publishing and her
own much-praised biography of Princess
Diana, The Diana Chronicles, behind her,
Judith Vidal-Hall You’re about to launch
the first joint venture of its kind. You’ve
said, ‘Some weddings take longer than
others,’ but can you tell us when this
marriage is likely to be consummated?
Tina Brown
Tina Brown The marriage is happily
consummated, and our redesigned
magazine will roll out at the end of March.
JVH Have you decided on the joint name
yet: Beastlyweek? Weeklybeast? What?
TB Ha! The magazine will be called
Newsweek. It’s such a classic name in the
magazine world. There are some staffers
who call the new company BeastWeek –
or, in the case of one clever guy, The Daily
Week. But we like the two titles just the
way they are.
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JVH Can you give us some idea of how
this will work? I find it hard to imagine
what the actual product will be or look
like. Will there be two products – one
online, one print – or just one?
TB Newsweek will be a place to find
longer articles that can take weeks or
even months to report, while The Daily
Beast will continue chomping through
and reacting to the 24/7 news cycle. I
think what’s more interesting is what
the two publications will have in
common. They’ll have the same
sensibility, the same flair in their writing,
the same smart scepticism. They’re close
cousins rather than distant relations.
JVH You’ve suggested The Daily Beast
will go on acting as a ‘24/7 news
operation’ while the magazine will
‘develop ideas and investigations that
require a different narrative pace suited
to the medium of print’. How will that
work out in practice? On what basis will
you share out or divide the material?
TB We’ll share liberally with ourselves –
how does that sound? Seriously, the only
constraint will be that some elements
look better or read easier on paper, while
some need to be online. But in almost
every case, great journalism tends to
work well in both places.
Talking to Tina Brown
JVH Do you think this is the way of the
future for the traditional media, i.e.
merging with the online media?
TB Different futures make sense for
different publications. There are plenty of
thriving web creatures that don’t need,
or want, a print counterpart. In our case,
we thought the merger made a ton of
sense.
JVH Why is this? Is it to accommodate
the different reading habits of the
generations, a shift in advertising, loss of
revenue and sales, etc?
TB One, it gives us an outlet for the
longform articles, not to mention all the
other wonderful things you can do with
print. Two, advertisers love having both
Newsweek and The Daily Beast as
outlets.
JVH What made you move your skills
online in 2008?
TB Barry Diller came to me wanting to
start a site that told you what to read on
the web. There was too much stuff out
there – it was like being dropped in the
middle of the ocean. So I saw the
opportunity to both aggregate and do
our own smart, Beastly journalism.
JVH There have been a fair amount of
newspaper and magazine closures and
bankruptcies of late – Newsweek sold for
$1, ditto the Independent for £I in the UK
– can the traditional print media survive
in their present form?
TB The key words there are ‘present
form’. That sort of changes at warp
speed, no? Look at the media entities
called the Guardian and the New York
Times, and compare them to the entities
bearing the same names even a few
years back.
JVH The recent Wikileaks drama showed
that the print media still have a
significant role to play in terms of
editing, redacting and getting
information out to people. Julian
Assange could not have done the job he
did without the collaboration of the
major press outlets in Europe and the US.
Is this the model you’re working on: a
symbiosis of old and new media?
TB It’s all symbiosis these days. I have yet
to meet the ‘old media’ editor who
doesn’t have a web browser, or the ‘new
media’ chieftain who gets news only
from Twitter. The old media are busy
learning from the new, and – though you
don’t always hear it – the reverse is
happening, too.
JVH What do you think of the Wikileaks
project: is its creator a high priest of free
speech as he is seen in much of Europe,
or a dangerous lunatic as many in the US
seem to feel?
TB High priest or lunatic – what a choice.
One could write a whole book on
Assange (and inevitably, somebody is).
Each case is different, but, speaking
generally, I side with the public’s right to
know, and don’t feel mere
embarrassment should hold up the
publication of a diplomatic cable. It’s too
early to know what to make of the
criminal inquiries, so I’ll reserve
judgment there.
JVH Given that our present media model
was established for a very different
world of the nineteenth century, is it fit
for purpose in the twenty-first?
TB The world turns – as I’d be the first to
tell you – and what worked 40 years ago,
even 20 years ago, won’t work in exactly
the same form today. I wouldn’t want to
edit Newsweek without having the
thriving Daily Beast on the web. They’ll
feed each other: the best of old and
new.
JVH Andrew Sullivan of the Sunday Times
has called your project ‘a strange and
. 87
New media meets old
unnatural coupling’. I quote him: ‘As
institutional brands decline and social
media grow, power shifts more and more
to readers and writers and away from
editors and magazines. Starting a
magazine online is like putting a chainlink fence in the middle of the sea. The
water simply goes where it wants to go.’
Could you comment on his scepticism.
Homecoming, 1909
CARYS DAVIES
She was the first woman I saw when we
came into port and I knew at once that I
was lost.
For a long time all I could do was stare,
gripping the rail and wondering if, after
all we’d heard, she could possibly be a
dream. Some kind of wicked mirage.
TB First off, I love Andrew – he’s one of
the smartest commentators in any
medium. But we aren’t erecting any
fences. Rather, the new company will
honour all the boundless possibilities of
a magazine and the (ever more)
boundless possibilities of the web. And
don’t discount us poor editors in the
digital age! We package, we shape, we
delete your hanging participles. We’ve
got plenty of fight left. And in an age
when data rain down on us all leaving us
gasping, editors who curate the
information, who choose and reject and
select are more important than ever
before. So watch this space!
She was tall, a large crimson hat
slantwise on her head.
But it wasn’t that – it wasn’t her being
tall, and it wasn’t the hat. It was the rest
of her, the rest of her in her leaf-green
dress, looking like nothing I’d ever seen
before. Such a comfortable, unrestrained
softness in the look of her body, such a
loose, easy look – it turned my tongue fat
and dry in my mouth, my knees to water.
I thought of Cass, waiting for me in the
narrow doorway of our house, the
children all clustered around her. Becky,
with her sweet smile, reaching up with
her little hands and asking me, what
presents have I brought?
You can find The Daily Beast at
www.thedailybeast.com and Newsweek
was relaunched in early-April
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A cream sash clasped the woman just
beneath her breasts; from there the
green cloth flowed down in a slender
waterfall, a few supple folds; pooled in a
narrow circle around her feet, and when
she began to stroll along the quayside on
the arm of the smart straw-boatered
gentleman who accompanied her, I could
see the slow, comfortable sway of her
waist. I could see the gentle curve of her
long back; the softly rounded flare of her
hips. I groaned aloud. I bit my lip and
began to moan and beat the rail with my
fists.
Behind me the crew had begun to gather
with their sun-burned faces and raggy
beards, with their foul breath and their
rotting teeth still loose in their spongy
gums. Jostling to get a look at the
woman in the leaf-green dress and at all
the others like her – because there were
more, lots more, walking past our poor
worn-out vessel on their way to meet
the passenger steamer. A whole sea of
them, in reds and blues and greys and
yellows. All with that same free, easy
look.
Prize winning short story
Next to me, Mr Mingus, the third mate,
pressed a grimy kerchief to his broken
lips. Two of the boatsteerers sank down
onto the deck. The rest continued to look,
spellbound and speechless. Poor goggleeyed buggers. A whole crowd of Rip Van
Winkles, gaping at the world to which
we had returned. The women different,
not the way we’d left them. Not the way
we’d banked on them being when we
came back.
Now this. The nightmare rumours from
the other ships – all true.
Not one single woman in a corset.
De-boned, all of them.
‘Mr Mingus,’ I said, turning away from
the rail and laying my hand upon his
shoulder.
‘We are lost.’
Thirteen months of ice and wind and
narrow frozen hammocks since we last
saw them. Thirteen months of hard
bread and salt meat and oatmeal since
we saw them as they used to be.
In the hold, our precious cargo. Chased
and harpooned and hauled up out of the
icy waters. What we wanted, hacked out
from inside the giant mouth, separated
from the greasy blubbery flesh. Scraped
and cleaned and dried. Over and over. A
year’s work. Eighteen thousand pounds
of whalebone. £25,000 at last year’s
prices.
From Some New Ambush (Salt, 2007)
by Carys Davies
Carys Davies (Bowen-Jones 1978) is the
winner of the 2010 Society of Authors’
Olive Cook Short Story Award.
Carys Davies
. 89
Queens of crime
JILL PATON WALSH
She enjoys a challenge, she says, so
against all the odds she took it up and
succeeded magnificently
I became the ghost of Dorothy L Sayers
with considerable trepidation. Dead she
may have been, but her followers and
admirers were and are very much alive,
and there were strong opinions abroad
about the piece of work I was being
invited to complete. The existence of
that work, Thrones, Dominations, was no
secret to the worldwide devotees of
Sayers. It had been begun, advertised in
Gollancz’s catalogues, and then
abandoned in 1936. Various people wanted
to publish the fragment as it stood, as an
act of piety or scholarship, but the literary
adviser to the Sayers estate was against
that. He did not think a murder mystery
which did not get as far as the murder
was likely to enhance Sayers’ reputation.
And there was a problem. The typescript
of the fragment was in the Marion E Wade
Centre in Wheaton, Illinois. The copyright
was with the Sayers Trustees in London.
Then a brown paper parcel was discovered
in the back of the manuscript cupboard in
Jill Paton Walsh
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the agent’s office. It was simply labelled
‘Thrones, Dominations‘ and contained a
carbon copy of the fragment. Perhaps it
had been deposited there for safety
during the Blitz, when many authors had
distributed their carbon copies far and
wide for fear of burning. The Trustees first
asked PD James if she would like to
complete it. She replied that she didn’t
think it could be done.
At that stage I was the author of only
two crime novels. But I had recently been
in the news, because a literary novel,
Knowledge of Angels had been
shortlisted for the Booker. It was a much
rejected novel which my husband and I
had published ourselves in the UK. The
media, and every unpublished author in
England, were entranced by that story. I
was briefly famous. I was offered the job.
Was it possible to complete in 1997 a
work left incomplete in 1936 without the
join showing? The materials were
scrappy and repetitive, with a plot
diagram on one piece of paper, showing
the murder not occurring till two thirds
of the way through (which offends
against one of Sayers own prescriptions)
and on which the most helpful
annotation said ‘moves and counter
moves as many as may be necessary’,
and the most tantalising said ‘Little
bump of emotional development leads
to the solution.’
I like technical challenges. But I must
admit that I would not be an alumna of
St Anne’s if I had not, at an
impressionable age, read Gaudy Night.
Nobody at my school, a convent in which
I was once told to remember that there
was no such beatitude as ‘Blessed are
the clever’, would have thought to
suggest it, or indeed any other university.
When an admirable new headmistress
arrived and asked us all what we wanted,
and I said I wanted to read English at
Oxford, it was Gaudy Night that had put
the idea into my head.
So I had a debt to pay. I went ahead.
Thrones, Dominations was, in the event
very well received. It was generously and
favourably reviewed by PD James and
sold well. So the Trustees wanted more,
and then more. My most recent Wimsey
novel is The Attenbury Emeralds, the first
without a single scrap of genuine Sayers
on which to base it, and though I once
more expected to be pounced on and
told that I couldn’t do it by myself, it is
currently being well reviewed and has
now gone into second hardback edition.
So I am happy enough being the ghost of
Dorothy L Sayers. But it is an experience
with odd moments. I have come in for
praise for successfully imitating Sayers’
style, praise that I do not deserve. She
wrote the King’s English, a dialect I grew
up being taught, and speaking without
conscious artifice. Of course, one must
watch the vocabulary to avoid
anachronism, but honestly it isn’t so very
hard. What is hard is to think oneself into
the mind and heart of her characters,
especially of her narrative voice.
However, the power to divide oneself
into multiple viewpoints and shift the
perspective between them is a basic
requirement of any fiction writer. And it
isn’t essentially harder to do a narrative
voice than any other character in a novel.
I don’t mind being praised for the wrong
thing, but another kind of difficulty is
being subjected to the intense curiosity
of many readers as to where the join is in
Thrones, Dominations, or whether some
passage they are interested in is by
Sayers or myself. Having taken a good
Dorothy Sayers. Courtesy the
estate of Anthony Fleming
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Queens of crime
Not falsehood, Harriet; idealism.
Detective stories keep alive a view of the
world which ought to be true.
deal of trouble to conceal the join, and
imitate her faithfully, I am naturally
unwilling to say. But to my profound
amusement all the many ‘Only Sayers
could have written…’ or ‘Sayers could
never have written…’ comments have
been wrong!
Many people have told me they would
love that to be by Sayers. Or that they are
sure that it is by her. Maybe it is, I’m not
saying. Of course, people could go to
Wheaton Illinois, and find out…
The passage over which I have been
most urgently implored to come clean is
one which contains a justification of her
craft and mine. Lord Peter says to Harriet:
I have mentioned the effect on my young
self of reading Gaudy Night. In 1937,
Queenie Leavis, that incomparable
mistress of scathe, launched a vicious
attack on Sayers in general and that
book in particular. The basis of the attack
is that Sayers has idealised to the point
of falsehood the idea that academics are
motivated by a devotion to scholarship.
‘Unfortunately for Miss Sayers’ thesis,’
she wrote, ‘people in the academic world
… are not as a general thing wiser, better,
finer or decenter or in any way more
estimable than those of the same social
class outside.’ Admittedly Leavis’
impression of academic life was based
on Cambridge; but her exposé of the
folly of attributing love of learning to
academics has passed into common
mythology. I have heard many academics
accuse themselves by sneering at her
naïve idealism.
Detective stories contain a dream of
justice. They project a vision of a
world in which wrongs are righted, and
villains are betrayed by clues
that they did not know they were
leaving. A world in which murderers are
caught and hanged, and innocent
victims are avenged, and future
murder is deterred.
But it is just a vision, Peter. The world we
live in is not like that.
Hasn’t it occurred to you that to be
beneficent, a vision does not
have to be true?
What benefits could be conferred by
falsehood? she asks
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Perhaps a belief that genuine
disinterested scholarship can be found in
universities is like the dream of justice in
detective stories – a view of the world
not as it is but as it ought to be. But if so
it is a dream that I brought to Oxford
with me, and which nothing I
encountered at St Anne’s damaged or
dimmed in any way. The senior members
of college during my three years up were
fine scholars and devoted teachers.
Unlike the body of scholars depicted in
Gaudy Night some of them were also
flamboyantly interesting and glamorous.
Pace Mrs Leavis, ideals and aspirations
are not simply wrong if their
correspondence with reality is patchy. At
a time when scholarship is under attack
from a tsunami of utilitarianism we
more than ever need to cleave to our
ideals.
Product of St Anne’s as I am, it’s Sayers
rather than Leavis for me.
Jill Paton Walsh (Bliss 1955) is an award
winning author of books for children and
adults. She has written three Dorothy
Sayers novels:
Thrones, Dominations, A Presumption of
Death and The Attenbury Emeralds all
published by Hodder and Stoughton.
Broken Places
WENDY PERRIAM
‘The world breaks everyone and,
afterward, many are strong at the
broken places.’ Ernest Hemmingway
My new novel, Broken Places, takes its
title from this line in Hemingway’s A
Farewell to Arms, an apt enough title for
a book exploring ‘broken places’ such as
children’s homes, prisons, and homes
and hearts in the wake of a divorce.
There was another factor, too: in its very
writing, I was struggling to be ‘strong’
after my own personal ‘breaking’: the
death of my daughter, Pauline, at the age
of 42.
Pauline read Law at St Anne’s in the
1980s – a very different College from the
one I knew when I went up in 1958. Some
years after graduation, she moved to
Seattle and married an American – a trial
for me, as I’m distinctly aviophobic!
Indeed, fear of flying is one of the
themes in Broken Places – a widespread
affliction, suffered by approximately one
in five of us. The protagonist, Eric,
becomes paralysed with dread when he’s
forced by a family crisis to board a plane
for the first time in his life, and
eventually collapses in ignominious
panic in the lap of the poor fellow sitting
next to him. I knew Pauline would be
amused by this and also by the airline
losing Eric’s luggage, since every time I
visited her, my own luggage would go
missing. Even when I flew over for her
wedding, my suitcase remained
obstinately AWOL – in it, my Mother-ofthe-Bride creation, chosen with great
care. I had to show up for the ceremony
in borrowed and ill-fitting garb and
shoes more suited to a hiking expedition.
When Pauline was diagnosed with
cancer of the tongue – one of the most
brutal of all cancers – I was paralysed
with shock and work was out of the
question. Later, however, when she
appeared to have pulled through, I
returned to the novel and decided to
include a cancer theme: Eric’s daughter
would have cancer but would
triumphantly survive, as I expected my
own daughter to survive. I even felt that
by penning such an outcome, I could
actually bring it about. When my
magical thinking was proved tragically
wrong, I ditched this change of plot: the
whole subject of cancer was now offlimits as being just too painful. I
continued to write the book, though,
since the only thing that helped me
through my grief was to keep obsessively
busy. A friend asked recently, ‘How on
earth could you write a novel – and a
comic novel of all things – so soon after
your daughter’s death?’
But that was the whole point: the task
was therapy. I felt I was writing it for
Pauline and even had the sense that she
was helping me from some mysterious
realm beyond the grave. Irrational or not,
this sense of her continuing presence
stopped me falling apart. Indeed, far
greater authors than I have testified to
the therapeutic value of writing. DH
Lawrence once remarked, ’We shed our
sickness in our books,’ while Samuel
Beckett said, ‘I could not have gone
through this awful, wretched mess of life
without having left a stain upon the
silence’: he could only endure life by
writing about it.
As for comedy itself, it has been used
since time immemorial as a way of
dealing with pain and loss, and as the
scourge of abuse, corruption and
pretension. Aristophanes, Shakespeare,
Moliere, Mozart, even Woody Allen, all
. 93
Broken places
Eric conceals not only his fears but also
the fact he’s a foundling. Famous fictional
foundlings such as Romulus and Remus,
Daphnis and Chloe, Tom Jones and the
Byronic Heathcliff provide a misleading
impression of the stark reality of having
neither family nor roots. Mercifully,
abandoned infants are far less common
than in the past. In the four years between
1756 and 1760, London’s famous Foundling
Hospital was overwhelmed by the
admission of some 15,000 babies, brought
to them from up and down the country.
Although it established six new out-ofLondon hospitals to help cope with the
influx, more than 9,000 of those poor
souls died. Yet foundlings remain a
problem in countries such as China,
although on a much lesser scale, and, just
last year, three hit the headlines here in
the UK: one abandoned on a school
playing-field; one dumped in a station
toilet; one left outside a supermarket.
testify to the power of laugher as an
outlet for suffering or for righteous
indignation.
My own poor book has no place amongst
such illustrious names, but it is written
in humorous mode and does contain
dark subject matter. Broken Places is the
story of a modern-day foundling,
abandoned in a recreation ground, who,
after a traumatic childhood growing up
in care, with no concept of a settled
home, develops many fears and a deep
sense of insecurity. The historian,
Anthony Beevor, claims that fear is the
prime moving force in most human
affairs and, centuries earlier, physicians
as eminent as Hippocrates and Avicenna
recognised its prevalence among
patients of all ages.
All in all, the book involved me in a steep
learning curve, as I had many different
areas to research, including the childcare
system. Knowing nothing at the outset
about this whole hidden world, I became
increasingly dismayed as my
investigations deepened. A report into
the Care System, in 2008, from the
Centre for Social Justice, stated: ‘The
treatment of many children in care
deserves to be a source of national
shame. Government, both nationally &
locally, has failed in its duties as a
corporate parent.’ Little has changed in
I had to imagine what it would be like for the three years since that damning
verdict. The outcomes for those in care
Eric to have no idea what his parents
make truly depressing reading: they are
looked like, where they came from, what
kind of work they did, what type of people far more likely to leave school with no
qualifications, and to land up homeless,
they were. For someone like myself,
mentally ill, addicted to drugs or drink, or
coming from a large family, with
even in gaol.
albumsful of family photos spanning
several generations, it was quite a stretch
I’ve always believed that there’s only a
to comprehend the feeling of having no
These fears range from the
commonplace (agoraphobia,
claustrophobia, fear of snakes, spiders,
heights) to the downright bizarre (fear of
buttons, beards, telephones, the colour
yellow and even books: bibliophobia).
Such terrors are often kept concealed as
a source of shame or embarrassment,
but, as a novelist, I am interested in these
secret parts of people that often conflict
with their outward facades.
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sense of identity, no fond tribe of
grandmas, cousins, aunts.
I also needed to ‘inhabit’ the male mind
and body, a challenge for any female
author. Besides the obvious contrasts in
the way the two genders dress and make
love, there are also subtle differences in
speech patterns, modes of thought, selfimage and, sometimes, values.
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2010-11
thin line between so-called normal
people and those who inhabit prisons,
psychiatric hospitals and rehabilitation
centres. It takes only so much trauma
and the strongest person will crack.
When researching an earlier novel,
Second Skin, I met a former CEO, now
reduced to selling doughnuts in Camden
Market – and grateful for the work,
because some of those who lingered by
his stall were homeless, hopeless and
jobless. One turn of the Wheel of Fortune
and the mighty become the
dispossessed.
sound a barrel of laughs, so let me return
to where I started, with Ernest
Hemingway, who claimed that an author
has to have experienced ‘a lot of
punishment to write a really funny book’.
I’ve no idea if my readers will find my
novel even mildly amusing, let alone
‘really funny’, but it certainly took ‘a lot
of punishment’ to bring it to fruition!
Wendy Perriam (Brech 1958) has
published 16 novels and six collections of
short stories. You can find her website at
www.wendyperriam.com
In Broken Places, Eric, a librarian, runs
reading groups for such disadvantaged
people, believing, as I do, that prose is
superior to Prozac and that literature can
act as ‘medicine for the soul’. He finds it
truly heartening when a member of his
group who’s only ever read the print on
an HP Sauce bottle gets to grips with
Shakespeare’s Sonnets. To write these
scenes, I drew on my own experience as a
Creative Writing tutor, having watched
many depressed, unconfident students
slowly blossom into talented writers and
discover ways of using their pain
creatively.
But, with this emphasis on depression
and disadvantage, Broken Places doesn’t
. 95
On reaching fifty
RUSSELL TAYLOR
A few years back, I wrote a cartoon strip in
which Alex organised a surprise birthday
party for a colleague from his bank who
was celebrating 30 years in the City. In a
display of seeming kindness Alex had
booked a wine bar and invited along the
whole department, including their boss.
Alex’s real motivation was, of course, to
draw the attention of the boss to the fact
that the colleague was getting a bit long
in the tooth and should thus be
considered a candidate for the
redundancy list.
The publicity over the centenaries of The
Ship and the ASM has overshadowed the
rather more significant and traumatic
occasion of his own recent fiftieth
birthday, says the creator of Alex, aka
Russell Taylor
Someone once told me that a good way to
get one’s age into perspective is to count
the years backwards, rather than forwards,
from one’s birth date. I was born in 1960,
so going back fifty years from then takes
us to 1910. That was the year in which Leo
Tolstoy and Florence Nightingale died; the
Titanic was still under construction in a
Belfast shipyard; the Somme was an
obscure river in northern France; and the
inaugural meeting of the Home Students’
ASM had yet to be convened. Reverse
extrapolating one’s life in this fashion has
no particular mathematical significance.
It’s just damn scary.
Thankfully, there are no such problems in
my own profession of cartooning. Just as a
magazine is only starting to get into its
stride at 100 editions, so is a cartoonist
merely entering his maturity at 50. This is
not because we older people are any
better at drawing or writing jokes; rather,
it’s due to a total absence of competition
from younger pretenders.
Turning 50 is a worrying milestone in
most professions: not least in the world of
business and finance which I satirise via
my fictional alter ego: a snobbish and
dastardly cartoon investment banker
called Alex Masterley.
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When my collaborator Charles Peattie and
myself started doing Alex in 1987 we were
the new kids on the block. Almost a
quarter of a century later we still appear
to be. Cartoonists have become an
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2010-11
Alex celebrates...
endangered species, dying off far quicker
than they are being replaced. Maybe it’s
due to the fact that art schools don’t
teach students to draw any more; or
perhaps it’s just that in the last 20 years
anyone with a talent for humorous social
observations has opted for a far more
lucrative career as a stand-up comedian.
Whatever the reason, before very long
cartooning will be one of those arcane,
archaic crafts that you see documentaries
about on cable TV, like rope-making or
charcoal burning, where there are only
two very old men in the country left who
still do it. Quite possibly one of them will
be me.
So the good news is there seems little
immediate danger of my being consigned
to a life of golf and Saga cruises. In any
case, cartoonists usually seem to go on
working right up until they finally drop,
which either means that cartooning is the
ultimate fulfilling creative experience; or
more likely that most of us never make
enough money out of it to be able to
afford to retire.
When a cartoonist’s time finally comes, he
(or, rarely, she) knows it. It arrives in the
form of a nomination to receive the
Lifetime Achievement award from the
Cartoon Arts Trust. One senior cartoonist I
know has been offered this accolade but
has steadfastly refused to accept it. He is
keenly aware of what it betokens. It is the
equivalent of being tipped the Black Spot
for a pirate or being sent a dead fish in the
post for a mafioso. Few recipients of the
honour live to see next year’s ceremony
and watch the baleful curse being visited
on the next person in line.
The Cartoon Arts Trust, incidentally, is the
body charged with occasionally changing
the drip feed on the life support system
that keeps our craft alive. It holds an
annual combined fundraising and awards
dinner, which is our industry’s modest
equivalent of the Oscars.
A few years ago, one of my own cartoons
was auctioned off at the event to raise
money for the trust. Many of the affluent
individuals invited along were City
bankers, whom the organisers intended to
ply with drink in the hope that they might
part with a tiny proportion of their
bonuses and buy a cartoon. So auctioning
off a piece of original Alex artwork made
sense. I was thus a little miffed to find that
my cartoon sold for considerably less than
the other two works on offer, which were
(in my opinion) far inferior. I asked a City
banker friend, whom I had noticed bidding
enthusiastically, why my cartoon had
fetched the least money. ‘Because you’re
alive,’ was his blunt response.
His keen actuarial brain had calculated
that Charles and I could be professionally
active for another 20, maybe even 30,
years, producing 250 or so cartoons a year.
This could add potentially thousands of
new Alex strips to the existing body of
work, which would thus (by the logic of
the stock market) dilute their individual
value. The oeuvre of the two deceased
... and again with Russell
cartoonists in the auction, on the other
hand, was by definition finite and so it
was possible to put a price on their
drawings. Great, I thought, so the only way
to get rich in this line of work is to die.
. 97
Dilbert’s age does not advance any more
than his career does, and is frozen at
about 32. Bristow has worked at the same
desk in the Chester Perry organisation for
almost half a century and is still a junior
buying clerk. He could probably sue the
company for constructive dismissal, if he
knew what it was. Fred Basset has been
going since 1963, which I estimate makes
him now at least 336 in dog years.
But one factor my banker hadn’t taken
into consideration is that the flow of
cartoons isn’t necessarily stemmed by
minor obstacles such as the death of the
cartoonist: the creator of the Daily Mail’s
‘Fred Bassett’ comic strip, Alex Graham,
passed away 20 years ago. Yet his canine
hero lives on, with the daily cartoons now
written by the artist’s daughter. These
days, Fred inhabits a world of satnavs,
Google and iPhones and his adventures
are syndicated on the Internet via RSS
feeds – all terms which would have been
utterly meaningless to his original creator.
Alex, on the other hand, was deliberately
created with built-in obsolescence. When
we started the strip we took a decision
that our characters would age in real time.
This is fairly unusual in comics. I can only
think of Doonesbury that does the same
thing. And though it means that one has
to keep updating scenarios and
relationships as one’s characters grow
older, the upside is that no one can keep
Alex going much after I am dead. I accept
that I am denying my descendants a
decent living in the family business, but
they will just have to go out and get
proper jobs of their own. Because when I
go I will be taking their cash cow with me.
Even more scarily, I recently discovered
that one of my favourite childhood
cartoon strips ‘The Wizard of Id’, created in
the 1960s by Johnny Hart and Brant Parker,
still soldiers on in 2011, despite the fact
that both its original creators are dead.
Nowadays, it is drawn by Brant Parker’s
son, Jeff, and written by two of Johnny
Hart’s grandsons. Still I suppose when you
are writing satire on mediaeval times it
never really dates.
This zombie-like immortality is made
possible by the fact that most cartoon
characters do not age. Charlie Brown was
eternally eight years old; unusually, he was
mercifully allowed to rest in peace after
his creator Charles M Schultz died in 2000.
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As far as Alex himself is concerned that
day cannot come too soon. Frankly he is
already cross that he is still having to hold
down his day job at the bank. I haven’t
been entirely consistent when it comes to
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2010-11
Alex’s age, but he is somewhere between
48 and 50. It’s profoundly embarrassing
for him that he’s still working (just to
support his feckless creators), especially as
he told all his friends that he would have
retired to the Caymans by the time he was
40. I don’t know how to break it to him
that he could be in the saddle for decades
more.
Russell Taylor (1979) The Best of Alex 2010
(see below) and other Alex books and
merchandise are available at
www.alexcartoon.com
Alumnae news
Senior members’ Publications
updates, honours Carole Angier (Brainin 1969): Life Writing:
Biography, Autobiography and
& appointments Writing
Memoir (Methuen, 2010, with Sally Cline).
Carys Davies (Bowen-Jones 1978-1981) has
won the Society of Authors' 2010 Olive
Cook Short Story Award for her story The
Quiet. The award, made every two years,
is judged by Jane Gardam and Jacob
Ross.
Ursula Gacek (Sauc 1981) has been
appointed to the post of Polish
Ambassador to the Council of Europe.
Mary Grey (Hughes 1959) has been
appointed an Honorary Professor at the
University of Winchester.
Gwendoline Anne Godfrey (Davies 1973)
is currently Co-chair of Banking Law
Committee of International Bar
Association (2009 and 2010).
Kate (Coral M P) Taylor (1952) was
collated and installed as a Lay Canon at
Wakefield Cathedral on Sunday, 10
October. Her stall there is William
Walsham How - the first bishop of
Wakefield.
Juliet Barker (Bateson 1977): Conquest:
the English Kingdom of France, 1417-1450
(Little, Brown, 2009); The Bröntes, new
edition (Abacus, 2010).
Frances Burton (Heveningham Pughe
1960): Core Statutes on Family Law, 6th
edition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
Liam D’Arcy-Brown (1989): The Emperor’s
River: Travels to the Heart of a Resurgent
China (Eye Books, 2010).
Mary Grey (Hughes 1959): The Advent of
Peace: a Gospel Journey to Christmas
(SPCK 2010); A Cry for Dignity: Religion,
Violence and the struggle of Dalit Women
in India (Equinox 2010).
Gwendoline Anne Godfrey (Davies 1973):
International Acquisition Finance: Law and
Practice, 2nd edition. Previously issued
under the name Griffiths (Oxford
University Press with the International
Bar Association, 2010).
James Hannam (1989): God’s
Philosophers: How the Medieval World
Laid the Foundations of Modern Science
(Icon books, 2010). Shortlisted for the
2010 Royal Society Prize for Science Books.
Anthea Jackson (Edenbrow 1960): Bay
Journey (poems) (Stramongate Press,
2010).
Nannerl O Keohane (Overholser 1961):
Thinking about Leadership (Princeton
University Press, 2010).
Jacob Klingner (1995): Minnereden im
Druck (Erich Schmidt 2010).
Leonee Ormond (Jasper 1959): Linley
Sambourne: Illustrator and Punch
Cartoonist (Paul Holberton Publishing,
2010).
Wendy Perriam (Brech 1958): Broken
Places (Robert Hale Ltd, 2010), her
sixteenth novel and twenty-second
publication.
Rebecca Probert (1991): Marriage Law and
Practice in the Long Eighteenth Century: A
Reassessment (Cambridge University
Press, 2009); Cretney and Probert’s Family
Law 7th edition (Sweet & Maxwell, 2009);
Responsible Parents and Parental
. 99
Alumnae News
Responsibility, co-edited with Stephen
Gilmore and Jonathan Herring (Hart,
2009); Sharing Lives, Dividing Assets, coedited with Joanna Miles (Hart 2009);
and (ed) Optimistic Objectives (Takeaway,
2010).
Jane Thynne (1980): The Weighing of the
Heart (Byline Books, 2010).
Lynn Urch (1995) (translator): Market
structure and equilibrium by Heinrich von
Stackelberg (Springer, 2011).
Stella Robinson (Giddins 1975): Did
anyone die? (Melrose Books, 2011), a
murder mystery written under the pen
name Stella Stafford.
Karen Vipond (1990) Genetics: An
Introduction for students of Nursing and
Health Care (Reflect Press, 2011)
Personal news
Constantine Sandis (1994): New Essays on
the Explanation of Action (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009).
Anne Sheppard (Raphael 1969): Greek
and Roman Aesthetics co-edited with V
Bychkov (Cambridge texts in the History
of Philosophy, Cambridge University
Press, 2010).
Ann Spokes Symonds (Spokes 1944): The
Changing Faces of Summertown and
Cutteslowe (Robert Boyd Publications,
2009); The Origins of Oxford Street
Names (Robert Boyd Publications, 2010).
Shirley Sherwood (Briggs 1952): Old and
New South American Botanical Art (Royal
Botanical Gardens Madrid, 2010).
Angela Thirlwell (Goldman 1966): Into
the Frame: The Four Loves of Ford Madox
Brown (Chatto & Windus, 2010) tells of
the life and art of the Victorian painter
closely associated with the PreRaphaelites, his two wives and two
secret loves.
100 .
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Tom Chivers (2001) and Sarah
Dustagheer (2001) will be married on 21
May 2011 at St Etheldreda’s Roman
Catholic Church, Ely Place, London,
followed by a reception at Stationers’
Hall.
Maureen Clark (Harbinson 1961) has
enjoyed marriage, motherhood (a son
and a daughter) and a career in
secondary education. She taught in the
London Boroughs of Barnet and
Hillingdon and the County of
Buckinghamshire. In 1995 they moved to
N Ireland and she took up the post of
Deputy Headmistress at Hunterhouse
College, Belfast. She was Headmistress of
Hunterhouse College from 1998-2008.
Now retired she is a member of the
Alumnae News
Governing Body of the Southern
Regional College, Newry, Co Down and a
member of the Council of the University
of Ulster Coleraine Co Londonderry.
Eleanor Crichton (Hunter 1996) and her
husband Charlie are pleased to
announce the birth of their son Robert
on 27 October 2010.
Charlotte Gray (1990) had a son Charles
Felix Schraa on 30 April 2010 in
Melbourne, Australia, a brother for Lydia
Louise Schraa (born 15 July 2007). She
married Andrew Schraa from New
Zealand on 23 October 2010 in
Melbourne where they now live. Ciara
Wells (Mulligan 1990) and Paul Donovan
(1990) were there to help celebrate.
Zinnie Harris (Shaw 1990) is living in
Edinburgh and had a third baby, Xanthe,
on 21 November 2009, a sister for
Malachy and Jasper.
Sunny Karir (Kotecha 1999) married
Anoop Karir on 26/9/09 on a beach
outside Lisbon. In February 2011, Sunny
opened up the Avo Hotel with her family.
This brand new boutique hotel in the
heart of Dalston, East London, an area
described by Italian Vogue as ‘the coolest
place in Britain’, will provide a
discounted rate on its ensuite rooms to
alumnae as well as a complimentary
upgrade to the penthouse suite when
available. (For 20% off all rooms, just type
in the discount code ‘ALUM’ when
confirming your booking on
www.avohotel.com.)
Melanie Perkins (1974) married Adam
Rae-Smith (ChCh) on 17 July 2010. Gaenor Price (1962) After retiring from
working as a gardener with the National
Trust, studied for an MA in Garden
History at Bristol and was awarded a
distinction in 2009.
Rebecca Probert (1991) has been
promoted to Professor of Law at the
University of Warwick, and delivered her
inaugural lecture, ‘From Fornicators to
Family: The Changing Legal Regulation of
Cohabitation’, on 9 February 2011, at a
ceremony chaired by Baroness Ruth
Deech. She is also President of her local
branch of Soroptimist International and
benefits enormously from the support
and culinary skills of her husband Liam
D’Arcy-Brown (1989).
and Clare (1). She also fits in a few hours
a week for Moloney Search, doing
business development for international
graduate recruitment among other
things. Life is fun if very busy!
Christine Walker (Moorse 1977) left
clinical practice in 2003 after 7 years as a
consultant paediatrician to spend time
at home with her growing family of
three sons Matthew (17), William (15) and
Simon (14) and husband Graham. She
returned to work in 2009 in the field of
medical law and ethics and now works
as a medico-legal advisor with the
Medical Defence Union. This has been a
challenging and exciting career move
which she would recommend to any
medic looking for a change of direction.
Jean Golding (1958) Professor Emeritus
at Bristol University started her
pioneering study ALSPAC (Avon
Longitudinal study of Parents and
Children in 1991. Twenty years on, the
study has proved invaluable in improving
the health of children worldwide, and in
assessing the impact of anxiety in
pregnancy.
Elnor Spearing (Allhusen 1991) is now
living in Southampton, married to Mark
and their children Anna (5), Michael (3)
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Alumnae News
Deaths
Edith May Arnold-Baker
(Woods 1936) 25 November
2010
Phyllis Margaret Austin
(Wallington 1937) 18 October
2010
Frederica Esther Brown (LowBeer 1960) 13 December 2010
Catherine Joan Burchardt
(1936) 23 October 2009
Claire Natasha Burchardt
(Edelman 1955) 20 February
2010
Nicola Jane Carter (1971)
29 November 2010*
Barbara Ann Chalkley (Witt
1947) 25 June 2010
Selina Toussaint Charlton
(Fisher 1961) 20 December
2010*
Isabel M Crotty (1935) 11 April
2010
Margaret Rosalind DelacourtSmith (Hando 1934) 9 June
2010
Alice Maude Eburne (1944)
19 January 2011
Nancy Raymonde Edwards
FSA (Briggs 1949) 8 February
2010
102 .
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
.
Philippa Ruth Foot FBA
(former Fellow in Philosophy
at Somerville College,
Professor in Philosophy at the
University of California and
friend of St Anne’s) 3 October
2010
John Greening MBE (generous
benefactor and friend of St
Anne’s) 5 November 2010
Irene Jessie Handley (Edwards
1936) 26 August 2010
Mary Nichola Stewart
Hitchings (Adams 1962)
10 October 2010
Anne Frances Hollowell
(Blackwell 1948) 29 April 2010
Anna Howley (1937) 18
January 2011
Barbara Gray Ivens (1932)
22 May 2010
Sheila Margaret Jenkins
(1969) 20 November 2010
Tony Judt (former Fellow in
Politics and a Supernumerary
Fellow) 6 August 2010
Sheila Mary Kelly
(O’Callaghan 1938) 4 January
2011*
Joan Catherine Kent (1938)
15 October 2010
Margaret Gwynneth Key
(1929) 13 January 2010
THE SHIP
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2010-11
Margaret Wade Labarge
(Wade 1937) 31 August 2009
Sally Ann Laird (1975) 15 July
2010
Alethea Lyall (Tynan 1944)
28 April 2010
Christine Barbara Martin
(Gibb 1935) 6 April 2010
Mary Laurella Matthews
(Thomas 1947) 23 July 2010
Neil McCormick (1993) 19 June
2010
Susan Frances McCormick
(1963) 12 August 2010
Diana Mary Osborne (1947)
16 August 2010
Wendy Mary Ozamiz
(Chalcraft 1955) 22 March
2010
Gillian Trenchard Daphne
Pickard (1939) 03 December
2009
Helen Elizabeth Mace Priest
(Holmes 1949) 18 August 2010
Doris Quinn (Shaw 1950) 9
April 2010
Kathleen Mary Saunders
(Brandle 1939) 5 January 2011*
Margaret Mary Savage
(Lovegrove 1940) 7 January
2010
Ursula Mary Thomason
Sedgwick (Beckett 1941)
26 December 2009
Helen Beatrice Hilda Shelford
(Schuster 1930) 31 July 2010
Alison Monsarrat West Sims
(West-Watson 1933) 4 June
2010
Angela Beatrice Swetenham
(Whiteman 1937) 12 January
2010
Edythe Rowena Williams
(Cullen 1941) 01 November
2009
Elizabeth Jane Williams (Sykes
1944) 01 July 2010
Zara Patricia Zaddy (1940)
14 January 2011
*Exact date of death
unknown.
Obituaries
Courtesy: John R Rifkin
In memoriam
TONY JUDT
2 January 1948–6 August 2010
Tony Judt was a Fellow in Politics at St
Anne’s between 1980 and 1987, when he
moved to New York. He was one of the
first generation of male fellows who
entered the college after it went mixed
in 1979, and he and I were a kind of
cumulative replacement for Jenifer Hart,
he in politics and I in history. Tony was
very much a live wire, who enjoyed St
Anne’s and Oxford precisely because of
their intellectual pluralism and lack of
sharp ideological definition. I’m sure his
tutorials must have had plenty of fizz in
them, though I suspect he was better
suited to the lecture hall than the
tutorial. This was one reason why he only
stayed with us for quite a short time; the
other was that, while he greatly
appreciated Oxford’s laid-back
atmosphere, in the final analysis he
really needed ideological argument and
conflict to thrive on. Though he claimed
to be ‘post-ideological’, his passion for
his own position was quite as fervent as
that of any ideologue. He was that
unusual kind of liberal who not only
stood up to be counted, but felt it was a
moral obligation to enter the school of
hard knocks and smite those who didn’t
measure up to his liberal creed. Seen in
this light New York was a more natural
home for him, even if his intellectual
world remained profoundly AngloEuropean, like that of so many Jewish
emigrés. By contrast, Oxford had offered
him a period of calm between the
somewhat more stressed atmospheres
he found or created in Cambridge before
and New York after. The only mention we
receive in his late (and most attractive)
collection of autobiographical essays, The
Memory Chalet, relates to his learning
Czech late at night – though to do such a
thing so soon before the collapse of the
Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe has an
almost prophetic or providential quality
about it. In this way his quiet years at
Oxford proved to be of fundamental
importance.
In his work Tony was one of a small, but
recognisable breed: the contemporary
historian. He was emphatically not a
political scientist and had all the
historian’s love of texts and of the
particular. On the other hand, while he
had a great breadth of perspective, he
had no especial desire to go back into a
deep or remote past. What was
important to him was the rigorous
historical explanation of the present,
based on strict scholarship and an
equally rooted political commitment.
First and foremost, this meant
explaining the French Marxism which he
encountered ‘in translation’ in
Cambridge in the late 1960s, and then in
Paris in 1968 (briefly) and 1970. Hence a
series of distinguished books beginning
with Socialism in Provence 1871-1914
(1979) – this was the furthest back in
time he ever got, but still the book
carried a characteristic sub-title: A Study
in the Origins of the Modern French Left. It
was followed by an essay collection
Marxism and the French Left: Studies on
Labour and Politics in France 1830-1981
(1986) which worked outwards from his
Cambridge doctoral thesis on the French
Socialist party in the 1920s; and then
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Obituaries
and highlight the most salient trends.
But, of course, such ‘simple’ demands
are among the hardest to meet – and
Tony’s erudition and linguistic virtuosity
(including his Czech) are on full display.
The central idea of the book was also
simple, and yet important: the
recognition that the history of Europe
had moved on; that there was now an
entire phase of history which was ‘postwar’, albeit one which, paradoxically,
was defined by the legacies of the
wartime era – communism and the
Holocaust above all. It deserves great
praise as the first attempt at a
significant history of Europe (East and
West) in this period, and just an ounce
of criticism because it refused to stop at
the obvious point, in 1989-90 (which
was also the date, as he tells us, when
he first had the idea for the book).
Instead it continued forwards to 2005,
the somewhat arbitrary date at which
the author laid down his pen. Yet both
its strength and its weakness are
hallmarks of the contemporary
historian, who seizes on the
significance of the recent past, and
refuses to separate it from the present;
and in 50 years’ time, though our
picture of the period may well have
shifted, we shall still derive much
stimulus and enjoyment from reading
Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals 19441956 (1992), where the intellectuals in
question got a pretty thorough pasting.
These books are roughly 50 per cent
“Jewish” and cosmopolitan, with a
characteristic cultural preference for
intellectual history and engagement;
and roughly 50 per cent ‘British‘, with a
countervailing suspicion of ideologues
and doctrinaires. His heroes are (by
French standards) rather unfashionable
men like Leon Blum and Raymond Aron,
while those with a higher profile, such as
Sartre and Foucault, evoke marked
distaste.
In the second principal phase of his work
he expanded his gaze from French to
European modernity. There are obvious
similarities between the two treatments:
as before he hoped to write with a
considerable amount of sympathetic
inwardness while reserving the
outsider’s rights of detachment and
judgement – in the latter case with the
extra distance conferred by being based
in the US. After a long essay entitled A
Grand Illusion? (1996), this phase reached
fruition in Postwar (2005), a history of
Europe after 1945. In many ways it was
an old-fashioned book which, in defiance
of modern specialization, sought quite
simply to survey its subject as a whole
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what he had to say as a pioneer.
A final strand of work lay in his essay
contributions to the New York Review of
Books from 1993 – again an ideal forum
for the contemporary historian – and
this was at least as important to him
as writing scholarly books. I remember
seeing an issue of the NYRB with the
banner headline on the front: ‘Kissinger
vs. Judt: an Exchange’, and thinking to
myself: ‘yes, Tony really has arrived’. The
conclusion to Postwar is really a digest
of New York Review articles, while many
of the originals are collected in
Reappraisals (2008), and this volume is
one of the best guides to the full range
of his interests. In particular it includes
something of his longstanding and
unfinished debate with Zionism – an
issue of great importance to him
personally, and surely a subject he
would have treated in sustained,
historical form if time had been
allowed to him.
Tony was a very sharp man indeed,
with a mordant sense of humour,
which no doubt reflected his origins,
both as a Londoner (though I don’t
suppose one can have a middle-class
Cockney from Putney) and as part of a
Obituaries
Jewish community. In his last two years he
was the victim of a motor neurone disease.
Typically he was keen to raise awareness of
the disease and promote its future
treatment, but he did not want to arouse
compassion or pity for himself. So in reply
to a typical question about what it was like,
he said he didn’t recommend it: ‘How
would you like to be wheeled around with
a piece of tupperware on your face ?’ I
hadn’t seen him in ages, but when I read
the word ‘tupperware’ (meaning his
breathing apparatus), I instantly recognised
his voice. Not exactly Proust’s madeleine,
but certainly a case of temps retrouvé.
Peter Ghosh
In memoriam
SALLY ANN LAIRD
2 May 1956–15 July 2010
The writer, journalist and translator Sally
Laird died of cancer in Aarhus on 15 July
aged 54. She had been living in Denmark
for many years, where her husband Mark
Le Fanu (the author of this tribute) held a
post at the European Film College. Two of
her recent articles treated of her adopted
country: the first, in July 2003, an account
of the Danish hospital system, written
with an insider’s knowledge (over the
years recurring bouts of erysipelas had
made her a frequent patient); the
second, in August 2008, a delightfully
nuanced essay on why the Danes have
continuously come top of the charts as
the world’s happiest nation – a
somewhat surprising finding on the face
of it, in view of their gloomy reputation.
Sally was a beautiful writer, and both
articles display her customary kindliness
and wisdom; she had little time for
sociological platitudes. What she
appreciated about the Danes was their
ceremoniousness, their civilized restraint,
and, crucially in the happiness stakes,
their wry and witty refusal to expect too
much out of life.
A gifted musician, Sally spoke and read a
number of languages. Her main
expertise was in Russian, which she
studied at St Anne’s following an
excellent grounding in the subject at
Camden School for Girls. In those preglasnost days (and possibly still today)
Oxford students were sent off in their
third year to Voronezh, a vast and
undistinguished city some 300 miles
south of Moscow, in order to perfect
their language skills and generally be
kept out of harm’s way. Twenty-one years
later, long after the Soviet epoch was
over, Sally revisited this melancholy
metropolis, home of the Soviet writer
Platonov, along with a number of her
contemporaries on the course, in order to
ascertain whether and how much the
place had changed. An engaging and
somewhat Rip van Winkle-ish account of
the trip’s pleasures can be found in the
June 2000 issue of Prospect – one of her
best articles, written (it seems to me)
with a truly Chekhovian wistfulness.
Sally belonged, through temperament
and family background, to a leftist
political position that never had any time
for communism or its illusions. In this
sense she was a pure-bred liberal, for
whom the rights and freedoms of the
individual were always the overriding
moral imperative. This humanist
predilection took her, during the 1980s,
to work at Amnesty International, and
then to the journal Index on Censorship
where in due course (during a somewhat
bumpy ride) she became editor.
Meanwhile the Observer, under the
benign literary editorship of Michael
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Obituaries
on the world. Many people relied on her
for all sorts of reasons; she radiated the art
of life, and I know will be much missed.
Ratcliffe, offered her opportunities for
reviewing the torrent of books about
Russia that was such a feature of the lateeighties and early-nineties.
Mark Le Fanu, first published online by
Prospect magazine,
www.prospect-magazine.co.uk
In the meantime Sally had become an
excellent literary translator. Two emerging
writers in particular, Vladimir Sorokin and
Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, came to
appreciate her deep knowledge of the
language and ear for nuance. I myself
have always felt – but then I am biased, I
suppose – that her book about
contemporary Russian writing, Voices of
Russian Literature, brought out by Oxford
University Press in 1999, was
tremendously under appreciated at the
time, mistakenly marketed by the press as
a specialized academic study rather than
what it really was and is: a beautiful
introduction for the general reader to the
fascinating complexity of the epoch.
In memoriam
SUSAN MCCORMICK
26th August 1944-12th August 2010
After gaining a degree in Philosophy and
Psychology from St Anne’s, Susan went
to New Hall Cambridge to take a diploma
at the Institute of Criminology, with a view
to embarking on an academic career. In
order to gain direct experience in a field
that particularly interested her, she
decided to join the Prison Service,
enrolling in the Prison Governors Training
Scheme. This was based at the Staff
College at Wakefield and also involved a
period training on the job as an Assistant
Governor at Holloway.
Sally kept up her contacts with Russia
during her Danish years: her on-campus
house in Ebeltoft was a magnet for
writers and film-makers who appreciated
its splendid isolation, and the almost
monastic concentration of the students, in
the midst of the beautiful Danish
countryside. All this testifies to her rare
gift for friendship. Sally had a fizzling
personality, and a keen and satirical take
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Her first post was as Assistant Governor at
Bullwood Hall, a girls’ borstal. After this
she was asked to return to the Staff
College at Wakefield to train other
Assistant Governors (1971-73). She was
finding her work so fascinating that she
decided to remain in the Prison Service
rather than return to academic life. In 1973,
she was appointed Governor of Askham
Grange, a women’s open prison.
Newspaper headlines declared her to be,
at the age of 28, the youngest ever prison
governor.
During her six years at Askham Grange,
one of Susan’s projects was the
establishment of a drama workshop
through which prisoners could write,
direct and perform their own
productions. She persuaded the Home
Office to allow the 20-strong cast to
perform at York Arts Centre and York
University. Members of the group
continued the work after their release
from prison, forming their own women
ex-prisoners’ theatre company, Clean
Break, which was championed and
supported by Susan; quietly promoting
its progress, she was never afraid to
speak out for it or stand as referee to
funding bodies. Clean Break continues to
function successfully today, a wellestablished theatre company with a
Obituaries
centre in London offering courses and
training to women who have
experienced the justice system.
After Askham Grange, Susan went to
Pucklechurch: a Remand Centre for boys
aged 16-20 and for women. This was the
first time a woman had been appointed
governor of a male establishment. Initial
problems with male staff were soon
overcome; she intimated that it had
helped that her car at that time was a
Porsche. Her next post was at a Young
Offenders’ Institute, Hollesley Bay, with
its rare breeds farm. Looking after the
animals was not only a coveted reward
for good behaviour, but Susan also
understood how important it could be in
developing each individual’s
responsibility and sense of worth. After
Hollesley Bay she had a spell seconded to
the Home Office (Michael Howard was
then Home Secretary) and also spent a
year with NACRO (National Association
for the Care and Resettlement of
Offenders); she then went to Portland
Young Offenders’ Institute in 1996. Her
final post before retirement was at The
Weare, the prison ship at Weymouth.
Her choice of the prison service was
driven by her wish to influence the
treatment of offenders, ensuring there
was humanity and respect in the system,
and nurturing the confidence of those
with shattered self-esteem. She was a
hundred per cent committed to
prisoners, their welfare and their
rehabilitation, at a time when these
were not politically popular views. She
was never a clone, never one of the
crowd, and always her own woman. She
remained true to her principles and she
was rewarded by many individual
successes. After retirement she returned
to her family home to look after her
widowed mother.
She was exceptional. Her integrity,
compassion and forthright nature were
outstanding. Deeply loyal and caring, she
was not interested in what others could
do for her, but in what she could do for
others. She faced her impending death
from colon cancer with stoicism and a
rare inner peace. She will be sorely missed
by family and friends who loved her.
Susan Schonfield (Schlesinger 1964)
In memoriam
MARGARET GWYNNETH KEY
12 March 1911-2010
Margaret Gwynneth Key was born on 12
March 1911 at Hucclecote near Gloucester.
She was the oldest child of Edgar and
Annie Key, and was followed by two
brothers James and William. Her father was
the Company Secretary of Gloucester
Mental Hospitals. After attending Denmark
Road High School for Girls, where she
became head girl, she was awarded a State
Scholarship to St Anne’s College, Oxford
where she read history. During her three
years at Oxford she travelled in Germany
and Austria, with long holidays in the Black
Forest. After obtaining her degree she
returned to Berlin where she continued her
study of the German language and
became an English teacher. However, the
deteriorating political scene in Germany
forced her to abandon this enterprise and
she returned home. Ironically, she returned
to Berlin immediately after the war, in an
airlift organised by the British Council to
help the rehabilitation of Germany.
Gwynneth’s love of travel stayed with her
throughout her life. She was a founder
member of the Youth Hostel Association
and took a prominent part in the
establishment of one of the first hostels
near Oxford, while she was still a student.
Her first teaching post was at the Alice
Ottley School in Worcester where she
taught History and German. She was also a
founder member of the Modern Language
Club in the city which brought together the
other secondary schools.
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Obituaries
of the Joint Consultation Committee of
Dorset Education Committee and a
director of the Wessex Trustee Savings
Bank.
In 1943, Gwynneth moved to Wakefield to
head the History Department at the High
School. The war years curtailed her
travelling but she gained valuable
administrative experience, and in 1946 she
was appointed Headmistress of
Bournemouth School for Girls. The country
was then contending with the austerity of
post-war life and it was against this
background that Gwynneth began to
build her own and the school’s reputation.
With the support of the governors and
staff the school soon established itself as
one of the leading girls’ schools in the
county. She was passionately devoted to
promoting the cause of girls‘ and
women‘s education.
She had also been a past President of the
Bournemouth Division of the Girl Guides,
the Bournemouth Historical Association,
the area branch of the YHA, the
Soroptimist Club of Bournemouth and the
Bournemouth and District UNA, the
development of which she was very
closely involved with from the late-1940s.
She took an active and wide ranging role
in the city for 60 years, hardly ever missing
a meeting or event until 2006.
Gwynneth was fully involved in the local
educational scene, serving for many years
as a teacher representative on the
Bournemouth Education Committee. She
was also a member of the local committee
of the Headmistress Association, the
Dorset Joint Four Committee, a member of
the Court of Southampton University and
a Syndic of Cambridge University Local
Examinations Syndicate. In Bournemouth
she had been a Manager of Boscombe St.
John’s and Moordown St. John’s Primary
Schools, a Governor of the Embassy Youth
Club, Chairman of Bournemouth Youth
Employment Committee and a member
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.
which were dear to her heart. She was
able to travel widely and at a more
leisurely pace.
Gwynneth was a regular worshipper at St
Ambrose Church, West Cliff Road, together
with Winifred Bay, her former secretary
and long-term friend.
When deteriorating health forced her to
leave her own home, she entered a Care
Home where the Matron and staff
provided peace, quiet and contentment in
her final years.
Bill Key (brother)
Her ‘family‘ as she liked to think of her
girls, held a high priority in her life.
Gwynneth kept in touch with her former
pupils around the world and visited many
of them. Her photograph albums often
included three generations of a family and
she usually remembered all their names.
In memoriam
DIANA MARY OSBORNE (1947)
d 25 July 2010
I remember Diana for two things, her
courage when faced with the inexorable
loss of the use of her legs and her
marvellous stories of a farm childhood.
Looking back over the life of Gwynneth
Key one is struck by the many ways in
which she was able to help, encourage
and direct her pupils towards a fulfilling
way of life. Being blessed with good health
she was able to enjoy a long life, and even
in retirement was as busy as ever,
furthering the aims of the organisations
We met at the first event of the
‘Cambridge South’ group, an attempt to
bring together graduates from the lower
reaches of the Cambridge Branch area by
inviting them to a pub lunch. Diana came,
and joined the branch. First on crutches
and then in a motorised wheelchair, she
was a familiar figure at branch events.
2010-11
Obituaries
Diana, her friend David, John Baker (1980)
and I met occasionally for pub lunches –
further meetings of the Southern group –
and she became expert at parking as near
the door as possible and moving in
painfully on her crutches. Her response to
the gradual disintegration of her legs was
Diana-practical. She bought a large van,
which would hold a motorised wheelchair,
and kept going. Her legs got her into
hospital in June 2010. A helpful neighbour,
who had picked up the annual Garden
Party invitation in her post, rang to give me
the news.
I wrote, but wish I had gone to see her. But
my chief regret was that I never persuaded
Diana to contribute to the biographies
project. She read modern languages, and
became a teacher. But she was adamant
that her life was nothing special. She was
wrong: all our lives are special and Diana’s
was lived with verve and courage. As a
Northamptonshire farm girl, she drove the
tractor at a tender age and swam in the
river by her aunt’s house, reckoning in
Heraclitean manner, that this was not the
same river that ran by her own farm, which
she had promised her mother not to swim
in! Diana was a lively child and a spunky
adult. Her death is a loss to us all.
Linda Richardson (Deer 1966)
In memoriam
ANNA STEPHANIE WILSON
27 September 1947 –
26 January 2010
Anna enjoyed fulfilling a huge variety of
roles; these included GP, musician,
charity worker, wife and mother. Uniting
all her roles was Anna’s passion for other
people, working with them, supporting
them, performing and laughing with
them. She was energised by her contact
with others. It was this love of people
which led her to want to help them. This
was not just in her working life, it was her
whole life.
Anna was born in Gosforth, Newcastle to
Polish parents who had escaped the Nazi
occupation of Poland on Christmas Eve,
1939. The family moved South in 1952.
Anna attended a convent school on
Kingston Hill and then Lady Eleanor Holles
School in Hampton. Pursuing an ambition
formed at the age of six, Anna undertook
pre-clinical training in St Mary’s Hospital
Medical School, where she won a
scholarship to undertake an Honours
Bachelor of Science Degree in Biochemistry
and achieved a first. Anna moved to the
University of Oxford Medical School for her
clinical training and became a member of
St Anne’s College. She graduated in 1971.
I met Anna at a party in Oxford and we
were married in St Anne’s Catholic Church
on Kingston Hill in October, 1972. Anna had
various house jobs in London, and then a
year as a GP trainee in the Elephant and
Castle. In 1975 we moved to Worsley, to the
North West of Manchester, where Anna
took up a post in the Accident and
Emergency Department of the Hope
Hospital.
In 1976 my work took us to Kitwe in
Zambia. Anna had a key role in Kitwe as a
GP in a medical aid society looking after
senior staff from the local industry. Shortly
after our return from Zambia in 1978, Anna
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Obituaries
roots in Winchester and shortly after had
a new house built on St Giles Hill.
gave birth to Anya, who is now following in
her mother’s footsteps as a paediatrician
in Glasgow.
During the 1990’s, Anna added to her
qualifications by obtaining the Diploma
of the Faculty of Family Planning of the
Royal College of Obstetricians and
Gynaecologists. This was followed by
Fellowship of the Royal College of
General Practitioners (RCGP) in 1998.
With future overseas tours in mind Anna
gained the Diploma in Tropical Health and
Membership of the Royal College of
General Practitioners in 1979. Our second
child, Nina, was born at the end of 1979
and shortly afterwards I was posted to
Kuala Lumpur. Whilst in Malaysia, Anna
worked as a GP in the health centre of
the University of Malaya, with
consultations in the local language
Bahasa Malaysia. We returned to England
in 1981 and Anna took up a series of GP
locum roles in South West London.
Anna joined the Board of the Wessex
Faculty RCGP in 1992 and became
Chairman in 1996. She contributed
extensively to the educational activities
of the Faculty, not only in women’s health
which was her specialist area, but also
creating innovative and fun events such
as ‘A Little Bit on the Side‘ and ‘Another
Bit on the Side‘, both of which looked at
ways in which GPs can pursue special
interests and earn money outside their
practices. Anna was awarded the Wessex
Faculty Chairman’s medal, an honour
reserved for special contribution to
furthering the work of the Wessex
Faculty.
Our third child, Crispian, was born in
March 1983 and shortly afterwards my
job took us to Wolverhampton. Whilst
there, Anna held the post of Community
Health Doctor in Child and School Health.
At the end of 1984, yet another career
move for me brought us to Winchester
where Anna again took up a child health
post. In 1991, as part of her work in Child
Health, Anna gave a training session to
the Gratton Practice in Sutton Scotney
and soon became a part time partner in
that practice. In many ways it was Anna’s
ideal job, so we decided to put down
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THE SHIP
Anna was a Vocational Training Scheme
Programme Organiser in Winchester
looking after the educational needs of
senior house officers; she tutored
practice nurses, taught family planning
.
2010-11
and was a trainer for GP registrars. She
was also an appraiser for her colleagues
in Hampshire Mid-Hampshire Primary
Care Trust. Anna was involved in setting
up the Wessex Re-entry into General
Practice Scheme, aimed at helping
doctors who had taken a career break to
return to practice. Anna personally spent
a considerable amount of time giving
careers advice. Following her lead, the
Faculty undertook a project developing
careers advice for potential medical
students. Anna took a great interest in all
of these groups and continued to remain
in touch with people as they moved on to
the next phase of their working lives.
At the same time, Anna started
campaigning on behalf of carers and this
led to the Carers Protocol, which was
created as a direct response to the
concerns and needs of carers. This was
adopted by the then Mid-Hampshire
Primary Care Trust. Anna’s caring side
was shown through her work with the
primary health care services for the
Trinity Centre and Winchester Churches
Night Shelter, working with the
homeless to give them access to health
care services. Anna has been the medical
adviser to both Carers Together in
Hampshire and Southampton Marriage
Care. She had a listening ear for those in
trouble, an amazing skill in non-
Obituaries
judgmental advising, a genuine care for
her colleagues and a strong sense of
justice.
Anna’s work with the charity Wells for
India was very practical: she raised over
£12,000, visited projects and opened a
school in Rajasthan in 2007. Anna was a
finalist in the Wessex Charity Awards in
the category of ‘Volunteer of the Year’.
Anna loved music and was an
accomplished flute player and pianist; she
also sang regularly in the St Peter’s
Church Choir and with other choirs.
Anna’s faith was very important to her
and she played a very active part in the
life of the Catholic diocese of Portsmouth.
She advised on women’s health issues
and child protection, as well as providing
help in setting up appraisals for the clergy.
Anna was appointed a special minister
enabling her to deliver Holy Communion
to the sick and housebound.
Anna was a founder committee member
of the South of England Branch of St
Anne’s Association of Senior Members
and took the lead in arranging
presentations by some very interesting
speakers.
Anna was diagnosed with Pancreatic
Cancer in July 2007. She underwent two
very serious operations and had
extensive chemotherapy and
radiotherapy. Her spirit remained strong
in spite of her illness and all the pain and
discomfort that it brought. Happily she
was able to enjoy the weddings of both
Nina and Crispian. Anna continued to
care for others right up to the end and
was skiing in Switzerland only three
weeks before her death in January, 2010.
With her passing we lose the fire and
sparkle that has illuminated our lives so
brightly. We miss her terribly. Her life
challenges us to follow her example and
take every opportunity to bring that life
and sparkle to each other every day.
To quote a colleague: ‘Anna was an
inspiration. She could have chosen as
others do to use her formidable
intelligence, charm and ability to benefit
only herself. Instead she set an example
to us all in her generosity of spirit and
contribution to society.‘
Max Wilson
November, 2010
. 111
Thank you
List of
donors to
College
2009-10
General Endowment: £26,348
Michelle Clayman Research
Fellowship: £107,171
Other: £5,375
Physical Life Sciences: £75,000
Teaching: £8,047
A total of £1.65m was gifted by St
Anne’s alumnae, parents and friends
between 1 August, 2009, and 31 July,
2010, to the following funds:
Student Support Fund
Greatest current college need: £363,289
St Anne’s Boat Club: £1,550
(NB: many of the fund totals are
greater than the figures stated here,
which refer only to the last year’s
donations.)
Library Provision
Library Fund: £6,165
PPE Library: £3,974
Student Bursaries and Scholarships
Ann Pasternak Slater Farewell: £1,206
Bursary Fund: £48,604
Elizabeth Ely Scholarship: £1,312
Graduate Development Fund: £442
GPDST Bursary Scheme: £1000
In memoriam Iris Murdoch: £26,113
In memoriam Marjorie Reeves: £813
In memoriam Mrs Bednarowska: £810
Year of 1955: £726
Year of 1962: £916
The Principal and Fellows
acknowledge with deep gratitude the
following alumnae, parents and
friends for their gifts (1 August 2009,
to 31 July 2010):
Student accommodation and
buildings
50 Woodstock Road: £13,974
Accommodation: £966
Building Fund: £ 2,007
Front of College fund: £250,000
Kitchen (including money raised by
Kitchen Suppers): £704,246
Other: £1,938
Senior Members:
Pre-1940:
FOX (Gaunt), Yvonne: 1934
WRAY (Beale), Pip: 1935
BERNARD, Joan: 1936
RALPHS (Thomas), Margaret: 1937
BEESLEY (Ridehalgh), Ruth: 1938
COSGRAVE, Margaret: 1938
DE TRAFFORD (MacFarlane),
Jacqueline: 1938
FRASER (Andrew), Paddy: 1938
VERNEY, Shirley: 1938
MARSHALL (Mathews), Annette: 1939
RABAN, Barbara: 1939
SAUNDERS (Brandle), Kathleen: 1939
Total given: £1,904
Participation rate: 2%
Teaching support
Classics: £1,282
English: £128
1940-44:
BADENOCH (Forster), Anne: 1940
GAULD (Marshall), Doreen: 1940
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2010-11
GILTHORPE (Wagstaffe), Helen: 1940
LUCEY (Denham), Mary: 1940
SAVAGE (Lovegrove), Margaret: 1940
BLAKE, Mary: 1941
BOUSFIELD (Calvert-Smith), Pamela: 1941
KIDMAN, Priscilla: 1941
LIGHT, Audrey: 1941
THORPE (Knott), Charity: 1941
WATTS (Budge), Grizel: 1941
CAPE (Johnston), Cathune: 1942
CARTER, Joan: 1942
DUNCOMBE, Ruth: 1942
HORSFALL, Jean: 1942
KENNARD (Walter), Therese: 1942
LIPPOLD (Tidmarsh), Kay: 1942
SCOTT (Priestley), June: 1942
STUDDERT KENNEDY (Leathart), Gillian:
1942
THOMPSON, Jean: 1942
BARBER (Steventon), Madeline: 1943
BRIDGART (Arkell), Christine: 1943
COOK (Crouch), Petronelle: 1943
CURRIE, Barbara: 1943
LOCK (Somerset), Helen: 1943
MILES (Sparkes), Mary: 1943
STEPHENSON (Berry), Joy: 1943
BATCHELOR (Brown), Jean: 1944
BEATTY (Cocker), Audrey: 1944
CHAPMAN, Gwendolen: 1944
CLARK, Ailsa: 1944
FAIRCLOUGH, Patricia: 1944
GRAY (Edmunds), Joyce: 1944
GURR (Johnson), Eileen: 1944
HEDGES (Young), Wendy: 1944
LORIMER (Packard), Priscilla: 1944
MCHUGH (Barlow), Jean: 1944
ORR (Stones), Muriel: 1944
WELLS (Lehmann), Yvonne: 1944
1945-49:
BAIRD (Dutton), Audrey: 1945
BARNES (Ponsonby), Mary: 1945
BUDGE (Parry), Megan: 1945
EATON (Freear), Diana: 1945
EDWARDS, Hilary: 1945
FISCHEL (Despard), Anita: 1945
FLINT (Marsden), Nancy: 1945
JACKSON (Hurley), Barbara: 1945
MACLIESH, Philippa: 1945
PEADEN (Morris), Valerie: 1945
BONSOR, Ann: 1946
COSH, Mary: 1946
CRAIG (Clarkson), Mary: 1946
CRAWSHAY (Reynolds), Elizabeth: 1946
FORSTER, Helen: 1946
KNOWLES (Watkins), June: 1946
MAIER (Bulley), Anne: 1946
MITCHELL (Rabbinowitz), Eileen: 1946
MOFFAT (Black), Margaret: 1946
RAMSAY (Pasternak), Helen: 1946
STRAWSON, Ann: 1946
ANDREW (Whitworth), Margaret: 1947
BEESLEY (Collins), Anne: 1947
CAVALIERO (Mcdonnell), Mary: 1947
CHALKLEY (Witt), Barbara: 1947
DOWLEY (Verry), Monica: 1947
KEEN (Wordingham), Patricia: 1947
LEWIS, Keri: 1947
MARRINER (Sims), Elizabeth: 1947
MARSLAND, Pauline: 1947
MATTHEWS (Thomas), Mary: 1947
MERRICK (Richards), Celia: 1947
BAILEY, Margaret: 1948
CLUTTERBUCK (Romeril), Margaret:
1948
GLYNNE, Dilys: 1948
HALE, Barbara: 1948
HONORE (Duncan), Deborah: 1948
HORTON (Butler), Carol: 1948
HUMPHREYS (Smith), Carol: 1948
KAYE, Elaine: 1948
LIVINGSTONE, Elizabeth: 1948
MARTIN (Sandle), Patricia: 1948
MATTHEWS (Greenshields), Daphne: 1948
Thank you
MILTON (Ward), Irene: 1948
PAWLEY (Herbertson), Margaret: 1948
PEACOCKE (Bennett), Meg: 1948
PRICE, Maureen: 1948
ROSEMAN (Hyames), Joan: 1948
STUART-SMITH (Motion), Joan: 1948
BOWEN (Williams), Ursula: 1949
DRURY (Jenkins), Janet: 1949
GIBBONS, Peggy: 1949
JONES, Madeline: 1949
LOWIS (Harding), Olive: 1949
MICKLEM (Monro), Ruth: 1949
OSBORNE, Marian: 1949
SAXTON (Clark), Joan: 1949
SMITH (Gane), Ann: 1949
SWORD (Boyle), Beatrice: 1949
TUCKWELL (Bacon), Margaret: 1949
VENABLES (Richards), Ann: 1949
WALTERS (Purcell), Anne: 1949
WARD (Hawking), Sheila: 1949
WHITBY (Field), Joy: 1949
WOLSTENCROFT (Browne), Valerie:
1949
1950-54:
BARLOW (Finn), Maureen: 1950
BELL (Seed), Patricia: 1950
CONGDON (Hammond), Mary: 1950
EVEREST-PHILLIPS (Everest), Anne: 1950
HALLAWAY, Mary: 1950
HEATH, Mary: 1950
HUGHES (Chetwyn), Mary: 1950
MELLORS (Williamson), Wendy: 1950
MURRAY (Goffart), Claude: 1950
ROBINSON (Frith), Valerie: 1950
ROBSON (Moses), Anne: 1950
SAINSBURY (Burrows), Gillian: 1950
SAUNDERS (Topley), Ann: 1950
TYLDESLEY (Poole), Rosemary: 1950
WIGHTWICK (Layzell), Pamela: 1950
AMHERST (Davies), Ann: 1951
ATKINSON (Alty), Janet: 1951
BARRY (Morris), Elaine: 1951
BUXTON (Aston), Margaret: 1951
EVANS (Wightwick), Sylvia: 1951
FARRIS, Dianne: 1951
FOX (Wheeler), Rosemary: 1951
GAZDZIK, Barbara: 1951
GREEN (Welch), Audrey: 1951
HARTMAN (Carter), Pauline: 1951
HICKS (Gander), Jennifer: 1951
JULIER (Johnson), Liz: 1951
LIPTON (Alis), Vera: 1951
MARSHALL (Woodcock), Pat: 1951
MIDDLETON (Hobbs), Ann: 1951
MOUGHTON (Parr), Elizabeth: 1951
RUTHERFORD, Jean: 1951
SCHACHTER (Hoysager), June: 1951
STOKES (Durham), Veronica: 1951
TUNSTALL (Mitchell), Olive: 1951
UNWIN (Steven), Monica: 1951
WHITE, Gillian: 1951
BAGLEY (Tong), Margaret: 1952
BULL (Fife), Anne: 1952
CHADWICK (Tomlins), Pat: 1952
COCKERILL (Brewer), Charlotte: 1952
COOK (Willcox), Betty: 1952
CROCKFORD (Brocklesby), Freda: 1952
FAIRN, Alison: 1952
HARMAN (Bridgeman), Erica: 1952
HOLLAND (Wilson), Valerie: 1952
MAKIN (Winchurch), Margaret: 1952
NEWMAN, Sarah: 1952
PICKERSGILL, Mary: 1952
REYNOLDS (Sullivan), Hilda: 1952
SECKER WALKER (Lea), Lorna: 1952
SHERWOOD (Briggs), Shirley: 1952
TOMKINSON (Minster), Norah: 1952
WILLIAMS, Joanne: 1952
WOOD (Gunning), Maureen: 1952
BROOKING-BRYANT (Walton), Audrey:
1953
DUNKLEY (Eastman), Shirley: 1953
ETTINGER (Instone-Gallop), Susan: 1953
EVANS (Trevithick), Elaine: 1953
GUNN (Hanna), Maureen: 1953
HOWARD, Christine: 1953
JESSIMAN (Smith), Maureen: 1953
JONES (Hughes), Barbara: 1953
LARKINS (Rees), Fay: 1953
LOUIS (Pickles), Judith: 1953
MACLEOD (Shone), Judith: 1953
ORSTEN, Elisabeth: 1953
PEELER (Wynne), Diana: 1953
PENWARDEN (Wright), Ruth: 1953
RENNIE, Jillian: 1953
REVELL, Elizabeth: 1953
ROSE (Clark), Sonia: 1953
SHERLOCK (Garland), Anne: 1953
STRINGER, M: 1953
TEMPERLEY (Flambert), Jane: 1953
ARNOLD (Roberts), Anthea: 1954
BEER (Thomas), Gillian: 1954
BEVERIDGE, Lindy: 1954
BOBERG (Sluce), Julia: 1954
BRUMFITT (Ford), Margaret: 1954
CAREY (Booth), Gillian: 1954
CARUS (Bishop), Sally: 1954
DOUGLAS (Mills), Audrey: 1954
EYSENBACH, Mary: 1954
FONTAINE (Fox), Marion: 1954
HEADLEY (Pinder), Mary: 1954
HILLS (Earl), Audrey: 1954
LEE (Stankiewicz), Krystyna: 1954
MCCRACKEN (Chavasse), Gabrielle:
1954
NEWSON (Dawson), Janet: 1954
NICHOLS (Cleave), Maureen: 1954
PIOTROW (Tilson), Phyllis: 1954
POLLINGER (Conquy), Gina: 1954
PULLAR-STRECKER (Fraser), Anne: 1954
REYNOLDS (Morton), Gillian: 1954
TAYLOR (Macadam), Helen: 1954
WHARTON (Mccloskey), Barbara: 1954
WOOD (Russell), Margaret: 1954
1955-59:
BROD (Sofaer), Jessica: 1955
CHARLTON (Nichols), Anne: 1955
CVIIC (Antrobus), Celia: 1955
GOSLING (Clayton), Margaret: 1955
HEWITT (Rogerson), Paula: 1955
LARNER (Dennison), Mary: 1955
LINTOTT (Stone), Dinah: 1955
MEEK, Christine: 1955
MOORE (Slocombe), Anne: 1955
OCKENDEN (Askwith), Ann: 1955
PATON (Hodgkinson), Anne: 1955
PATON WALSH (Bliss), Jill: 1955
PEIRCE (Hankinson), Margaret: 1955
REVILL (Radford), Ann: 1955
ROBERTSON, Valerie: 1955
SLOCOCK (Whitehead), Gilia: 1955
SMITH (Philpott), Christine: 1955
STEVENSON, Patricia: 1955
STODDART (Devereux), Frances: 1955
BETTS (Morgan), Valerie: 1956
CLARKE (Wood), Peggy: 1956
DAVIES (Mornement), Margaret: 1956
DAVISON (Le Brun), Pauline: 1956
DELANEY (Carrigan), Elizabeth: 1956
FANN, Bridget: 1956
HENNESSEY (Tildesley), Freda: 1956
HOME, Anna: 1956
LEWIS (Hughes), Pauline: 1956
MAGNE (Lisicky), Vera: 1956
MCMASTER (Fazan), Juliet: 1956
NEWELL, Margaret: 1956
NORTH (Chadwick), Stephanie: 1956
PATERSON (Hargreaves), Sylvia: 1956
POWELL, Helen: 1956
RUTTER, Mary: 1956
VARLEY (Stephenson), Gwendolen: 1956
BELL (Watt), Christine: 1957
BISPHAM (Gordon), Jennifer: 1957
BOYDE, Susan: 1957
CHRISTENFELD (Vincent-Daviss), Liddie:
1957
DRAPER (Fox), Heather: 1957
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Thank you
FLEMING (Newman), Joan: 1957
FUECKS (Ford-Smith), Rachel: 1957
GRAHAM (Portal), Mary: 1957
GRIFFIN (Dressler), Miriam: 1957
GRUNDY, Isobel: 1957
HOGG (Cathie), Anne: 1957
MANTLE (Gulliford), Wendy: 1957
MORETON (Stone), Jane: 1957
PARTRIDGE (Hughes), Joan: 1957
PATERSON, Mary: 1957
PHILLIPS (Simmonds), Anna: 1957
PRESTON (Haygarth), Barbara: 1957
RICHARDS (Gardiner), Rosalind: 1957
ROBERTS (Armitage), Judith: 1957
ROGISTER (Jury), Margaret: 1957
STEWART, Annabel: 1957
SYKES (Nicholson), Sue: 1957
BANNISTER (Taylor), Jean: 1958
COLLINS, Norma: 1958
FOWLER (Lloyd), Lorna: 1958
GEDDES (King), Anne: 1958
GOLDING (Bond), Jean: 1958
HAMBLETON (Salthouse), Mary: 1958
HARDY (Speller), Janet: 1958
KENWRICK, Patricia: 1958
MATTHIAS (Leuchars), Elizabeth: 1958
REES (Jones), Margaret: 1958
ROBINSON (Neal), Patricia: 1958
SCOTT (Groves), Miriam: 1958
SUMNER (Palmer), Gill: 1958
WHEELER, Heather: 1958
WOOD (Chatt), Sara: 1958
BARCLAY (Thomason), Sally: 1959
BERNSTEIN (Kidson), Sandra: 1959
BOTTOMS (Wenger), Janet: 1959
CAMERON (Ungoed Thomas),
Katherine: 1959
DE FREITAS, Frankie: 1959
EVEREST (Lupton), Diana: 1959
FINDLAY (Boast), Judith: 1959
GREENWAY (Denerley), Ann: 1959
GREY (Hughes), Mary: 1959
GRUFFYDD JONES (Woodhall),
114 .
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
Maureen: 1959
HASSAN (Gillespie), Moya: 1959
JONES, Grania: 1959
MERCER, Patricia: 1959
PATON, Sara: 1959
SAYCE (Papworth), Julia: 1959
VERRALL (Silvester), Peggy: 1959
VON BIBRA (Johnston), Berta: 1959
1960-64:
ANDREWS (Devonshire), Irene: 1960
BLATCHFORD (Rhodes), Barbara: 1960
BROOMHEAD (Lemon), Christine: 1960
CUTLER (Mccoll), Veronica: 1960
DUSINBERRE (Stainer), Juliet: 1960
JACKSON (Edenbrow), Anthea: 1960
JONES FINER, Catherine: 1960
NEVILLE (Clark), Susan: 1960
NEWLANDS (Raworth), Elizabeth: 1960
RAMBERG CADOGAN (Ramberg), Lucy:
1960
TATE (Hardy), Valerie: 1960
WHITELEY (Wilson), Linda: 1960
WILLIAM-POWLETT (Silk), Judith: 1960
WILLIAMSON (Hodson), Valerie: 1960
BRYANT (Chapman), Anne: 1961
COURT (Smith), Rosie: 1961
FORBES, Eda: 1961
KEOHANE (Overholser), Nannerl: 1961
KILLICK (Mason), Rachel: 1961
MANN (Ditchburn), Jill: 1961
PLEAT, Susan: 1961
REID (Massey), Su: 1961
RHYS (Plumbe), Leah: 1961
SHIPP (Nightingale), Phillida: 1961
VERE (Spalding), Jennifer: 1961
WATERHOUSE (Wraight), Virginia: 1961
YOUNG (Cowin), Pat: 1961
ARCHER (Weeden), Mary: 1962
COATES (Symons), Liz: 1962
COOK (Gisborne), Janet: 1962
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2010-11
DARNTON (Baker), Jane: 1962
DAVIDSON (Mussell), Jenny: 1962
EVANS (Kruse), Lesley: 1962
FREEMAN (Davies), Gillian: 1962
GRAVES, Lucia: 1962
HENDY (Rich), Jill: 1962
HITCHINGS (Adams), Nichola: 1962
HOWARD (Warren), Liz: 1962
MACE, Anne: 1962
PALMER (Allum), Marilyn: 1962
PEAGRAM (Jackson), Christine: 1962
SAUNDERS (Popham), Mary: 1962
SCHULTE (Gardner), Susan: 1962
SHEATHER (Hall), Judith: 1962
STUART (Garlant), Julia: 1962
WARD (Tubb), Christine: 1962
WHITE (Pippin), Ailsa: 1962
WILLIAMS (Ferguson), Fiona: 1962
ATKINSON (Pearson), Helen: 1963
BAINES (Smith), Jennifer: 1963
DAVIES (Jennings), Sheila: 1963
EDWARDS (Galbraith), Mary: 1963
HAGUE (Hannington), Judy: 1963
HARRIS (Dixon), Jenifer: 1963
LEECH (Bailey), Barbara: 1963
LIPSCOMB (Rickman), Christine: 1963
MOSS (Flowerdew), Barbara: 1963
PORRER (Dunkerley), Sheila: 1963
PRIDEAUX (Griffin), Elisabeth: 1963
RUSHTON (Jones), Virginia: 1963
SEYMOUR-RICHARDS (Seymour), Carol:
1963
STEVENS, Jane: 1963
TURNER (Chang), Mei Lin: 1963
BARRON (Taylor), Enid: 1964
CLARK (Balfour), Judy: 1964
ELLIS (Barber), Susanne: 1964
EVANS (Moss), Isabel: 1964
GERRY (Gibbon), Marilyn: 1964
GRIMOND (Fleming), Kate: 1964
HARRIS (Telfer), Judy: 1964
HIBBARD, Caroline: 1964
JULIAN (Whitworth), Celia: 1964
MALONE-LEE (Cockin), Claire: 1964
MANN, Gillian: 1964
MCCREDIE, Gillian: 1964
MILLER (Robertson), Mary: 1964
PACKER (Sellick), Sally: 1964
SOUTH (Hallett), Vivien: 1964
SPINKS (Wallis), Leila: 1964
SYMONS (Davidson), Judith: 1964
WAGNER, Rosemary: 1964
WOODLAND (Lockett), Christine: 1964
1965-69:
ALEXANDER (Holland), Marguerite: 1965
AXE (Roberts), Patricia: 1965
BAZLEY (Hainton), Joanna: 1965
BREEZE (Horsey), Fiona: 1965
BROWN (Lichfield Butler), Jane: 1965
DERKOW DISSELBECK (Derkow),
Barbara: 1965
DREW, Philippa: 1965
EMSON (Thompson), Rosemary: 1965
GALLANT (Cox), Rosamond: 1965
HAILE (Tovey), Helen: 1965
HANES (Foster), Katharine: 1965
HARVEY, Judith: 1965
JORDAN (Draper), Cheryl: 1965
KITSON, Clare: 1965
LE MESURIER (Armitage), Ruth: 1965
LUMLEY, Margaret: 1965
MOULT (Stanford), Jane: 1965
OGILVIE (Milne), Moira: 1965
ROOKE (Perrett), Anne: 1965
SKELTON, Judy: 1965
TAYLOR, June: 1965
WILSON (Szczepanik), Barbara: 1965
ALEXANDER (Bennett), Jane: 1966
BELDEN, Hilary: 1966
COLLIN (Barlow), Trixie: 1966
COOK (Clark), Cornelia: 1966
CURRAN (Stewart), Jane: 1966
EDWARDS (Kent), Pamela: 1966
Thank you
EDWARDS (Cuffe), Barbara: 1966
FISHER (Hibbard), Sophia: 1966
HALL (Wills), Caroline: 1966
HYDE (Davis), Ann: 1966
JOHNSON (Owens), Janet: 1966
JONES (Farror), Shelagh: 1966
LAMBLEY (Booth), Janet: 1966
LEE, Judy: 1966
MORRISON (Hammond), Penny: 1966
NEWILL (Sykes), Bridget: 1966
NICOLL (Sampson), Cathy: 1966
SULERI (Smith), Jane: 1966
WHITEN (Challoner), Susan: 1966
BUSH (Hainton), Julia: 1967
CARTER (Gracie), Isobel: 1967
COOTE, Hilary: 1967
HALLS (Pett), Judy: 1967
HARE, Diane: 1967
JEFFERSON, Ann: 1967
KEEGAN, Rachel: 1967
MARETT, Karen: 1967
RANDOLPH, Sarah: 1967
ROBINSON (Sutton), Jill: 1967
SCOTT-BARRETT (Lindley), Charlotte:
1967
WHELAN (Gray), Pamela: 1967
WYLIE, Fiona: 1967
ANDERSON, Jane: 1968
AXFORD, Shelagh: 1968
BENNETT (Yates), Catherine: 1968
BROWN (Harvey), Carolyn: 1968
BROWN, Elaine: 1968
CADWALLADER (Eckworth), Debby:
1968
COURT (Lacey), Liz: 1968
DEEBLE, Liz: 1968
FORBES, Anne: 1968
HOATH, Moira: 1968
HOLLAND (Tracy), Philippa: 1968
JOHNSTON (Maier), Susanna: 1968
KAVANAGH (Harries), Shirley: 1968
KENNA (Hamilton), Stephanie: 1968
KERSLAKE, Celia: 1968
LANNING (Creek), Rosemary: 1968
LAYCOCK (Laycock), Deborah: 1968
MOSES, Karin: 1968
O’SHEA, Pat: 1968
ROBINSON, Jancis: 1968
SWINDELLS, Heather: 1968
WILSON (Kilner), Anna: 1968
BRETT-HOLT, Alex: 1969
BYNOE (Robinson), Geraldine: 1969
ELY (Masters), Hilary: 1969
FERNER (Moss), Celia: 1969
FOSTER, Shirley: 1969
JONES (Duff), Pam: 1969
OWEN (Lytton), Stephanie: 1969
PAICE, Patsy: 1969
PREWETT (Nash), Rosalind: 1969
REEVE, Antonia: 1969
RICHARDS (Stubbings), Lucy: 1969
SHEPPARD (Raphael), Anne: 1969
SONDHEIMER (Hughes), Philippa: 1969
WILSON (Hay), Lindsay: 1969
WRIGHT, Joan: 1969
1970-74:
ASTON SMITH (Johnson), Julia: 1970
BRYCE, Jane: 1970
CHRISTIE (Fearneyhough), Sue: 1970
COCKEY (Ward), Katherine: 1970
DAVIES (Baxendale), Jane: 1970
GIBSON, Elizabeth: 1970
GOLODETZ (Cross), Patricia: 1970
HIGGS (Blackett, Nee John), Lyn: 1970
HUGHES (Marshall), Susan: 1970
KING, Rosanna: 1970
LEIGHTON, Monica: 1970
LLOYD-MORGAN, Ceridwen: 1970
MARRON, Carol: 1970
RAMSEY (Walker), Barbara: 1970
ROSE (Madden), Patricia: 1970
SHEPHERD (Cullingford), Christine: 1970
TEMPLEMAN (Davis), Lesley: 1970
TONKYN (Mcneice), Shelagh: 1970
WILKINSON (Spatchurst), Susan: 1970
ADAMS (Samuel), Kate: 1971
BOLTON-MAGGS (Blundell Jones), Paula:
1971
BOWDEN (Gaskell), Mary: 1971
CLARKE, Felicity: 1971
DARLINGTON (Hill), Moira: 1971
DELANEY, Christine: 1971
DORNHORST, Anne: 1971
GROUT (Berkeley), Anne: 1971
HARNETT (Turner), Penelope: 1971
HATFIELD (Bratton), Penny: 1971
JENKINS (Hulme), Caroline: 1971
JOSEPH (Milloy), Anne: 1971
LAWLESS (Freeston), Sally: 1971
LEANSE (Farrell), Vicky: 1971
MINIKIN (Kennedy), Gillian: 1971
NASMYTH (Mieszkis), Lalik: 1971
OSBORNE (Neal), Joelle: 1971
PAUL (Driver), Anne: 1971
ROWLANDS, Helen: 1971
WALKER, Margaret: 1971
WEDDERBURN (MaclaganWedderburn), Mary-Louise: 1971
ARCHER (George), Andrea: 1972
BIGGS (Perrin), Lynn: 1972
BURGE (Adams), Susan: 1972
CLAYMAN, Michelle: 1972
FALLON (Geldart), Kathleen: 1972
FOISTER, Susan: 1972
GIBSON, Anna: 1972
GOWER (Ellis), Pauline: 1972
IRONTON (Montgomery), Frances: 1972
MAUDE, Gilly: 1972
NAUGHTIE (Updale), Ellie: 1972
O’CONNOR, Marian: 1972
ONSLOW (Owen), Jane: 1972
ORMEROD (Tudor Hart), Penny: 1972
PEARCE, Shirley: 1972
SZWER, Gita: 1972
THOMAS (Struthers), Doreen: 1972
WILLIAMS, Mary: 1972
BARRETT, Jane: 1973
CLARKE, Aileen: 1973
DYE (Shrimpton), Alyss: 1973
ELLERY, Susan: 1973
GRANT (Ward), Melanie: 1973
GRIFFITHS (Whittingham), Susan: 1973
HUGHES-STANTON, Penelope: 1973
KNOX, Bernadette: 1973
LE PAGE (Inge), Susan: 1973
LEWIS (Glazebrook), Jane: 1973
MAIR (O’Connor), Margaret: 1973
MARSACK, Robyn: 1973
MORGAN (Egan), Clare: 1973
NORTON (Gordon), Claire: 1973
SETCHIM (Andrews), Elizabeth: 1973
SIMON (Holmes), Jane: 1973
TOVEY (Williams), Maureen: 1973
WILLIAMS (Revell), Shirley: 1973
ANSLOW (Pick), Anne: 1974
ASHLEY, Jackie: 1974
BARRINGER, Terry: 1974
CEBULA (Tamplin), Lindsey: 1974
CHLEBOUN (Wyvill), Carol: 1974
CLAYDEN (Dew), Ann: 1974
GILLINGWATER (Davies), Helen: 1974
HASLER (Abbott), Judith: 1974
HOOKER (Dussek), Gillian: 1974
LOGAN, Ruth: 1974
MCGHEE (Kingham), Helen: 1974
MOYNIHAN (Hazon), Judith: 1974
NORTON (Pirkis), Anne: 1974
OVEY, Elizabeth: 1974
PEARSON (Lewis), Alison: 1974
PENNINGTON (Durham), Jane: 1974
ROWSWELL, Ann: 1974
TAPLIN (Canning), Angela: 1974
THOMAS (Covington), Anne: 1974
VODDEN, Debbie: 1974
VON WULFFEN (Mazurkiewicz), Anna: 1974
WHEATER (Jones), Bella: 1974
WILLETTS (Ferreras), Maria: 1974
. 115
Thank you
1975-79:
ASHLEY, Kate: 1975
ASTLES, Rosemary: 1975
BAATZ (Watson), Yvonne: 1975
BARDSLEY (Riddell), Kate: 1975
BENHAM (Jenkins), Glynda: 1975
BERNSTEIN, Judith: 1975
CASSIDY (Rhind), Catriona: 1975
CHARMAN (Rees), Stella: 1975
CLEMENTS, Valerie: 1975
CLOUT, Imogen: 1975
COHEN, Shelly: 1975
DEY, Jennifer: 1975
ELLIS (Eton), Rachel: 1975
FREEDMAN (Woolfson), Hadassa: 1975
HALL, Jan: 1975
HARRISON, Carol: 1975
HUGHES, Rosaleen: 1975
KITCHER, Lucy: 1975
LANDOR, Gina: 1975
MCCLENAGHAN, Pauline: 1975
MICKLEM, Ros: 1975
MURPHY (Braune), Lindsey: 1975
NAUGHTON (Cope), Jane: 1975
NUSSEY (Railton), Victoria: 1975
PITT (Lewandowska), Diana: 1975
SZCZEPANIK (Murray), Lynette: 1975
WOOD, Lucy: 1975
ALMOND, Catherine: 1976
ASHFORD (Leadbeater), Jean: 1976
BOERMA-COLLIER, Pauline: 1976
BOWMAN (Ward), Christine: 1976
BRUCE-GARDNER (Hand-Oxborrow),
Veronica: 1976
CLARKE, Mary: 1976
GENT, Lizzie: 1976
GEORGESON (Owen), Jan: 1976
GORNALL, Gill: 1976
HOLMES (Wood), Hilary: 1976
INGRAM, Jackie: 1976
JACOBUS, Laura: 1976
LEPPARD (Allen), Jo: 1976
LIGHTLEY (Edwards), Janice: 1976
116 .
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
.
MANWEILER (O’Keeffe), Isabel: 1976
MILNER (Land), Jill: 1976
RAWLE, Frances: 1976
RICHARDS (Machin), Gillian: 1976
STANDELL (Marchment), Lesley: 1976
SUGRUE (Janaway), Meg: 1976
THOMPSON (Lomas), Vivian: 1976
WOOLLEY, Polly: 1976
BEVIS (Bevis), Jane: 1977
CHESTERFIELD, Jane: 1977
CONSTANTINE (Leith), Jo: 1977
CUMMINS (Chapman), Ann: 1977
GRIFFITHS, Hannah: 1977
HOBBS (Galani), Efrosyni: 1977
HURRY (Williams), Olwen: 1977
JAMES (Lucas), Cherry: 1977
KENRICK, Ann: 1977
LLOYD (Chanter), Catherine: 1977
MCKINNON, Christine: 1977
NICHOLSON (Smith), Emma: 1977
NIGHTINGALE, Linda: 1977
O’BRIEN, Sue: 1977
O’DONNELL, Claire: 1977
PEARSON, Rosanna: 1977
PECKHAM (Rogers), Ginny: 1977
PETTINGER (Abbott), Kirsty: 1977
PHILIPS (Palmer), Wendy: 1977
PRESTON, Claire: 1977
RYAN, Fran: 1977
SALTER, Catherine: 1977
SMITH, Elizabeth: 1977
WALKER (Moorse), Christine: 1977
WELLER, Isobel: 1977
WRIGHT, Ellen: 1977
CARSON, Denise: 1978
DAVIS (Davis), Kelly: 1978
FISHER, Elizabeth: 1978
GIBSON (Walters), Melanie: 1978
HAZLEWOOD, Judith: 1978
ISARD (Mccloghry), Nicky: 1978
JAGGER (Capel), Judith: 1978
KEEBLE (Jaques), Helen: 1978
LITTLE, Tamasin: 1978
THE SHIP
.
2010-11
LYONS (Parker), Felicity: 1978
MCGUINNESS, Catherine: 1978
MICKLEM, Judith: 1978
NEALE (Lunghi), Xanthe: 1978
NEVRKLA (John), Sara: 1978
OVEREND (Old), Sarah: 1978
PHILLIPS, Susie: 1978
ROBINSON (Gifford), Elizabeth: 1978
ST JOHN-HALL (Browne), Anne: 1978
TUFFS, Helen: 1978
WATTS, Felicity: 1978
WESSEL WALKER (Wessel), Donna: 1978
BARNARD (Langford), Caroline: 1979
BARNES (Gould), Amanda: 1979
CRISP, Roger: 1979
DRYHURST, Clare: 1979
DYE, Julian: 1979
FARQUHAR (Bradbury), Ann: 1979
FAUX (Cook), Penelope: 1979
GILES (Jones), Amanda: 1979
HARDY (Hurst), Alison: 1979
HILL (Topping), Janis: 1979
O’GRADY (Archer), Yasmin: 1979
PICKFORD (Atkin), Gillian: 1979
POMFRET (Pearson), Carole: 1979
RALPHSON (Wightwick), Helen: 1979
ROBINSON, Crispin: 1979
SCOTT (Wilkinson), Veronica: 1979
STAINER, Mike: 1979
STAUFENBERG (Hill-Wilson), Penelope:
1979
VERNON (Mcardle), Sarah: 1979
YATES (Haddon), Madeleine: 1979
1980-84:
BAKER, John: 1980
BODDINGTON, Andrew: 1980
CAREY, Juliet: 1980
CLARKE (Hopper), Wendy: 1980
CUBBON, Alan: 1980
DENNEY (Bancroft), Louise: 1980
EMERY, Dominic: 1980
GARVEY, Stephen: 1980
GAUL, Pat: 1980
HALSTEAD, Jonathan: 1980
LAILEY (Nicholson-Lailey), Janet: 1980
LATTO, Andrew: 1980
MAYO, Timothy: 1980
MONTGOMERY, Bill: 1980
MYERS (Pye), Kathryn: 1980
NICOLSON, Mark: 1980
PARKMAN, Timothy: 1980
ROBERTS (Stiff), Nicholas: 1980
SHAKOOR, Sameena: 1980
STACEY, Martin: 1980
THYNNE, Jane: 1980
TITCOMB, Lesley: 1980
WALKER (Gatheral), Anne: 1980
WILLIAMS, Anne: 1980
WOOD, Edward: 1980
BRODIE, Pete: 1981
BURNS, Julian: 1981
DALLEY, Grahame: 1981
DAYMOND, Andrew: 1981
DUMBILL, Simon: 1981
HAMMOND (Wright), Helen: 1981
JENKINS (Bannister), Catherine: 1981
LOVERIDGE (Knight), Fiona: 1981
MILL, Cherry: 1981
MONAGHAN, Elizabeth: 1981
NUGEE (Browne), Judith: 1981
NUGEE, Andrew: 1981
ORR (Lloyd-Sherlock), Jane: 1981
TANEGA (Donnelly), Kara: 1981
TAYLOR, Jeffrey: 1981
WILLIAMS, Edmund: 1981
ARTINGSTALL, David: 1982
COLE-BAILEY, Marc: 1982
EDWARDS, David: 1982
ENGLAND, Richard: 1982
FILER (Bernstein), Wendy: 1982
GEM, Mark: 1982
GRAHAM, Mark: 1982
HORROCKS, Richard: 1982
Thank you
HUGHES, Simon: 1982
KHANGURA, Jasbir: 1982
KING, Martin: 1982
MOSS, Imogen: 1982
NACHOOM (Wiener), Sharron: 1982
ROCHFORD (Shields), Deirdre: 1982
SEAGER, Edward: 1982
VERCOE (Cowling), Henrietta: 1982
WINGFIELD, Caroline: 1982
ALLUM, Gina: 1983
GODFREY, David: 1983
GUY, Wesley: 1983
PARKER, Helen: 1983
SCOTT, Alastair: 1983
SHAIL, Robin: 1983
SMITH (Howells), Carole: 1983
STONE, Edward: 1983
SWINFEN, Sally: 1983
CITRON (Smith), Emma: 1984
CITRON, Zachary: 1984
DUMBILL (Weiss), Charlotte: 1984
EMANUEL, David: 1984
FLUCK, Ghislaine: 1984
FOGGO, Andrew: 1984
GALLANT, Julian: 1984
GOUGH (Cobham), Catherine: 1984
HEWITT, Peter: 1984
HOBBS (Hooper), Lucy: 1984
HOLME (Simon), Philippa: 1984
HOPKINSON, Christopher: 1984
INNES, Chris: 1984
LAWRENCE, Kerry: 1984
LAWRENCE, John: 1984
MACKAY (Firth), Helen: 1984
MCFARLANE, Isobel: 1984
MILLETT, Peter: 1984
ORR, Frank: 1984
STARLING, Alison: 1984
WILSON (Latham/Hill), Kate: 1984
WORT, John: 1984
1985-89:
ATKINS (Parsons), Sarah: 1985
BELL, Andrew: 1985
EADES, Cynda: 1985
HART, Christopher: 1985
NUNN (Bright), Anne: 1985
O’NEILL COLLINS, Cynthia: 1985
STEVENSON (Short), Fiona: 1985
WHITE, Richard: 1985
ADEBIYI, John: 1986
CHOWDHURY, Mohammad: 1986
DONALD, St John: 1986
EATON (Cockerill), Sara: 1986
FAWCETT, Susan: 1986
GREENWAY (Pedley), Sarah: 1986
GREGORY, Vanessa: 1986
GRIFFIN, Oliver: 1986
HANSFORD, Paul: 1986
POLLITT, Graham: 1986
SANDERSON, Andrew: 1986
SCOTT, Andrew: 1986
STREET, Michael: 1986
TURNER (Griffiths), Clare: 1986
BERRY, Duncan: 1987
BURROWS, Peter: 1987
HITCHINGS, Katharine: 1987
HOWARD, Andrew: 1987
ISAAC, Daniel: 1987
KENNEDY, Iain: 1987
NUTTALL, Callum: 1987
ROBERTS, James: 1987
THORNLEY (Gluning), Rachel: 1987
URMSTON, Richard: 1987
WHITWORTH, Michael: 1987
WILLIAMS, David: 1987
BRETTELL, Francesca: 1988
FAZZIO (Davies), Sarah: 1988
GALLAGHER, Mark: 1988
GOUNDEN ROCK (Rock), Alyson: 1988
MULLEN, Anne: 1988
NOSWORTHY, Tim: 1988
PARR, Simone: 1988
RILEY, Simon: 1988
TSANG, Heman: 1988
WILLIAMS, Simon: 1988
FAULKES (McNeile), Fiona: 1989
FULTON, Guy: 1989
GAWTHORPE, Andrew: 1989
HAYNES, Gavin: 1989
HAYTON, Michael: 1989
JARMAN, Richard: 1989
LAUGHTON, Stephen: 1989
LITTLE, Karen: 1989
MCCARTHY, Andrew: 1989
MORGAN, Robert: 1989
PAGE, Joanne: 1989
STEPHENSON (Gratton), Dawn: 1989
SWANN, Simon: 1989
WIECK, Robert: 1989
1990-94:
ALEXANDER, Danny: 1990
BROWNE, Andrew: 1990
BUCKRELL (Mason), Jo: 1990
CLEMENTS, Sam: 1990
DONOVAN, Paul: 1990
GAWTHORPE (Farmer), Michele: 1990
GIRARDET (Schafer), Ruth: 1990
JAMES (Kramer), Rebecca: 1990
SCHMIDT, Simon: 1990
SLATER, Shane: 1990
TRUESDALE (Upton), Alexandra: 1990
WAREHAM, David: 1990
WARNER, Steven: 1990
WINKLER, Bernhard: 1990
AARON, Rachel: 1991
BATES, Jonathan: 1991
BREWARD, Chris: 1991
GASKELL, Alexander: 1991
GEDAY (Long), Amanda: 1991
HUGHES, Benedict: 1991
INGHAM, David: 1991
JAMIESON, Sheila: 1991
KHAWAJA, Nasir: 1991
LOUGHLIN-CHOW, Clare: 1991
MILLS (Davies), Catherine: 1991
PRICE, Fiona: 1991
PROBERT, Rebecca: 1991
SHAPIRO, Leonid: 1991
SIAME, Sebako: 1991
SOLOMON, Daniel: 1991
VASSILIOU, Evelthon: 1991
BECK, Sarah: 1992
BOOTH, Heather: 1992
BROWN, Camilla: 1992
CHARLESWORTH, Edward: 1992
CHEA, Henry: 1992
ENDEAN, James: 1992
HAMMOND, Ben: 1992
HARRIS, Robert: 1992
INNES, Duncan: 1992
KILLEEN (Fenton), Louise: 1992
LEVENE, Michelle: 1992
MCDOWALL, Alex: 1992
MOODY, Antony: 1992
MOORE, Matthew: 1992
MORGAN, Rhydian: 1992
NICHOLSON, Paul: 1992
O’MAHONY, Andrew: 1992
PUTTOCK, Neil: 1992
ROBSON, James: 1992
SCROOP, Daniel: 1992
WEBB, Matthew: 1992
BOWLEY, John: 1993
CARTER, Jamie: 1993
COLVILLE, Johnny: 1993
DUNCAN, Garreth: 1993
KINGSTON, Charles: 1993
MYATT, Sarah: 1993
PATEL, Alpesh: 1993
SOPER, Julian: 1993
STEPHENS, Daniel: 1993
TIMPSON (Still), Julia: 1993
BAKER, Simon: 1994
BARTLEY, Aidan: 1994
BREAKS (Pritchard), Amanda: 1994
BROWN (Page), Sarah: 1994
. 117
Thank you
CHOW, Martin: 1994
DAMIRI, Lahcen: 1994
DEXTER, Alexander: 1994
HAMPSON (Makepeace), Anna: 1994
HOOPER, Andrew: 1994
HUGGARD, Patrick: 1994
LLOYD, Matt: 1994
PERTHEN, Joanna: 1994
PETER, Kai: 1994
WEST, Colin: 1994
WRIGHT, Nicholas: 1994
YOUNG, Geoff: 1994
MILNE (Clay), Eleanor: 1996
ROGERS, Andrew: 1996
SUTERWALLA, Azeem: 1996
WILES, Michael: 1996
WILLIAMS, Vanessa: 1996
WOLTON, Jonathan: 1996
WULWIK, Kevin: 1996
BARBER, Wesley: 1997
BEAUCHAMP, Rose: 1997
DONOHUE, Joseph: 1997
HADDAD, William: 1997
HEARN (Allton), Sarah: 1997
KANJI, Gulzar: 1997
PAJAK, Mark: 1997
PHILLIPS, Daniel: 1997
PURCHASE, Mathew: 1997
SARGEANT, Anna: 1997
THOMAS, Gemma: 1997
WARREN, Joseph: 1997
WILLIAMS, Charlotte: 1997
BUCKNALL, Christopher: 1998
BUTT, Sarah: 1998
EVANS, Joanna: 1998
EWART, Isobel: 1998
GEORGANTA, Fonteini: 1998
LEE, Moon: 1998
O’BRIEN, Stephen: 1998
PATEL, Priyen: 1998
STONE, Chris: 1998
TAPSON, James: 1998
WESTON, Daniel: 1998
WHITE (Mcintosh), Claire: 1998
CAYLEY, Emma: 1999
COPESTAKE, Phillip: 1999
DAVID, Huw: 1999
DUNBAR, Polly: 1999
HALLWOOD, Janie: 1999
HENRY, Simon: 1999
JENKINS, Gwyn: 1999
SINGER, Adam: 1999
SMALLEY (Woolley), Sarah: 1999
SWIRE, Hugh: 1999
WALKER, Ben: 1999
1995-99:
ALLEN-PENNEBAKER (Pennebaker),
Betsy: 1995
BAER, Jan-Jaap: 1995
COTTINGHAM, Faye: 1995
DIXON, Clare: 1995
HALL, Imogen: 1995
HAYAT, Jameel: 1995
INNES-KER, Duncan: 1995
KLINGNER, Jacob: 1995
MAN, Bernard: 1995
ROLFE, Jeremy: 1995
ROSSAN, Benjamin: 1995
ROYDON, Karen: 1995
RUSSELL-MITRA, James: 1995
SABHARWAL, Naveen: 1995
URCH, Lynn: 1995
ASHLEY (Nevill), Sarah: 1996
BARKER, Natalie: 1996
BOURNE, Jon: 1996
BRYSON, Andrew: 1996
CAMPBELL-COLQUHOUN, Toby: 1996
COLVILLE, Edward: 1996
CRICHTON (Hunter), Ele: 1996
DAVIES, Mike: 1996
HENDERSON, Sally: 1996
HOULDING, Mark: 1996
INGRAM, Jonathan: 1996
118 .
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
.
THE SHIP
.
2010-11
WATTS, Catherine: 1999
2000-present:
BROOKES, Victoria: 2000
CARVOUNIS, Katerina: 2000
CASTLO, Paul: 2000
DALLISON (Glover), Olivia: 2000
EVSEEV, Anton: 2000
LEWIS, Diana: 2000
MALIN, Nigel: 2000
NEWMAN, Terry: 2000
SARAFOPOULOS, Constantine: 2000
WAGNER, Adam: 2000
WITTER, Mark: 2000
DYKE, Chris: 2001
MARLOW, Julia: 2001
MCDEVITT, Joseph: 2001
OPOTOWSKY, Stuart: 2001
ROBERTS, Sara: 2001
ROBINS, John: 2001
SHIPMAN (Carter), Shirley: 2001
UHIARA, Okezika: 2001
CHIN, Edward: 2002
DEVENPORT, Richard: 2002
FEDYNA, Bill: 2002
FOX, Sebastian: 2002
HARDING, Catherine: 2002
JESSOP, David: 2002
MATZIE, Steve: 2002
PRICHARD, Lorna: 2002
SHERRINGTON, Richard: 2002
TUCKER, Matthew: 2002
WILDY, Samuel: 2002
ATKIN, Lara: 2003
ROGERS, James: 2003
WYATT, Nicholas: 2003
GARBETT, Briony: 2004
LALLY, Jagjeet: 2004
MARTINDALE (Berry), Rebekah: 2004
ALPHEY, Nina: 2005
PENG, Hao: 2005
RAMSDEN, Isobel: 2005
SEATON, Emma: 2005
SMITH, Barry: 2005
BONHAM, Sarah: 2006
CLARKE, Stephen: 2006
GREENE, Hannah: 2006
HARRISON, Will: 2008
NISTOR, Ligia: 2008
Parents: AIDAM, Edward & Edla
ANDERSON, Clive & Jane
ANGELINI, Marco & Jane
ANTWI-BOASIAKO, Stephen & Sandra
ARDREY, Raymond & Lynne
ASHTON, Roderic & Julie
BALL & BOYES, David & Alison
BARRETT, Ian & Anne
BARTHOLOMEW, Clive & Julie
BATES, Chris & Rosemary
BECKETT, Michael & Deirdre
BELTON, Kevin & Valerie
BIRTLE, Martin & Alison
BLACKWOOD, Roger & Libby
BLYGHTON, Alan & Geraldine
BOA, Eric & Frances
BOOTH, Ian & Penny
BRAIDWOOD, Julian & Lynne
BRIERLEY & ISAAC, David & Louise
BRUNTON, Timothy & Anna
BURGESS, Benjamin & Nicola
CAPLE, Leslie & Alyson
CARR, Simon & Paola
CARTER, Andrew & Eileen
CARTER, Nigel & Isobel
CEARNS, Anthony & Alison
CHOW, Terry
COX, Michael & Judi
CUKIER, Gerard & Dana
CURRY, Nicholas & Paula
DAVIES, Huw & Siân
Thank you
DAVIES & COTTER, Rhodri & Margie
DEVEREUX, Robert & Margaret
DIXON, John & Sheila
DIXON,
DONOHOE, Peter & Bernadette
DUFFY, David & Heather
DUSTAGHEER, Hamad & Angela
EDWARDS, Paul & Jacqueline
ELKINS, Neil & Hilary
EVANS, Gwyn & Elena
EVANS, John & Catherine
FAULKNER, Mark & Fiona
FINNEGAN, Frank & Christine
FLANDERS, Paul & Jackie
FLEMING, Mark & Elspeth
FOWLER, Nick & Sue
FOX, A J & A M
GOLDHILL, Michael & Carolyn
GREANEY, Declan & Andrea
HAMBLEN, Nicholas & Kate
HARMAN, Michael & Janet
HAWLEY, David & Helen
HINDLE, Gerald & Pauline
HOOPER, David & Caroline
HOUGHTON, Adele
HUGHES, Linda
HUNT, Tim & Ann
JACKSON, Anthony & Marilyn
JACKSON, Richard & Alison
JARDINE, Paul & Ruth
JONES, Richard & Jane
JOSEPH, Charles & Yasuko
KELLY, Vince & Marie
KHNG, Pauline
KYNASTON, David & Lucy
LAWRENCE, Patrick & Lucinda
LEE, Ian & Stephanie
LEVY, Marcia
LEWIS, David & Helen
LLOYD, John
LOBO, Colin & Susan
MARRIOTT, Robert & Helen
MARTIN, Ralph & Judith
MCDEVITT, Joseph & Won Young
MCKERNAN, Anne
MCMAHON & MORRISSEY, Madeleine
& Alan
MELLON, Andrew & Susan
MODI, Jitendra & Daksha
MOELLER, Ruediger & Hannecore
MONAGHAN, Sean & Kathy
MORRISON, Gordon & Barbara
NEHR, Karen
NICHOL, Zain & Elaine
O’BRIEN, Frances
O’KEEFFE, Bernard & Jo
O’LEARY, Anthony & Shailja
PATEL, Mahesh & Sami
PATEL, Raj & Darshna
PATRICK, Tony & Rachel
PATTEN, Jaya & Blanche
PERKINS, Russell & Alison
PERKINS, Tony & Caroline
PHILLIPS, David & Angela
PIECH, Chris & Kasia
PREUSS & BERTRAN, Andreas &
Cristina
RAMSDEN, John & Jane
REEVES, Tony
RICHARDS, Derek & Veronica
ROBIN, Philip & Claire
ROOKE, Edward & Wendy
ROYLE, Kenneth & Kathryn
RUSSELL, Alexander & Libby
RYAN & O’BRIEN, Denis & Eta
SAGE, Ian & Dinah
SCOTT, Craig & Elizabeth
SCOTT, Jon & Di
SEVER, Peter & Judith
SHELLARD, Malcolm & Ann
SHELLEY, Sue
SHEPHERD & MAINE, Neil & Patricia
SIMPSON, David & Dee Dee
SONLEY, Michael & Valerie
STANGER, Debra
STOCK, Richard & Caroline
SUMNER, Tony
TRAYNOR, Andy
TSANG, Steven & Grace
VEDPATHAK, Vinit
VUKCEVIC, Milivoje & Penny
WARING, Mark & Sarah
WINTER, John & Irene
WOOD, John
YADIN, Jonathan & Susan
YEOH, Seok Hong & Kathleen Chew
ZIGMOND, David
Friends:
BROWN, Vicky
CAMPBELL, Quentin
CLOTHIER, Liza
CUTTING, Geraldine
FINK, John
FOARD, Christine
FOX, Hazel
GARDAM, Tim
HAVELL, Jane
HUGHES, John & Vi
KEYMER, Thomas
KNOTT, Eric
KRELLE, Jack
LIPTON, Lini
NIXON, Gill
OWEN, Sally
PATTISSON, John
ROBERTSON, Christine
SMITH, Godfrey
STOYE, Enid
THOMPSON, Ruth
WALSH, John
WILLETS, David
Organisations and charitable trusts:
ASM Bristol & West of England Branch
ASM Cambridge Branch
ASM North East Branch
Stillpoint Fund
The Atkin Foundation
Tsuzuki University
William Brake Charitable Trust
Legacy Gifts:
We also record our gratitude to the
following alumnae and friends who
left gifts to the College in their wills:
Margaret Gwynneth Key, 1929 (£500)
Gillian Trenchard Daphne Pickard, 1939
(£567)
Edythe Rowena Williams (Cullen), 1941
(£100)
Beatrice Dorothy Bowen, 1945 (£5,000)
Nancy Raymonde Edwards (Briggs),
1949 (£5,000)
Gwynneth Margaret Matthews
(£26348)
Mervyn Trenaman (£50,000)
Marjorie Barley, 1947 (£126,000)
The Plumer Society has been founded
to acknowledge and thank those who
inform the College of their decision to
include a gift to St Anne’s in their will.
It currently numbers 187 members
(some of whom have asked not to be
listed):
SMITH (Hammer), Kate: 1958
ALPHEY, Nina: 2005
HUDSON, Julie: 1975
MUNRO, Rob: 1982
FOWLER (Burley), Elizabeth: 1957
KIRK-WILSON (Matthews), Ruth: 1963
LAWLESS (Freeston), Sally: 1971
FRANK (Hoar), Thessa: 1951
CHADD, Linda: 1967
DEECH (Fraenkel), Ruth: 1962
BYNOE (Robinson), Geraldine: 1969
GROCOCK, Anne: 1965
JULIAN (Whitworth), Celia: 1964
. 119
Thank you
BREWARD, Chris: 1991
KHURSANDI (Strange), Diana: 1960
KAYE, Elaine: 1948
JONES (Smith), Elizabeth: 1962
JOHNSTONE, Harry
BUSH (Hainton), Julia: 1967
THURLOW (Yarker), Molly: 1949
POUNTNEY, Rosemary: 1969
WAGNER, Rosemary: 1964
DARNTON (Baker), Jane: 1962
CLARK, Ailsa: 1944
DONALD, Margaret: 1950
BONSOR, Ann: 1946
ROWE, Barbara: 1942
HALE, Barbara: 1948
HILTON, Catherine: 1965
DOWDALL, Deb: 1974
GLYNNE, Dilys: 1948
ALDWORTH, Elizabeth: 1940
COSH, Mary: 1946
NIXON, Gill
FORSTER, Helen: 1946
MOTTERSHEAD, Hester: 1941
THOMPSON, Jean: 1942
HARDCASTLE, Margaret: 1954
RENNIE, Jillian: 1953
CARTER, Joan: 1942
SHENTON, Joan: 1961
SKELTON, Judy: 1965
HALL, Kathleen: 1941
LEWIS, Keri: 1947
BOGGIS, Margaret: 1940
LANG, Margaret: 1944
WHEELER, Heather: 1958
MARSLAND, Pauline: 1947
MARKS, Winifred: 1944
ROBINSON, Crispin: 1979
PATTISSON, John
MANN, Paul: 1988
LLOYD, Peter: 1983
JARMAN, Richard: 1989
HUZZEY, Clement & Christine: 2001
THIRLWELL (Goldman), Angela: 1966
120 .
ST ANNE’S COLLEGE
MIDDLETON (Hobbs), Ann: 1951
SPOKES SYMONDS (Spokes), Ann: 1944
MOTTERSHEAD (Roberts), Ann: 1977
COLVILE (Watson), Anne: 1938
PATON (Hodgkinson), Anne: 1955
SHAND (Abbott), Anne: 1952
MOORE (Slocombe), Anne: 1955
BURTT (Waite), Audrey: 1942
PEOVER (Handscomb), Brenda: 1959
TJOA (Chinn), Carole: 1965
POMFRET (Pearson), Carole: 1979
HYDE, Caroline: 1988
WALTER (Chipperfield), Christina: 1954
HARRIS (Cavenagh), Kirsty: 1946
SPEIRS (Fox), Christine: 1947
BRIDGART (Arkell), Christine: 1943
TURNER (Griffiths), Clare: 1986
FOX, Clemency: 1956
JACKSON (Mansergh), Deborah: 1953
HONORE (Duncan), Deborah: 1948
KING (Haines), Dorothea: 1933
OWEN (Sammons), Dorothy: 1943
CARTER (Palmer), Elise: 1942
GREENWAY (Denerley), Ann: 1959
HUNT (Siddell), Ann: 1963
NEWLANDS (Raworth), Elizabeth: 1960
MOUGHTON (Parr), Elizabeth: 1951
KNOWLES (Watkins), June: 1946
MCDONNELL (Phillips), Marie-Louise: 1971
CRAGOE (Elmer), Elizabeth: 1950
LARKINS (Rees), Fay: 1953
ROBINSON (Truman), Nell: 1964
COX (Ware), Frances: 1968
BURTON (Heveningham Pughe), Frances:
1960
O’FLYNN (Brewster), Hazel: 1946
SIMON (Holmes), Jane: 1973
PICKLES (Wilson), Janet: 1953
MCEWAN (Ogilvy), Lindsay: 1940
FLINT (Parker), Joy: 1946
LACEY (Aykroyd), Juliet: 1962
COO (Spink), Kathryn: 1972
EVANS (Kruse), Lesley: 1962
.
THE SHIP
.
2010-11
MURDIN (Milburn), Lesley: 1960
MASSEY (Glaser), Lili: 1967
WRAY (Beale), Pip: 1935
STANTON (Beech), Mandy: 1981
YOUNG (Tucker), Margaret: 1949
PAWLEY (Herbertson), Margaret: 1948
MONROE (Burgess), Joan: 1941
CRANE (Begley), Meg: 1965
TRICKER (Poole), Marilyn: 1964
JESSIMAN (Smith), Maureen: 1953
ORR (Stones), Muriel: 1944
BALLARD (Davies), Romie: 1944
BAKER (Gibbon), Ruth: 1955
PACKER (Sellick), Sally: 1964
REVILL (Radford), Ann: 1955
FISHER (Hibbard), Sophia: 1966
FOREMAN (Kremer), Susan: 1957
YATES (Crashaw), Sue: 1967
MAGNE (Lisicky), Vera: 1956
RUSHTON (Jones), Virginia: 1963
WELLS (Lehmann), Yvonne: 1944
FOX (Gaunt), Yvonne: 1934
HOME, Anna: 1956
BELDEN, Hilary: 1966
JACK, Susan: 1970
PERRIAM (Brech), Wendy: 1958
LARMOUTH, John & Carole: 2003
ORSTEN, Elisabeth: 1953
FLEMING (Newman), Joan: 1957
BELL, Sister Dorothy: 1951
BUXTON (Aston), Margaret: 1951
Library Donations and Gifts
Gifts of their own work have been
received from Nabih Abdelmalek, Carole
Angier, Juliet Barker, Pathompong
Bodhiprasiddhinand, Andrew Briggs,
Liam D’Arcy Brown, Frances Burton,
Kenneth Fincham, Anne Fleming,
Gwendoline Godfrey, Penelope Harnett,
J.T. Hughes, Edmund Ions, Anthea
Jackson, Nannerl Keohane, Jacob
Klingner, Mark Leech, Matthew Leigh,
Patrick McGuinness, Fabienne
Marchand, Christine Meek, Marie-Louise
von Motesiczky Charitable Trust,
National Institute of Education,
Singapore, Wendy Perriam, Diane Peters,
Mary Pickersgill, Frances Presley, Hazel
Rossotti, Constantine Sandis, Shirley
Sherwood, Carolyn Shread, Sally
Shuttleworth, Franklin Smith, Martin
Speight, Ann Spokes Symonds, Pauline
Stainer, Angela Thirlwell, Jane Thynne,
Lynn Urch, Isabel Vasseur, and Jean Ward.
Other gifts have been received from
Jane Annesley in memory of her mother
Clare Veronica Holder, anonymous staff
member in memory of Margaret Ball,
David Benjamin, Anna Biegun, Huilin
Chin, Codrington Library, All Souls
College, Huw Davies, Lauren Davies, Field
Fisher Waterhouse, Peter Ghosh, Imogen
Goold, Edmund Ions, John Lawlor in
memory of Helen Flint, Matthew Leigh,
Nicholas Mayer, Patrick McGuinness,
Isabella McIntyre, Winifred Marks, Steve
Martin, Gill Nixon in memory of
Elizabeth Swinburne, Terry
O’Shaughnessy, David Pyle, Crispin
Robinson, Tulika Sen, David Smith, M.G.
Speirs, Sally Speirs, Jane Stead, Antony
Sumner, Jonathan Sutton, Templeton
Foundation, Neha Thirani, Sam
Thompson, Sam Tucker, Virginia
Programme at Oxford and Jian Yang.
1920 degree day for home students: this was the first
year the university gave degrees to women.
St Anne’s College
E-group
St Anne’s e-group is open to all Senior
Members and supporters of College. Our
2,400+ members benefit from updates
and the latest news from St Anne’s, as well
as receiving the monthly e-zine St@nnes.
To subscribe please send an email,
including your name and matriculation
year to Kate Davy in the Development
Office at [email protected]
Facebook and Twitter
The St Anne’s College group now has over
550 members on Facebook and almost
200 followers on Twitter. These sites are a
great way to find out the most recent
news about the College, information about
forthcoming events and to network with
friends. In addition, our Principal Tim
Gardam now has his own Twitter feed
containing his personal updates and
comments.
Personal News
Please send personal news for The Ship
2011-2012 by email to
[email protected]
or by post to:
The Ship (Editor)
Development Office
St Anne’s College
Oxford
OX2 6HS
Development Office Contacts:
Gina Beloff
Director of Development
+44 (0)1865 284536
[email protected]
Liza Clothier
Senior Development Officer
+44 (0)1865 284517
[email protected]
Wouter te Kloeze
Senior Development Officer
+44 (0)1865 284622
[email protected]
Kate Davy
Alumnae Relations Officer
+44 (0)1865 284672
[email protected]
Anna Fowler
Development Assistant
+44 (0)1865 284536
[email protected]
Mary Ogilvie and Nancy
Trenaman outside
Hartland House
With this issue of The Ship, the
ASM celebrates a double
anniversary: magazine and senior
members share a common
birthday 100 years ago.
I would like to thank all those who
have made this centenary issue
something special, above all, our
contributors who, as ever, have
responded so generously to the
impossible demands of a merciless
editor. Thanks to Kate Davy of the
Development Office and our army
of proof readers, notably David
Smith and Elisabeth Salisbury.
St Anne’s College
Woodstock Road
Oxford, OX2 6HS
+44 (0)1865 274800
www.st-annes.ox.ac.uk
The Ship 10/11

The Ship 2010/2011 - St Anne`s College

Transcription

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