the elizabethan newsletter 2009/2010

Transcription

WESTMINSTER SCHOOL
THE ELIZABETHAN NEWSLETTER 2009/2010
THE ELIZABETHAN NEWSLETTER 2 009/2010
The Elizabethan Newsletter is produced annually
by the Development Office of Westminster School
and is available to all OWW. Letters are positively
encouraged and should be sent to:
The Development Office
Westminster School
17a Dean’s Yard, London SW1P 3PB
T: +44 (0)20 7963 1115
F: +44 (0)20 7963 1064
E: [email protected]
Deaths
Maurice James Baird-Smith
Grant’s 1932-1936
14/08/1918 - 31/01/2009
Ralph Bernard Samuel Instone
Ashburnham 1930-1936
27/07/1918 - 03/03/2009
Robert Alexander Neill Petrie
Rigaud’s 1941-1945
15/08/1927 - 20/07/2009
John Darell Barnes
Rigaud’s 1948-1952
13/10/1934 - 25/08/2008
Stephen John Instone
Rigaud’s 1968-1973
22/12/1954 - 25/07/2009
John Anthony Storm Roberts
Busby’s 1949-1954
24/02/1936 - 29/11/2009
Johnstone Fletcher Britten
King’s Scholar 1945-1950
01/10/1931 - 11/2009
Huw Elwyn Jones
Busby’s 1957-1961
13/12/1943 - 11/09/2009
Gerard Chalmers Ross
11/12/1933 - 18/02/2009
Henry Thomas Cadbury-Brown
Grant’s 1927-1930
20/05/1913 - 09/07/2009
Dan Victor Klein
04/11/1938 - 28/06/2009
Hugh Anthony Izett Rowland
Busby’s 1935-1939
18/06/1923 - 11/03/2009
Peter Francis Gabain Copley
Home Boarders 1929-1932
20/05/1915 - 17/10/2008
Thomas Paul Kowol
Rigaud’s 1969-1973
18/01/1956 - 22/08/2009
Martin William Sherwood
Wren’s 1957-1962
14/01/1944 - 2009
Michael Stuart De Mowbray
Busby’s 1935-1940
01/10/1921 - 01/08/2008
Gordon Stuart Law
Wren’s 1949-1955
17/11/1936 - 19/03/2009
Peter Louis Michael Sherwood
Queen’s Scholar 1954-1959
27/10/1941 - 19/03/2009
Alexander Walter Henry Dick
Rigaud’s 1933-1938
29/02/1920 - 16/08/2008
David Oliver Lloyd-Jacob
30/03/1938 - 06/08/2009
Paul Martin Sofer
Liddell’s 1976-1979
05/01/1963 - 14/02/2009
Nigel Edward Athelstan Eddis
Wren’s 1950-1952
02/03/1936 - 11/01/2009
Peter Hugh Jefferd Lloyd-Jones
21/09/1922 - 05/10/2009
Hugh Francis Brady Symons
23/09/1916 - 13/06/2009
Timothy March Beaupre Eiloart
Wren’s 1950-1954
29/12/1936 - 04/03/2009
Richard Cameron Low
30/03/1928 - 17/02/2008
Vereker Thomas Michael Ryan Tenison
Grant’s 1937-1940
06/09/1923 - 19/01/2009
Richard John Bell Glanville
Rigaud’s 1922-1927
16/11/1908 - 2009
Nigel Livingston Macassey
05/04/1921 - 10/05/2009
David Arthur Trehearne
11/11/1921 - 09/01/2009
William Maitland Grigor-Taylor
Rigaud’s 1958-1963
11/03/1945 - 24/04/2009
Benjamin William Malcolm Martin
Wren’s 1999-2004
08/11/1985 - 31/12/2008
Peter Sherod Duguid Walker
Rigaud’s 1954-1959
20/05/1941 - 21/01/2009
Nadim Gulamhuseinwala
Wren’s 1993-1995
05/12/1976 - 05/08/2009
Michael Miller
28/06/1933 - 20/02/2008
Gordon Trueman Riviere Waller
04/06/1945 - 17/07/2009
Peter Hampton-Smith
Busby’s 1938-1942
12/06/1925 - 01/02/2009
Alexander James Mosley
Grant’s 1983-1987
05/04/1970 - 05/05/2009
Former members of Staff
William Booth
Frank Kilvington
Samuel Hood
Andrew Charles Hugh Hordern
05/07/1965 - 2010
John Ormiston
21/01/1916 - 09/01/2010
Christopher Gerard Housden
Wren’s 1955-1960
03/04/1942 - 29/08/2008
David Francis Pears
Wren’s 1934-1939
08/08/1921 - 01/07/2009
CONTENTS
To advertise in next year’s Elizabethan Newsletter, please contact:
The Development Office, Westminster School
17a Dean’s Yard, London SW1P 3PB
T: +44 (0)20 7963 1115
F: +44 (0)20 7963 1064
Head of Alumni Relations/Editor: Tori Roddy
Design: Tam Ying Wah
Photographs: Colin Wagg, Sandy Crole, Tori Roddy,
Photoshot, Alex Rawes, Ed Miller, Matthew Webb, Paul Tam
Printed by: The Marstan Press
First published by Westminster School, 2010 © Westminster School
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any shape or form by any means electronic, mechanical
photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of Westminster School.
The views and opinions expressed by writers within The Elizabethan Newsletter do not
necessarily reflect those of Westminster School. No responsibility is assumed by the
publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products
liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products,
instructions or ideas contained in the material herein.
From the School
Head Master • Dean of Westminster
Bursar • Director of Development
Head of Alumni Relations
The Elizabethan Club • School Society
02
House Societies
College Society • Rigaud's Society
Liddell's Society • Dryden's Society
Wren's Society • Ashburnham Society
Old Grantite Club • Busby Society
18
OW Sports
Cricket • Fives • Football • Athletics
Tennis • Real Tennis • Golf Society
26
Westminster Today
Tom Edlin • Andrew Johnson
Gavin Griffiths • Edmund Jolliffe
34
OW News
Prag Prize • 450th Anniversary Celebrations
Neville Walton Travel / Cultural Bursary
From the Archives • OW News
Henley Royal Regatta • OW Careers
44
Obituaries and Deaths
Maurice Baird-Smith • Willie Booth
Jim Cadbury-Brown • Michael de Mowbray
Nadim Gulamhuseinwala • John Hopkyns
Stephen Instone • Huw Elwyn Jones
Hugh Lloyd-Jones • Richard Low
Louis Sherwood • Paul Sofer • Hugh Symons
62
Above: At the Elizabethan Club Dinner 2009.
From the School
• Dr Stephen Spurr (Head Master)
• The Very Reverend Dr John Hall
(Dean of Westminster)
• Chris Silcock (Bursar)
[email protected]
• Angie Garvich (Director of Development)
[email protected]
• Tori Roddy (Head of Alumni Relations)
[email protected]
• Tim Woods (Chairman, The Elizabethan Club)
[email protected]
• Michael Rugman (Chairman, School Society)
[email protected]
Westminster
Past and Present
Dr Stephen Spurr
Head Master
2010! The aims for this anniversary year are to: enjoy
ourselves; engage all constituents of the Westminster
community; learn about our past; celebrate our foundational
links with the Abbey; reflect critically on Westminster
today; and leave the School in good heart for the future.
We are off to a good start, despite the weather; and I hope
very many Old Westminsters will join us at 2010 events
throughout the year and help us all to fulfil our aims.
Tickets for the Ball are selling very quickly!
Above: Dr Stephen Spurr (right) with Jim Forrest
(AHH 1957-1962) at the Fund for Westminster Drinks.
The Bishop of Reading stirred the School into thought at
the snow-bound opening service on the first morning back,
interweaving the ancient and modern themes of poker and
memento mori: that, in judging ourselves and not others,
we will be remembered for how we played our hand of
cards and used our talents to the full. On that theme I know
that current Westminsters will receive inspiration from
reading the rich accounts of the lives in these pages.
Still snow-bound a week later, with the meteorological
conditions of January 2010 imitating the mini ice age of
Elizabethan times, Susan Doran, the Oxford historian,
spoke to some 300 pupils, parents, Common Room, OWW
04
|
ElizAbETHAN NEWSlETTER
| 2009/2010
Westminster’s intellectual
‘While
credentials remain its most enduring
feature, there is no aspect of a
fully rounded education in which
we are not totally competitive.
’
Edlin of the physical changes to the facilities in the
decade between leaving in the Remove and returning as
a teacher of History speaks for itself), pre-eminent in the
league tables both at GCSE and A-level, and victorious at
Henley, as described vividly by Oliver Cox - a win which
was the uncorking of the fine vintage of Westminster
Water that had been maturing for some time. My thanks
also go to the OW readers of Tatler who noted the icing
on the cake, namely that Westminster was judged public
school of the year in 2009! The serious point to emphasize
being that, while Westminster’s intellectual credentials
remain its most enduring feature, there is no aspect of
a fully rounded education in which we are not totally
competitive.
and members of the Abbey community, her broad canvas
of the English Reformation and Renaissance shot through
with colourful references to Westminster’s involvement
in the political, religious and cultural questions of the
time. In the words of Elizabeth I, the aim of a Westminster
education is described as:
The youth, which is growing to manhood, as tender
shoots in the wood of our state, shall be liberally instructed
in good books to the greater honour of the state.
In looking back to that and forwards to Mark Easton’s
lecture on ‘Education Policy in an Age of Globalization’,
I have established a Head Master’s 2010 prize-winning
essay, open to all pupils in the School, on the purpose of
education at Westminster today and tomorrow, as we
move into the second decade of the 21st Century.
The School Society has generously funded a magnificent
statue of Elizabeth I, sculpted by Matthew Spender (LL
1958-1962), to be unveiled in Yard on 21st May; and the
School Monitors are preparing a robust time-capsule to
bury at her feet on the evening of Big Commem on 19th
November. These will endure as memorials of the 450th
Anniversary; and the new School Archives are actively
setting about conservation of our heritage for the future.
The School is in very good shape despite the strains and
stresses of recession. Fuller than ever before with 740
pupils and an expanded campus (the account by Tom
From this position of overall strength we are looking to
help others. Westminster has always been involved in
the local community, and we are now giving greater
coherence to our efforts. In particular we have decided
that we would like all pupils (rather than a dedicated few)
to engage in some significant, sustained form of civic
engagement during their time at School. Among recent
initiatives to assist with raising educational standards
more widely, we have established a Summer School, in
partnership with local authorities and educational
charities, to encourage GCSE pupils from Central London
state schools to continue to A-level and then to university.
The two principal charitable endeavours for 2010 are:
Phab, whose significance for the life of past and current
Westminsters is made clear in the article by Andrew
Johnson and our memories of Willie Booth; and social
projects in Swaziland in partnership with Waterford
Khamlhaba School with which we have a
long-standing connection. You can support Phab most
easily by purchasing one of the handsome 2010 mugs
pictured on p.60: they have been designed and produced
for Westminster at cost price, which means that all profit
will go to straight to Phab, which has now been running
for an unbroken 33 years.
The Fund for Westminster, now in its second year, has
been very successful, as will be seen from the report of
the new Director of Development, Angie Garvich. The
bulk of the money raised has gone towards providing
financial assistance as we continue to widen access and
find deserving pupils with the ability and potential to
benefit from a Westminster education. Please be generous
again this year when the letter or telephone call comes! >>
| 2009/2010 |
05
>> This year’s special projects which are being supported
by parents and OWW include the establishment of
Westminster teaching studentships, where recent
Westminster graduates are invited to spend a term or
a year back at School learning the rudiments of teaching
and contributing to the extra-curricular programme.
I hope this is a practical idea for identifying the
brilliant and inspiring teachers of the future and that
OWW generally will agree to support through The
Fund For Westminster. We have some five OWW on
the staff at present, and I would like to see more!
One project to which OWW generously contributed
through last year’s Fund for Westminster was the
relocation and refitting of the archives. I am therefore
especially pleased that the archivist, Rita Boswell,
has contributed to the 2010 edition of the Elizabethan
Newsletter. Please do contact her if you have any
items you would like to donate or if would like to be
involved in the Oral History Project.
Gloomy predictions currently surround the future
of university education in the UK, as the Higher
Education sector faces cuts in Government spending.
It is at such times that Westminster School can be
particularly glad of its independence. You will be
pleased to know that admission to the top universities
continues unabated. Westminsters are being increasingly discerning in choosing university courses that
suit what really interests them. While Oxbridge still
claims on average a remarkable 45% of the year group,
other leading UK universities, which can offer a
wider range of courses, and a lengthening list of US
destinations are often pupils’ first choices. The recent
recognition of this by the Elizabethan Club, in going
to meet OWW at UCL, Bristol, Durham and Edinburgh
- and gatherings in New York - in addition to Oxford
and Cambridge, has been particularly welcome. I have
also been very grateful to the Elizabethan Club for the
career mentoring and work experience opportunities
they have offered to pupils and undergraduates. In a
shrinking (and thus ever more competitive) job market
this form of assistance is enormously valuable.
Finally, since the last Elizabethan Newsletter, it gives
me great pleasure to let you know of the promotions
of two members of the Common Room: Dr Frances
Ramsay was appointed to be the Head of Queen’s
College Girls’ School, starting last September; and
Dr Gary Savage (the current Under Master) will move
in September 2010 to become Headmaster of Alleyn’s
in Dulwich.
06
|
| 2009/2010
Westminster’s
Foundation
The Very Reverend Dr John Hall
Dean of Westminster
2010 is a significant year and a year of celebration
for Westminster Abbey and Westminster School.
The Abbey’s history is replete with important
dates: 960 we remember as the date of the foundation
(or re-foundation) by St Dunstan, still Bishop of
London on the eve of his translation to Canterbury,
of the Benedictine monastery here on Thorney
Island; 28th December 1065 as the date of consecration
of King Edward the Confessor’s wonderful Norman
church and abbey buildings; 13th October 1269 as
the date of the consecration of King Henry III’s
still more marvellous, though unfinished, Abbey
Church; 21st April 1509 as the day of death of
King Henry VII whose amazing Lady Chapel was
nearing completion; 16th January 1540 when the
abbot and monks executed their deed of surrender
at the dissolution of the monastery; 21st November
1556 when Queen Mary I re-erected the monastery
under Abbot Feckenham; 21st May 1560 when her
half-sister Queen Elizabeth I gave her Royal
Charter, establishing their perpetual succession
and restoring their lands to the Dean and Chapter
of the Collegiate Church of the Blessed Peter in
Westminster.
When King Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries
took effect in 1540, he was naturally keen to preserve
the church of his and his royal predecessors’ coronation
since 1066, as well as maintaining intact the tomb of
his father in the Lady Chapel. There could therefore
be no possibility, as with many other dissolved
monasteries, of razing the abbey buildings to the
ground and using the stone to provide a favoured
magnate with a new great house. But the remaining
great Abbey Church had to have a new purpose.
So, the king created the diocese of Westminster, a
geographical area carved out of the diocese of London;
and a diocese needed a cathedral for its bishop to
have his throne. So Westminster Abbey became in
1540 Westminster Cathedral. Five other great dissolved
monasteries elsewhere in the country, including
Gloucester and Peterborough, he treated in a similar
way. Collectively such former monastic churches
now cathedrals are known as cathedrals of the new
highlights of 2010 will
‘beTwoa service
for the Abbey
community with the Great and
Under Schools on 21st May,
in the presence we hope of Her
Majesty The Queen, and the
Elizabethan Ball on 9th July.
’
foundation, thus contrasted with the cathedrals that
had never been monasteries (of the old foundation)
and new diocesan cathedrals built in the 19th and
20th centuries (of modern foundation). Every new
foundation cathedral other than Westminster
remains what it has been since the 16th century. But
the new diocese only survived for ten years. In 1550,
it was reabsorbed into the diocese of London, which
was then compensated with thirteen of Westminster’s
manors in Paddington and Westbourne. So Peter was
first robbed to pay Paul.
1550 to 1560 were surely the ten years in England of
the most extraordinary change: first to an extremely
Protestant form of liturgy under Edward VI; then to a
restored Roman Catholicism under Mary I; and finally
to the via media under Elizabeth I, the Church of
England, Catholic and Reformed. Elizabeth I rescued
Westminster from the turmoil on 21st May 1560. The
new Collegiate Church of St Peter Westminster was to
be ruled by a Dean and Chapter (twelve Canons, later
reduced to the current four) and they were assisted as
now by other clergy known as Minor Canons and lay
staff including the Receiver General.
Westminster School of course traces its origin to the
days of the new foundation under Elizabeth I, whom
the School celebrates as its foundress. Without
denying one iota of the importance of Elizabeth I or
her benefaction, it has to be said that the School was
already solidly in existence. The monastery would
from the beginning have educated at least a handful
of boys. At the dissolution, Henry VIII replaced the
monastic school with a new school of two Masters and
forty King’s Scholars. Mary would have re-established
the monastic school, perhaps even as one of the same
complement. That was the school that Elizabeth
re-erected in 1560 as part of the Collegiate Church:
two Masters and 40 Queen’s Scholars who remain
part of the Westminster Collegiate Foundation,
alongside the Dean and Chapter. The School was
established on a separate trust in 1868 but with the
Dean as chairman and two Canons on the governing
body. Since then its growth in numbers and importance
nationally has been phenomenal.
Two highlights of 2010 will be a service for the Abbey
community with the Great and Under Schools on 21st
May, in the presence we hope of Her Majesty The
Queen, and the Elizabethan Ball on 9th July. Thus
we can celebrate our shared past and deepen the
relationship for the future.
| 2009/2010 |
07
bursar’s Report
Chris Silcock
My annual contribution to the Elizabethan reminds
me of Andrew Marvell’s wonderful lines “But at my back
I always hear / Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near” - I
fear I am generally caught if not trammeled and overtaken
by said chariot driven hard by Tori Roddy.
I shall begin not with Estates but with Catering. I know
many OWW eat in School for House or School functions
each year and that you will be keen to know standards are
high. Last Lent term the Governors advertised the catering
contract and following a rigorous beauty parade, including
some waistline busting tastings, Grayson Education won
the contract. They are a well established catering company
which operates in dining rooms and restaurants around the
City, but Westminster is their first school. Sir Humphrey
Appleby may have described the decision to appoint them
as courageous, but the Governors were impressed by
Grayson’s commitment to deliver high quality food, locally
sourced where possible and with new elements such as
theatre cooking to make suppers for boarders in particular
an exciting and tasty experience. Initial results are excellent
so I hope you get to enjoy their fare.
On the Estates front, the final phase of the Busby’s Yard
project was completed after five years work in Busby’s
08
|
| 2009/2010
Above: The Governors have purchased a building
in Douglas Street adjacent to the Under School.
It has been a triumph for the
‘architect
Ptolemy Dean’s original
vision to open up Busby’s Yard
and recover the spirit of the
place whilst creating modern
spaces for pupils and staff.
’
Yard, Rigaud’s, Liddell’s and Hakluyt’s, the Common Room
and the main reception under Arch. Photos of earlier phases
appeared in the 2007/08 and 2008/09 editions. When you
visit the School, do ask for a tour of Busby’s Yard because
I wager there is not an OW or Busbyte in particular who
would not think the result magnificent. Busby’s Yard has
become a haven of quiet where on nice days staff and pupils
may sit outside and study or simply enjoy the sun.
and her interest in her Scholars, would seem fitting indeed.
She will be unveiled on 21st May.
For those OWW who came up from the Under School, you
may be pleased to hear that the Governors purchased a
building in Douglas Street adjacent to the Under School
and their intention is to convert it to provide a new
kitchen and dining room, and a new Art department,
The School’s bursary programme, supported by very generous donations
‘from
OWW as part of the Fund for Westminster, is enabling any
pupil who wins a place on merit to receive appropriate financial support.
’
The teaching staff now has a Common Room and support
area which they deserve and in which they can work or
relax. In what used to be Liddell’s ground floor in No. 18,
medieval openings have been reopened, historic walls
exposed and a main corridor created to allow the original
building and rooms to work better and permit users much
improved access. It has been a triumph for the architect
Ptolemy Dean’s original vision to open up Busby’s Yard and
thereby easing considerably the very tight space in Adrian
House. This will add three much needed classrooms to
Adrian House and allow the main hall to be used just for
drama, music, assemblies, and no longer dining. If all goes
well Douglas Street will be ready in September 2011.
Last year I mentioned the work of the Charity Commission
to define public benefit and to determine whether schools
Above: Busby’s Yard.
recover the spirit of the place whilst creating modern spaces
for pupils and staff.
By contrast, 2009/10 will be a quieter year. The Governors
agreed that everyone deserved a rest from living on a
building site whilst also wishing to ensure that 2010
would be a time to celebrate the School’s 450th anniversary
of its re-foundation with a clear Yard! Mention of 2010
allows me to flag up the Statue of Elizabeth I which the
School Society is funding and which the sculptor Matthew
Spender (LL 1958-1962) is close to completing. She will
stand under the tree at the base of the steps and she will
look towards College which, given Elizabeth’s scholarship
meet the test. Since then five schools have been inspected
in a pilot process and sadly two did not pass. It appears
that bursaries are the key, if only, metric which makes the
difference. Westminster’s Governors are content that the
School’s Bursary Programme, supported by very generous
donations from OWW as part of the Fund for Westminster,
is enabling any pupil who wins a place on merit to receive
appropriate financial support.
Any 2009 article should mention the crunch. You will
be pleased to hear that finances remain sound and with
applications far exceeding places, Westminster is set
reasonably fair to weather the storm. Floreat.
| 2009/2010 |
09
Westminster
Development
Angie Garvich
Director of Development
I have to say, writing this has proven to be a bit of a
challenge. There have been the common distractions (the
odd blizzard outside of my office window being just one),
but in the end I realised that my real problem was that the
“new girl in the office” angle had been pretty well covered.
Staff changes have become a bit of a running joke in the
Development Office, to the extent that we now seem to
get through Directors the way Spinal Tap gets through
drummers. For the past few issues new members of staff
have been saying hello, only to disappear before the next
edition, and I didn’t feel the need to tempt fate by continuing
the trend!
Above: King’s Scholars on the terrace, c. 1906/1907.
10
|
| 2009/2010
I am, however, cautiously hopeful that we are moving
towards a full house (not that I don’t think we could have
Tori continue on as a one woman army, but after a while
you do start to feel just a tad guilty!) and have ambitious
plans to one day attain the lofty heights of four full time
employees. In the meantime, we have been filling the gap
with some amazing volunteers, and would like to thank
the Old Westminsters and parents who have kindly sent
along their own offspring to undertake “work experience”
on the Development Office slave ship!
Staffing hiccups aside, it has been a pretty remarkable
year. The School’s Annual Fund Campaign, the Fund for
Westminster, produced incredible results, raising over
£390,000 and enabling us to fund not only all of our targeted
projects but also to direct over £250,000 towards the
School’s Bursary Programme. This amazing outcome just
reinforces the fact that there is no such thing as a small
gift, and that together Westminster parents and alumni
were able to make great things happen.
We’re expecting no less from 2010, and with the 450th
Anniversary upon us, we can look forward to a year of
very special events. The Fund for Westminster will return
with even more ambitious targets, and with an American
patchwork than a landscape, often times focusing more on
the quirky than the practical, it has helped enormously in
attempting to navigate my way through this wonderful,
yet slightly mad, place. (And who wouldn’t rather know
more about rowing in 1955 than, say, the quickest way to
Vincent’s Square?)
While I’m afraid I can’t offer too much in the way of
reflections on the year just gone, I do feel that in my very
short time here I have learned some pretty remarkable
things about a pretty remarkable institution. Westminster
is the very best example of a solid foundation with
enormous potential, not just in fundraising terms, but in
scope for further integrating both alumni and parents into
School’s Annual Fund Campaign, the Fund for Westminster,
‘The
produced incredible results, raising over £390,000 and enabling
us to fund not only all of our targeted projects but also to direct
over £250,000 towards the School’s Bursary Programme.
and Canadian Friends of Westminster to launch, more
bursaries to fund, a website to revamp and a new Under
School building to fundraise for, we have quite a busy
twelve months ahead!
I think the thing I am most looking forward to is having
the opportunity to meet more of our alumni and parents.
The ones I have been lucky enough to encounter so far
have not only given me invaluable insight into the kinds
of things that matter to our extended Westminster Family,
but have also helped to paint a fuller picture of life at the
School. While I would have to say that it’s more of a
’
the fabric of the School. And while we are going to do our
very best to make sure that we keep working towards
success, I would like to hope that we can count on your
support and feedback to keep us on the right track. Please
do feel free to give us a call or send an email, or even
better, pay us a visit. I can almost guarantee that we’ll
have biscuits, and we’re always grateful for the input!
Below: Pupils in Little Dean’s Yard, 2009.
| 2009/2010 |
11
Covers of The Elizabethan.
Below: June 1937 issue.
Right: Issue 573, April 1948.
Below right: Issue 677, July 1972.
Elizabethan
Evolution
Tori Roddy
Head of Alumni Relations / Editor
Despite a certain OW Club’s Secretary’s persistent
efforts, I continue to hold the dubious title as the last person
to submit their article for the Elizabethan. To give the
fellow his due, he even left the country in an attempt to
take my crown this year, but of course, as Editor, I tracked
him down and I suppose I do have a slight advantage!
Alas, this will be the last battle that he and I will face
on this front, as he steps down from his position after
wonderfully organising their activities for a number of
years. I will miss our yearly skirmish! Note that he
remains (slightly) anonymous.
Submitting my article last does have its pitfalls, for I read
in other articles all the introductions to be made and much
of the news reported, and, of course, the pressure is then
on, not to repeat other people’s jokes. Our new Director
has already alluded to Development Office staffing (joke),
12
|
| 2009/2010
and I hear you cry, “let’s not go there”! So I won’t, suffice to
say, it is all change once again, and to welcome Angie and
to thank Alex Rawes for all his help. So given that the
other contributors have stolen my thunder, how else
was I to upstage them? I know, redesign the newsletter...
Actually, it did seem like a good idea at the time, and it has
been a number of years in the previous design and we
thought to mark this special 450th Anniversary Year,
a facelift would be nice (for the publication, not me).
Left: The Elizabethan, Issue 1
published in July 1874.
Below: The Elizabethan
Newsletter 2007/2008.
next year will hold plenty
‘This
of new opportunities for OWW
to get involved with our regular
events and some special functions
on the calendar.
’
previous 12 months, so I will not pre-empt his article but
to say it has been busier than ever and would not have
been possible without his dedication and enthusiasm and
that of our many OW volunteers, on the House, Sports and
Elizabethan Club committees- thank you one and all.
It sounds a simple task, but I have to say that it often felt
like I was pulling to pieces an old but much loved jumper.
Whilst the content, I hope, will continue to be of interest,
I also hope that bringing to you the year’s activities in full
colour will be a welcome change. Of course, this is not the
first nip and tuck that the Elizabethan has experienced I was most interested when looking through the archives
at the various forms it has taken over the years and I do
hope that this year’s will meet your approval. However
you feel, all comments, as always, are most welcome and
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Our Chairman’s report which follows will cover nicely
all the things that we have been up to as a Club over the
This next year will hold plenty of new opportunities for
OWW to get involved with our regular events and some
special functions on the calendar. Many of you will
already be aware that Westminster has a year of
celebrations planned to mark the 450th Anniversary of
its re-foundation. For your information, I have enclosed
with this Newsletter two inserts that may be of interest.
The first is a calendar of events, specially planned by the
School for the year, some of which I hope you will attend.
The second is an Application Form for one of the most
spectacular events of the year - The Elizabethan Ball - to
be held in the School and Abbey Precincts on Friday, 9th
July. Truly, this is an opportunity that we have not had
before, and one which I hope you will not miss. Further
details can be found later in the newsletter and, of course,
on the OW website at www.oldwestminster.org.uk.
And now the dust has finally settled over 17a Dean’s Yard,
I will again be taking up the mantle of further developing
the Career and Mentoring programme for OWW. Many of
you have already kindly offered your assistance with this
project, and I thank you all and promise that we will be in
touch shortly. In the meantime, if you would be willing to
offer work experience or to act as a career mentor for a
current pupil or OW, then please drop me a line.
| 2009/2010 |
13
The Elizabethan Club
Tim Woods (GG 1969–1974)
Chairman
The Club has experienced yet another busy year, with
the full calendar of established events being added to by a
number of new functions aimed at increasing our contact
with the worldwide Old Westminster community.
Events
At this year’s Elizabethan Dinner, diners were entertained
by media and sports personality Daniel Topolski (WW
1959-1963).
The Club will increasingly look to
‘work
with the Parents Committee
and Friends of Westminster School
and build on our relationships
with both the Abbey and the
Common Room.
’
14
|
Other gatherings have included the Lawyers’ Dinner
organised by Simon Randall (RR 1957-1962) that was held
at Buck’s Club with another good attendance from all
ages. For the first time the Club financed the attendance at
the dinner of prospective lawyers from the School. The
Medics’ Dinner will now be held every other year and I
am pleased to report that Sixth Form pupils will continue
to be invited.
The Travellers Club was the venue for the Business
Drinks, kindly arranged by Alex Gee (DD 1988-1993), with
over 80 Old Westminsters in attendance, despite a train
strike that night.
Even better support was seen at the Ben Jonson Drinks
that was held at the Bankside Gallery on the South Bank
and continued our drive to hold such functions outside
the School premises.
Regional parties continue with the Club visiting towns
and cities outside of London with drinks parties at Christ
| 2009/2010
John East as Chair of the OW Wine Society has arranged
a great series of gatherings for OWW interested in wine.
This year we were fortunate enough to hear from and taste
wines from Esme Johnstone’s fromvineyardsdirect.com
and those from the Montes estate in Chile. In addition,
Fabian Baird introduced us to seasonal wines at a wellattended and most enjoyable evening in Ashburnham
House.
I addressed the Governing Body earlier this year in order
to bring them up to date with our current and future plans
and I continue to have a constructive and ongoing dialogue
with the Head Master, recently concentrating on how the
Club can assist Old Westminsters on the careers front.
This is a prominent feature of the new website and will
become even more important in the future. Other work
within the School included addressing the Remove and
their parents after the Leavers’ Service to tell them about
the many advantages of membership of the Club.
Above and left: At the Elizabethan Club Dinner 2009.
Church, Oxford, and Trinity College, Cambridge (both
particularly well attended by both undergraduates and
Old Westminsters from those counties) and more recently
a dinner in Edinburgh for our alumni of all ages north of
the border.
This year’s Young Gaudy was aimed at a wider age range
with over 250 leavers from 1998-2008 returning to the
School to meet each other and members of the Common
Room. The Young Gaudy will continue and our aim is to
extend the Gaudy Programme so that other decades can
enjoy an informal evening gathering.
House Societies
You will read more later about the various and interesting
activities that our House Societies have been up to over
the last 12 months. This is an area in which the Club is
particularly active and the annual meeting of the Club,
House Society committees and House representatives,
chaired by Graham Walker (RR 1963-1967), was particularly
well attended and useful. The Club continues to support
these important groups.
Sport
All the stations financed and supported by the Club have
been very active this year and I am pleased to report the
three new clubs (Akido, Angling and Fencing) were formed
during the year. The annual meeting between the Club’s
representatives, Masters-in-Charge, and pupils continues >>
The Club hosted a drinks party to introduce members of
the Common Room to its aims and activities and it is hoped
that this will be a regular feature of the Club’s calendar.
The highly popular Henley Regatta drinks was delivered
with the assistance of the Elizabethan Boat Club who ably
distributed champagne to over 50 of the Old Westminster
boating fraternity on what turned out to be a historic year
for Westminster on the water. Our lecture series given by
members of the Common Room and other friends of the
School continues to be a success with OWW enjoying
informative evenings with Jacqueline Cockburn talking
about Velàzquez, Chris Barton who, with members of the
School Drama Department, gave a fascinating talk on the
rules and pitfalls of Shakespearean verse-speaking and
Fiona Sharp with an extremely fun and informative lecture
on Emborio.
Above: At the Young Gaudy.
| 2009/2010 |
15
Elizabethan Club
>> to be useful and we look forward to a full turnout later in
2010. Details of the various successful sporting activities
can be found in the following pages.
Neville Walton Travel/Cultural bursary
A last minute rush of applications made this year’s choice of
winner of the Neville Walton Bursary particularly difficult.
Those Old Westminsters eligible to apply planned to travel
to all four corners of the world but the winner was Will
Harris (DD 2002-2007) whose plan to travel with a friend
to the USA following a route loosely based on the “Blues
Highway” you can read about later in this issue.
Committee Members
David Neubeurger (WW 1961–1965)
President
Tim Woods (GG 1969–1974)
Chairman
Tim brocklebank-Fowler (RR 1976–1980)
Hon. Treasurer
Nicholas brown (RR 1968–1973)
Hon. Secretary
Artin basirov (GG 1989-1994)
Jonathan Carey (GG 1964–1969)
OW Sports Representative
Jessica Chichester (GG 2000–2002)
Gavin Griffiths (WW 1967–1972)
Common Room President
The Development Office continues to assist and support
the Club in all areas. We remain committed to increasing
communication within the membership and to this end
the Club contributed to the latest software required
to enable the Development Office to work even more
efficiently and to give the Club a far more modern and
useful web portal. As a result there is now an online
booking system that we hope will attract increasing
numbers of Old Westminsters to events. I would like to
thank Tori Roddy for her work on this publication as
well as all her other endeavours on behalf of the Club.
I would also like to welcome Angie Garvich,
Westminster’s new Director of Development.
Future Plans
The Club will increasingly look to work with the Parents
Committee and Friends of Westminster School and build
on our relationships with both the Abbey and the Common
Room whilst monitoring carefully its financial health,
which, thanks to our Hon. Treasurer and Hon. Examiner
and their stewardship and hard work, is still robust.
In the meantime, plans for the Elizabethan Ball on Friday,
9th July are progressing quickly. This event will be one of
the highlights of the year’s celebrations to mark the 450th
Anniversary of the re-foundation of the College of St Peter.
Over 2,500 OWW, Parents and friends will join for an
evening of entertainment held in the grounds of the
School and Abbey.
16
|
| 2009/2010
Caroline lewis (GG 1980-1982)
Tarun Mathur (AHH 1988–1993)
Darius Norell (BB 1985–1990)
David Roy (AHH 1955–1961)
Graham Walker (RR 1963–1967)
House Societies Representative
Matthew Webb (BB 1999-2004)
The Club has also contributed to the commissioning of a
new Te Deum by Richard Blackford (LL 1967-1970) to be
used during the 2010 celebrations.
The Committee
Without the Committee little could have happened and I
would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for
their contribution over the last twelve months, in particular,
I thank those stepping down from the Committee, Hannah
Chambers (DD 1992-1994) and Charlie Hayes (GG 19982003) and I welcome those joining, Caroline Lewis (GG
1980-1982), Artin Basirov (GG 1989-1994) and Matthew
Webb (BB 1999-2004).
Michael Rugman (GG 1955–1960)
Chairman
In January the longest serving member of our
Council, Michael Tenison, sadly died. His valuable
contributions to our discussions will be much missed.
The Society has continued with its support of bursaries
and music scholarships at the School and has again
made grants to assist numerous activities at the
School, including the Library and Water, as well as
grants to Houses, mainly for improvements to their
amenities, such as pictures and framing.
The Tizard Lecture this year, which we again
sponsored, was given by Professor Steve Jones, of
University College London, on the subject of Human
Evolution. We also continued to make awards for travel
by pupils, including the Philip Hendy Travel award.
We are making a major contribution to the cost of a
new statue of the Foundress of the School, Queen
Elizabeth I, which will be installed in Little Dean’s
Yard in 2010, as part of the School’s 450th
Anniversary Celebrations.
Above: Westminster Abbey Concert.
Westminster School Society
In conjunction with the School, we are planning
further developments in the near future, which will
increase the help we are able to give it, including
possible assistance to the School with its outreach
programme for the local community.
| 2009/2010 |
17
House Societies
For enquiries about House Societies,
please contact the Development Office
or the contacts listed below:
Ashburnham Society
Angus Roy (AHH 1993-1998)
E. [email protected]
T. 01923 842538
P. 7 Sandy Lodge Lane, Moor Park,
Northwood, HA6 2JA
busby Society
Christian Wells (BB 1968-1973)
James Nunns (BB 1967-1972)
College Society
Jonathan Rawes (QS 1963-1968)
Charles low (QS 1967-1972)
Dryden's Society
Aqib Aslam (DD 1994-1999)
Hakluyt's Society
Please contact the Development Office
T. 020 7963 1115
liddell's Society
David Eaton Turner (LL 1974-1979)
Tom Weisselberg (LL 1984-1989)
www.liddellssociety.org.uk
Milne's Society
Alasdair Donaldson (MM 1994-1999)
Neil Fisher (MM 1994-1999)
Thomas Munby (MM 1994-1999)
Old Grantite Club
Peter Cole (GG 1993-1998)
Purcell's Society
Please contact the Development Office
T. 020 7963 1115
Rigaud's Society
Sam Ala (RR 1983-1988)
P. PO Box 165, 28 Old Brompton Road,
London SW7 3DL
Wren's Society
Dean Chatterjee (WW 1997-2002)
Centre: Matthew Rhodes (RR 1987-1991); Chairman of the Rigaud’s Society.
College Society
Continuity and stability have been the watchwords for
the Society in the last few years, with a settled committee
and a regular pattern of three well-attended events each
year. Now we are entering a period of some change.
Our programme of events is likely to be different for 2010;
many of our members will be individually supporting the
range of events which the School is arranging, but we also
hope as the Society to mark the year in some way. We are
delighted that Arda Eghiayan has agreed to join the
committee, our first female committee member - and the
first to be at the School in the 21st century! We also welcome
Mark Feltham, the new Master of the Queen’s Scholars, who
has already shown great interest in the Society’s activities.
Mark’s predecessor Frances Ramsey has left to become
Principal of Queen’s College, Harley Street, and she and
her husband were able to join us at an enjoyable AGM and
dinner in September, giving us the opportunity to record
our appreciation of her support for the Society.
In the past year we have made donations to two current
Scholars: to David Wong, an exceptionally talented clarinettist,
to enable him to be a member of the National Youth
Orchestra, and to Jonathon Hazell, who completed a World
Challenge expedition to Laos and Thailand.
We were very pleased that Jenny Cogan came to this year’s
drinks party in March, which was for those in the House
during the time when Jim Cogan was Master; this was
hosted by two veterans of that era, Duncan Matthews and
Andrew Havery. And Naida Christie joined us for this year’s
College Society lecture in June, given by Professor Victor
Bulmer-Thomas (QS 1961-1965), former director of Chatham
House; much of his career, and thus his talk, concentrated
on Latin America, on the economics of which he is a leading
expert, but during questions he displayed his astonishing
expertise and insight into the global political scene.
As always I would like to thank the committee, and the
Development Office, for their support over what has been
another successful year, although overshadowed by the
death of Louis Sherwood, who was a staunch supporter of
the Society and member of the committee for several years.
If you would like to join the Society contact Charles Low.
Jonathan Rawes (QS 1963-1968)
20
|
| 2009/2010
Rigaud’s Society
Our one social event this year was our Gaudy
on 11th June, when as before, all old Rigaudites
together with their partners, and current
Rigaud’s parents, were invited to attend. It was a
good turnout with a fine spread of ORR vintages,
from Seb Rosin and Hugh Isaacs who were at the
Rectory in Whitbourne in the early 1940s, to Dara
Barkhordar, Nicholas Day and Alexander Gilbert
who were in last year’s Remove. There was also a
very welcome number of parents - one of them,
Michael McCarthy, I last saw in very different
circumstances when he was a young newspaper
reporter on the riot-torn streets of Londonderry
in 1973 - and now a proud Rigaud’s parent.
Our Travel Award has been made to Peter Smith,
who will be travelling to Darmstadt, Germany,
in the New Year to teach English as a foreign
language in the Gerhart Hauptmann School
there. His aim is not just to gain some valuable
experience of teaching, especially to pupils who
will have no knowledge of English whatsoever,
but also to improve his own skills and studies
into the German language.
On the social side, our next event will be another
Rigaud’s Gaudy. We had planned to hold a Dinner
in 2010, but have now postponed it until 2011, so
that there is no likelihood of any sort of clash with
the Elizabethan Ball on 9th July. My successor,
Sam Ala, will be sending out all the details of
the Gaudy.
ipsu razu
Michael Steele (RR 1945-1949)
Above (left to right): Nick Brown (RR 1968-1973),
Sam Price (RR 1949-1954), Seb Rosin (RR 1940-1944).
liddell’s Society
In January 2009 the Society arranged an evening tour of the
Abbey, followed by a reception in the Camden Room. The event
was very well-attended, and highly atmospheric. Old Liddellites
and their guests enjoyed fascinating talks from our guides Eddie
Smith and John Curtis.
Much of Liddell’s has been refurbished over recent years, gaining
a roof-top extension at third-floor level providing seven extra
rooms, and a Resident Tutor’s flat. The five bedrooms in the
Hilary wing and the three ground floor bedrooms have been given
up to other uses. The Housemaster’s flat was moved from 18
Dean’s Yard to No.19 and the displaced study bedrooms moved into
the vacated area, so that all study bedrooms are now closer together,
with the Housemaster and Resident Tutor nearby. The addition of
the extra floor meant that the subdivided bedrooms on the ground
floor of No.18 could be converted to much-needed staff working
space. The old and very unsuitable building in Busby’s Yard was
demolished, allowing Busby’s Yard to be opened up.
The five-year project was carried out under the supervision of
Ptolemy Dean Architects Ltd who worked closely with English
Heritage and Westminster Council to obtain the necessary consents
to alter the Grade 1 listed buildings. The work allowed medieval
walls and other historic features in No. 18 and No. 19 to be opened
up, and the original proportions of the rooms to be restored.
Ptolemy Dean - who is also well-known as an author, and as a
presenter of the BBC Television series Restoration - has kindly
agreed to give an illustrated talk about the work carried out on the
house to Old Liddellites and to parents of present pupils on the
evening of Wednesday, 26th May 2010, to be followed by a reception
and the opportunity to tour some of the refurbished areas of
the house.
The Committee of the Liddell’s Society comprises: David Eaton
Turner (Hon Chairman), Tom Weisselberg (Hon Secretary) and
Emilie Bosworth Speight (Hon Treasurer), David Dudding, Edward
Hasted, Andrew Howe, Christina Kulukundis, Edward Oates and
Tony Willoughby. We would be very pleased to hear from any Old
Liddellite who wishes to be involved in the Society.
Above three images: At the Rigaud’s Gaudy.
In order to make sure we can contact you about future events,
please update your own details at www.oldwestminster.org.uk and
encourage other Old Liddellites with whom you are in touch to
provide contact details and to attend the Society’s events.
David Eaton Turner (LL 1974-1979)
| 2009/2010 |
21
Apart from the opportunity to
‘meet
old friends and exchange
updates, former Drydenites
feasted their eyes on the
incredible haul of sporting
trophies won by the House’s
most recent inductees.
’
Dryden’s Society
“All human things are subject to decay, and, when fate
summons, monarchs must obey.” Fate chose 2009 for the
inauguration of the Dryden’s Society - the fortieth year
since the House was founded - and Drydenites, old and
new, obeyed.
Under the auspices of Housemaster Martin Boulton, those
Drydenites brave enough to bear the cold and reach the
Camden Room met on 5th February for the launch of the
Dryden’s Society. Apart from the opportunity to meet old
friends and exchange updates, former Drydenites feasted
their eyes on the incredible haul of sporting trophies won
by the House’s most recent inductees, kindly laid out by
Dr Boulton - contrary to the House’s traditionally unOlympic heritage, senior members were delighted to find
that Dryden’s has been excelling in inter-House events.
The Housemaster also found the time to dig out and put
on display several House portraits from each decade for
former Drydenites to huddle over and reminisce.
Despite fears that Dryden’s suffers from a much smaller
base of alumni compared to the older Houses, the turnout
was extremely high. The younger members were also
extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to meet some
of the first members of the House, who explained how they
had been handpicked from existing Houses when Dryden’s
was first formed back in 1969. Furthermore, it was revealed
over the course of the evening that it has only been in the
last few years that Dryden’s has been fortunate enough to
have more than one generation from the same family cross
the threshold of No.4 Little Dean’s Yard.
The evening passed very quickly, but not without numerous
observations on the warmth and camaraderie. There was
much delight that finally the Society had come into being
and a strong desire for it to continue. Given that Dryden’s is
much younger relative to other Houses, the Society is in the
enviable position of having a much younger base of senior
members, which will hopefully lead to a very active calendar
of future events. As well as being a first chance to relive old
memories and celebrate all things Dryden’s, we hope that
2009 will be the first heroic couplet in a long poem of events
for the Dryden’s Society.
Aqib Aslam (DD 1994-1999)
22
|
| 2009/2010
Wren’s Society
The 60th anniversary dinner celebrating the
formation of Wren's was attended by over 70 people
in College hall on 24th September. This was the follow
up event to the inaugural drinks last year. It was a
fantastic evening attended by the Head Master and
his wife along with the new Housemaster of Wren's,
Simon Wurr. It was good to see so many people there
who also attended the inaugural drinks event as well
as parents of current pupils in Wren's.
The Head Master gave a speech and the current
Housemaster also said a few words. I managed to put
a few words together but could see the classic Wrenite
looks on the guests ushering me to sit down quickly!
I would like to thank Tori Roddy for all her help in
putting the event together at such short notice and to
thank everyone who attended the night.
Once again I am keen to organise more events and am
open to suggestions from fellow Wrenites. If anyone is
interested in joining or acting as a connection to fellow
Wrenites then please let me or the Development
Office know.
Dean Chatterjee (WW 1997-2002)
Ashburnham
Society
After a quiet year for the Society in 2008, there was
activity during 2009. The Society learnt early on in 2009
that after 9 years as Housemaster of Ashburnham, Geran
Jones would be stepping down to concentrate on some of
his other commitments in the School. To thank Geran and
his wife Gaby for their contribution to the house, we held
a drinks party in September in Ashburnham Garden.
Over 50 Old Ashburnhamites gathered to say thank you as
well as others who came to reconnect with some of their
contemporaries. We were all able to wish Geran and Gaby
the very best in their new ventures based up Purcell’s.
We were also lucky enough to have the new Housemaster
of Ashburnham, Andrew Johnston (LL 1987-1992), present
at the drinks which gave Old Ashburnhamites a chance to
meet him.
Last year the Society were pleased to announce that we
are able to offer an annual bursary of up to £500 to
Ashburnhamites in their final two years at School and in
the first few years after they have left. We hope that this
bursary will be able to be used by the selected student
towards a project (whether travel, music, arts or
otherwise) which they would, without the bursary, not
have been able to do. The first bursary was awarded to
Anthony Ellis (AHH 1999-2004) to put towards research
trips abroad as he undertakes a PhD at Edinburgh
University. Anthony will during his PhD write a
commentary on the seventh books of the Histories by
Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the so-called ‘Father of
History’. Anthony will be writing about his research
trips in a later edition of this newsletter. If any Old
Ashburnhamite wants to apply the bursary next year,
please write to Angus Roy (at [email protected])
explaining what you would like to use the money for and
what you plan to achieve from the project. The Society
hopes that this Bursary will prove very successful.
first bursary was awarded
‘toTheAnthony
Ellis to put
towards research trips abroad
as he undertakes a PhD at
Edinburgh University.
’
As some of you will be aware, the School will be celebrating
the 450th Anniversary of the re-foundation of the School
with many events throughout 2010. One of these events
will be the Elizabethan Ball on 9th July 2010. The Society
would like to encourage anyone interested in attending the
Ball to book tickets through the Development Office. The
Society hopes that there will be a large contingent of Old
Ashburnhamites at the Ball and if any of them would like
to sit on an Old Ashburnhamites table, please highlight
this on the application form.
We would like to build on the success of last year’s
events and expand the activities of the Society. We have
had some ideas already but please do get in touch
with the Development Office (020 7963 1115 or email:
[email protected]) if there is something in
particular you would like to attend. In this regard, the
Society is trying to expand its committee, and if anyone is
interested in joining the committee or simply helping as a
link to their fellow contemporaries, then please let Angus
Roy or Tori Roddy know.
We look forward to a successful year in 2010.
Angus Roy (AHH 1993-1998)
| 2009/2010 |
23
Old Grantite Club
This year has seen a time of consolidation within the
Club, with the influx of new Committee Members from
the past few years, having taken up various appointments
within the Committee and now contributing to the running
of the Club.
Following on from the successful Leavers’ Dinner held in
2007, the Club had hoped to hold a repeat event this year,
however, this proved not possible and those Grantites
leaving the School in 2009 were instead invited to this
year’s AGM and Dinner for no charge. The event, which
was open to all Old Grantites, was highly successful with
about 60 attendees.
This year the Club was
‘fortunate
enough to have
John Brown, founder of John
Brown Publishing, as an
after dinner speaker.
’
This year the Club was fortunate enough to have John
Brown (GG 1966-1971), founder of John Brown Publishing,
as an after dinner speaker, and all those who attended
agreed that it helped to make what was a very enjoyable
evening. We hope to repeat this dinner, open to all Old
Grantites, bi-annually and will be looking to attract a
similar calibre of speaker for these future events. Please
do contact us if you have any suggestions!
Going into 2010, we are very aware that the Club has to
compete with the School’s Anniversary events for Old
Grantites’ affections, and therefore intend to arrange a
number of smaller, more casual or themed events.
Information about these events will be circulated in the
New Year and via the Club’s website which is also due an
overhaul in 2010.
It just remains to say that the Committee remains
determined to continue its work in communicating with
and arranging events for all Old Grantites, and to this end
we are thankful for the support and input of both David
Hargreaves, the Housemaster, and the School
24
|
| 2009/2010
Development Office. However, to make the Club fit for
purpose, we need to hear from our Members of all ages
and to understand what is expected from us.
We would also like to hear from any Old Grantite who
feels that they can help develop the future of the Club
by playing some role within the Committee.
Peter Cole (GG 1993-1998)
busby Society
We had a successful and happy Busby
Dinner in College Hall on 27th November.
The new Housemaster, Paul Botton, let us
have drinks in Busby’s pool room (formerly
the Under). He was unable personally to
attend on this occasion. The photo shows
from left to right: Malcolm Kafetz (former
Chairman of the Society), Dan Cornwell
(Head of House), Harriet Allan (Busby’s
Head of Girls) and Anne Dunn (former
Matron).
At our AGM, Matthew Webb (BB 19992004) was appointed our new secretary,
and we are grateful to him for taking on
this role.
After dinner, all the recent leavers stood
and spoke briefly about their days up
Busby’s, each to loud applause.
We welcome new members of the Society
and its committee. Please get in touch if
you are interested.
James Nunns (BB 1967-1972)
At our AGM, Matthew Webb was
‘appointed
our new secretary, and
we are grateful to him for taking
on this role.
’
Above (left to right): Malcolm Kafetz (former Chairman of the Society),
Dan Cornwell (Head of House), Harriet Allan (Busby's Head of Girls)
and Anne Dunn (former Matron).
| 2009/2010 |
25
OW Sports
Contacts
Athletics
John Goodbody (LL 1956-1961)
Cricket
Daniel Cavanagh (RR 1993-1998)
Rowan bamford (LL 1993-1998)
Fencing
Chris Namih (DD 1999-2004)
Golf Society
David Roy (AHH 1955-1961)
7 Sandy Lodge Lane, Moor Park
Northwood, HA6 2JA
Real Tennis
Simon Marshall (DD 1990-1995)
T. 07985 604042
Tennis
Tristan Vanhegan (HH 1994-1999)
T. 07977 993193
Fives
Andrew Aitken (WW 1967-1971)
Water
Sam Scheuringer (DD 1997-2002)
T. 07958 765205
Football:
Hugo braddick (QS 1989-1994)
Jack Holborn (LL 1997-2002)
T. 07909 962576
Cricket
In some quarters 2009 will be remembered as the year
England reclaimed the Ashes, but for real connoisseurs of
the game the vintage will be remembered for the inaugural
Jim Cogan memorial trophy game. Cricket was just
one of the many ways that Jim influenced generations
of OWW and so it was fitting that a fair spread of those
generations turned out on a warm May afternoon to
take on the School. The fact the game was the most
oversubscribed in OW history was entirely apt, as was
the return to headquarters of numerous OW cricketing
luminaries, many of whom had been feared lost to the
Club many moons ago. Unfortunately the match script
writer had a day off and despite the undoubted pedigree
and combined (hundreds of) years of experience, the
OWW fell cruelly short in their run chase.
Next up came the Cricketer Cup. The Club has underperformed in this arena in recent years, as despite being
able to call on an increasingly strong pool of players a
combination of some tough draws and failing to rise to
the occasion have conspired against us. Unfortunately
2009 can be added to that list as an extremely strong Old
Wellingtonians side, full of county IIs players brushed us
aside with rather too much ease.
Despite these two early season setbacks a silver lining had
been gained from the School game, as post match nostalgia
and inebriation was cynically exploited, with the result
that Cricket Week teams were pretty much filled on the
night. When this was combined with some hungry
youngsters the result was the strongest OW Cricket Week
line-up on record.
For once paper strength was translated into on-field
results as the OWW won five, drew one and lost two.
Victories came against Marlborough, Butterflies, Lords &
Commons, Kensington and particularly impressively, the
28
|
| 2009/2010
Free Foresters, on their return to the Cricket Week line-up.
Notable individual performances included: A. Sahai’s
(WW 1988-1993) 5-55 against Eton, 50s for A. Hines-Green
(QS 2002-2007) and K. Patel against the Free Foresters, 75
for B. Orme (RR 2002-2007) against Seagullians, 100 for
A. Campbell (WW 1989-1994) against Lords & Commons.
Champagne moment of the week came from M. Cornes
(DD 1988-1993) who after a few years trying, opened his
hundred account with a majestic one against Eton.
The Club would like to thank the School for its continued
access to London’s finest private cricket ground, and
particularly the new groundsman, Franklin Barrett,
whose helpful and accommodating attitude was a
wonderful breath of fresh air.
As ever, the OWCC welcomes young or old from the OW
cricketing fraternity who are interested in playing or
supporting. For more information get in touch with the
Development Office, Daniel Cavanagh or Rowan Bamford.
Fives
A curate’s egg of a season was one description of
the Old Westminsters’ fortunes in 08/09. Following
their impressive debut back in the top flight, when
they finished as Division One runners-up, the OW1
squad enjoyed another really solid campaign to come
third, behind the Olavians and Harrovians. OW2 had
a very tough course to steer in Division Two, much of
it through the choppy waters of the relegation zone,
but managed to pull clear at the end, leaving four
clubs in their wake. This escape was in no small
measure due to strength in numbers - 30+ active
players - which meant we did not suffer penalty
points for defaulting on pairs (as did many of the
other teams), together with the ever-immaculate
match management of Edward Levy and Chris Watts.
It’s too early to report much on 09/10, though the
First Team are currently still in third place, with a
convincing recent victory over the Old Harrovians.
Also cause for celebration is their run in the Barber
Cup (in which all players have to be genuine former
pupils, with no guest players as in the League),
galvanised by Giles Coren:
“After OW’s historic defeat of the Harrovians, the
defending League Champions, in the First Division on
Nov 17 - finally overturning 80 years of league precedent
- further glory was brought on the club with a defeat
of the Wulfrunians in the first round of the Barber
Cup by a bona fide Westminster ‘originals’ side (six
OWs fair and true, educated in Dean’s Yard) featuring
Rose and Coren at 1st, Albert and Brock at 2nd and
Chen and Jackson at 3rd. It’s the first time we’ve
competed in the premier knockout competition in
recent memory and a great thing to have got six up
to the Black Country by train on a vile wet November
weekend and beaten a really competitive side 2-1.
first time we’ve competed
‘inIt’sthethepremier
knockout competition
in recent memory and a great
thing to have got six up to the
Black Country by train on a vile
wet November weekend...
’
Huge respect to Laurie and Alf who shlepped all the
way from Cambridge via three trains taking four
hours to be there. We had a few crisp Heinekens on
the way home and felt very damn fine about ourselves.
I don’t think I can remember a better day for OWFC.”
GC
Coming up in early 2010 (the product of a post-match
pub session) is what we hope to be the first of many
‘Very Old Westminster’ fixtures - against long-standing
friendly rivals, the Very Old Ipswichians. Players
must be over 50 and we have three pairs who were
all at School in 1970: Messrs Margerison, Sanderson,
Wilson, Hooper, Grant and Aitken. That we can still
do this 40 years on is a testament to the life-enhancing
qualities of the game (or something) and a challenge
for more recently joined members, such as Laurie
Brock, Napper Tandy, Freddie Krespi and Matt Chen,
to take up...
Andrew Aitken (WW 1967-1971)
| 2009/2010 |
29
Football: 1st Xi
For the 1st XI, the 2008/09 season was akin to the old
footballing idiom: ‘a game of two halves’.
The season started impeccably. Ten minutes in, on a sunny
afternoon away at Harrow, the Pinks took the lead. A nice
move down the right flank produced a curling cross from
Anthony Doeh, which was duly dispatched by Rupert
Ratcliffe. This led the way for what is commonly known as
‘champagne football’. The opposition fought hard but the
Pinks danced around their aggression like a matador easing
a bull towards its destiny. Rupert Ratcliffe added another
and Ezra Rubenstein notched up a couple until skipper,
Fabian Joseph finished the job. The result was a 5-0 drubbing
against a team that was to finish the season in 2nd.
The next two matches saw a team high in confidence
take charge of the Premier Division with a 4-1 home win
against Lancing, followed by a 2-0 win away at Malvern.
Will Wolton in goal and a back four of Hugo Braddick, Rob
Sawbridge, Rupert Coltart and Sherif Salem had conceded
one goal in three games. Then came a loss at Brentwood.
A tight game in which the team were punished for two
lapses in concentration.
Westminster then became draw specialists. Stalemates
against Eton, Charterhouse and Malvern, combined with
a thrilling 4-3 victory over Forest, were enough to ensure
that the Pinks were top of the league come Christmas. This
was added to in January with a 3-2 win away at Eton and
then detracted from by the reverse score against Harrow.
In the Arthur Dunn Cup, Westminster had smashed Old
Berkhamstedians 6-1 and Bradfield 4-0 to reach the quarter
finals. This was to be the turning point of the season.
An agonising last minute defeat against Lancing triggered a
series of disappointing results that saw the team plummet
from title hopefuls to a final finish of 6th. Westminster
had taken a two goal lead, after two cool finishes by David
Weinstein-Linder, but Lancing managed to get themselves
back into the match with a goal just before half time.
For the majority of the second half it was an evenly fought
contest but the opposition found something extra and
scored twice in injury time to win the tie 3-2.
30
|
| 2009/2010
Losses to Brentwood, Kings and Forest were only salvaged
by a point away at Charterhouse, the eventual title
winners, and a 3-0 win away at Lancing on the final day
of the season.
Special mention should go to Fabian Joseph, for his energy
and enthusiasm in the role of captain. A final finish of
sixth in the Premier Division, viewed to some as an
underachievement, shows how far this team has come.
The previous season where the 1st XI finished third, and
achieved the club’s best ever league finish, was not to be
surpassed, but that remains the ambition for the future of
this club.
Other special mentions should go to Rob Sawbridge who
scooped the big prize of player of the season, Sam Sazaki,
for Young Player of the Season, and Rupert Ratcliffe, who
was the team’s top scorer with 14 goals.
The 2009/10 season has thus far been a different story,
as the club has struggled to deal with some internal
reorganisation. Half of the last season’s 1st XI from last
season have either moved on or been injured, and we have
won only one of our first five matches in the league. A 4-1
win over Kings Wimbledon where Jon Korganker had one
of the most inspirational performances seen in a Pink shirt,
scoring all four before half time. Previous to that fixture,
Westminster had been beaten by Lancing, Aldenham and
Brentwood, the last two being lost in the final minute
from set pieces. Momentum gained by a fantastic first
round win in the Arthur Dunn Cup, against the odds
away at Salopians, where keeper William Wolton was
outstanding, was then lost in the last round, in terrible
conditions, against Tonbridge. With a strong side being
assembled, morale still good and several players returning
from injury, Westminster will be looking to reverse their
fortunes in 2010 and target a respectable league finish.
Rupert Ratcliffe (AHH 1997-2002)
year’s event was won by
‘This
Tom Samuel, who in 2008
became the first OW in living
memory to have competed in
the Varsity cross-country race.
’
Athletics
Football:
2nd/3rd Xi
The 2008/09 season was a glorious one for the
OW 3rd XI, with the side winning the 4th Division
title, taking 36 out of a possible 42 points, and
remaining unbeaten. The final record was: P:14,
W:11, D:3, L:0.
The team consistently showed real spirit and
character, regularly coming from behind to score
crucial late goals, epitomised by the last minute
goal scored on the last day of the season, to win
the title, and maintain the 3 year unbeaten home
record. A wide pool of players were used throughout
the season, but Tezcan, Scimone, Sen Gupta,
Lancaster, Khera, Jones, Gregory and Bamford all
deserve notable mentions, while the player of the
season award went to Jo-Jo Gunnell who was
something of a colossus at centre back.
The year’s activities have been overshadowed
by the death of our long-standing member, Dr
Stephen Instone, who combined lecturing in
Classics at University College London with longdistance running. Stephen, a regular marathon
runner, died aged 54, when swimming in Lake
Geneva on 25th July. We will always remember
him, particularly his zeal and determination - he
is believed to have run the perimeter of Richmond
Park more often than anyone in history.
A minute’s silence in his memory was held at
the start of the Towpath Cup on 20th September,
when the OWW annually compete against the
School and the Common Room.
This year’s event was won by Tom Samuel, who
in 2008 became the first OW in living memory to
have competed in the Varsity cross-country race.
The Oxford Blue won in 16 minutes 34 seconds, a
course shortened this year by 230 metres because
of the building work being done on Barnes
Railway Bridge. Second was another OW, Will
Sweet, who did 17 minutes 42 seconds and
Richard Kowenicki, representing the Common
Room, was third. The OWW won the team event.
Currently the 2nd X1 are sitting in the bottom 1/2
of the table in Div 2, and facing a potential relegation
battle - so the 2nd half of the season will present a
great challenge to everyone in the squad.
Unfortunately, most of the younger OWW were
unavailable for the Thames Hare and Hounds
annual Old Boys’ Race on Wimbledon Common
on 12th December. If they had been able to run in
their normal form, we probably would have
finished second behind Winchester, our perennial
rivals. As it was, the OWW finished 8th in a field
of 85 runners over the hilly, five mile course, won
by Charles Sykes of Sedbergh in 27 minutes 27
seconds. Miles Copeland was our highest scorer
in 26th place in 32 minutes 06 seconds followed
by Tristan Vanhegan in 32 minutes 42 seconds,
his best-ever time, and his brother Toby, running
in his 10th race in 11 years, was our third scorer
and James Furlong, our fourth. Anyone interested
in taking part in the OW athletic activities should
e-mail: [email protected].
John Goodbody (LL 1956-1961)
Sadly, following the retirement of a number of
key players, and a decidedly patchy start to the
2009/10 season by all 3 teams, the decision has
recently been taken to merge the 2nd and 3rd XIs.
While disappointing at the time, and not a decision
taken easily, this has left the club with two strong
teams and competition for places, and we feel it
should help to make the club stronger in the
long term.
| 2009/2010 |
31
Tennis
As I file my copy from Rex Hotel garden roof, Saigon,
I am very happy to report that it has been an excellent year
for the OWLTC troops; the Club goes from strength to
strength with numbers and activity continuing to expand.
The Tuesday club evenings at Vincent Square from late
April continue to be very popular. This year, thanks to the
generosity of the School and the tremendous support of the
new Groundsman, we have even been able to extend into
early September.
We are delighted to have been able to resume weekend
morning play, mainly on Saturday mornings, thanks again
to the terrific commitment of the School but also of Franklin
Barrett: he has been unstinting in his efforts on our behalf,
to every problem he has a solution and his kindness is
hugely appreciated. The Saturday morning sessions
were particularly popular with the younger players and
continued until snow stopped play late in the year.
The match activity has continued: impressive efforts by
stalwarts Marc Baghdadi and Ed Roussell again saw us
through the round robin section of the D’Abernon Cup,
thereby earning us a seat at the table to discuss the future
of this event, as we continue to hope to penetrate further
into the second section of the event (or re-write the rules
in our favour).
The match against the School was of exceptional value this
year: stalwart efforts from the OWW saw the match reach
a thunderous (this time, happily, not literally) climax with
the much hoped for decider between Marc Baghdadi and
his erstwhile partner Chris Anguelov. What can I say
except well done Marc, though Chris will be a very
welcome addition to our ranks.
32
|
| 2009/2010
Above: © Matthew Webb.
The match against the Common Room was almost as
impressive, above all for an almost unprecedented
development: a full team from the Common Room with no
ringers, albeit happily again two (Simon Craft and Andy
Johnson) who could have played for either side. A great
afternoon, the precise score lost sight of in a delightful picnic.
Whilst one or two other normal fixtures fell by the wayside
this year, they are all back in planning for next season
which promises to be better than ever. This is due in no
small measure to the enthusiasm of a new generation and
their willingness to step up and take over the reins. I greatly
welcome the contribution that the new team of Tristan
Vanhegan, Yasheen Rajan, Matthew Webb and Alex Perry
are going to make to running the Club. They are assured of
the continuing support of the less young guard (including
Nick Perry, Alec Melville, Tom Sooke, Tim and Simon
Brocklebank-Fowler, Simon Clement-Davies and the
indomitable Stephenson quad) without whom there would
be no club to take over. We wish them every success in
continuing to encourage new members and especially in
attracting a critical mass of female players.
Duncan Matthews QC (QS 1974-1979)
(Outgoing) Hon. Sec. OWLTC
Players of all standards are more than welcome. To find
out more check the OWLTC page on the OW website
where you can also find the link to our Facebook site for
the latest news.
the Old Boys Putting
‘InCompetition
at Royal
Wimbledon we just failed
to qualify for the Final.
’
Image: iStockphoto.
Real Tennis
Golf Society
The season was somewhat truncated by a
wholescale revision by the clubs of their social
match policy, whereby those teams and clubs
who are not able to offer reciprocal matches have
been moved down the pecking order. This is not
great news for teams such as the Old Wets, Old
Harrovians, and others without a ‘home’ court,
although it is testament to the ever-increasing
popularity of the sport, so no one should complain!
The Club has played in five Old Boys Golf
Competitions during the year. In the Halford
Hewitt we lost 4-1 to Eastbourne, our winning
pair was Edward Cartwright and Johnny
Woolf. It was nice to welcome a new member
Oli Flynn to the team. In the plate competition
the team lost 2-1 to Framlingham.
The solitary fixture in the season was therefore
Patrick Schmitt, sadly losing 3-2 on the last singles
to his other alma mater, Oxford.
The 2009-10 season should be a bit more active,
with three matches already lined up for the spring,
and the hope that we can once again put out a
competitive team in the old boys tournament, the
Henry Leaf Cup, in Leamington Spa in March.
If anyone, current or past student, is interested in
taking up the game and playing in these matches
and others, please do get in touch with me.
Simon Marshall (DD 1990-1995)
In the Grafton Morrish we failed to qualify
for the knock-out stage, and in both the
Bernard Darwin and Senior Darwin we
lost to Radley. In the Old Boys Putting
Competition at Royal Wimbledon we just
failed to qualify for the Final.
This year the Club has played ten inter Old
Boys matches where we have won four,
halved one and lost five. The Club has defeated
the Old Uppinghamians, Old Paulines,
Old Radleians and Old Carthusians, the Club
halved with the Old Canfordians.
All three Society meetings were well attended.
If anybody would like to join the Old
Westminster Golf Society please contact me.
David Roy (AHH 1955-61)
| 2009/2010 |
33
Westminster Today
This year’s Elizabethan Newsletter features articles written by Old
Westminsters who are now members of the School’s teaching staff
and have focused on their experiences as both pupil and teacher.
• Tom Edlin (DD 1993–1998)
• Andrew Johnson (LL 1987–1992)
• Gavin Griffiths (WW 1967–1972)
• Edmund Jolliffe (LL 1989-1994)
Tom Edlin
Dryden’s 1993–1998
June, 1998. The brief two-hour existence of the Remove
‘most likely to…’ list, an addendum to the leavers’ yearbook
so tactlessly offensive (in parts) that it was immediately
excised and destroyed - if not quite forgotten. I only
mention this loss to the Archive as I was not ‘most likely
to return to Westminster to teach’ (step forward Jamie
McClelland, who has become a barrister instead) - but I
should perhaps add (while saying nothing of what I was
deemed most likely to do) that my contemporaries have
responded to the news with amusement rather than
amazement. That may be indicative. One does not return
to one’s old school if one hates the place.
I was away from the School for ten years; enough time
had elapsed for Westminster to have changed a good deal.
My final term was also David Summerscale’s last as Head
Master; we were awaiting the return of Tristram JonesParry, who taught me maths in the fifth form before
departing for Emanuel. Others too left that year - Robert
Court, Richard Ballard and one Brian Smith, if I remember
rightly… And it is certainly true that the Common Room
I joined in 2008 included many unfamiliar faces. Indeed,
I was part of perhaps the largest single intake of new
teaching staff in living memory. So it was perhaps a little
odd for one of those new boys to find that the colleagues
he knew best were among the most senior - but the fourteen
of them who once taught me have been universally tactful
in their reminiscences. Some, I fear, have been so by
default - in fact, one ‘introduced’ herself at lunch on my
first day and I’m afraid I did remind her that, yes, I knew
her well as she’d taught me for three years...
36
|
| 2009/2010
The History Department has grown and moved, but
much remains the same. Giles Brown, who taught me
in the fifth form and became Head of History when I was
in the Remove, is now my boss, and has yet to carry
through his threat of digging out his mark-book for
1993-94 (just as I have yet to re-submit any of my preps).
Frances Ramsey, who taught me at GCSE, only left this
summer. But a department of seven (I think) has become
one of eleven - partly through internal promotions and
partly an impressive expansion at Sixth Form level.
Expansion has been physical too - the move to Weston’s
means I am spared the horror of teaching in any of my
old classrooms, and gives us space, light and penthouse
views of the Abbey, which were decidedly lacking in the
Sutcliff’s basement. Weston’s, the Manoukian and the
Millicent Fawcett Hall offer far better facilities than we
who taught me
‘inGilestheBrown,
fifth form and became
Head of History when I was
in the Remove, is now my boss,
and has yet to carry through
his threat of digging out his
mark-book for 1993-94.
’
Main image: Dryden’s House photograph 1998.
enjoyed back in the 1990s, and the added space has made
the School a calmer place (certainly from our top floor
perspective). The John Sargeaunt Room has been added
to the library as a dedicated History room, and it was a
relief to find the book still valued in an IT-driven world
(though I have mixed feelings about picking out certain
titles, noticing the last date stamped was ‘Nov.97’ and
wondering if that was me).
The courses we teach have certainly changed - and the
style of examination even more so. International
Relations from the Treaty of Versailles onwards is still
a staple of the Lower Shell, but we now cover a wider
period and this year, with the introduction of the IGCSE,
we reach 1989, which I still struggle to see as ‘History’.
Coursework has evolved (whether in the direction of
extinction we shall have to wait and see) - and the muchderided empathy questions on Nazi Germany have been
replaced by proper source analysis on the Six Day War.
At A level, thankfully, the range of periods and papers
remains broad, and we stick to our practice of all teaching
different units, though some old favourites have been
wiped from the syllabus. The modular structure of AS
and A2 imposes its own constraints, and finding a logical
path of progression from Sixth Form to Remove is something of a challenge - while the need to master a greater
range of techniques and approaches than simply ‘essay’
and ‘document’ makes the subject more technical, and
probably less content-rich.
Beyond the department, I have occasional feelings of déjà
vu. This year I have returned to Dryden’s as a tutor, and
noted that within a week our 1998 house photograph
(hanging in full view all last year, but noticed by few…)
had been politely removed and replaced with one of a
Above: Dryden’s House photograph (April 1998).
Tom Edlin (2nd row from front, 9th from left).
more recent vintage. Tutoring the fifth form has meant
returning to Alston for the first time since Lent 1994
(when we used to go as half form-groups); the school
house was worryingly familiar and the correct route
through the lead mine came back to me as soon as we
reached the first turning. On Station afternoons, my
hockey stick from the days when out-of-season puntsmen
had to find something to do between October and April
has been brought into use for the first time in ten years,
though I have detected a level of disappointment in my
skills from those who forget that it was never really my
‘proper’ Station. Still, I have kept up my proud record in
the Common Room vs 1st XI match, which at the time of
writing runs: played 6 (three on each side), lost 6, aggregate
goals for: 5, aggregate goals against: approximately 28.
These continuities raise the question of how best to
negotiate the pitfalls of being an OW on the staff. From
the start, I have seen no point in being too secretive about
the fact - which is probably just as well, for it is hard to
conceal (even more so now). ‘OW’ is included in the pink
list, where all other letters of distinction are deemed
surplus to requirements. And perhaps there is more to it
than that. At my first parents’ evening a mother with no
knowledge of the fact suddenly stopped in mid sentence
and commented that I was surely an old boy, wasn’t I, I
simply must be… She was unable to say exactly how she
knew. One of my tutors in Oxford once said that you
could always tell a Westminster as they couldn’t walk
properly, but I was sitting down.
| 2009/2010 |
37
Andrew Johnson
LL 1987–1992
The original request was to reflect upon my experiences
as a Westminster pupil (LL 1987-1992) and History teacher.
This seemed to be a fine opportunity to jeopardise my
career and the reputations of others by embarking on the
sort of confessions piece associated with retired American
tennis players or golfers who have driven into trees.
Needless to say, whilst the Berlin Wall was crumbling and
the first Gulf War raged, I was the model student and all my
teachers were true professionals. The history department
that inspired my choice of degree did not misplace
coursework, teach medieval history using language that
would make Gordon Ramsay blush, or operate with such
dedication that staff came to work the morning after being
up all night to support the birth of their first child.
The aspect of Westminster life that I have decided to write
about instead is Phab. In front of me I have two photographs, group photos from Phab 1992 and 2009. The first
photo was found in 2000 behind one of Tim Francis’ filing
cabinets when the Registrar’s office was refurbished. 1992
was Charlotte Moore’s first year running Phab and my
second year volunteering. The previous year, my first as
a helper, had been Willie Booth’s final year running the
course he had set up in 1977. By contrast, Phab 2009
was my last year organising Phab, something I had the
privilege of doing since 2003, taking over from David
Hargreaves. Looking at these two photos, it is clear that
much has changed about Phab in the last 17 years, and that
much, thankfully, has not changed at all. The same is also
true of the School.
Has presentation triumphed over substance? In 1992 participants on Phab were PHs or ABs - Physically Handicapped
or Able Bodied. PHAB is now Phab - a community not an
acronym - and a community comprised of ‘guests’ and
‘hosts’ rather than PHs and ABs. Is this merely political
correctness? The semantics change reinforces the idea that
physical appearance and mental capacity do not define our
roles or relationships with others. The principles of parity
and inclusion that Willie built at the heart of Phab were a
revelation to me in 1991 and still surprise hosts, staff and
parents alike. Styles of presentation may change, but it is
the substance of what is happening behind that matters.
In 1992 I was an ‘AB’ sporting a ludicrous quiff and a
38
|
| 2009/2010
Christmas jumper in mid-July, whereas in 2009 I was a
balding course Director in a Chelsea FC T-shirt. Clearly
there’s more to having value than looking good. I learnt this
on Phab and it is a lesson that continues to improve many
within the School community, even if it might irk our
notoriously vain foundress Queen Elizabeth I.
Does size matter? In the 1992 picture I can see 18 guests, 24
hosts and 6 staff. In 2009 there are 29 guests, 35 hosts, and
15 staff. Phab, like the School, has expanded considerably
since the early 90s. It is the nature of the expansion that
matters, however. Phab has been vastly oversubscribed
from the 6th form since the mid-1990s. Few Remove
pupils get a chance to volunteer and nobody is able to do it
twice as I did in 1991 and 1992. It is a huge testimony to my
predecessors who ran Phab, as well as the guests, that a
summer course as demanding as Phab has developed this
profile. There are now 35 pupils in every year group who
have a chance to be hosts on Phab, and many more who
would have liked to. Increased size has also come with
increased opportunity. Phab is now free thanks to the
generosity of the School and well-wishers. The ideal of a
fun, educational experience that is both subsidised and
more accessible than it was in 1992 is to be celebrated.
I am glad this is true of Phab and also that it is true for
some within the School via the bursary system.
Does technology damage young people? I have some
sympathy for those concerned about a generation growing
up with a lack of sensitivity to the difference between
private and public spaces, and for those anxious to protect
us all from the dangers of the internet. However, let’s not
be blinded by generational anxieties about technology that
pupils use better than we do. How did Phab work without
mobile phones? I know it did, but I can’t imagine running
it then. Mobiles help to limit Health and Safety risks via
24/7 contact to the nurse and the staff. Without the internet,
the Phab website, and the Phab facebook group, guests
and hosts, scattered across the country, would not be able
to sustain so readily the genuine and important friendships
made on Phab. More fundamental than all of that, there
are no electric wheelchairs in the 1992 photo. For these
reasons, I can tolerate thumb print registration and pupils
playing computer games at break times in School.
Above: Phab 2009. Andrew Johnson (seated front left). Below: Phab 1992.
‘
The exhilaration comes from
achieving something better
than grades as a reward for
unself-conscious hard work
for the benefit of others as
well as oneself.
’
Do continuities matter as much as changes? Yes! Just ask
a historian. Among the guests in both photos I can see
James Gusterson (my roommate in 1991), Neil Ross (my
roommate in 1992), and Dorcas Munday. James can no
longer stand, as he is doing in the 1992 photo, Neil, like
Phab, has expanded somewhat, and Dorcas (MBE) remains
one of the most remarkable and inspirational people I
have ever met. I also recognise the expressions on so many
faces in both photos. There is a beautiful combination
of exhaustion and exhilaration. The exhaustion comes
from a demanding residential course involving huge
responsibility, the delivery of care, workshops,
outings and continual, often side-splittingly entertaining
social integration. The exhilaration comes from achieving
something better than grades as a reward for unselfconscious hard work for the benefit of others as well as
oneself. It is the continuity of ethos which is so important.
I hope that is still true of a School that has always prized
individuality without pandering to ego.
So where does this all lead in a discussion of Westminster
‘then and now’? In a School driven by a hunger for academic
success, Phab has always offered invaluable perspective.
I know of ex-Phabbers who have found affluent careers
but whose values are partly shaped by Phab. I know of
others whose choice of future has been defined by Phab.
I didn’t realise that was happening to me in 1991 or 1992,
but I now know that it did. What has happened to Phab
since Willie’s last Phab in 1991 mirrors much that has
happened to the School - expansion, technological
advance, changes in personnel and styles of leadership and all this, I hope, without a fundamental change in
ethos. Long may this remain the case.
| 2009/2010 |
39
Gavin Griffiths
WW 1967–1972
I was at Westminster, as a pupil, between 1967 and 1972;
returning as a teacher in 1980, I have remained ever since.
To have spent thirty five years in the same institution
possesses a certain circus freakishness, and it would be
idle to object being classified with bearded ladies and
pin-headed ape men.
The reasons for my life sentence are a result of the marriage
between Westminster’s advantages and my own deficiencies:
among the former are the lively students, (mostly) endearing
colleagues, pretty surroundings and convenience for the
District Line; among the latter are want of imagination,
innate conservatism, a chronic absence of ambition and an
inability to focus on, or indeed believe in, the ‘future’.
Whenever I meet Old Westminsters, one question pops up
and beneath it slobbers an enduring fantasy. The question
is ‘has the old School changed?’; the fantasy behind it is
the belief that the School must have gone downhill.
Of course, Westminster has altered - whether or not it is in
perpetual decline depends very much on the attitude of the
Old Westminster who is proposing the initial question.
The School has changed because society has changed,
largely for the better. You may like to recall that until July
1967 homosexual acts between consenting adults were a
criminal offence. If there were any gay teachers or students
at Westminster, they would have had to engage in
dishonesty, subterfuge, hypocrisy and deceit on a daily
basis. Today people can choose to be open about their
40
|
| 2009/2010
sexuality. This must be regarded as an improvement of
some sort, even if the British, as a nation, habitually relish
evasive euphemism over plain expression.
I came to Westminster from the Lycée Français de Londres,
in South Kensington. The French attitude to education is
clear in its assumptions: children are to be taught subjects,
the ethical stuff is left to parents; co-education is selfevidently ‘healthier’ than the alternative; if children have
authority over other children, it will result in bullying.
Westminster came as a culture shock. To an extent, my
views chimed in with the poet Larkin: ‘When I was a child
I thought I hated everybody but when I grew up I realised
it was just children I didn’t like’; but in my case, substitute
‘public schoolboy’ for ‘child’.
Frankly, I found it difficult to understand why it was that
my fellow pupils had such confidence, authority and selfimportance. Gradually I came to understand how prep
schools operated - prizes, pins, badges, ties, coloured
blazers, prefects, etc, etc: a panoply of devices designed
to stuff the child’s mind with respect for their Elders,
and a belief in themselves. Of course, in many respects,
Westminster perpetuated this toff-tosh, and Independent
Schools (another euphemism) still enjoy flirting with
the idea of empowering their charges with the idea of
‘leadership’. Which is fine and dandy, except that it
assumes that somewhere out there, beyond the school
gates, is to be found a tribe of natural ‘followers’.
The other thing that Westminster had in spades was
charismatic teaching. The Heavens preserve us from the
charismatic and inspiring schoolmaster, a breed which
is fortunately dying out and, if not, requires immediate
putting down. Although tweedy eccentrics with booming
Main image: Common Room 1989.
Gavin Griffith (3rd row, 2nd from left).
voices, coloured socks and insulting ways can be initially
fun, after a bit, it becomes wearing. How often at Old
Westminster gatherings have I had to listen to some
reminiscence of adult bullying, now lauded as a hilarious
example of Mr X’s colourful method of instruction.
To give an example, I remember one highly respected
English master kicking a copy of George Eliot in the bin to
dissuade me from wasting my private hours on such
‘lugubrious Victorian trash.’ To quote Larkin once more,
‘useful to get that learnt’.
Westminster has grown up since then. We no longer
believe that it is imperative for pupils to shoulder the
burden of their teacher’s psychological quirks and defects.
On the contrary, it is now seen to be the responsibility of
the teacher to think about the mental well-being of the
student. Surely this is the right way round.
no longer believe that it
‘We
is imperative for pupils to
shoulder the burden of their
teacher’s psychological
quirks and defects.
’
On the whole, though, I enjoyed my school-days at
Westminster but when I returned to teach it was a relief to
find that some of the jolly old assumptions were quietly
expiring. Even the PE teacher no longer pretended that he
was training troops for jungle warfare, although the Head
Master still behaved as if he were Louis XIV, and 17 Dean’s
Yard the court of Versailles.
My own hope for the School’s future (if I could believe in
the concept for a moment) would be that it should embrace
co-education throughout all five years. I am a sufficiently
old fashioned English teacher to believe that for people to
be happy they need to sort out their relationships with
members of their own sex and members of the opposite
sex, at the earliest possible opportunity. This is the
undercurrent that runs through great English fiction
from Samuel Richardson (via George Eliot, of course) to
D H Lawrence, and possibly beyond.
Over the years, Westminster has become more liberal, not
less, because British society has freed itself from many of
the inhibiting prejudices - about sexuality, race and religion
- which no doubt won us the Empire and two World Wars.
It seems to me that in 2010 the pupils are more selfconscious and thoughtful and that teachers are more selfaware and responsible. There is no doubt that co-education
in the Sixth Form has made the school more interesting
and intellectually lively than it was in 1967, when Little
Dean’s Yard was awash with blokes in black suits.
My other hope is that we can dump the idea of the ‘great
schoolmaster’ - and, while we’re about it ‘great headmaster’
- once and for good. After all, it makes no sense to talk of
‘great’ accountants or ‘great’ solicitors. Teaching is a job
like any other: and it suits some more than most. I have
been privileged to teach at Westminster for thirty years and the reason that I’ve felt privileged is because it has
been great fun to be involved with a bunch of entertaining
people who are interested in learning something. It is not
more complicated than that.
| 2009/2010 |
41
A blast from the past
Twenty years ago
at the Under School
Westminster Under School now has two OWW (and former WUS pupils) on the staff:
Greg Pallis (maths) and Edmund Jolliffe (music). A number of OWW have contributed to
this issue of the Elizabethan Newsletter and Edmund Jolliffe (LL 1989-1994) outlines
below some of his thoughts on what life was like at WUS twenty years ago.
As I flick through my school magazine of 1989, I am
reminded of all the wonderful things that WUS did and
continues to do. The Science Labs that boys now use were
first installed at the top of Adrian House, much to the
annoyance of boys in Year 8, who had previously had a
table tennis and snooker table kept there for their use in
break time.
The general knowledge quiz continued apace, although Mr
James bemoaned the fact that ‘nobody yet had managed to
answer the question of the previous year: Who was the first
actor to play James Bond?’ Can anybody answer this now?
In 1989 the choir became film stars by appearing in a
British Airways film about a traditional British
Christmas. Sadly they were not allowed to eat all the food
laid out on the film set. The Music Department gained
its first Music Technology in the form of 8 very small
keyboards. It was housed in Mr Walker’s present office,
which seems hard to imagine, but then his office was
housed in the electrical store cupboard where all the
gowns are kept now. The present Music Technology
room used to be the Music classroom where all rehearsals
took place. Can you imagine the entire choir stuffed in
there for rehearsals!
42
|
| 2009/2010
Talking of the choir, they went on tour to the Rhineland and
Mr Walker wrote that the choir performing Holst’s Ave Maria
was ‘perhaps the most magical moment of my musical career’.
I am sure there have been many more moments since then!
Trips to Italy, the Norfolk Broads, Alston (for the geography
field trip) and Paris all took place as well and there were trips
to the Opera, Scotland and the Isle of Wight. Risk assessments
must have been a little different back then as I remember on
the Paris trip we all went to see a film and lost a boy on the
Metro. The awful thing is that nobody noticed until we all
returned to the hotel after the film!
In those days there was a special
‘room
for House Captains (really
an oversized cupboard) where we
could make cheese toasties and
plot world domination.
’
assessments must have
‘Risk
been a little different back then
as I remember on the Paris
trip we all went to see a film
and lost a boy on the Metro.
The awful thing is that nobody
noticed until we all returned
to the hotel after the film.
’
Above: The Under School.
Competitions like the Scrabble, Model and Reading competitions were already firmly established and there were
many sporting fixtures won (the first XI played 9 matches:
won 6, drew 1 and lost 2). I could not resist quoting this
report on the Under 11’s performance: ‘Unfortunately due
to the vagaries of the international postal system (not to
mention those of the author), the Under 11 Soccer report
has not yet found its way out of Africa ...’
From my own point of view, 1989 saw me rise to the
pinnacle of my WUS career as House Captain of Martlets.
In those days there was a special room for House Captains
(really an oversized cupboard) where we could make
cheese toasties and plot world domination. I appeared
in the senior production of ‘Treasure Island’ playing
somebody’s mother. There is a very fetching picture of me
on page 16 of the school magazine. I beat the 400m record
on Sports Day, knocking 4 seconds off the time (only to be
beaten the very next year). I clearly was not that good a
Cricketer though as I ended up scoring a lot of Cricket
games. I was not very good at that either as I distinctly
remember not knowing how many balls were in an over
and trying to make it five. Oops!
Above: Edmund Jolliffe.
I am writing this in June, with Common Entrance going
on in the hall. It’s the final term for the Year 8s - the end
of one era and the beginning of another. So many exciting
things ahead - will these boys ever return to the Under
School? Can you imagine what Westminster Under School
will be like in 2029?
| 2009/2010 |
43
Above: At the Elizabethan Club Dinner.
News
if you have any news you would like to
share with your contemporaries,
please send details to the Editor:
The Elizabethan Newsletter
17a Dean’s Yard, london SW1P 3Pb
T. 020 7963 1115
From the Archives
In a new regular feature in the Newsletter, the
School’s Consultant Archivist, Rita Boswell,
brings us up to date with news from the archives.
46
Above: Old Tuck Shop (demolished in 1903).
Can archivists make things last longer?
inherent attitudes?
The temptation of being involved in relocating and setting
up a new Archive at the prestigious Westminster School
was too much to resist. You would perhaps be forgiven for
thinking that after being involved in physically moving
three Archive Collections, two while working as an
archivist at Essex Record Office, and another at Harrow
School that enough was enough. There is, however,
enormous satisfaction in putting order into a ‘collection’
and making it accessible for research, each move exposes
weaknesses in systems to be corrected and avoided in the
future. It is worth explaining that Westminster School
Archive contains the written heritage of the School, but its
remit also involves the caretaking of its treasures such as
paintings, trophies, furniture, antiquarian books and
artefacts spread throughout its premises. My professional
training included conservation and preservation of all paper
records and artefacts as well as the intellectual control of
information, in the form of documentation, for both
archives, modern and electronic records. It is frequently
thought a boring, dirty, dusty job, usually undertaken by
a plain Jane with horn-rimmed spectacles, tweed skirt
and brogues; there may be many similarities here but it is
certainly not boring! Now the users of an archive are a
different matter, of course! They can be young/old, want
the impossible - particularly when asking for photographs
of their ancestors who attended in the 18th century - or
just difficult when they think the pencil only rule doesn’t
apply to them. But, believe me, ink marks can not be
removed from manuscripts or photographs and do
serious damage.
In the past antiquarians, particularly in the 19th century,
were keen to cherry-pick what they considered were
important historical documents; however it was not
until the 20th century that day to day records came to
be considered future archives. As a result many paper
documents were either destroyed or lost before their
potential as a future historical record were recognised;
this is the case in most schools.
|
| 2009/2010
Enlightenment and action
Westminster School has a unique heritage and a special
place in the history of public schools. Over many years
it has retained a valuable collection of antiquarian books,
which in recent years have been painstakingly listed by
Eddie Smith. By their nature, books, however, are not
unique, while the written routine of school life is.
Westminster has acknowledged the importance of its
long history by engaging professional help and providing
dedicated archival storage.
During the summer of 2008 the archive was generously
allocated an office and two storage rooms in the space
previously used for teaching Spanish on Wren’s mezzanine
floor. The first task was to reinforce the floor, as paper is
extremely heavy, after which special racking was installed
and the office fitted out. I arrived in September 2008 and
together with Eddie Smith started preparing storage for
the transfer of records and labeling shelves. A welcome
extra pair of hands, in the guise of David Clifford, arrived
in the autumn of 2009, which enabled the majority of the
collections scattered throughout the School to be transferred
into the store by the end of term, with just a few pockets
outstanding. As a result the initial objective of completing
a full transfer of records by 2010 is well on target. The
records are being boxed in archival acid-free containers
and listed to allow for efficient retrieval; a more long-term
task will be to allocate unique identifiers and catalogue
(a more detailed listing) each item.
What do we have?
As we go through the collections it is slowly becoming
apparent what we have and what is missing. It is strange
that the 20th Century should have lost so much of its
written records, no doubt due to the disposable attitude
which evolved during this period. There is a small collection of roughly sorted photographs covering the 19th and
20th century, many of which are without captions. House
records look interesting and worth actively extending. A
good selection of school magazines, such as the Ash Tree,
The Clarion and The Elizabethan - all possible candidates
for digitization. Plans and prints of buildings and people.
There are school uniforms, including ties and caps, videos,
CDs and an excellent though massive collection of books.
There are, however, enormous gaps.
So, where do we go from here?
It is obvious to an archivist that an archive must not be
allowed to stagnate, so a good archive motto might be
‘Today’s records make tomorrow’s archives’. It is very
important to continue to collect and actively seek out items
for inclusion which reflect the activities of the school, its
teachers and pupils. Archivists should look forward as
much as they look backward. What questions will the
researcher of the future be asking in say 50 or 100 years?
Records do not have to be written - they can also be in
sound and video forms. Recordings of people’s school
memories are very useful at putting back missing periods
in the School’s history. Old Westminsters and former
members of staff may well be able to help in all these areas.
Another plan is to adopt an active collections policy, which
involves surveying various record-generating areas in the
School and consider which might produce information of
possible historical interest in the future and then implement a system to capture this data.
Who uses such a collection?
A wide variety of researchers, from academics to family
historians, are interested in school records. The topics are
diverse concerning subjects such as cricket, football and Old
Westminsters. This year’s main topic of interest has been
flu epidemics in schools, obviously triggered by the outbreak
of Swine Flu. Over the last 100 years many schools have
recorded pupil deaths from various outbreaks, particularly
the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918/9; more recent episodes
happened in 1957/8 and 1967/8. This time the researchers
came from the medical profession rather than academia.
There is a growing demand for statistical information which
is impossible to meet without a lengthy series of relevant
records. This is a clear indication of a future research trend.
There are also internal demands for displays to celebrate
occasions, such as the 450th Anniversary.
National interest in school records
There has been much enthusiasm shown in school records
in recent years, encouraged by TV programmes such as
“Who Do You Think You Are?”. As a consequence, many
schools are now setting up small archives, with either a
Librarian or retired member of staff in charge. They have
recognized the specialist knowledge required and sought
help from other schools. In 1998 this interest resulted in
these acting archivists banding together into The School
Archivists’ Group, a self-help organisation for the purpose
of information sharing and support. Today its membership
numbers over 165 independent schools.
Above: Rita Boswell
Can you help?
Yes you can. If you have any documents, such as reports/
correspondence, concerning school activities or former
pupils/teachers etc., please consider donating them to the
archive. Photographs and memoirs of school life would be
particularly welcome. We aim to set up an Oral History
Project commencing next year and if you would like to take
part to record memories of your time at the School please
contact me.
The Future of Westminster School Archive
The archive collections have now been consolidated into a
sound base for future growth. A watching brief is being kept
on auction houses/eBay and an in-house collections policy
will be adopted in the very near future to help build up the
collections even further. The future looks encouraging.
Above: The new rolling stacks
Rita boswell
T. 020 7963 1106
| 2009/2010 |
47
Passion crawl: the Prag award
Ted Tregear (BB) and Roland Walters (BB)
The first annual award given in memory of teacher Adolf Prag was given to
two pupils in Busby’s for an Eastertide crawl of performances of the Passions.
I don’t think either of us really knew what we were
doing when we set off on this. I certainly didn’t: the
Passions are pieces I thought I knew very well through
recordings, and it seemed a nice idea to watch as many
of them as we could fit in to one Eastertide. So when we
planned it, it seemed best to choose from a whole range of
performance styles and capabilities. To know the music
itself, you have either got to ignore performance and sit
at home with a score, or you have got to see as many
performances as you possibly can, giving you a whole
range of different insights and interpretations.
In the end, we saw three of each Passion. This amounted
to about 15 hours’ worth of pieces lasting five hours. And
you would think, seeing them again and again, I would
have a completely sure idea of exactly what they mean and
were written for. But I am not sure I do. There were some
incredibly important things the series of performances
showed both of us.
The first and most novel idea - at least for me - was how
astonishingly difficult they are to perform well. The first
passion was a John at a tiny church in Hampstead, performed
by the local choral society and orchestra. Normally, there
would be so many of these I would not have thought of
going to them, but the Church had somehow managed to
book Sarah Connolly and Gerald Finley to do it - two of the
greatest soloists around at the moment. In the end, Sarah
Connolly was in the middle of a run of Dido and Aeneas at
the Royal Opera House, and felt physically exhausted to do
it, but their names brought us to the first (mostly) amateur
passion I had ever seen. This is when I realised how tricky
it is as a piece. The conductor was less than inspiring, the
choir was over-enthusiastic but under-rehearsed, and the
48
|
| 2009/2010
Image from iStockphoto.
text was a translation by the local vicar, who had included
some very theologically questionably interpretations of the
original Luther text Bach used for the story - including the
‘Temple Police’, and the tossing of a coin to determine who
got Christ’s robe. But I wouldn’t have missed it for anything;
Gerald Finley was fantastic - I had not heard him sing
Bach before - and though the piece as a whole was not a
huge success, it just showed how much Bach put in to
these pieces, and how difficult it was to get even a small
amount of that out.
Another interesting performance we went to was a One
Voice Per Part interpretation of the Matthew Passion at
the Royal Festival Hall. This collaboration between the
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and a group of
eight soloists, led by Mark Padmore, was the continuation
of a fierce debate among performance scholars, started
over thirty years ago by Joshua Rifkin. The theory that
Bach would only have had eight singers, four in each choir
With the sermon and hymns,
‘the
service took about four hours,
but it was an immensely moving
experience.
’
and so one on each part, has attracted some very serious
musicians, including Andrew Parrott and Paul McCreesh.
Before this concert I thought it sounded like a great idea;
I had only ever heard the results on recordings, where the
balance of each voice can be fine-tuned to create the sound
of a choir with more clarity. But this conductorless and
choirless performance, which I expected to be the highlight
of the whole Passion Crawl, showed me how much
I needed a conductor and choir to enjoy the work. In a
space like the Royal Festival Hall, the eight voices seemed
underpowered. They were also obliged to sing at the top of
their voices all the time just to be heard, and so the subtlety
called for by the Chorales could not be shown. And for all
the talent of the eight voices - including not only Mark
Padmore, but Roderick Williams and Christianne Stotijn,
so some really great soloists - they just did not blend as a
choir. Perhaps it was the enormous pressure on each of
them, or the fact that they are so used to singing on their
own. The lack of a conductor also seemed to effect the
performance; the crucial orchestral flurry, Sind Blitze,
Sind Donde, was a bit of a mess without someone regulating
it from the podium. As a whole it was less good than I
had imagined, and it stood as a convincing proof of the
necessity of a choir, at least in live performances.
Above: Frede and Adolf Prag. Top: Image from iStockphoto.
The most touching one we went to see was at St George’s
Hanover Square. Each year, one of the Passions is performed
on Good Friday, in the context of a service. So there was a
hymn at the beginning and a hymn at the end, and a sermon
after the first half. This year, Laurence Cummings was
directing the choir in the Matthew Passion. The church
has a long musical history - it was Handel’s church - but
I did not expect the choir to be quite as good as they were.
There were only about 16 of them, but the wood-panelling
of the church meant it sounded very close. With the sermon
and hymns, the service took about four hours, but it was
an immensely moving experience. In a church that feels
as small as St George’s, every small utterance by the
Evangelist is picked up, and nothing is lost. This was my
favourite concert of the Crawl; it communicated more
than anything else the intimacy of the Passion, that it does
not have to be remote and withdrawn, but can be much
more personal.
The process of rehearsal was one we got to see up close.
Early in March, we went up to Cambridge for the day to
hear Stephen Cleobury rehearsing for the St John Passion
with the Choir at King’s and the Academy of Ancient
Music, before watching the performance at the end of it.
This gave an insight into the role of the conductor in a
performance of this piece. Though much of his rehearsal
was technical, he confessed to the choir at one point that he
did not know what to do with the Chorale which ends the
John Passion. ‘With the Matthew, it’s much easier to know
when you stop: there’s a big chorus which ends with
triumph. I just don’t know what to make of the Chorale at
the end of this.’ I’m not sure he really succeeded in the end,
but watching the rehearsals was a unique experience, all
the more useful considering the performance did not really
live up to them. His soloists were the same generation as
him: James Bowman (now 68 or 69), William Kendall
(around 60) and Stephen Varcoe (who started singing
Christ about thirty years ago). The sad truth is that these
great names were not the singers they once were. It was
interesting to see them, but the music which had once
come so naturally to them seemed to elude them this time.
The role of the Evangelist was also something I had underestimated before. It is a role which pushes any tenor to their
limits - both vocally and emotionally. And each performance
had its different styles. At the Barbican, Riccardo Chailly
used a German tenor, Johannes Chum. His voice sounded
very like Kurt Equiluz’s, and he had the same, rather
detached method of telling the story. This eliminated the
sense of narrative line that a singer has to maintain to keep
the work from flopping at all. Padmore’s Evangelist, famous
throughout the world, was indeed a triumph - particularly
considering his participation in all of the Chorales and
choruses as well - but Nicholas Mulroy’s interpretation at
St George’s was just as accomplished vocally, and had a
sense of communication Padmore missed, probably because
of the size of the Royal Festival Hall. There is a very difficult
bit in the John Passion when Christ is being flogged, where
the Evangelist has some incredible coloratura to manage,
and this stood as a test for each singer than attempted it.
At St John’s Smith Square, Mark Wilde coped completely
comfortably, just grouping the notes and relaxing on them.
The different treatments of the top B and melisma describing
Peter’s betrayal in the Matthew Passion, just before
Erbarme Dich, were very interesting to compare. Chum
tried to get it over with, but Padmore - who trained as an
haute-contre - dwelt on the top note, slowing the pace
down, and really leaning into the suspensions of his line.
This was really a wonderful thing to hear.
I don’t think I understand the Passions now. I thought
I did before we started. The effect of this Passion Crawl
was to make me realise how little I knew about the pieces.
But to be able to start all over again with an interpretation,
to rid all influences - whether from recordings or performances - from your head, that is the real value in doing this.
I feel closer to the work than I have ever felt before,
simply from feeling further from truly understanding it.
And for that I’ll be eternally grateful to this project.
| 2009/2010 |
49
Sweet Home Chicago
Will Harris (DD 2002-2007) winner of the 2009 Neville Walton Travel/Cultural Bursary writes.
This summer, between August and September, a friend and I travelled from Chicago to Houston
on Greyhound buses; we slept on the couches of strangers, some of whom we had contacted
beforehand, most we discovered only days or hours before.
On our first night in Chicago we meet our host Hayley
at the bus stop. She gives us the key to her apartment and
a set of directions written on the back of a carryout menu.
She says she’s sorry she can’t go with us, she has a dance
recital at eight, but will try to get back as soon as she can,
probably around eleven.
We are on Division Street, a Hispanic area once controlled
by an infamous gang called the Latino Kings. This, like
many other parts of the South and Westside, functions as
a ductless gland for the city, secreting its problems and
successes directly into the bloodstream. In the half-light
young men gather on bikes outside the local cantina,
shouting at each other from behind the handlebars.
One of them looks at us sceptically but does nothing, too
busy explaining something to a friend.
We both notice a service station mural. Though its colours
have been obscured by years of dust and rain it is still
possible to decipher the image of a Puerta Rican family
smiling at the Chicago skyline, eyes fixed on the twopronged tip of the Sears Tower. We ask each other if we
were meant to turn off a block before.
A half-hour later we come to Maplewood and find it is a
different neighbourhood altogether, an African-American
neighbourhood. But perhaps neighbourhood is not the
best word. Each street is a self-contained community that,
though it may exist within a larger community, is distinctively, racially, its own. Together they are a jumble, each
limb jutting into another, jostling for supremacy.
Into this street, this community we walk, slack-limbed,
hopelessly out of place. We ask ourselves how we fit in. We
could not be said to bridge any divisions. Perhaps we should
ask these kids, home from school playing basketball, how
50
|
| 2009/2010
they think we fit into their lives. Or the smaller ones that
chase each other across the street, dodging cars, the ones
who follow us for a bit pretending we can’t see them,
maybe they know.
We find what we think is the apartment and double-check
the menu before sliding our hands behind the front gate,
shoving it until it opens. Because Hayley moved into the
apartment less than two weeks ago it is still a mess. There
are piles of clothes on the floor, scatterings of artwork and
books. The only real furnishing is her sister’s chaise
longue, which is the same dull cobalt as the walls and
ceiling. We cannot find the light switch so must endure
the half-darkness. At least, because the blinds have fallen
off their rail, a little light reaches us from outside. We lie
down, resting our heads on our bags and fall asleep.
Two hours later the door opens violently.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it! Have you looked
outside?’ she says, turning on the light behind the fridge.
‘There’s a pool of blood outside the house.’
At first we cannot remember where we are, who we’re
talking to.
‘Outside, there’s a fight outside!’ Hayley continues.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘Who’s fighting who?’ we ask.
She throws down her coat and sits beside us.
‘Two gangs! There must be at least six on either side.’
‘Do you think they have guns?’ we ask.
‘They don’t bother.’
‘I guess if they already have a conviction it’s not
worth it.’
‘Yeah, it’s only the young guys that have them now.’
We sit upright, looking Hayley in the eyes.
‘So who are the people outside? Why are they fighting?’
‘One gang’s Puerta Rican, I think, the other’s Black.
They always fight, but not usually around here.’
‘Why not here?’
‘Most of this street is families, I guess,’ she pauses
thoughtfully. ‘The woman who lives upstairs, Debbie,
called the police. Can you hear them?’
There are sirens, distant enough that they could be anywhere. We arc our necks and look out of the blindless
window.
‘No police, not yet, but they’re not fighting anymore,
they’re shouting. One of them looks badly hurt.’
‘I think so, though I couldn’t get a good look. I didn’t
want to go too close.’
‘The blood must be his.’
We attempt to decode the scene from our vantage. Each
drab of blood, gleaming like oil in the dark, leads back to
the man outside, flat on his stomach. Two figures stand
above his body, squaring off.
‘They can see into this house, you know, so we probably shouldn’t stare. Let’s go into the kitchen. You want
something to eat or drink?’
We get up, startled to still be indoors, to have access to a
kitchen, and walk into the next room. We think of something we read earlier, something Dos Passos had called
the U.S.A. - ‘the link that tingled in the blood.’ As Hayley
begins preparing an omelette, as the shouting grows louder
and louder, the phrase takes on an ominous aspect. It must
be that suggestion of a metallic element, the ‘link’ or chain,
Meanwhile we cannot stop ourselves from staring at the
injured man, still conscious though clearly in some pain.
Based on the bandaging it looks like a deep gash beneath
his left ribcage; perhaps his lower colon has been pierced,
perhaps they have literally gutted him. He sees us and,
without saying anything, gives us an unmistakable glance.
If he could he would ask us what the hell we’re looking at.
Four days later we are on Greyhound bus in Southern
Illinois, travelling from St Louis to Carbondale, a small
town whose stagnant coalmining industry has been
practically killed off by the recent economic downturn.
Cornfields with tall stalks, gold-headed, are watched over
by dense green forest. From out of the trees comes a wind
that combs through the corn. Among the forests and corn
is a small lake of glacial stillness, perfectly reflective, with
an unmanned pickup beside it.
Because the land is so flat the sky seems huge. This must
be why so many people in Chicago have no time for the
rest of Illinois, why there are so many churches here. You
can only be a small creature on this land, under its huge
sky. You must build your house low because the closer it is
to the ground the further from judgment. Judgment comes
in the clouds. At dusk, they are black beasts, large enough
to carry gods, whose nostrils fume. It is because of them
that soon the heads of corn will not be so gold and the
forests will merge with the darkness.
Because the land is so flat the sky
‘seems
huge. This must be why so
many people in Chicago have no
time for the rest of Illinois.
’
making contact and imposing itself with a tingle on the
dark, moist flow of blood. There are no glasses so Hayley
simply pours the beer into a measuring jug and hands it
to us.
An hour or two later police cars arrive. They knock on a
few doors, ask questions, but by this point everyone who
was involved is gone, probably not far, though easily
beyond the warrant of any officer. We decide to go out to a
bar on Division called Papa Ray’s. As we leave the man we
saw earlier, badly injured, is being lifted onto a stretcher
by paramedics. Just then Brooks, a neighbour, walks by.
Hayley asks what he’s up to. Not much, he says, what
with schoolwork and Labour Day coming up, when he’s
going back to Ohio. Because he hasn’t been on Maplewood
all night Hayley explains what happened.
That night our hosts in Carbondale, a couple called Bill
and Priya, take us to a bonfire in celebration of their
friend Nate’s newly established organic farm. Nate studied
in Chiacgo so we talk about our time there. He agrees, it
has its problems, in some ways it’s still segregated and
the city politics is definitely still corrupt. ‘I think the
corruption there, at the head, infects everything, the
whole body,’ he says. Nate has no workable saw so throws
large trunks into the fire that take all evening just to char.
He offers us some peach cobbler, sizzling beneath a bed of
coals, but we are full, taken in by the density of the forest,
the backdrop of hissing locusts and yowling coyotes,
crying for one another’s company, for food. Apparently
they will not bother us, the fire keeps them away.
We are still thinking of our journey here. To get in and
out of the city are several major arteries, one of which,
Interstate 94, goes south and is crisscrossed by numerous
overpasses, including several metrolink stops. Before
leaving we have to drive across one of these overpasses
and, for a moment, can see the whole system at work. The
thousands of arteries draining blood from rural Illinois,
Iowa, Wisconsin, all connect to this single, wide artery
feeding into the city of Chicago, visible as downtown,
the glittering cerebral cortex in the distance.
To apply for the bursary, see details overleaf.
>>
| 2009/2010 |
51
The Neville Walton
Travel /Cultural bursary
Award: Worth £500 per annum
Eligibility: Open to Old Westminsters under 25
Report: On return, write a ‘trip report’ for the
Elizabethan Newsletter
Application deadline: 1st May
Winner announced: 1st June
About the bursary
In order to celebrate Neville Walton’s (QS 1966-1971)
involvement with the Elizabethan Club and his love
of travel and foreign culture, the Club created this
annual Bursary in 2006. All Old Westminsters aged 25
and under at the time of application can apply.
The value of the Bursary is £500 per annum and is
awarded on the basis of the best application from an
Old Westminster received by 1st May of each year.
Application details
Each application of not more than 500 words will be
reviewed by the Elizabethan Club Committee who will
consider the cultural aspect of each trip, rather than
pure travel involved.
Report on the trip
The annual winner will be notified by 1st June of
each year and the result will be posted on the Old
Westminster website. An article on each trip should
be prepared for publication in the Elizabethan
Newsletter (1,000–1,500 words) and should be
submitted within two months of return.
Further information
For further details please contact:
Westminster School
17a Dean's Yard
London SW1P 3PB
T: 020 7963 1115
Applications should be posted to the
above address or sent by email to:
[email protected]
52
|
| 2009/2010
Above: Garden Party, 13 June 1946.
OW News
If you have any news you would like to share with your contemporaries, please send
details to the Editor: The Elizabethan Newsletter, Development Office, 17 Dean’s Yard,
London SW1P 3PB. E. [email protected]
Edward’s book, The Perilous Road to Rome and Beyond,
has been translated into Italian and a new edition is to be
published in Rome.
Council after seven years, as well as most other London
based activities. His only regular duty visits to London
are related to Vestey Pension Trust and Butchers’ Livery
Company Court.
Michael baron (GG 1942-1946)
Richard Sturch (KS 1949-1954)
Edward Grace (BB 1928-1932)
Michael was the editor of On a Bat’s Wing: Poems about
Bats (ISBN 978-1-905512-27-0), published by Five Leaves
Poetry.
Edward Enfield (RR 1944-1948)
Edward’s latest book, Old Age and How to Survive It, was
published in September. He says ‘it is a work of moral
philosophy but the publishers have labelled it humour as
they say there is more money in humour than in moral
philosophy’.
Graduated BSc from the Open University in 2007.
Published From World to God? (Resource Publications) in
2008 and co-edited (with Professor Suzanne Bray) Charles
Williams and his Contemporaries (Cambridge Scholars
Publishing), published in 2009.
Christopher bartlett (BB 1951-1956)
Has authored The Flying Dictionary: Fascinating
Explanations for Journalists, Aviation Buffs and
Concerned Flyers, published by OpenHatch Books in 2008,
followed this year by Air Crashes and Miracle Landings.
Humphrey Palmer (BB 1943-1949)
Previously Professor of Philosophy at Cardiff University,
now retired, has written a book entitled How Parables
Work, explaining what hearers found they had let
themselves in for. For more information go to
www.palmerparables.co.uk.
Colin Cullimore (BB 1945-1950)
Has handed over the Chairmanship of Lincoln Cathedral
Grattan Puxon (GG 1953-1956)
Wrote the novel Freeborn Traveller (Small World Media,
2007) as part of commitment to stop the eviction of a
hundred Gypsy families from their own land at Dale
Farm, Crays Hill, Essex. Founder of the Gypsy Council
back in 1966 and former General-Secretary of the
International Romani Union. Now back in his home
town of Colchester after time abroad in Ireland, former
| 2009/2010 |
53
Above: At the Fund for Westminster Drinks.
Yugoslavia, Greece, Germany and California. Email:
[email protected]
Christopher Channer (GG 1955-1960)
Retired in October 2008 after ten years as Rector of
St Michael-in-Lewes and St Thomas, Cliffe, East Sussex.
David Northmore (BB 1957-1960)
Having retired in 2008 as Professor of Psychology at the
University of Delaware, David and his wife Lenis now
divide their time between Delaware and the Algarve,
Portugal.
Neil inglis (WW 1975-1979)
Neil and his wife Marielle have been enjoying life in
Washington DC, singing in the local church choir. Neil
has reached his twentieth anniversary as a translator/
reviser at the International Monetary Fund, and is now
the editor of the Tyndale Society Journal, a historical
review focusing on the life and work of William Tyndale,
the earliest published translator of the Bible, and a forum
for discussion of broader Reformation issues. He is also
the Associate Editor of www.interlitq.org, an on-line
journal of literature and opinion.
Paul lowenstein (DD 1977-1981)
David Neuberger (WW 1961-1965)
Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury has been appointed the
new Master of the Rolls and Head of Civil Justice, having
been the youngest of the law lords. His new role became
effective from 1st October 2009.
Peter Mieville (GG 1965-1970)
The Suffolk launch of his third book in the Burnchester
Mystery, Tyro’s Journey, took place at The Abbey in Eye
on 14th June 2009.
Nigel Planer (WW 1966-1970)
Has been appearing in “Hairspray” in the West End during
2009, as well as his second play “Death of Long Pig”, about
the last days of Robert Louis Stevenson and Paul Gauguin
in Polynesia, produced at the Finborough Theatre to a
good critical and audience reaction.
Piers Gibbon (LL 1980-1984)
Presented the show ‘Headshrinkers of the Amazon’, which
was broadcast by Channel 5 and has been commissioned
to present another TV documentary for National
Geographic ‘Cannibals of the Pacific’.
Todd Hamilton (AHH 1980-1984)
Acquired dual Italian and British citizenship after
seventeen years living in a small town near Venice.
Now has a niece and nephew both by marriage and by
blood and is enjoying the quiet life.
Alex Williams (QS 1981-1985)
A senior partner at Farrer & Co., his oldest son Robert
(QS 1999-2004) is taking an MSc at Wolfson College,
Oxford, in Mathematics and Computer Science.
Has published two new collections of cartoons. 101 Ways
to Leave the Law is a funny, subversive take on every
lawyer’s secret fantasy - dumping the law for a new life,
while with 101 Uses for a Useless Banker, Alex ruminates
on what has become of the bankers who no longer find
themselves in the positions they once enjoyed.
David barnes (AHH 1967-1973)
Mat loup (LL 1982-1986)
James Furber (WW 1968-1971)
Having obtained a City and Guild qualification, David
offers picture framing on a semi professional basis
(email: [email protected]).
After fifteen years at The Sunday Times, Mat has moved
with his family to Canada’s west coast, and thus far has
stayed away from grizzlies.
Penny Wright (RR 1976-1978)
Owen Matthews (DD 1985-1990)
As Honorary Physician and Medical Director of the
British Association for Performing Arts Medicine
(www.bapam.org.uk), Penny would love to hear from
any other medic-musicians or physio-musicians.
54
Took silk in March and now practising in Commercial,
Financial and Business litigation.
|
| 2009/2010
Owen’s book, Stalin’s Children, was published by
Bloomsbury in June. A family memoir of three generations
of the Russian side of his family, The Sunday Times
described it as ‘a Russian Wild Swans’. Stalin’s Children
Above: Neal Richardson playing piano
at the Elizabethan Club Dinner.
was shortlisted for the Guardian First Books Award and
selected for the Book of the Year by the Sunday Telegraph,
Spectator and The Sunday Times. Owen has donated a
copy to the library and is sure that Bloomsbury would be
delighted to make copies available at a discounted rate to
Old Westminsters.
Annabel was a corporate M&A lawyer at Ashursts,
but has taken a rest from the legal world to be a mother.
Andrew Howe (LL 1990-1995)
Andrew and his wife Gaby have added one more to the
population of South West London. Oliver was born in
June 2009 and is doing well.
Jennifer Rusby (BB 1990-1992)
Recently appointed as a Consultant Oncoplastic Breast
Surgeon at the Royal Marsden Hospital in Surrey.
She trained in Oxford and Wessex before undertaking a
research fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital,
and Oncoplastic Fellowships in Birmingham and at the
Royal Marsden in Chelsea.
Nan Atichatpong (GG 1988-1993)
Having spent six years as a project architect on the
renewal of St Martin-in-the-Fields (recently awarded
the British Construction Industry Award), Nan has set
up his own architecture practice, SolidVoid Architects,
with projects in London, Madrid and Bangkok. Recent
works include a conversion of a clock factory into a
private residence and an exhibition for the City of
Madrid on London’s Regent Street.
John Mehrzad (BB 1992-1997)
Called to the Bar in 2005 and has been practising as a
barrister from Cloisters Chambers in the Temple,
specialising in employment and commercial disputes.
Having been Captain of Water and rowing at an
international level for Ireland, he now rows for the
Elizabethan Boat Club and is ‘reminiscing about how
good we once were - but still picking up occasional
medals along the way’.
Serena Steinberg (née Hines) (DD 2001-2003)
Living in Palo Alto, California, with her husband David.
David is studying at Stanford University for his MBA,
while Serena has received her Graduate Gemologist degree
from the GIA in New York and now runs her own jewelry
business, SHS Jewels.
Artin basirov (GG 1989-1994)
Maximilian Kamran Basirov was born to Artin and
Alexandra on 15th August at 3.18am weighing 3.97kg
(8lbs 12 oz), 55cm.
Annabel Simpson (College 1992-1994)
Married George Biddulph on 27 October 2001, and gave
birth to two sons, Henry in 2004 and Alex in 2006.
| 2009/2010 |
55
Westminster quad
takes Henley glory
Oliver Cox (HH 1997–2002)
At a Henley Royal Regatta which drew most attention
for record temperatures and an unprecedented possible
removal of jackets in the Stewards, four Westminsters and
their coaching team this year quietly prepared another
piece of history. On Sunday, 5th July 2009 the First Quad
of Pierre Thomas (HH), Wilf Kimberley (WW), Daniel
Rix-Standing (BB) and Tom Fielder (DD) beat Melbourne
Grammar School, Australia to take the Fawley Challenge
Cup. Podium time an hour later was the culmination of
years of hard training and months of specific preparation.
However, this meant more: as generations of Westminster
oarsmen who have battled year after year at Henley will
know, a Westminster crew had never won a final since the
Regatta’s inception in 1839.
This crew was, of course, exceptional. While the year
began with singles and pairs, a composite quad containing
three of the Henley crew came sixth overall at Fours Head,
beating Elite quads and fours that included aspirant
Olympians. Those who questioned the result were
presumably silenced when the Westminster scullers
also then won National Schools’ Championship Quads.
Bill Mason, their head coach, described an advanced
training regime boosted by training camps in Ghent and
Mequinenza and progressive physiological testing at
Oxford Brookes’ facilities. Despite individual success at
GB trials, the quad remained a unit - allowing them, at
Marlow, to beat the junior Great Britain quad! Their
defeated Melbourne opponents’ post-race report ruefully
now describes them as “probably the fastest schoolboy
quad in the world”.
Once at Henley, a tense quarter-final against a Melbourne
University & Barwon (Australia) composite saw our quad
have to regain the lead after one sculler lost his seat.
Even in the final, Melbourne Grammar School’s ever-quick
start saw them lead to the Barrier marker. However,
Westminster were leading before Fawley and, to the
56
|
| 2009/2010
Above: The Henley Quad, C D Riches, Bill Mason and the Head Master.
cheers of parents and Old Westminsters including the
present Elizabethan Boat Club, increased their lead from
half to two-thirds of a length down the enclosures to
the finish. A group hug on shaky legs was their private
celebration, before the grand prize-giving and collection
of the Cup from Lord Coe.
Bill Mason, formerly coach at Imperial College BC, praised
the athletes’ discipline and professionalism throughout
the build-up. These were, of course, months also dominated
by exam preparation. “If they couldn’t train together,
they’d just get together in pairs and train when they
could. I could trust them... They showed what is possible.”
He also had a word for the quad’s “totally supportive”
parents, and gratitude for the support of the School and
those other parents who have together supported the Club
with its latest and most advanced equipment - especially
Paul Burdell’s magnificent donation of a brand new
Empacher quad in the run-up to the Regatta.
Westminster’s oarsmen will not rest on their laurels. The
squads are back in training, under CD and Bill’s watchful
eyes. The Princess Elizabeth Cup remains to be won.
Re-foundation of St Peter’s College
at Westminster by Elizabeth i
450th Anniversary
To mark the 450th Anniversary, a series
of events (shown overleaf) has been
planned to bring the School and Abbey
communities together. For further details
and to book for events, see our website:
www.oldwestminster.org.uk
In addition, a commemorative print (left)
and pottery mug have been specially
commissioned and designed, see details
of how to obtain them on page 60.
Above: 450th Anniversary Commemorative Limited Edition Print
Produced from an original watercolour painting designed exclusively for Westminster School's
2010 celebrations by artist Alison Merry. The painting features Queen Elizabeth I enthroned
beneath the School's Burlington Arch and surrounded by vignettes representing significant events,
people and places from the School's history over the past 450 years.
| 2009/2010 |
57
450th Anniversary
Events Calendar 2010
A full list of events for 2010 is shown below.
For further information and to book for events
see our website: www.oldwestminster.org.uk
Election Term
27–30 Apr
Wed 5 May
From 13 May
Fri 21 May
Fri 11 Jun
Mon 21 Jun
Fri 9 Jul
School Musical: West Side Story
7.15 pm. School. To book tickets contact the Common Room Secretary
(T: 020 7963 1050; E: [email protected])
lecture: Helen Alexander (President of the CBI)
7.15 pm. School
Exhibition of Abbey and School Artefacts
Abbey Library. Group visits by prior arrangement with Abbey Librarian (T: 020 7654 4826)
Foundation Anniversary Celebration
School. By invitation only
Cantandum Summer Concert: A Masque by Thomas linley
– ‘Ode on the Spirits of Shakespeare’
7.15 pm. Ashburnham Garden. No booking required
Summer Art Show
4.00 pm. Art School (Sutcliff’s). No booking required
2010 Elizabethan ball
7.00 pm onwards. Abbey/School
Play Term
Until 30 Sep
Wed 15 Sep
7–8 Oct
Sat 9 Oct
Fri 19 Nov
6–9 Dec
Fri 10 Dec
Wed 15 Dec
58
|
Exhibition of Abbey and School Artefacts (continues)
Abbey Library. Group visits by prior arrangement with Abbey Librarian (T: 020 7654 4826)
lecture: Professor Rick Trainor – ‘british Schools and Universities 1560–2060:
A Higher Education Perspective on Student Recruitment’
7.15 pm. School
Opera: King Arthur (music by Purcell, libretto by Dryden)
7.30 pm. Abbey
September Saturday
School. No booking required
Commemoration of benefactors
7.30 pm. Abbey. By invitation only
The latin Play: Phormio (Terence)
7.15 pm. Millicent Fawcett Hall
lecture: David Starkey
7.15 pm. School
Concluding service: The Rt Revd David Stancliffe (OW) bishop of Salisbury
9.00 am. Abbey. By invitation only
| 2009/2010
The Elizabethan ball
9th July 2010
One of the most spectacular events of the Anniversary Year
will be The Elizabethan Ball which will be held in the
beautiful surroundings of the School and the Abbey.
The event will be a black tie evening of entertainment
and celebration which will from 7pm on Friday and finish
at 2am on Saturday.
Venue and entertainment
The Elizabethan Ball will be held in the precincts of the Abbey and
School. The evening's entertainment will be drawn mainly from
home grown talent, provided largely by the Abbey, pupils, parents,
friends and Old Westminsters who will perform throughout the
entire site, including the Abbey itself and College Garden, as well as
Little Dean's Yard and Up School.
Tickets
‘Dining Tickets’ have now sold out.
‘Non Dining Tickets’ are limited.
If you would like to attend, please complete the
enclosed ‘Elizabethan Ball Application Form’
and send it along with your payment.
Old Westminsters are encouraged to apply
for tickets as soon as possible to avoid
disappointment.
Further information
T: 020 7963 1115
| 2009/2010 |
59
450th Anniversary
Commemorative Mug
Designed by Emma Bridgewater exclusively for
the School, this commemorative pottery mug is
now available to buy for £15.00 each.
Description
Standing 9.3cm high and with a diameter of 9 cm at the base,
the mug is parchment cream with 'Westminster Pink' lettering.
Around the outside rim of the mug the words read
‘1560-2010 - FlOREAT’ and on the inside of the rim,
‘450 YEARS iN THE PiNK’.
Profits from sales
All profits from sales of the mug will go to the charity 'Phab',
which the School regularly supports. Phab's aim is “to promote
and encourage people of all abilities to come together on
equal terms, to achieve complete inclusion within the wider
community”.
How to order
Please order your mugs by
email or telephone:
T: 020 7963 1180
Payment can be made by cash or cheque
on collection of your order from the
School Reception at 18 Dean's Yard.
We are not able to send orders by post.
450th Anniversary
Commemorative
limited Edition Print
Description
The A2 colour print
(overall size including
border: 420mm x 594mm)
is printed on 300gsm
textured paper to give a
matt finish. Each print
will be signed and
numbered by the artist,
who has also composed an accompanying synopsis
describing the sources and details featured in the
illustration. The prints are presented in a cream
mount, wrapped and flat-packed.
Cost per print
The cost of each print is £89.
This price includes postage and packaging
to addresses in the UK. Please add £15 for
delivery overseas.
Commissions for hand-painted copies of the
original A2 painting are welcomed by Alison.
The cost of a hand-painted copy is £750 plus
postage and packaging.
Delivery date by arrangement.
60
|
| 2009/2010
A limited edition print (250 copies)
has been produced from an original
watercolour painting designed
exclusively for Westminster School's
2010 celebrations by artist Alison Merry.
The painting features Queen Elizabeth I
enthroned beneath the School's
Burlington Arch and surrounded by
vignettes representing significant
events, people and places from the
School's history over the past 450 years.
How to order
Orders can be made by telephone or in writing:
T: 01452 770517
Alison Merry
illUMiNATiONS
3 Rose Hill, Far Wells Road,
Bisley, Stroud, Glos. GL 6 7AQ
www.merryilluminations.co.uk
OW Careers
SolidVoid Architects
In a new section promoting OW Careers, we
focus on Architect, Nan Atichatpong
(GG 1988-1993)
My job at Eric Parry Architects came rather unexpectedly.
It was summer 2001 and I had wanted to return to New York
City, where I worked for 2 year before coming back to complete
my architecture Diploma at Cambridge University. A friend
suggested I joined her at EPA to do some part time work while
I plotted my next move. I was immediately attracted by the
practice’s work ethos, their intellectual vigour and the quality
of the architecture. Eric Parry is one of the great architects
working in London today.
After 9/11, however, I decided to continue at EPA and stay
in London.
In March 2002, EPA won the competition for a hugely prestigious
and challenging project: the Renewal of St Martin-in-the-Fields
on Trafalgar Square. I became one of the team and we embarked
on the planning application, which we obtained, followed by the
mammoth tender documentation, for which we worked late into
the evening every night for a whole summer. Once on site, I was
project architect for the new public underground atrium which
replaced the leaky burial vaults.
After 7 years and after the completion of that award-winning
project, I felt it was the right time to move on. I resigned and
went to Rio de Janeiro for two months.
With my batteries recharged, I returned to London in January
2009 and set up SolidVoid Architects with two Spanish friends.
We started in March 2009 and were fortunate enough to
immediately win a competition. Since then we have picked
up a variety of interesting projects, including a restaurant in
Victoria, a touring art exhibition for the City of Madrid and
a conversion of an old clock-part factory into a home for an
Islamic art scholar. I have also started to teach at Nottingham
University. It is a privilege indeed to be able to pass on the
experiences I have picked up since I started studying architecture
in 1994 to a whole new generation of eager students.
Despite the current economic conditions, SolidVoid has had
a successful first year and we are expanding. It is our hope
that we will continue to attract interesting work and to
develop a critical and responsive design process to provide
thoughtful and elegant designs that are both innovative and
contextually sensitive.
Top: Design for private residence, London SW3
Middle: Exhibition design for Casa de Correos,
Madrid and El Prat Airport, Barcelona
Bottom: Nan Atichatpong, Marta Granda Nistal,
Gonzalo Coello de Portugal
SolidVoid Architects
Unit 3.1
2-6 Northburgh Street
London EC1V 0AY
T. +44 (0) 20 3217 0025
M. +44 (0) 7854 924 004
W. www.solidvoid.net
Nan Atichatpong
| 2009/2010 |
61
Obituaries
Maurice James Baird-Smith
1918-2009 (GG 1932-1936)
Maurice Baird-Smith, who has died aged 90, was one
of the RAF’s last surviving World War II bomber pilots.
He was a pathfinder and Wing Commander who flew
Wellingtons and Lancasters with 7 Squadron. BairdSmith earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for his
successful mission bombing the heavily-defended
German air-base on Rhodes. By destroying enemy aircraft
on the ground he permanently removed their air-cover.
In 1943 the War Office decided that they needed a photogenic RAF officer to ‘sell’ the war to an American public
who were largely indifferent to the bloody battle being
fought in Europe. Baird-Smith, with his wit, intelligence
and fine service record, proved to be the ideal choice.
Through lectures and lobbying Washington he put across
the argument for the US to enter the war. In the course of
his tour of America he was particularly proud at having
met Walt Disney, Henry Ford and Colonel Charles
Lindbergh. Oscar-winning film director William Wyler
even sent a letter to Hollywood actress Greer Garson ‘in
the hope that you may be able to make Baird-Smith’s stay
in California a little more pleasant’.
On returning home he rejoined his squadron taking part
in many bombing raids on Germany. His sorties proved
how hollow Goering’s boast to Hitler was that ‘the RAF
would never bomb Berlin’. In 1944, after a successful
night raid on Berlin, Baird-Smith was shot down by a
Messerschmitt 110 night fighter. His bombadier was
subsequently murdered by the Berlin mob but BairdSmith evaded capture for a month. He was imprisoned in
Stalag Luft III but, fortunately, arrived too late to join the
Great Escape after which many prisoners were recaptured
and shot. A grateful British government showed their
appreciation of his contribution to the war effort by
docking his pay during his imprisonment.
62
first to New York and Houston to learn the oil business.
A hectic seven years followed in Brazil before he was
drafted in to West Africa to sort out Shell’s complex
holdings there. Moving to Chile as general manager was,
Baird-Smith always said, the happiest period of his life.
At weekends he could ski in the Andes before lunch and
swim in the Pacific in the afternoon. His love of the
country was reciprocated when the President awarded
him the Order of Bernardo O’Higgins, an honour rarely
bestowed on foreigners.
Baird-Smith was posted to Havana as general manager
shortly after the 1959 revolution. He recalled Fidel Castro’s
younger brother Raul marching into his office, placing a
pistol on the table and warning him that he had just
24 hours to leave Cuba.
Baird-Smith’s final posting was to Athens as managing
director where he made many friends and built a splendid
home opposite Spetsai. He retired in 1969 when he was
able to fully indulge his love of flying and sailing. He made
three major flights aboard his Cessna Skylane and Piper
Comanche: to West Africa, Hong Kong and Cape Town.
He continued flying well into his eighties and in 1999 the
Guinness Book of Records recognized him for having held
a flying licence for a world record 63 years, 47 days.
Maurice Baird-Smith died in Grasse on 31st January 2009.
He was married twice: first to Vyvyan Bodley, a neice of
of Viscount Waverley, a member of Churchill’s wartime
cabinet. He is survived by his second wife Monique
Mousseau, a former Carven fashion model.
The Rev Prebendary Willie Booth
1939-2009
Willie Booth was the Sub-Dean of the Chapels Royal,
the Sub-Almoner of the Royal Almonry, Deputy Clerk of
the Closet of the Ecclesiastical Household, and Domestic
Chaplain at Buckingham Palace from 1991 until his
retirement in 2007.
Maurice James Baird-Smith was born on 14th August 1918,
the son of the Rev Alexander Baird-Smith, rector of
Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire and Ellen Mary Campbell
of the Campbell shipping family. He was educated at
Westminster School but, instead of attending university,
joined the RAF as an 18-year-old trainee pilot. He progressed
from Tiger Moth bi-planes to flying ageing Harrow
bombers. A year followed working for an Americanowned aircraft-instrument company. After the Munich
crisis he realized that war was probably inevitable and
rejoined the RAF. He became a flying instructor at RAF
Harwell before demanding that he rejoin his squadron for
active service. He flew countless bombing missions over
Germany and attacked the German ground troops during
the 1940 evacuation of Dunkirk. He was then posted to
Malta where he took part in the epic Fleet Air Arm torpedo
attack on the Italian fleet moored at Taranto.
William James Booth was born in Ballymena, Co Antrim,
Northern Ireland, in 1939. He was educated at Ballymena
Academy and Trinity College Dublin. He was made deacon
of the Church of Ireland in 1962, and ordained priest in
1963. Booth’s first appointment was as curate of St Luke’s
Parish, Belfast, where he served in 1962-64.
After the war Baird-Smith joined Shell as a trainee and
began a 25-year career largely spent abroad. He was posted
In 1973 when Westminster School was in need of a new
chaplain, he was poached by John Rae, then the Head
|
| 2009/2010
In 1965 he arrived at Cranleigh School, Surrey, to take up
the post of chaplain. For someone who had led a relatively
sheltered life, it was a pretty severe shock to be pitched
into the adolescent world of the Swinging Sixties. He had
rooms right at the centre of the school and immersed
himself in school life. It is testimony to the regard and
affection that he engendered in the pupils that many kept
in touch with him throughout his life. He married them,
baptised their children and officiated at the funerals of
some young people who had died before their time.
coaster for guests and hosts. Many Westminster pupils
said that this week was the most formative of their school
days. Booth was the inspiration and entrepreneur behind
Westminster PHAB. He had the ability to make everyone
feel worthwhile. PHAB still flourishes at the school.
Above: Willie Booth.
Master, much to the annoyance of Cranleigh. Booth arrived
at Westminster in September 1974. He was an instant
success. His great strength as a chaplain was that he could
get on the same wavelength as the young. If any pupil, or
indeed colleague, was in difficulties nothing was too much
trouble for him. Booth wore his faith lightly and yet many
held him up as an example of a man whose life embodied
all the Christian virtues. He was the first to say that he
was not an academic and that was a relief to his adolescent
audience. In his sermons he gave it to them straight - with
the odd joke thrown in - and such talks were much more to
their taste than some of the fustier offerings from others.
The added element of a Northern Ireland twang when he
was in full flow gave an extra piquancy.
He made a point of being available to everybody. He did
not foist himself on anyone but got to know pupils by
being around and chatting so that they were relaxed in his
company. They knew where to go if they were in trouble.
He was famous for his late-night ghost stories which
pinstriped stockbrokers would remind him of when they
met him again many years later.
As sometimes happens there are tragedies among the
young. Far too often, even with all the help available from
teachers and counsellors, a young man or woman may
come to feel that it is better to end their life. Booth
managed these horrors with great sensitivity and often
remained in touch with parents long after the event.
When Booth was at Cranleigh he had organised a PHAB
(physically handicapped and able-bodied) course. This he
took with him to Westminster. Every year at the beginning
of the summer holidays about thirty sixth-form
Westminster pupils would stay behind for a week. They
would welcome 30 handicapped pupils as their guests for
a residential course. They would work together in groups
to produce art, dance and musical events, culminating in
a show at the end of the week. It was an emotional roller-
Booth was made Priest in Ordinary to the Queen in 1976 an honorary title which meant that he often officiated at
the Chapel Royal. In 1990 Booth was invited to lunch at the
Palace. He found himself sitting next to the Queen and
unbeknown to him this was an interview. It obviously
went well. In 1991 he left Westminster and moved to the
Chapel Royal as Sub-Dean. This involved looking after
the Chapels Royal as well as being Domestic Chaplain at
Buckingham Palace. As one would expect, Booth regarded
the job of chaplain as caring for everybody from the coachman to the Royal Family. Each individual mattered and was
given equal time and care. Booth was constant in friendship
and people in real distress came to him. Perhaps it was his
Ulster background which made him refreshingly unfussy
and unpompous about the liturgy. There was a freshness
and lack of cynicism about Booth which endeared him to
many. He was amazed that someone like him, who regarded
himself as a simple fellow from Ballymena, was involved in
the great ceremonies of state. He could never quite get over
the fact that one day at Sandringham he found himself
sitting on a sofa with the Queen on one side of him and
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother on the other.
Both Chapels Royal have been used in recent years for the
lying-in-state of members of the Royal Family. The coffins
of the Queen Mother and of Princess Margaret lay at the
Queen’s Chapel, while that of Diana, Princess of Wales, lay
in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace. This meant that
Booth was intimately involved with the family at those
very difficult times.
He was appointed LVO in 1999 and CVO in 2007 after 16
years’ service to the household.
After his retirement he went to live in King’s Lynn, Norfolk.
He maintained his base in London by becoming chaplain
to the East India Club. Recently, covering a sabbatical, he
had been the acting chaplain at New College, Oxford. He
brought the same care and attention to the job as he always
did, even though it was for no more than six months.
Booth will be remembered with affection and gratitude
by so many of the hundreds of people he came into
contact with.
He did not marry. He is survived by a brother and a sister.
The Rev Prebendary Willie Booth, CVO, Sub-Dean of the
Chapels Royal, was born on February 3, 1939. He died of
heart failure on June 2, 2009, aged 70
© The Times, 10th June 2009
A donation of audio equipment to the Drama and Music
departments at the School was very generously made by
Oli Da Costa (RR 1990-1995) in memory of Willie and the
great work he did at and for the School.
| 2009/2010 |
63
Henry Thomas Cadbury-Brown
1913-2009 (GG 1927-1930)
Henry Thomas Cadbury-Brown (always known as Jim)
was one of Britain’s youngest and most vibrant Modernist
architects. His work blossomed from the mid-30s when
he won prestigious competitions. This enabled him to
start his own practice in Mayfair and to forge ahead with
new and exciting designs. Le Corbusier and Berthold
Lubetkin inspired him - once he had absorbed their
theories Jim never looked back. Pitched roofs and chimneys
were out; glass, water, music and intricate modular
designs were in.
Jim’s father, H W Cadbury-Brown, a non-practising
solicitor, was constantly on the move renting and buying
properties. He was gassed and invalided out of the Royal
Horse Artillery during World War I but remained a
talented horseman. Jim’s grandfather H Cadbury-Brown
(a descendant of the Cadbury chocolate family) was a
prosperous property developer residing in a magnificent
London home with greenhouses bursting with tropical
fruit and exotic palms. Life was all tennis parties, motoring
in the 1908 Fiat, soirées and Grand Tours.
Jim was born in Sarratt, Hertfordshire but soon moved to
Wormingford, Essex, nurturing his delight of living in
East Anglia. His father owned a moated 200-acre farm
keeping cattle, and breeding and showing horses at
agricultural shows. Both Jim’s sisters enjoyed hunting
and dressage but Jim was never comfortable on a horse,
and disappointed his father by building little houses in
the barn. His sisters were chunky and brave; Jim was lean
and artistic and, later in life, preferred arranging flowers
to repairing the roof. His worst memory was of having his
tonsils removed on Grandpa’s dining table. “They put a
hole in my tongue and a bit of string to hold it down, I
fought like an animal with Auntie Edith and Auntie Nellie
lying on top of me. There were lamps and sheets and a
dreadful smell of ether.” As a reward he was presented
with a bowl of two goldfish and a catfish. “The catfish ate
the goldfish from the tails up, until they disappeared.”
A governess called Beanie taught him at home, and he was
then sent to a Dame school. As a very old man he harboured
terrible memories of little boys being bullied by masters,
pulped senseless with Fives racquets until they collapsed.
Jim fell over frequently due, they said, to flat feet.
Desperate to show his sporting prowess he won the
Under 11. “Nothing fancy,” he said, “Just jumping, jumping,
jumping. I could hardly walk.” Eventually he was diagnosed
with diphtheria paralysis and confined to bed for months.
A blind masseur was engaged to coax his muscles, “I hated
him, he slapped me hard on the back and legs and I wanted
to slap him back.”
“My father wanted me to go to Westminster School and I
was there from the age of 13 in January 1927 until I was 17
in July 1930. I struggled with the Common Entrance but
got in by nepotism.” He was in Grant’s and received the
Football League Medal. “I started in a class of boys 2 or 3
years older than me. My father discovered that they were
64
|
| 2009/2010
Above: Jim Cadbury-Brown.
low achievers but the sons of Old Boys who could not be
refused. Eventually I was moved, and my schoolmaster
was like Will Hay with a crooked pince-nez and a dusty
mortarboard. We used to act things. We would rearrange
the forms and desks and play at Law Courts. Until my
voice broke, I was a chorister and sang in Westminster
Abbey. Once the conductor was Gustav Holst but I was not
impressed, he was just another old man waving a stick”.
(Much later Holst’s daughter, Imogen, became Jim’s
neighbour in Church Walk, Aldeburgh.).
A good friend was R W P Smith with whom Jim lost touch
but, later, met him again with photographer Norman
Parkinson. Another fellow pupil was Kim Philby. “He was
a bright scholar and the school goal keeper. As a team
member he was a problem, but in a crisis he acted alone.
Are all goalkeepers potential spies, or are spies loners?”
Jim said he had an uneventful school career with minor
successes in maths, physics and chemistry but was a major
failure in the compulsory subject of Divinity. Aged about
15 or 16 he decided he wanted to be an architect. No one
took much notice of him because he had no real interests.
“So then I said I would be an accountant or a lawyer or an
engineering draughtsman. I was wise enough to know
that I should want to do something. Eventually architecture
was agreed upon and, aged 17, I joined the Architectural
Association which has always been one of organisation,
ambition and operation running with a great deal of
flexibility. It is still a unique school with a worldwide
committed membership, and has always been at the
cusp of coming to terms with new challenges posed by
globalisation, urbanisation and new technologies.”
He enjoyed every minute at the AA and did quite well.
“I had a big interest in things I liked, but was not very
good at things I didn’t like. In my fifth year I met Ërno
Goldfinger and was his unpaid assistant. His contracts,
mainly shops, were rewarding in themselves, and being
part of the Goldfinger circle was an obvious advantage
for a young architect.” Then he won a big railway ticket
office competition and was able to set up on his own.
In 1935, with war on the horizon, he volunteered for the
Territorial Army. “It gave you an aspect of life you would
not normally have had. I went into the Royal Engineers
and spent 8 months in Searchlights as there were no
bullets involved. I was against killing but it was a dead
end job. A ‘desire to kill people’ came later and I went into
artillery proper. When war is declared your attitude
changes. In September 1938 I was ‘called up’ and given the
rank of 2/Lt and joined 38th AA Brigade at Harrow-on-theHill as a Staff Officer posted to the Outer Hebrides (Scapa
Flow). Things were hotting up and I was sent to Normandy
(D Day + five to six days after the first landings), and
moved on to Belgium and Holland and ended up in
Germany. I was demobbed in 1945 with the rank of Major.”
Before the war he became a founder member of MARS
(Modern Architectural Research Society) which functioned
from 1933 to 1957. It was started by a group of architects
and critics including Wells Coates, Maxwell Fry and
Morton Shand and was a ‘think tank’ for British
modernism producing visionary plans and exhibitions.
The founding members included members of Tecton, the
progressive architectural group formed by the Russian
emigré Berthold Lubetkin (1901-1990).
In 1936 Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace was destroyed by
fire and MARS initiated a debate on the loss of what it
called Britain’s ‘most important claim to have made an
original contribution to modern architecture’. Pilkington,
the glass manufacturer, responded by launching a
competition to show how the reconstruction of the
Crystal Palace could showcase modern glass. By then, the
group had grown to 58 members from its original core of
28, and felt ready to undertake a more ambitious project
by organising an exhibition. The Hungarian-born
Bauhaus emigré, László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), was
charged with organising the exhibition, but handed over
to Misha Black (1910-1977) when he left Britain for the US.
More than 7,000 people trooped into the New Burlington
Galleries to see it between 11 and 29 January 1938.
Financially it was a disaster leaving the members of the
MARS executive committee with a hefty deficit to pay
off. But it had its effect and Le Corbusier wrote in the
Architectural Review: ‘I dropped out of an airplane into
the midst of a charming display of youth, and my lasting
memory was the lyrical appeal of those poems in steel,
glass and concrete. The New Architecture can no longer
be reproached with being mere insensitive and soulless
techniques.’ This was indeed praise for the struggling
bank of British Modernists. The MARS Group was then
the latest in a series of so-far unsuccessful attempts to
create a support structure for the motley assortment of
British-based architects, engineers and theorists, who
shared the ideals of the European modern movement.
Painfully isolated in conservative 1930s Britain, these
Modernist pioneers - many of whom had fled to exile
from Nazi oppression - sought support by banding
together. It was influential in propagating the idea of
modern architecture and continued after the war. It had a
membership of 50-60 architects. They produced a radical
scheme of a Plan for London, advocating the demolition of
much of the existing city and its replacement by a collection
of ‘hubs’ combining housing with workplaces and leisure
facilities encircled by a ring road. But the group was
fragmenting. Not only were there wide political divisions
between individual members - Lubetkin, who was far
further to the left of Coates and Shand, left in late 1938
after dismissing MARS as ‘a flat roofs club based on a
gentleman’s agreement’ - but younger architects considered
it too conservative. The MARS Group survived until the
late 1950s, but the ‘flat roofs’ club’ never recovered the
momentum it had enjoyed during what Le Corbusier
described as its ‘charming display of youth’’.
In 1950 Jim was commissioned to do various designs
for the Festival of Britain. This was a source of cheer
in austerity conditions, and he had met up with Hugh
Casson, the architecture director who was always generous
in involving others in jobs. Jim described this as “... an
event for a new dawn, for enjoying life on modern terms,
with modern technology.” He designed the People of
Britain and Land of Britain pavilions using conical shapes;
the Concourse; fountains and music for dancing.
Jim had then met Elizabeth (Betty) Elwyn, an American
architect. When asked, “What was your moment of glory?
his reply was “Marrying Betty; Festival of Britain; getting
the practice going and the Royal College of Art job”.
“Having already taught for some years at the AA, Hugh
Casson and I also taught at the Royal College of Art. It
was then that the idea of a new building for the RCA and
we worked together, with Robert Goodden, on the design,
of which I did the majority. The uncompromisingly
modern building was completed in 1963 and was sitting
| 2009/2010 |
65
well in the proximity of the Albert Hall and Albert
Memorial.”
Michael Stuart de Mowbray
1921-2008 (BB 1935-1940)
Jim also was involved with building at several universities
(Essex and Birmingham), designing a new civic centre at
Gravesend, plus interiors at the Time-Life Building and
Shell Centre and, later, at the Royal Academy - “I’ve always
liked doing interiors.”
Michael Stuart de Mowbray, who died on August first,
2008, was a consultant psychiatrist, and, (starting in his
seventies) a composer.
“I was invited to lecture at Harvard. I had no responsibilities,
just talked and worked with students, and Betty was able
to accompany me. The World’s End was a big project and
a big problem. Not my favourite job. I liked Harlow it was
very small. After 1945 onwards I did rehabbing of buildings,
like more lavatories in Park Street, Green Street and had
good clients including the Federation of British Industries.
I also did work for Turners and Asbestos Cement, as well
as Chance Glass who were bought out by Pilkingtons ‘Pilks left nothing to Chance’ - and the Building Centre.
It was all fun to do. Harlow, Hatfield and Basildon were
constrained by cost. When you go back, you see your
work is not as individual as you imagined - I thought
I was being original. Hornsey Lane School I enjoyed
very much.” Another company he did work for was the
Vaughan family in Bedfordshire. They made VONO beds ‘Vaughan Only No Others’”.
Due to his Suffolk connections, Jim was commissioned to
design a composing room for Benjamin Britten and Peter
Pears at the Red House. His last job, with Betty, was the
Print Room and Library at the Royal Academy of Arts.
They worked in the spatial peace of their Aldeburgh
home, designed by them and built in 1964, situated on a
flat grassy plot surrounded by magnificent trees - one
grown from a fir cone brought back from Italy.
When he died, aged 96, Jim was the most senior Royal
Academician, having been President of the Royal Institute
of British Architects, Professor of Architecture at the RA
and the Architectural Association, plus Prime Warden of
the Worshipful Company of Dyers. He was also awarded
the OBE. In 2006 the Royal Academy (where his work has
been archived) produced an exhibition of Jim’s designs ‘Elegant Variation’. He was there; silver haired, handsome
in long jacket and dark drainpipe jeans, a coloured scarf
flopping from his top pocket, “I have met people today,” he
said, “Who I never thought I would ever see again.” And we
all went to dinner at the Arts Club and drank champagne.
H T Cadbury-Brown died on 9 July 2009 at Ipswich Hospital,
pre-deceased by Betty in 2002. They had no children.
Natalie Wheatley
(Jim’s Secretary 1957-59. Niece-in-law since 1960)
Michael was the third of four sons, born in Lymington,
Hampshire on October first, 1921. His father was a general
practitioner and surgeon, and three of his four sons went
into medicine. Michael’s oldest brother, John, (born in
1916) also went to Westminster. His next oldest brother,
Robert, (born in 1920), went to Winchester, as did his
younger brother, Steve, (born in 1925).
For his early schooling Michael went to a local teacher
in Lymington, Miss Latham. Sometimes he was the only
pupil in her school. At age nine he went to a boarding
school four miles from his home - Hordle House.
(He would have gone there at eight, as Robert had done,
but whooping cough postponed his entry by a year).
At age thirteen he went to Westminster, and donned
the top hat and tailcoat which were the school uniform.
Having had a very good start in Latin and Greek from
Miss Latham, he expected to study Classics, and eventually
teach. However, while at Westminster he decided to
become a doctor, and switched to science.
During his last year at Westminster World War II broke
out. The school was evacuated to Lancing College, where
they lived in very crowded conditions. For their last six
weeks they were sent to Exeter, which was further away
from London (and much less crowded).
While they were at Exeter, France fell. People then feared
that Germany would invade Britain, for which they were
quite unprepared. To assist the war effort, Michael and his
schoolmates were given lessons from a grouse-shooting
countryman on how to shoot down German planes.
Pointing his airgun towards some birds, the grouse shooter
told them, “You just go snap! snap!”. The boys also used to
poke their rifles into ditches in case they might discover a
German parachutist there.
During the first holidays after he finished Westminster
Michael joined the Homeguard (Dad’s Army) in
Lymington. On duty nights he used to cycle to the local
Drill Hall with a rifle slung over his back and a large
mattress in his bicycle basket. They were expected to do
sentry duty in the Drill Hall at all hours of the night.
By this time Germany had started air raids on Great
Britain. Some of their planes flew over Lymington, and the
family home, on their way to Southampton, which was a
very important port. Bombs ravaged Southampton High
Street (while Michael’s mother watched, from Lymington).
After Westminster, Michael went to Oxford, as did all his
brothers. At Oxford, while many of his classmates were
sent to war, Michael, like other medical students, finished
his studies. While he was at Oxford, the war ended.
66
|
| 2009/2010
Many of his friends returned to University, just as
Michael was sent to Germany for two years as an army
doctor. He was sad to leave Oxford, but greatly enjoyed
his time in Germany, where he found a rich cultural and
musical life.
“On first acquaintance, he was always charming and
instantly made you feel comfortable. His initial instinct
was always to trust you, which is so different from the
way we are all brought up to behave today. As a result,
everyone liked him.
As a doctor, Michael started in General Medicine,
switched to Paediatrics, but then settled on Psychiatry,
which suited him. Most of his work was done at Banstead
Hospital, Surrey, and at St Mary Abbots in London, where
he was in charge of an open ward. (Patients were not
locked in.). His colleague, Dr. Peter Rohde, wrote to me,
“His patients loved him. And he, in turn, cared greatly
for them”.
“On my last visit with Trad (in a rehabilitation center,
after a fall) he appeared to be back to his old self. He was
optimistic that he might have another 2 years left in
him. He was looking forward to going home; grilling me
for family news and stories from my recent holiday.
He wanted to share his experiences at the Rehabilitation
Centre and tell me about all the extraordinary people he’d
met there and he was, of course, charming the socks off
the staff!
After his retirement from medicine a chance conversation
led him to his second great endeavour. Music had always
been a central part of his life. His father played the violin,
his mother the piano, and from about age three Michael
loved to listen to classical music. Michael played the
violin, in duets with his brother Robert (on the piano),
and as a soloist with the Oxford orchestra. Throughout
his life he listened to, and read about music incessantly.
Then one afternoon, as I was waiting at the school gate
for our son Stuart, another mother, standing next to me,
happened to mention that she was looking forward to
returning to Birkbeck College to teach music composition.
I went home and told Michael, who telephoned her,
enrolled in the course at once, and never looked back.
He finished the course with Distinction. Eventually he
had all his compositions printed, and then professionally
recorded on a series of compact discs. (These included all
the pieces he wrote during, and after, the course, as well
as several pieces he had written at age eight).
Michael’s music includes four poems set to music, and
sung by mezzo-soprano, as well as pieces for piano, violin,
flute, and organ. His “Chromatic Elegy” was recorded by
the world famous organist Jennifer Bate.
A description of Michael must include his breadth of
reading and knowledge, and his manner with people.
My cousin, Bill Willcox (from America) described “that
most kindly, cultured, elegant, estimable man. He was so
brilliant, so affable, so knowledgeable and well-informed
about everything, so easy and interesting in conversation,
and quite as interested in your opinions as in his own indeed more interested, for like all large-minded persons,
he knew what he knew and thought and so wanted most to
find out what others knew and thought. We had wonderful
conversations about English history and literature, and
particularly about Britain’s finest hour, which Michael
lived through as a young man and knew everything about.
As an American I am proud and humbled to say to all
attending this service that those great British days are still
an inspiration to Americans and to everybody everywhere
who resists tyranny and thuggery and terror in the world”.
His son Julian (who called him “Trad”) described him as
“fascinated by people - who they were, what they knew,
where they came from...
“A worker came into the room whilst I was there to ask
what he would like for his evening meal. Trad, as was his
way, engaged her in conversation about everything other
than what he wanted for his evening meal and for the
next 20 minutes we had a happy chat! Eventually, she
remembered why she had come to see him and offered
him a choice of rice or potatoes. There was never any
doubt to me or him that his answer would be potatoes;
but out of sheer good manners and politeness, he gave
the matter due consideration, as if pondering a weighty
dilemma. With a twinkle in his eye and a sweet smile,
he finally answered, ‘If it’s alright, I think I’ll have the
potatoes today’. That made my day and I suspect that the
conversation she had with Trad made her day too. That to
me was Trad encapsulated.
“Maybe because I knew his habits so well, I felt that I
never needed to see that much of him to feel close to him.
I knew, for example, that at 4.45pm on every Saturday
afternoon, we would both be sitting not too far from a
radio tuned in to ‘5 Live’. We would both be in a state of
high anxiety, waiting for the outcome of Southampton
Football Club’s latest match, wondering whether they
could yet again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory!
“We went through that agony together many, many times
and the relief associated with any victory would often
prompt a phone call, when we would greet each other
simultaneously with the words, ‘Up the Saints!’. Thanks
to Southampton’s perennial poor form, sometimes we
wouldn’t speak for weeks!”
In February 2008, Michael fell and broke his arm.
Following that he was unable to use the zimmerframe he
needed to walk, and was bedridden, and in hospital, for
most of the next five months. By mid-July his arm was
fairly well healed, and he went to the rehabilitation centre
for practice in walking and eventual discharge. On
Sunday, July 27 Julian and I both visited him, and found
him lively, optimistic, and impatient to return home.
But the next morning he had a heart attack, followed by
five days in a coma, before he died on August first. Sudden
though this was, it gave me, and other family members a
chance to be with him at the end, and seemed to be a
comfortable and peaceful last few days for him.
| 2009/2010 |
67
Michael is survived by his first wife, Hetty, and their
grown children Tessa, Julian, Nikki, and Saskia, and by
his second wife, Elizabeth, and our son Stuart.
Nadim Gulamhuseinwala
1976-2009 (WW 1993-1995)
Nadim Gulamhuseinwala, known fondly as ‘Nads’ or
‘Gulam’ at School, embodied much of what was expected
from a Westminster boy - highly intelligent, competitive,
motivated, playful, generous and, above all, his own man.
When Nadim joined the sixth form class in September
1993, as a strong addition to the cohort from St Benedict’s
School, Ealing, it was clear that adapting to a new environment would come naturally to him. He was continuing a
family tradition at Westminster, his brother Imran having
already completed his A-levels by the time Nadim arrived.
Nadim studied Double Maths, Biology, Chemistry and
Physics, with the express intention of reading Medicine
at university. It was an ambition he was to achieve and
one of many fields in which he was to excel.
Nadim quickly became known as a fun loving but focused
individual, who brought humour and intellect to classroom
discussions in equal measure. He was compassionate to
those around him and always ready and willing to assist
any strugglers or champion the rights of the class underdog. He was also renowned for his sparkling wit, with
few, if any, able to match him in the banter stakes. Nadim
became a valued member of Wren’s, where he participated
in both football and cricket, excelling with the bat.
Nadim embraced the extra-curricular activities
Westminster had to offer. In particular, he was a key
member of the 1994 and 1995 Physically Handicapped and
Able Bodied (PHAB) courses, held at school during the
summer exeat. These intense and demanding courses
allowed the aspiring medic to develop some of the attributes
he would possess in abundance as the outstanding doctor
he would go on to become. Moreover, Nadim illustrated
at an early age that he was a natural leader, who was
eminently capable of taking responsibility for the care
of others.
When exams came around, Nadim excelled, obtaining
5 A grades at A-level. This was a phenomenal achievement,
and a justified reward for his hard work and natural talent.
In October 1995, Nadim went to the University of Bristol
to read Medicine. In the first year, Nadim lived in Clifton
Wood House - an annexe of the larger Clifton Hill House
halls of residence. The intimate surroundings of the house
meant that most of his neighbours there would become
his lifelong friends. His sense of fun and his wide-ranging
interests from cricket to politics and academia meant that
he made many friends in his six years at the University.
He always managed to work out where the best party was
happening and often went to more than one a night with a
customary stop at the Medics’ Bar. He could also regularly
be found at the gym and tried his hand at rowing with the
University Boat Club.
68
|
| 2009/2010
At the same time, his focus on his work was second to
none. Many of his friends say that his discipline and
dedication served as an example to them to try put as
much energy and work into their studies.
On the academic front, Nadim excelled from the outset,
particularly enjoying the traditional medical sciences. He
achieved a string of merits and distinctions throughout
his medical training. In 1997 he won a Wolfson Award to
undertake an Intercalated BSc in Pathology and was
awarded a First Class degree with Honours the following
year. Outside the lecture theatre, he could readily switch
his sharp academic focus to an equally sharp sense of
humour. His easy-going charm mixed with a healthy dose
of witty cynicism won him many friends.
During the clinical years of medical school, Nadim set his
sights on a career in surgery. In 2000 he chose to spend
his two-month medical elective in Adelaide, studying
craniofacial surgery. En route, he spent the summer
travelling the world with friends, and developed his
enduring passion for diving and playing golf.
In 2001 Nadim graduated from Medical School amongst
the top of his year, and embarked upon postgraduate
medical training as a House Officer in Cheltenham.
In 2002 he made the decision to move back to London. He
spent a year teaching anatomy and training in Accident
and Emergency at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals, during
which time he passed the first part of the Membership
of the Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS) examination.
He then secured a position as a Senior House Officer on
the Basic Surgical Training programme at Guy’s and
St Thomas’ Hospitals, which he took up after having
returned to Australia to work in Emergency Medicine in
Sydney for six months.
Once back in London, he applied himself to his surgical
career with his characteristic focus. He achieved high
scores in the remainder of his MRCS examinations,
qualifying as an accredited surgeon with his title now
‘Mr’ rather than ‘Dr’. During this time he also managed
to publish several articles in peer reviewed journals, and
began to focus on a career in plastic surgery. He furthered
this ambition by getting a series of jobs as a trainee plastic
surgeon in several highly regarded hospitals including
St George’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals in London, and
Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead. He developed
a reputation as a hard working, knowledgeable and
skilful surgeon and was well regarded by those who
worked with him.
However, in 2007, unimpressed by the changes to medical
training and deeply frustrated with the uncertainty of a
career in medicine and the NHS’ increasing bureaucracy,
Nadim boldly elected to embark on a new career. True to
form for someone who consistently reached the top, he
was hired by management consultants McKinsey and Co,
the industry’s most prestigious firm. He joined the
Pharmaceuticals and Medical Products division as an
Associate, advising clients in the sector in Europe, the
with the unimaginably tragic circumstances of his
passing. They were not alone. Nadim touched people’s
lives everywhere he went. There was barely room in the
vast Abbey for the hundreds of mourners who wished
to pay their respects. Each one felt compelled to be part
of the tribute to Nadim, whether they had met him as a
schoolboy at St Benedict’s or Westminster, an aspiring
student at Bristol, an overworked but enthusiastic trainee
medic, a top-notch surgeon in London, a high flying
management consultant at McKinsey or a flamboyant
batsman on a village cricket pitch.
All who were there burst into spontaneous applause
following his brother Imran’s eulogy, in recognition not
only of its perfectly pitched and indescribably moving
content, but also of the premature loss of a truly unique
and irreplaceable individual. Indeed, it is impossible to
better his description of the scale of Nadim’s achievements
in his life and the inspiration he was to others:
Above: Nadim Gulamhuseinwala.
“Nadim did more than live his life to the full, he lived his
life at twice the speed of anyone else I know. He could not
have achieved more in his 32 years.”
“He wanted to be the best he could be; and when you were
around him you wanted to be the best you could be too.”
Middle East and the US. Despite having no prior business,
financial or management experience, his capacity for
hard work allowed him to bridge this gap. Within a few
months he was excelling in this second career, earning a
promotion to the position of Engagement Manager in the
summer of 2009. He truly felt he had found a vocation that
was at the same time challenging, professionally fulfilling
and made the most of his many talents.
In April 2009, he was seconded to McKinsey’s New York
office, where he was due to stay until late August.
Incredibly, though perhaps not surprisingly given Nadim’s
remarkable reserves of energy, he flew back to London as
often as he could, keeping in regular contact with his
close-knit family, his beloved partner Rebecca and his
many treasured friends. His natural amiability meant
he was soon a hugely popular figure at McKinsey, where
he’s remembered with immense warmth and affection.
Despite having lived and worked in so many different
locations, at home and abroad, Nadim retained a lasting
affection for the area close to school and, when in London,
chose to live a stone’s throw from Dean’s Yard. He was
notorious for fitting in his social calls on his mobile phone
as he jogged around Vincent Square to stay in shape.
He also enjoyed walking in the green spaces of SW1 and
had a particular fondness for St James’s Park, where he
was known to sit on a bench and take some time out of his
unrelenting schedule for reflection. It is a truly bitter
irony that the savage and random attack that robbed him
of his life happened in Green Park, which he had walked
through so many times and where he had always felt safe.
Nadim’s two years at Westminster had a hugely significant
impact on many people. The class of 1995 stood in solidarity
at his funeral at Ealing Abbey, trying to come to terms
He will never be forgotten.
The Friends of Nadim Gulamhuseinwala
Should you wish to make a charitable donation, please
consider donating to St James’s and Green Park, where
Nadim loved to walk, for the purchase of a memorial
(cheques should be made payable to Imran
Gulamhuseinwala). All donations should be sent to Haven
Funeral Services, 13 The Broadway, Gunnersbury Lane,
London W3 8HR. If you are a UK taxpayer and would like
to gift aid your donation, please write: “This donation
should be treated as gift aid” followed by your name and
address on the back of the cheque.
John Creasey Wykeham Hopkyns
1915-2008 (BB 1929-1933)
Born in 1915 in Suffolk, England and died in 2008 in
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He is survived by five sons
and one daughter, thirteen grandchildren and twelve
great-grandchildren. John attended Westminster School
from 1929-33. He went on to graduate in Medicine from
Oxford and London Universities. John married Joan Edith
Yates in 1941. He served as a Surgeon Lieutenant at sea and
ashore in the Royal Naval Volunteer Service 1942-1946.
He later transferred to the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve
retiring as a Surgeon Lieutenant-Commander. John and
Joan came to Edmonton in 1952 where John practiced
Internal Medicine for many years. He obtained his
fellowship at the Royal College of Physicians of Canada
and taught Internal Medicine for the University of
Alberta. In 1980 he was named an Emeritus Associate
Professor when he semi-retired. John was active in the
Anglican Church for many years. He enjoyed his extended
family and travelled all over the world.
| 2009/2010 |
69
Stephen John Instone
1954-2009 (RR 1968-1973)
It is with the deepest sadness that we have to record the
tragic and untimely death of Stephen Instone at the age of
54. Stephen drowned whilst swimming in Lake Geneva in
July 2009 while on holiday in Switzerland with his family.
He was up Rigaud’s from 1968 to 1973 and was respected
and loved by a wide circle of friends and colleagues. He
was supremely fit at the time of the accident and its cause
remains a mystery.
An integral member of the classics department at UCL,
Stephen was known for his universal helpfulness and his
ability to bring the subject to life for his students. At the
memorial event held in October at that institution there
were many tributes to his support and enthusiasm and
he is also sadly missed at St Mary’s University College,
Twickenham, where he taught previously for some years.
Stephen was also a staunch member of the Old
Westminsters Athletic Club, running some 13 times in
the Towpath Cup race against the school, with a best time
of 17 minutes 45 seconds in 1987. His capacity to combine
the worlds of classics and athletics was unique.
The following is an extract from the obituary written
by his running club, Ranelagh Harriers:
“Rarely can the loss of a member have been so keenly felt
not only throughout the club but also in the running
community in general. Stephen was very special. We
know of no-one who did not have a soft spot for him.
Stephen joined Ranelagh in the early 1970s at just about
the time he was leaving school and going up to Balliol
College, Oxford, to study Classics. Stephen may not have
been blessed with huge amounts of natural running
ability but he made up for this with sheer hard work.
It was not long before an “Instone furrow” formed round
the perimeter of Richmond Park as Stephen put in lap
after lap after lap of training. He improved steadily
throughout the decade and by 1980 had run 10 miles in
55 minutes and 2:42 for the marathon. He ran crosscountry too, but road was his favoured surface, his
slightly stiff running action with minimum knee lift
being well suited to the longer distances.
70
Financial Times and other publications. He became Editor of
the club Gazette, but the classical references which always
found their way into his race reports revealed where his
true love lay, and he returned to the world of academia and
the Ancient Greeks. After spending some time in China with
Hugh Jones, who won the 1982 London Marathon, in 1986
and then nine months in the USA in 1987-88, he completed
his PhD at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College,
London and subsequently became an Honorary Research
Fellow and departmental tutor at University College London
and a lecturer at St Mary’s College, University of Surrey.
He became an acknowledged authority on the works of the
Greek Poet Pindar, whose Odes were composed to commemorate victories in the Olympic and other Games of
ancient Greece. When in 1993, the BBC was preparing a
Radio 4 series entitled “Greek as a Treat” it was only
natural that they should pick on Stephen to feature in the
episode dealing with the Games. “Only the BBC,” wrote
the Sunday Times reviewer, “could make a series which
includes a scholar-athlete running around Regent’s Park
with a saucepan on his head and clutching a dustbin lid to
illustrate the difficulties of the Ancient Greeks’ 400 metres
armour racing event: the same man tells of how he sprinted
naked in Crete to see if the original Olympians’ practice of
nude running was hindered by male encumbrances”.
The latter had taken place on a secluded beach, but in 2004
his past came back to haunt him in the guise of a BBC2
crew filming a programme entitled “First Olympian”.
Here’s BBC News Online: “Dr Instone, who bared all on
Loughborough University campus despite the chill winds
of winter, told BBC News Online: ‘If you are trying to
recreate aspects of the ancient Olympics, when it comes to
running you have got to run naked. I lined up with quite a
few semi-international sprinters. I’m 49 and they were
about half my age. They all had Lycra on, while I had to
run unencumbered. I just tried it to show you can run
perfectly well naked. People these days say it’s difficult
from a practical point of view. At least I proved it could be
done’. Dr Instone, a club runner himself, came last.”...and
sadly the episode ended up on the cutting room floor.
Progress was brought to a sudden halt in the spring of
1980 when, trying to clear some ivy from the guttering of
his mother’s house on Barnes Common, he fell off a ladder
and shattered his ankle. He spent two weeks in hospital
at Roehampton where various pieces of metalwork were
inserted into the leg, but it was entirely typical of Stephen
that the day after his release he could be found completing
a lap of the Park on crutches. A little over three months
later he ran a 10 mile road race in 76 minutes. From then
on there was always a trace of a limp in his running, but
the upwards curve in his performances continued and by
1982 his marathon best had come down to 2:38.
BBC News Online continues: “Although the modern
Olympics - at least in theory - are supposed to be more about
the taking part than the winning, the opposite was true of
the original games, which started in 776BC. In fact, their
ambition was as naked as their bodies. Dr Instone said:
‘It wasn’t like being British now, where coming second is
considered quite good. Back then, it was considered a total
disgrace. Some writings describe the loser having to go home
by back alleyways to avoid other people. It was part of the
Greek shame of defeat. Winners would bring back a great
deal of reflected glory’.” Here’s an extract from Stephen’s
translation of Pindar’s Ode “Olympian One”, published in
1996: “And the glory’s seen afar in races at Olympia of Pelops:
for this is where speed of feet has a contest and hard-fought
supremacy in strength. And he who is victor has a honeysweet tranquillity throughout the rest of life”.
He dabbled with journalism after taking his degree, working
for a local newspaper while also contributing articles to The
In the mid-1990s Stephen married Shelley, aFrancis
former
Rawes
student of his, and they had two children, Florence, now
|
| 2009/2010
11, and Arthur, 9. Shelley is a writer/reviewer herself and
a regular contributor to the letters pages of The Times,
sometimes at Stephen’s expense: “Already aware that
he was on dangerous territory by giving me a tasteless
wedding anniversary present just before Christmas, my
husband surpassed all my low expectations of him as a
lacklustre and deeply unimaginative present-giver by
giving me a cookbook - the very one that he had given
me the previous Christmas. Unfortunately for him, the
present has only been used as a diverse and perfectly
compact weapon”.
As his family commitments grew, Stephen’s racing
appearances diminished, though not his enthusiasm for
the sport which ran alongside his love for his family and
his overall zest for life. And of course the laps of the
Park continued. Here’s John Bryant, an Oxford Blue and
former Editor of The Daily Telegraph: “I remember him
best from the endless laps he used to run in Richmond
Park. I usually ran anti-clockwise, Steve clockwise - and
sometimes we would see each other many times. He
would approach with that shy, almost gawky style, his
head to one side. We would pass with a nod of recognition,
sometimes a wave - that acknowledged that we were
doing the same thing, for the same reasons; sharing the
same pleasures, and often the same pains. Occasionally,
we would pause and chat. Sometimes, when injured,
Stephen would be on a bike, and we would swop views
about how effective (or useless) training on a bike was.
Other times we would update each other on our latest
injuries, sympathise over broken bones and broken
dreams, that runners know all too well. It seems trite to
say that I shall miss him in the Park. But Stephen was a
fixture there. We shared a mutual respect that only hardcore runners understand - it needed no explanation, no
justification. When I got smashed up in a road accident
and tried doing laps on sticks in the Park, he would
always stop. His words of encouragement meant much to
me then. And I knew I was getting back to normal when
we would pass each other, running again, with just a nod.
I shall miss those nods in the Park”.
The last word goes to Jim Forrest (who encouraged him to
join Ranelagh): “Stephen was utterly delightful in every
way; a wonderful companion”.
Our sincere condolences go to Shelley, Florence and
Arthur.
Above: Huw Elwyn Jones.
Huw Elwyn Jones
1943-2009 (BB 1957-1961)
Huw Elwyn Jones, who has died aged 65 after a brief
illness, was a highly respected and experienced solicitor
in North Wales. His grandfather was the Reverend E.
Tegla Davies, a well-known Wesleyan minister, fine
preacher, and prolific author. His father was Sir Elwyn
Jones, another highly regarded local solicitor who died in
1989, knighted for his services to the cause of the North
Wales quarrymen. Like his father, Huw Elwyn, had a
strong sense of public duty.
Stephen completed 66 mob matches for the club and won
the club 20 miles championship twice with a best time of
1:59.20 in 1987. When the Saturday morning UK Time Trials
/ parkruns were instigated in 2004 Stephen was a regular
attender from the outset, firstly in Bushy Park and latterly
at the Richmond Park event. He was last year’s winner of
the annual Richmond Parkrun points competition and
held a clear lead in this year’s before his death. The trophy
for the points winner was donated by Ranelagh and it has
been presented this year to Shelley to keep. Ranelagh will
then donate a replacement to be known as the Stephen
Instone Trophy.
From Westminster, Huw Elwyn went to Christ Church,
Oxford, where he studied law, intending to go for the Bar.
However, his father’s illness brought him back to Bangor
in the late sixties. Initially he had intended to return to
London, but enjoyed the work so much that he stayed and
developed his father’s practice, Elwyn Jones & Co., which
he built up substantially to include a number of partners
and assistants.
Stephen was published on Homer, Virgil and Greek athletics
as well as Pindar and his latest research centred on Greek
personal religion (his book on this subject was published
in October) and on sound-effects in Homer. The ScienceLive
website includes a lecture by Stephen on the latter, in
which it is easy to discern Stephen’s deep passion for his
subject: www.sciencelive.org
Huw Elwyn’s diligence and concern for others, for both
established and new clients, was proverbial. He had
that invaluable quality in a lawyer of being able to see
the strengths and weaknesses of both sides of a case.
He was able to give objective and forceful advice so as to
obtain the best result for his client. He was a man of the
utmost integrity and even-handedness and totally
| 2009/2010 |
71
committed to his community, in which he had such
deep roots.
During his years of practice he became a Deputy District
Judge. He was President of Bangor Rotary during the
centenary year of 2005 and was also President of the
Gwynedd Law Society, which he helped establish.
He followed in his father’s footsteps when he became
treasurer of Bangor University, a position which he held
until he died.
Huw Elwyn is survived by his wife, Anna, his children,
Sara, Angharad and Edward, and his sister, Carys.
Huw E Huw
Peter Hugh Jefferd Lloyd-Jones
1922-2009 (AHH 1935-1940)
Professor Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones, the former Regius
Professor of Greek at Oxford University, who died on 5th
October aged 87, was a gatekeeper for a particular style of
traditional scholarship and one of the foremost classical
scholars of his generation; his imposing output of scholarly
works ranged across the fields of Greek epic, lyric,
tragedy, comedy, Hellenistic literature, religion, intellectual
history - and beyond.
Among other achievements, Lloyd-Jones edited the
fragments of Aeschylus, Menander’s Dyscolus,
Semonides’s Satire on Women, the Supplementum
Hellenisticum (with Peter Parsons, his successor as
Regius Professor of Greek), and the plays of Sophocles
with the companion Sophoclea (both with Nigel Wilson).
He also published an annotated translation of Aeschylus’s
Oresteia as well as The Justice of Zeus (1971). But it is for
his trenchant articles and reviews that he will probably
be best remembered.
Lloyd-Jones was the product of a type of rigorous
philological training in Latin and Greek which was
uniquely characteristic of the best English schools in the
pre-war period. To this he added a thorough knowledge
of the classical tradition and the history of scholarship;
expertise as a papyrologist and textual critic; and a
thorough grounding in ancient Greek religion and culture.
Thus armed, for most of his academic career he engaged in
an almost personal war to protect the soul of Classics from
the modern age.
Much of Lloyd-Jones’s work can be seen as a reaction to
prevailing opinion, and he was at his best when probing
the unexamined assumptions of others or challenging
fashionable beliefs. He opposed applying any intellectual,
religious or psychological system to literature as a
substitute for thinking critically about each text.
Thus, in a famous article in the Journal of Hellenic
Studies, “Zeus in Aeschylus” (1956), he challenged the view,
fashionable among American scholars, that Aeschylus
was a profound religious thinker whose tragedies offered
a vision of the Almighty far more sophisticated than that
72
|
| 2009/2010
of Homer and tending towards Judaeo-Christian theology.
A common approach was to see the change between the
vindictive Zeus of the Prometheia to the more majestic
figure of the Oresteia as evidence that Aeschylus’s god
evolves during the long years of Prometheus’s suffering to
become a more just and benevolent deity.
Lloyd-Jones’s approach, set out in the article and elaborated
in a series of lectures published as The Justice of Zeus
(1971), was to deny that there was any contradiction
between the Zeus of the Oresteia and the Prometheia.
Prometheus is finally released from his torments in
exchange for the secret that threatens the supremacy of
Zeus, and Orestes is spared by the Erinyes in exchange for
a permanent home in Athens.
In both cases Zeus is not involved in the arrangements,
which are engineered by subordinates - Athena and
Heracles. Aeschylus’s conception of Zeus, Lloyd-Jones
concluded, and his conception of divine justice, contained
“nothing that is new, nothing that is sophisticated; nothing
that is profound”, and could be understood only in the
proper context of Olympian religion with its “belief that
the whole nature of the universe is necessarily adverse to
human aspirations”.
“The Greeks,” as Lloyd-Jones once wrote, “were not tolerant
of the well-meaning idiot.” Neither was he; and he never
allowed diplomacy to temper the pungent expression of
his views. “Who but a bigoted nationalist, and one grossly
deficient in aesthetic sensibility, would have argued that
Creon and Antigone represented moral viewpoints of equal
validity?” he demanded to know in one diatribe.
In a review of the German HJ Mette’s attempt to reconstruct
the lost trilogies of Aeschylus, Lloyd-Jones advised the
author to take to heart two lines of Catullus: “Miser
Catulle, desinas ineptire, et quod vides perisse perditum
ducas” (“Wretched Catullus, you should stop being a fool
and consider lost that which you see has come to an end”).
The attack had a dramatic sequel when the two scholars met
at an international classical symposium in Bonn. During a
“friendly” get-together on a Rhine pleasure steamer, voices
were heard raised in anger on the lower deck. Peering over
the rails, a group of astonished German and British students
saw the two scholars doing furious intellectual battle, Mette
in fluent English and Lloyd-Jones in fluent German.
In fact, Lloyd-Jones had considerable admiration for
German scholarship, a respect that found expression in
learned essays on Goethe, Nietzsche, Humboldt, Wagner
and (surprisingly) Marx, as well as on more recent
scholars such as Reinhardt, Maas, Fraenkel and Pfeiffer.
His barbs were more frequently directed at transatlantic
scholars who attempted to impose Freudian or LeviStraussian theories on Greek myth and literature. “To
acquire a smattering of Freud, usually untainted by the
smallest admixture of modern psychology, has been one
way of solving the perennial problem of how to publish
work on Greek literature and not perish, without knowing
any Greek,” he declared.
And he had a good nose for the killer quotation: “Freud’s
contention that ‘the myth of Prometheus indicates that to
gain control over fire man had to renounce the homosexually-tinged desire to put it out with a stream of urine’ is
not often mentioned even by his loyal adherents.” His
most emphatic put-down, however, was always: “But he
doesn’t know Greek!”
Peter Hugh Jefferd Lloyd-Jones was born on September 21
1922 and educated at the Lycée Française in South
Kensington and at Westminster School. He began his
undergraduate studies at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1940
and resumed them in 1946 after military service with the
Intelligence Corps in the Far East, graduating with Firsts
in Mods and Greats.
As part of his wartime work, Lloyd-Jones had learned
Japanese, and noticed how it was impossible, or at least
difficult, to express certain Western concepts in that
language. When he returned to Oxford, he set out in an
essay for his tutor to refute St Anselm’s ontological argument
for the existence of God by showing the difficulties of
expressing it in Japanese. It was this, perhaps, that
convinced him of the dangers of imposing anachronistic
thought structures on the work of ancient writers.
He found in postwar Oxford a “somnolent beauty which
was slowly awakening from the clerical slumbers of the
previous century”. None the less, in 1948 Lloyd-Jones
moved to Cambridge, where he became a fellow of Jesus
College and assistant lecturer, then lecturer, in Classics.
But he returned to Oxford in 1954 as fellow and EP Warren
Praelector in Classics at Corpus Christi; then from 1960,
Regius Professor of Greek and Student of Christ Church.
Lloyd-Jones began publishing in 1949 - with a review and his career spanned the development of postwar
classics. He professed himself a “conservative with very
little intrinsic belief in the goodness of human nature”
and blithely ignored currents in postwar social analysis,
literary criticism, cultural history and politics. Instead
his work was always informed and stimulated by an
abiding and deep awareness of the larger picture of
Greek culture.
As a teacher, Lloyd-Jones was encouraging, demanding
and sometimes waspishly indiscreet about his academic
colleagues. Despite the passion of his own intellectual convictions, he was always tolerant of his students’ wild ideas.
From Edward Enfield (RR 1944-1948)
There must still be a handful of us who remember the day
when the exciting news rang through the school: “LloydJones has won the Ireland!” For most people it just meant
that we got a late play, but for us in the Classical Seventh
it meant more, because we had had the inestimable
privilege of being taught by him.
‘
There must still be a handful of
us who remember the day when
the exciting news rang through the
school: “Lloyd-Jones has won the
Ireland!”
’
There was a gap in the teaching staff, due partly to the
illness of the headmaster, J.T. Christie, and this was filled
temporarily by Hugh Lloyd-Jones. He had been demobbed
from the army and was to go back to Oxford in October,
so he came and taught us for, I think, two terms. It was a
revelation. Until then I had tackled the Greek and Latin
languages in the spirit in which one approaches a difficult
crossword puzzle - one can get some satisfaction from
cracking the code and getting to the right answer, but that
was about all. It was Hugh Lloyd-Jones who opened my
eyes and, I am sure, the eyes of others to the enormous
literary riches and possibilities of these languages.
I remember particularly his bursting into an impromptu
recitation of the most famous poem of Sappho, the words
of which meant nothing to any of us at the time, but the
performance sent me to the Oxford Book of Greek Verse to
read all the early lyric poets. He himself later wrote of J.T.
Christie and Eduard Frankel that “what made them great
teachers was their enthusiasm for literature and their
eagerness to help others to share the pleasure they derived
from it.” He could have been talking about himself.
I never met him afterwards. The Telegraph obituary
suggests that he may have become a little prickly in later
life, but in his short time as a schoolmaster he was friendly,
encouraging, enthusiastic and immensely learned. He also
gave us pleasure with his slightly mischievous jokes, such
as when he took a bunch of schoolboys into a cafe, ordered
tea and buttered buns, and solemnly assured the waitress
that they were having an El Alamein reunion.
He was knighted in 1989.
Hugh Lloyd-Jones married first, in 1953, Frances Hedley;
they had two sons and a daughter. The marriage was
dissolved and he married secondly, in 1982, the American
classical scholar Mary Lefkowitz, with whom in later life
he lived at Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Reprinted from The Telegraph, 5th October 2009
| 2009/2010 |
73
I look back on our short acquaintance with warmth and
Richard
gratitude. Cameron Low
him to Westminster.
Peter
Louis Michael Sherwood
1941-2009 (QS 1954-1959)
Richard Low (known as Dick) died on 17th February 2008,
six weeks before his 80th birthday. After prep school at
St Felix in Felixstowe he entered College in September 1941
at Whitbourne Court, Worcester, the home of College
during the evacuation. He developed a deep affection for
Whitbourne during his four years there, and would always
revisit the Bromyard area whenever he had the opportunity.
He was delighted to return to Westminster in 1945 for his
final year and to be involved in the re-establishment of the
School in its own home and its connection with the Abbey.
Louis Sherwood was chairman of HTV, the West Country
broadcaster, and a director of the Halifax Building Society,
which became HBOS and is now part of the Lloyds Banking
Group. He was also chairman and chief executive of
Gateway Foodmarkets, the supermarket bought in one of the
most infamous corporate takeover deals of the early 1990s.
1928-2008 (KS 1941-1946)
He was for several years in the Cricket XI and the Football
XI and was Captain of Cricket in 1946.
Despite winning an exhibition to read Maths at Trinity
College, Cambridge, on leaving school he entered the RMA
Sandhurst and was commissioned into the Royal Artillery,
with postings to Tripoli, Trieste and Germany. In Tripoli
he was selected to play for the Divisional Cricket XI.
After a period in BAOR with the 2nd Regiment Royal
Horse Artillery he decided to seek a new career in the
insurance business. He was with the Northern Assurance
in the City for four years and then joined the insurance
brokers Glanvill Enthoven, who appointed him to open
their West Africa branch in Lagos, Nigeria.
The next six years were a great experience for Dick and
his family. Starting a company virtually from scratch was
a massive task, but after a few problems all went well,
and when he returned to Head Office after six years the
company was on the way to becoming one of the most
successful insurance brokers in West Africa.
Dick returned to London in December 1963, and maintained
his connection with Nigeria as well as becoming involved
with Glanvill’s activities in Spain, Ireland and Israel (an
opportunity for some memorable holidays). In 1979 he
was head-hunted by the then Midland Bank to set up
an insurance broking facility. In 1983 Dick took early
retirement and moved to Wiltshire.
He became involved in local activities - as churchwarden
and member of the PCC, treasurer of the Salisbury and
South Wiltshire Museum, treasurer and chairman of the
Salisbury branch of the Leukaemia Research Fund, and a
vice president of the Chalke Valley Cricket Club. For 28
years he was a member of the Board of Management of
the British Home and Hospital for Incurables at Streatham.
He also pursued his interest in genealogy and family
history, which inspired him to write his book The Tigress
and the Rose.
He married in December 1951 Sheila Pary, daughter of
Robert Jephson Hilary (first Housemaster of Busby’s)
and his wife Nita (College Matron 1941-1961). To his great
delight his son Charles and grandson Robin both followed
74
|
| 2009/2010
Gateway was the subject of a hotly contested takeover tussle
not long after Sherwood joined the company. A buyout
team operating under the name Isosceles, beat off rival
bidders, and opposition from a Gateway management team
including Sherwood, to make the £2 billion acquisition.
It was one of the first large deals completed by a small team
of professional money men, using a company created for
the specific purpose of launching a takeover. Isosceles
funded the acquisition with large quantities of borrowed
money and methods that resurfaced in the hedge fund
and private-equity-fuelled mergers and acquisition spree
of the early years of the new millennium. Having bought
Gateway, Isosceles ran into dire trouble as the debt burden
proved heavy and trading suffered in the recession of the
early 1990s. It became one of the more infamous examples
of financial excess, and failure, of the period.
Peter Louis Michael Sherwood was born in Hammersmith,
London in 1941. He was educated at Westminster School,
New College, Oxford, and went to Stanford Business School,
in California, on a Harkness scholarship. After three years
with Morgan Grenfell, the merchant bank, he turned to
retail business management. He became a director of
various companies within James Goldsmith’s AngloContinental Group and when Goldsmith acquired the
Grand Union Group in America, Sherwood took charge of
development. His final four years were spent with the Great
Atlantic and Pacific group, where sales topped £10 billion
and of which he was appointed group president in 1985.
Returning to the UK, Sherwood moved, with his wife
Nicole and their young family, to Bristol and began a short
career running the Gateway supermarket chain, which
was the third-largest food retailer at the time. Freed of
association with the unfortunate corporate story of
Isosceles because he was on the losing side of the Gateway
bid, Sherwood began another career as a non-executive
director, at businesses as varied as Clerical Medical, the
investment and insurance company, Wessex Water and
the maintenance and construction group ROK. As chairman
of HTV from 1991 he helped the company to stave off
financial difficulties and in 1997 led its sale to United
News & Media, which itself was later absorbed into
today’s ITV commercial broadcasting company.
Sherwood’s association with Clerical Medical led him to
serve as a non-executive director of the Halifax, when the
former was bought by the latter in 1996. Sherwood served
as a non-executive director of Halifax until 2001, when it
(in English) and the LSE (in Social Anthropology) by the
age of 22. A brilliant intellect, Paul decided that his parents’
academic path was not for him-at least, not at first.
Instead Paul followed his artistic and intellectual passions
outside a conventional career.
A voracious reader, as a teenager Paul had fallen in love
with George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London
and fearlessly hitch-hiked around Europe. In his twenties
he settled in London and turned his hand to fiction, writing
several unpublished novels-comedies of alienation set
in a brittle, middle-class world of overeducated, underemployed Londoners.
After his mother Elaine returned to the United States, and
his brother Andrew moved to Israel, Paul spent several
years in the USA. He pursued library science and avidly
represented the library workers of Brown University in
their contract negotiations with management. Paul then
pursued creative writing; travel; his love of languages;
and teaching academic English to non-native speakers.
Above: Painting of Louis Sherwood by Philip Lambe.
merged with Bank of Scotland, to form HBOS.
Sherwood started every morning at 6am in his study to, as
he said, “rustle his papers”, read the Bible and prepare for
the day before his morning run and devouring newspapers.
His disciplined life benefited many in business, schools,
hospitals, charities, and cultural organisations. He assisted
cultural initiatives such as At-Bristol, which he helped to
launch in 1995-96, and the Bristol Cultural Development
Partnership, where he was a director. He was a leading
proponent of the ultimately unsuccessful bid to develop
a new showpiece concert hall for the city.
He became Master of Bristol’s Society of Merchant
Venturers in 2003, and used the position to pursue an active
modernisation agenda for the city which emphasised the
contribution of women, and acknowledged that the professions, financial services and the academic institutions add
as much wealth and wellbeing as traditional industries.
In later years, Paul explored the culture, politics and
economics of the EU. At the Jagellionian University in
Krakow, he wrote a master’s thesis on variance in
European birth rates as a reflection of cultural differences.
As he traveled Europe, supporting himself mostly by
teaching, Paul approached life as an undercover cultural
anthropologist. He relished quirkiness wherever he came
across it, from American swimming pool protocols to how
Polish pedestrians passed each other on the sidewalk.
Paul was a private man with a gift for friendship. His
friends cherished his “gentle gaiety,” his warm-heartedness,
his (sometimes exasperating) argumentativeness, his gift
of mimicry, and his sense of fun. From his father Cyril,
Paul inherited playfulness, whimsicality, and charm; from
his mother Elaine, a deep appreciation of art, music, and
literature. Paul enjoyed children and family and was a
magical uncle to his nephew Julian. But he loved best
of all to engineer a good evening of wine, humor, and
disputatiousness amongst friends.
Paul is survived by his mother, Dr Elaine Sofer, and by his
younger brother, Professor Andrew Sofer.
Andrew Sofer
He is survived by his wife, a son and two daughters.
© The Times, 28th May 2009
Paul Martin Sofer
1963-2009 (LL 1976-1979)
Paul Sofer died on 14th February 2009, when he was
struck and killed by a train in Lodz, Poland. Paul was a
lecturer in English at Lodz University’s English Institute.
Paul grew up in Cambridge, the son of South African and
American academics. Paul studied at King’s College School
and at Westminster-where he came in second on the
entrance examination-before earning degrees at Oxford
Hugh Francis Brady Symons
1916-2009 (AHH 1931-1935)
Throughout Hugh’s life, sport - cricket, tennis, golf, but
above all, soccer - was his abiding passion. This love of
sport kept him young in spirit and made him an inspirational figure who touched and enriched countless lives.
A doctor’s son, after leaving Westminster, where he
excelled at cricket and football, Hugh followed his father
into the medical profession, graduating from St Mary’s
Hospital in 1942. From 1943 to 1946, as a captain in the
RAMC he saw service in the Middle East. At one point he
| 2009/2010 |
75
had to flee for his life after awarding a contentious penalty
kick when refereeing a highly-charged cup final between
Arab and Egyptian teams, watched by a huge crowd of
their ultra-volatile following.
After being demobbed, from 1949 till 1981 Hugh was first
assistant in physical medicine at the Middlesex Hospital
and consultant rheumatologist at St George’s, then at
Hyde Park Corner. Many were the injured footballers
who came in to seek Hugh’s expert diagnoses and so
popular were the ministrations of his team of attractive
physiotherapists that some injuries tended mysteriously
to linger on. His tour de force came when he was consulted
by the Fulham winger Trevor ‘Tosh’ Chamberlain, who
was injured and out of form. So efficacious was Hugh’s
treatment, both physical and psychological, that in the
very next game ‘Tosh’ posted a hat-trick against the then
mighty Newcastle United. As he told a national Sunday
newspaper ‘It’s all down to the Doc!’
For a number of years Hugh lived in Kensington, on one
occasion standing as the Liberal parliamentary candidate
for what is now Kensington & Chelsea. With the Royal
Parks in close proximity, he was able to give free rein to
his keen interest in ornithology. As his parents’ health
began to fail, Hugh returned to the family home in
Streatham, which after his parents’ demise he shared
with his sister Zai who predeceased him by a few months.
A generous and loyal friend, Hugh was the hub of a small
circle that met regularly in London for lunch, and he was
never less than lively and entertaining company.
As a footballer, Hugh could grace any pitch with his silky
ball control, acute football brain and an unerring eye for
the chance. He had acquired the soubriquet of ‘Tank’, as
on his day he was virtually unstoppable.
Hugh played with great distinction for Wimbledon, long
before the days of The Crazy Gang and the subsequent
morphing into MK Dons and AFC Wimbledon. He led the
Old Westminsters to a memorable win in the Surrey AFA
Senior Cup final against Carshalton Athletic. Happily, he
was able to watch the comparatively recent Arthur Dunn
Cup final between the OWW and Old Carthusians.
He was also adopted as an honorary Old Malvernian and
frequently played for and toured with the OMs.
As if all this was not enough, Hughie also founded and
was the leading spirit behind a Sunday morning side,
Sunday Strollers aka London Hospitals. For their home
fixtures, the team was fortunate to be able to play on the
immaculate hospital pitches at Cobham (now home to
Chelsea FC’s state-of-the-art training complex). The team
played an eclectic variety of opponents ranging from
London Probation Officers and United Banks to the
District Line and National Car Parks. Two of the most
eagerly anticipated fixtures were those versus the
BBC commentators (John Motson et al) and the Chelsea
Casuals captained by the journalist and broadcaster Brian
Glanville who could call upon an array of talented players.
The games, though keenly contested, were played in a
very good spirit, with enjoyment of the game always
76
|
| 2009/2010
Above: Hugh Symons.
paramount. Unfortunately, the same could not be said
of a two-season foray into the Surrey Sunday Friendly
League whose title belied the ferocity of some of the
encounters!
A GQ magazine article dubbed Hugh ‘A legendary figure
in Sunday morning soccer circles’ and quoted him as saying
‘soccer is the best and most beautiful game to watch and
the most enjoyable to play’. Just what you would expect to
hear from a man who at the age of 79 scored a scintillating
hat-trick and who even aged 82, had not totally hung up
his boots.
I feel greatly privileged both to have played, as did my
son, alongside Hugh and have counted him, as godfather
to our daughter, among our closest family friends. There is
sadness that we will in all probability never see his like
again. But we can look back and reflect that from the
frozen wastes of Gunnersbury Park to the quagmire of
Hackney Marshes, when Hugh had the ball there was
always a hint of magic in the air.
James Woodford (GG 1949-1954)

the elizabethan newsletter 2009/2010

Transcription

Similar documents

Karen K. Resendes Westminster College New Wilmington, Pa

Spring Newsletter 2013 (final)

WESTMINSTER CHURCH

third in advent - Westminster United Church

This is my 1942 Ford GPW, Serial Number 76157, date of delivery

Dummer Golf Club Minutes of a Liaison Meeting Held on 176 |anury

Barn Quilt - Carroll County Tourism

harrogate - Brassington Rowan

online media and newsletter - SL

Rotary Club of Denver West | Golden, Colorado