In Touch Autumn 2012 by King's College London

AUTUMN AUTU AU TUMN TU MN 2012 201 0122

REMEMBERING THEWAR THE DICKSON POON SCHOOL OF LAW FIRST LESSONS IN FIRSTAID VISION AND HOPE IN BURMA

MARIA SPANN

A questionof lifeordeath One in ��,�� children is born with Batten disease, a neurological disorder for which there is no known cure. These children lose their eyesight and use of their limbs, suffer from seizures and will die at a young age. Thanks to donations to the World questions|King’s answers campaign, Dr Andrew Wong is researching ground-breaking treatments using a combination of gene therapy and bone marrow transplants – leading the way to finding a cure. Help us find the answers. Donate today. Call�� Email giving@kcl.ac.uk Visit www.kcl.ac.uk/kingsanswers

In the service of society

Vision and hope in Burma Dr Phillip Ambler, St Thomas’, Medicine, 1975

cautious sense of optimism is spreading across Myanmar, better known as Burma. There have been peaceful, open elections in recent months, and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has travelled abroad to meet with world leaders. Thanks in part to Dr Phillip Ambler, several thousand Burmese are seeing this quiet revolution with their own eyes. For more than two decades, Dr Ambler has travelled to Burma at least twice annually to perform sightrestoring surgery for impoverished Burmese suffering from cataracts or glaucoma. A GP for most of his career and now semi-retired, his first house job was in St Thomas’ Eye Department and he has remained active in ophthalmology. In 1990, Dr Ambler saw a Christian Medical Fellowship advert seeking physicians to provide medical care for Burmese refugees. He signed up with Consultant Eye Surgeon Frank Green, and the two of them have been a team ever since. They first worked in a portion of Burma held by prodemocracy forces, but the ruling military junta took control of that territory in 1995. Since then they’ve operated in clinics along the BurmeseThai border, usually for two weeks at a time. Small incision cataract surgery – inserting a plastic lens into the eye – is the most common procedure. While Dr Ambler is trained to lead on several types of eye operations, this is not one of them, so he assists Dr Green. They

Michael donald

The people themselves are so inspiring

perform the operation quickly and with minimal equipment, up to 30 times in a day. ‘Eye surgery lends itself to this type of work. You can go in for two weeks and accomplish quite a lot,’ he says. The Burmese government has been aware of the clinics for many years but hasn’t hassled Dr Ambler and his colleagues. ‘They probably respect that we’re not a political organisation.’ In fact, he and Dr Green aren’t really part of any organisation. Although they

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formed a small charity called Karenaid – named in honour of Burma’s Karen ethnic minority – they prefer to link up with on-the-ground organisations such as the International Rescue Committee, Malteser International and Médicins sans Frontières. Expressions of gratitude come in the form of modest, heartfelt gifts, such as a jar of honey or a woven shirt. ‘The people themselves are so inspiring. They possess a remarkable gentleness and fortitude. We’re lifted up by them.’ autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

IN TOUCH

AUTUMN 2012

Ian MacNicol/Getty Images

‘worth the wait’

PhD law student Katherine Grainger, left, already Great Britain’s most successful female rower, brought home gold at the London 2012 Olympic Games. Having won silver medals at Sydney, Athens and Beijing, Grainger and her rowing partner Anna Watkins captured gold in the women’s double sculls at Eton Dorney. The pair won in dominating fashion before

a thunderous home crowd, pulling away from the competition and finishing nearly three seconds ahead of the Australian runners-up. Grainger and Watkins are undefeated in their 23 races together. What about Rio in 2016? Will she seek a fifth Olympic medal? Grainger isn’t saying yet.

AUTUMN 2012 IN TOUCH

Update

THE BIG PICTURE ‘Worth the wait’

UPDATE Saving Lives, Instant Sunshine, Michael Luck Q&A

CAMPAIGN UPDATE Babies’ first moments, opera and novelists

REMEMBERING THE WAR Alumni share memories from a turbulent time

A NEW ERA OF CLINICAL RESEARCH Continuing the push to develop treatments

LAW FOR A CONNECTED WORLD King’s is making a landmark investment

COMMUNITY A big London weekend, Reggie causes a stampede

LOGIC PUZZLE Professor or fraudster?

LETTERS Remembering Churchill

LONDON & ME Nights at the opera

From the Principal

assessments at the same level as other students, and from their third pre-clinical year onward they follow the same course and must reach the same pass standard in degree examinations. The Extended Medical Degree Programme is now in its 11th year, and has already produced several hundred highly talented doctors. It has been praised by Universities Minister David King’s is committed to welcoming every Willetts and also by former Labour Minister Alan Milburn. student with the ability to succeed Our Dental Institute is now introducing a similar uch has been written in the past scheme: King’s Enhanced Support Dentistry year about changes to how the Programme. The course is similar to the standard United Kingdom finances five-year Bachelor of Dental Science degree but higher education. Government provides additional help to the student. Entrants funding for teaching in English to this programme will come from widening universities has declined by approximately 80 per participation schools linked to King’s, or schools cent, and beginning this autumn undergraduate with low achievements in students from the UK and other EU countries are GCSE and A-level. paying tuition fees of up to £9,000. At the same time, our Less has been written about how universities are increasingly vigorous financial helping students from disadvantaged backgrounds. aid programme means that by Because we are committed to equal access, Equal access 2014 about a third of our home universities such as ours clearly must develop undergraduate students will is a central a suite of programmes that will help talented part of King’s receive some financial support young adults who come from families with towards tuition fees or living mission limited financial means or who attended undercosts, and some students will performing schools. not pay any tuition fees at all. The principle of equal access to higher education The generosity of alumni and has always been a central part of King’s mission. friends is an important part of We were the first English university to provide these efforts. Scholarships and a degree through evening study, dating back bursaries established by alumni to 1855. We welcomed women as students before can make a profound difference. I encourage many of our peers. you to consider how you can invest in the future In recent years, we have launched innovative of our students. initiatives such as our successful Extended Medical Together we can ensure that no student with Degree Programme, which offers students from the ability to profit from our academic programmes disadvantaged backgrounds the opportunity to will be denied entry because of his or her study medicine over six years instead of five. financial circumstances. Students in the programme must pass all Professor Sir Richard Trainor

IN TOUCH Alumni benefits and services Tel +44 (0)20 7848 3053 Email alumoff@kcl.ac.uk Editorial Tel +44 (0)20 7848 4703 Email amanda.calberry@kcl.ac.uk King’s College London Ground Floor Strand Bridge House 138-142 Strand London WC2R 1HH In Touch is published by the College’s Fundraising & Supporter Development office. The opinions expressed in it are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the College.

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Editor James Bressor Assistant Editor Christian Smith Editorial Assistant Amanda Calberry Contributors Louise Bell, James Bressor, Megan Bruns, Amanda Calberry, Ellie Cook, Lucy Jolin, Elena Kuryleva, KCLSU, King’s Public Relations, Shona McIntosh, Frances Pattman, Christian Smith, Amy Webb

Photography Michael Donald (cover), Gary Calton, Nick Dawe, Suki Dhanda, Karen Robinson, Maria Spann, Jim Winslett Illustrations Michael Kirkham, James Lambert, Yann Lebec

In Touch has been produced using paper from sustainable sources and bleached using an elemental chlorine-free process. The paper is produced at a mill that meets the ISO 14001 environmental management standard and the EMAS environmental management standard. The magazine is fully recyclable.

Design Esterson Associates +44 (0)20 7684 6500

The College will publish the next issue of In Touch in spring 2013.

Cover: Donald Leggett aboard HMS Belfast; photo by Michael Donald

maria spann

First lessons in first aid Foresight King’s students help London youths learn how to save lives In a warm, humid secondary school gymnasium in Southwark, three King’s students slowly and precisely explain each step in performing CPR. The two dozen girls gathered in the St Saviour’s & St Olave’s School gym watch intently. A few nervous laughs erupt as they pair up and take turns pumping the manikins’ clicking chests and breathing into their flesh-coloured lips – with a King’s student guiding each girl through the procedure. There are many questions and a genuine interest in getting it right. Maybe one of these girls will one day save somebody’s life. In fact, one student from this very school did exactly that a few years ago, treating someone who had collapsed at a bus stop. More than 18,000 London children know basic first aid thanks to an organisation called Saving Londoners’ Lives. It’s a society that brings medical and nursing students from King’s and

other universities to help teach first aid at more than 300 secondary and primary schools across London. Pupils learn the fundamentals of first aid: CPR, recovery position and DR ABC (danger, response, airway, breathing and circulation). Third-year medical student Natali Vigneswaran is the organisation’s President. ‘We are trained personally by the London Ambulance, who are volunteers of St John Ambulance, twice a year at King’s, to ensure all members have the same level of teaching,’ says Vigneswaran. Since 2008, St John Ambulance London District has also trained 1,300 teachers as lead instructors; the university students provide assistance and often connect with the pupils in a way teachers can’t. ‘When we explain it, we explain it in their language,’ she says. Androulla Kouppas, Assistant Head at St Saviour’s & St Olave’s, says the girls sit up and take notice when

Natali Vigneswaran guides two students through a CPR lesson in south London

how to help You can help student organisations through the Annual Fund. Call +44 (0)20 7848 4701

someone from outside teaches a class. ‘They respond well to having other people coming in,’ she says, ‘rather than it being taught by the same faces they see day in and day out.’ As an added benefit, Kouppas says, the girls get to see poised young adults, often women, who are pursuing careers in medicine and nursing. ‘My favourite memory is from my first training session,’ says Vigneswaran. ‘I remember being really anxious about whether I would be a good enough trainer for the pupils, but I had a really receptive group that listened to every word and perfected CPR. The best part of that session was when some of students asked if I was coming back next week, and I couldn’t believe how much of an impact I seemed to have made.’ Approximately 40 King’s students are now part of Saving Londoners’ Lives. Vigneswaran says the group wants to grow that number to 100. autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

Update

King’s Policy Institute is building a bridge between academics and policymakers in the UK and beyond As Chair of King’s Policy Institute, Nick Butler, a former economic and business policy adviser to Gordon Brown, explains, one of the Institute’s major challenges is to cut through the myriad urgent issues to focus on areas where King’s can have most impact affecting policy. ‘We can’t do everything,’ he says. ‘So we prioritise areas where there’s a good match between unresolved policy issues and King’s expertise.’ The Policy Institute was set up to provide a swift response to pressing political, economic and social issues, bringing King’s unbiased expertise to leading policymakers in the UK and beyond. With the eurozone in crisis, it’s no surprise that Europe is currently at the top of the agenda. Two current seminar series, covering finance and defence and security, are providing unique opportunities for academics,

Top of the agenda: helping elected leaders such as David Cameron and Angela Merkel resolve the eurozone mess

So many areas overlap with policymaking

politicians and policymakers to share ideas. New French president Francois Hollande came to the Institute in February while still a candidate. Dominique Moisi, founder of the French Institute of International Relations, and Sir Nigel Sheinwald, former British ambassador to Brussels, are visiting professors. The Institute’s agenda includes three other priority areas. Professor Alison Wolf of the Management Department is looking at the future of universities, while Bill Park of the Defence Studies Department is focusing on how Turkey manages the tensions between Muslim traditions and growing Western influences. Professor Matt Uttley, the Institute’s Director, is leading work on the future of defence policy in times of austerity. Another important aspect of the Institute’s work involves raising the

Silence is golden

From theory to practice

profile of what Butler calls ‘King’s hidden gems’. These include groups such as the International Centre for Security Analysis, led by Dr Joanna Kidd, which specialises in open source data gathering. ‘They’re doing great work, including on Iran and nuclear proliferation,’ Butler says. ‘Now we want to find ways to apply their knowledge and skills beyond the academic arena.’ The Institute is keen to attract support for future projects. ‘The key criterion is a close match between our academic work and the interests of any external sponsors,’ says Butler. ‘Take Europe. So many jobs depend on what happens in the eurozone and there are many organisations that could benefit from a proper analysis of what’s happening there. That’s the kind of partnership we’re interested in.’ Butler is also looking to build links within King’s. ‘A big part of our remit is to reach out and work with people right across the College. Health, law – there are so many areas that overlap with policymaking. My time at No 10 taught me the value of embracing new ideas and knowledge. That’s exactly what we’re doing at King’s – drawing on our collective expertise to shape the agenda and directly tackle some of the biggest issues facing us today.’ To learn more about the Institute, email Butler at nick.butler@kcl.ac.uk or Professor Uttley at muttley.jscsc@ defenceacademy.mod.uk

King’s recommends If The Artist piqued your interest in silent films, here are five classics

suggested by Dr Lawrence Napper, lecturer in the Film Studies Department Most people have seen The Cabinet of Dr Caligari or Battleship Potemkin, usually in an educational setting. Great though those films are, they tend to give the impression that silent cinema is a rather intellectual, avant garde art form. In fact, as the dominant mass entertainment of its day, silent cinema can be as dumb, as thrilling, as funny and as moving as any modern rom-com or action blockbuster. Thanks to The Artist, there are more opportunities to see these films on the big screen than there used to be, and – crucially – accompanied by live music. In London, BFI Southbank and the Cinema Museum have regular screenings, and you can learn about events at other venues by visiting www. silentlondon.co.uk. If you can’t get to the cinema, here are some suggestions for your DVD wish list.

The Eclipse [L’ eclipse du soleil en pleine lune] (Melies, 1907) Fans of Martin Scorcese’s recent film Hugo will need no introduction to Georges Melies and his astonishing, magical, early short films. Here, an unruly class of voyeuristic astronomy students spy on the intimate congress of the sun and the moon.

In 2013, King’s is going to roll out a new website for alumni, providing you with a fuller picture of what’s taking place across our campuses and within the alumni community. As part of this overhaul, we are going to offer In Touch in an electronic version – an important change for alumni living overseas, as it can sometimes take two or more weeks for the magazine to reach your home. Of course, even if you live in the UK, you might prefer to read the magazine on your iPad (or other tablet), computer or handheld. The electronic version of In Touch will have several benefits: 6

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 It will conserve resources; by printing fewer magazines we’ll save vast amounts of paper annually  You’ll have the magazine in your hands much sooner  It will save the College thousands of pounds, meaning we can redirect that money to other priorities What’s the first step in making this happen? Please email us at InTouch@ kcl.ac.uk or call +44 (0)20 7848 2990 to let us know that you want to receive In Touch electronically. The digital version of In Touch will have all of the articles, news and class notes of the printed magazine, plus added bonuses, such as links to videos.

Keep an eye on alumni.kcl.ac.uk

Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/BFI/ Underwood & Underwood/Corbis

Coming soon: a revamped website and digital In Touch

The Lodger (Hitchcock, 1927) It’s been hard to avoid silent Hitchcock recently as nine of his films have been restored by the BFI and

released with specially commissioned scores as part of the Cultural Olympiad. This story, inspired by Jack the

Ripper, was the film that first brought Hitchcock to international prominence, and it remains one of his best.

Bed and Sofa [Tretya meshchanskaya] (Room, 1927) While we associate Soviet film-making with revolutionary montage techniques, the majority of the films made in 1920s Russia were just as narrativeand characterbased as Hollywood. This one is a particular delight, not least because of its highly modern attitude to gender relations. Because of the Moscow housing shortage, three characters are forced to share a room… and a bed.

Fantomas (Feuillade, 1913) These films were adapted from a series of crime novels, which were spectacularly popular in turnof-the-century Paris. Fantomas is a diabolical master criminal and genius of disguise who terrorises the citizens of the city. There really is no morality in this series of films, which play very much on notions of the uncanny, and as a result were a great favorite with the Surrealists.

The Unknown (Browning, 1927) Lon Chaney plays an armless knife-thrower in this gruesome and bizarre MGM film, directed by Tod Browning (who later

directed Dracula). He’s in love with Joan Crawford, who has a phobia of men’s hands. It sounds like a perfect match, but things don’t turn out so well.

autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

Reggie’s round-up

The particle predicted by Professor Peter Higgs has been found – now what does it do? In the field of particle physics, discoveries typically lead to more questions. So while physicists cheered in early July when they learned of the near-certain discovery of the Higgs boson, the inevitable question followed: what next? Forty-eight years after Professor Peter Higgs FKC (Physics, PhD, 1954) predicted the existence of a property that binds all matter, scientists at the CERN laboratory announced that they were – literally – 99.999 per cent certain they had found the particle in July of this year. The historic announcement in Geneva came in a progress report from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator. ‘It’s the end of one chapter in particle physics and the start of another,’ says Dr Malcolm Fairbairn, who works in the College’s Theoretical Particle Physics & Cosmology Group. ‘We don’t know what comes next.’ Dr Fairbairn said the discovery could well help physicists understand knotty questions such as why there is more matter than anti-matter. ‘When we study particle interactions involving the Higgs boson at the LHC, we are probing the conditions which existed in the first microsecond of the universe. The next stage is to study this particle to find out if it does precisely what we predicted it should do, or something else, which of course would be even more interesting.’ Professor Higgs predicted that there must be a property – some have termed it ‘cosmic treacle’ – that fills the universe and endows particles with mass, or else all particles would remain massless and race 8

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Professor Peter Higgs: for five decades his name has been attached to one of the greatest mysteries in physics

We don’t know what comes next

through space at the speed of light. The hunt for the Higgs boson – a boson is a type of subatomic particle – has been one of the great scientific challenges of the past half century. Scientists announced to the world that their finding is a ‘5-sigma result’, meaning they’re 99.999 per cent certain they have found a new particle. Confirmation of the particle’s existence fills a gap in the Standard Model, which describes all of the particles and forces in the universe. Members of the scientific community have heaped praise on Professor Higgs, with some calling for him to receive a knighthood or other recognition. Following the announcement at CERN, Cambridge Professor Stephen Hawking told the BBC that he believes Professor Higgs deserves the Nobel Prize, but also conceded that discovery of the particle cost him $100, as he had bet a fellow physicist that it wouldn’t be found. Despite losing this bet, Professor Hawking acknowledged the Higgs boson discovery at the science-themed opening of the Paralympic Games. As the centre of the Olympic Stadium morphed into the LHC, he said, ‘The recent discovery of what looks like the Higgs particle is a triumph of human endeavour and international collaboration. It will change our perception of the world.’ Dr Fairbairn hopes the Higgs boson will also be remembered as the first of many great Large Hadron Collider discoveries. ‘This is just the beginning of the LHC. They’re still tuning the thing.’

Brain cancer vaccine trial The university and King’s College Hospital are the first in the UK to trial the DCVax® therapy, a treatment which uses patients’ brain tumours to develop their own personalised vaccine. Since July, King’s has been recruiting patients newly diagnosed with glioblastoma mulltiforme, the most common and most aggressive primary malignant form of brain cancer. Patients diagnosed with this tumour typically live less than 18 months. In US trials, however, the vaccine delayed the recurrence of the tumour to two years, and extended the patients’ average survival to three years. Mapping the nature-nurture debate The extent to which our development is affected by nature or nurture may differ depending on where we live, according to Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) research. Studying twins at age 12, researchers assessed a range of cognitive abilities, traits and environments, designing a series of maps revealing the UK’s genetic and environmental hotspots. ‘We can tell that in classroom behaviour problems in the UK, around

suki dhanda

The start of a new chapter

DENIS BALIBOUSE/AFP/GettyImages

Update

Michael Luck Q&A Immersed in a science that touches us every day Professor Michael Luck is Head of the Department of Informatics. He has been a member of King’s staff since 2007, and for the past two years he has led the department, one of the College’s fastest-growing. Just what is informatics?

Informatics is concerned with the study of the representation, storage, processing and communication of information. It has many different aspects, including computer science, artificial intelligence, robotics and bioinformatics. In the Department of Informatics at King’s, we’re working on fundamental challenges and problems in all of these areas, as well as their application to biological sciences, healthcare, security and many others. What are King’s strengths in this field?

We believe we’re strong in all of our areas, but we’ve just recruited the best artificial intelligence planning group in the country, giving us a unique and world-leading combination of expertise in the area of intelligent systems and robots. We’re also developing some of the most advanced algorithms for bioinformatics. How is this field evolving?

That’s such a difficult question because computing is everywhere. Even our credit cards have chips these days, and the potential for exploitation of our

research is limitless. The easy answer is that it’s evolving continuously, dramatically and very, very rapidly. How are changes in informatics affecting people’s day-to-day lives?

In ways that we don’t even think about: mobile phones, TV, internet, Facebook, apps, electronic payments, etc. But the changes are only seen when things go wrong, like the recent problems with computer failures at NatWest. What’s the next big thing for your department?

Well, we’re recruiting, and we hope that 2012-13 will see us reach double the number of academic staff we had in 2010. Importantly, we’re also trying to address societal challenges, working on interdisciplinary projects with colleagues in health and in cybersecurity, for example. It’s here that we’ll be able to make a big difference that truly will affect people’s lives. When not working, how do you unwind?

It’s easy to forget to unwind, but I try to ensure that I watch my football team, Chelsea, on TV when they are playing. I inherited this allegiance from my father, and this year we’re both delighted that they are European champions. Apart from that, we have a really good atmosphere in the department, and I often hang out with our PhD students for a few drinks on a Friday evening.

Hotspots for classroom behaviour

60 per cent of the difference between people is explained by genes,’ says Dr Oliver Davis of the IoP. ‘However, in the south east, genes explain less than half the variation. When we compare maps of income equality to our nature-nurture map, we find that income inequality may account for some of the pattern.’ ‘The message is that your genes aren’t your destiny,’ says Dr Davis.

We’re trying to address the societal challenges

autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

The Quad will soon be a place to meet and greet For most of the past half century, the Quadrangle tucked between the King’s Building and Somerset House East Wing has sported a coat of macadam and served as a car and bicycle park. Not surprisingly, it hasn’t been the most popular place to mix and mingle. And on stormy days, students and staff in the two levels of classrooms and offices underneath the Quad have endured steady streams of rainwater leaking through the ceilings. As In Touch went to press, the College was about to select an architectural firm to oversee a complete renovation of the Quad, turning the heart of the campus into an

Top 10

undergraduate courses of study, 2011-2 intake

how to help

Undergraduate

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Nursing Studies

Law

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554 357 280

Medicine MBBS

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252 221 145 138 138

Biomedical Science

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130 129

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445 181 175 161 117 107 98 85

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82 81

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A portion of the funding for the Quad renovation will come from gifts to King’s. Help make this transformation possible. Call +44 (0)20 7848 4701 or email giving@kcl.ac.uk

Learn more at www.kcl.ac.uk/quad

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King’s in the media Interview with the vampire writer On the 100th anniversary of Bram Stoker’s death, The Guardian featured King’s history alumnus and young horror writer Will Hill’s top 10 vampires in fiction and popular culture, with Stoker’s creation coming in at number one. ‘Everything that you think of when you hear the word vampire was set in stone by Stoker.’ Hill’s list included the child vampire Claudia from Anne Rice’s novel Interview with the Vampire and Spike and Drusilla from the cult television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Even TV’s Count Duckula – an animated vegetarian vampire who is squeamish about blood – received a notable mention. ‘Hundreds of writers have turned to vampires to tell stories,’ said Hill, ‘each focusing on the particular aspect of the legend that interested them: religion, sex, death, romance, violence, eternal life.’

History

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21 20

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18 17 16 15 14 Law

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Spike and Drusilla: not vegetarians

The whole truth and nothing but? In April, The Observer carried an article by Dr Vaughan Bell, Institute of Psychiatry, on the flaws in lie-detector technology. He argued that the polygraph ‘doesn’t actually detect lies, but, instead, measures arousal – fleeting changes in blood pressure, sweat gland activation and respiration when answering questions with lies’. He suggested that physiological differences may arise for many reasons, including the fear of not being believed even when telling the truth. Because of this, said Bell, ‘techniques to “beat” a polygraph are simple and effective. The simplest strategy seems to be to increase arousal during control questions (“Are you sitting on a chair?”) rather than trying to reduce arousal during deception’.

Let the sun shine Self-mocking and understated, this dinner-jacketed trio from St Thomas’ still find time to sing about life’s foibles After 45 years, hundreds of songs and thousands of laughs, the three members of Instant Sunshine continue to poke gentle fun at all that is English. Instant Sunshine comprises three doctors who graduated from St Thomas’ in the 1960s. Describing themselves as ‘dinner-jacketed men of a certain age’, they are Peter Christie (guitar, trumpet and ukulele), David Barlow (guitar, mouth organ and spoons) and Alan Maryon-Davis (bells, whistles and assorted bird noises). Happily orbiting on the fringes of the show business universe, they’ve always put their medical careers first, squeezing performances into evenings and weekends. Christie was the first drawn to the stage, singing at a Mayfair restaurant while doing post-doc work. ‘Three pounds a night and a free meal,’ he recalls. They premiered at St Thomas’ on New Year’s Day 1967, filling in for an act which had cancelled due to the flu. Their opening song, ‘We’re Here to Bring You Sunshine’, led to their name. Maryon-Davis describes their music as ‘quintessentially English – slightly self-mocking and a bit understated. We go down rather well with British ex-pats. We remind them of home. More precisely, we remind them of home in about 1950.’ ‘We never intended this to be anything but a hobby,’ says Christie. Intention or not, the trio took off, became a quartet with the addition of double bass player and humourist Miles Kington and found themselves voted ‘Hit of the Fringe’ at the Edinburgh Festival in 1975. In that same year, they started a 17-year run as regulars on Radio 4’s Stop the Week with Robert Robinson. The programme posed a rigorous weekly challenge: to prepare a song relevant to the discussion without being told the topic until a day or two before recording. As songwriter, Christie often had less

suki dhanda

Car park to showcase

aesthetically pleasing ‘learning commons’ for members of the King’s community and the general public. Designed correctly, the Quad will handle a large volume of foot traffic without feeling crowded, says Oluchi Uduku, Senior Project Manager for the College. ‘If you think of South Bank on a sunny day, there’s so much happening and yet people can still move around easily,’ she says. Following a campus-wide consultation, to learn how students and staff would like to use the Quad, the College in early 2012 initiated a design competition through the Royal Institute of British Architects. The College selected six finalists, and their concepts were on display for viewing through the latter half of August. In addition to transforming the Quad into a handsome space where students, staff and alumni will want to meet and socialise, the £20 million project will provide an additional 3,700 square metres of teaching space and student facilities.

twentieth century fox /Everett / Rex /illustration by yann lebec

Update

Instant Sunshine, from left: David Barlow (consultant genitourinary physician, Guy’s and St Thomas’); Peter Christie (retired consultant paediatrician); and Alan Maryon-Davis (professor of public health, King’s College London)

than 24 hours to craft the music and lyrics, all the while still seeing patients. The constant time pressures on writing and rehearsing have given their performances a ‘slightly impromptu’ style, Christie says. ‘But this is part of our act. We’re not – ’ ‘Slick,’ Maryon-Davis interjects. ‘Luckily, most people think we put the mistakes in deliberately,’ says Christie. Instant Sunshine recorded several albums at Abbey Road and travelled to New York to perform at a small theatre in Greenwich Village, receiving rave reviews. This led to an invitation to appear on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, America’s top-rated late-night TV show. Due to their day jobs, they declined, becoming quite possibly the only band ever to turn down an opportunity

to perform on Carson’s show. ‘That’s NHS loyalty for you,’ says Maryon-Davis. But they did perform for the Royals. Booked to sing at Badminton House, they were surprised to learn at the last minute that Her Majesty The Queen and several members of the royal family were in the small audience. The Duke of Beaufort introduced them as ‘Immediate Sunshine’. Kington left the group in 1992, and the original three are now supported by Barlow’s son Tom (PGCE, 2006) on double bass. Instant Sunshine are celebrating their 45th anniversary with a concert on Friday 9 November at the Greenwood Theatre, Guy’s Campus. To book tickets for their November concert, visit www.ticketweb.co.uk or call 084 4477 1000 autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

Campaign Update

The period immediately before, during and after birth is a critical window for future health. What happens to babies at this time can have a profound impact on the rest of their lives. For example, lack of oxygen around the time of birth – or birth asphyxia – accounts for about 20 per cent of all cerebral palsy in the developed world. Heart disease and meningitis in the newborn period can cause brain damage, and autism and ADHD can also develop at this time. The London-based Garfield Weston Foundation has an impressive track record of supporting research in this crucial area and recently agreed to fund important research at King’s new Centre for the Developing Brain. The Centre is led by Professor David Edwards, who came to King’s in 2012 after two decades as head of the Weston Neonatal Research Group at Imperial College. Professor Edwards’ work has already led to the first successful treatment for birth asphyxia, which is now in use throughout the

NHS and around the world. Now that Professor Edwards and his 60-plus research team have joined King’s, they will be able to draw on the College’s expertise in neuroscience and paediatrics and build links – for example, with colleagues in the Institute of Psychiatry – to expand their work in areas such as autism. New projects are planned, including long-term follow-up of children treated as newborns and extending MRI capabilities to improve the diagnosis and care of autism and ADHD. The Garfield Weston Foundation will support one of the Centre’s key priorities – to engage with parents and children, and help them play an active role in the research. ‘Through the Weston Family-Centred Research Programme, we can make sure that we are addressing the problems that really matter to families,’ says Guy Weston, chairman of the Garfield Weston Foundation. ‘And by

istock

King’s Health Partners is expanding its innovative work to reduce brain damage in babies, thanks to the generous support of the Garfield Weston Foundation

These are critical moments for a developing brain

building long-term relationships, Professor Edwards and his team can gain a better understanding of how treatments work, so the Centre can develop more effective interventions and help more children to lead healthier lives.’

From theory to practice King’s is at the forefront of dental education in the UK and beyond. Ranked number 1 in the UK by The Guardian in 2011, King’s Dental Institute trains one in four dentists in the UK and provides professional training for practitioners in nearly 60 countries worldwide through its innovative online learning. The Maurice Wohl General Dental Practice Centre, which opened in 1987, makes a vital contribution to the success of the Institute with its commitment to excellence in teaching and learning, supporting research that directly benefits patients and giving students the opportunity to train in a real-life practice setting. Maurice Wohl, a successful property developer turned philanthropist, supported a wide range of causes during his lifetime 12

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The Maurice Wohl Charitable Foundation and King’s The relationship between the Maurice Wohl Charitable Foundation and King’s is a longstanding one. The Maurice Wohl General Dental Practice Centre has played a key role in King’s success since its opening in 1987. Now the foundation is also providing very significant support for the new Maurice Wohl Clinical Neuroscience Institute, due to open at Denmark Hill in 2013. The Foundation believes strongly in investing in research that translates directly for the benefit of patients, mirroring the priorities of King’s Health Partners.

but always took a particular interest in dentistry at King’s. ‘Maurice Wohl was always very aware of the excellent work of the Centre and the high regard in which it was held by its patients,’ says Nairn Wilson, former Dean of the Dental Institute. ‘Occasionally, patients would inadvertently telephone his business office to ask for dental appointments, or extol the Centre’s virtues. Maurice Wohl would always listen patiently and with amusement before putting them right, but only after they had finished offering their praise.’ Now, the foundation’s trustees are building on that legacy by providing further generous support. The Maurice Wohl Chair in Primary Dental Care and Advanced Dental Practice will be named in perpetuity, while students

supported by the new Vivienne Wohl PhD Studentship will help to train general dental practitioners in research skills, as well as pursuing their own research. The Centre’s aim is to focus on developing more practicebased clinical research and building a robust evidence base, enhancing both patient experience and outcomes. Strengthening the link between academics and practitioners is an essential part of the Dental Institute’s vision of a London-based general practice research network that brings together researchers from across the UK and internationally. Working alongside practitioners will also create opportunities for research to take place in real-life environments, where the materials and techniques being developed will eventually be used.

Legacies: not just for the wealthy

nick dawe

First moments, lifetime impacts

‘Our gifts add up,’ says Sheila Doak, an alumna committed to future generations of students As a young woman Sheila Doak (née Charter) hoped to become a doctor. Immediately after the Second World War, however, with thousands of ex-servicemen returning to their universities, few medical schools were accepting women. As an option, Doak came to King’s and studied natural sciences. With her degree in hand, she accepted a job at the Chester Beatty Institute for Cancer Research. Her major project was based on the need to understand how the lives of heavily irradiated individuals could be prolonged, brought home by the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From those early days, research progressed rapidly and now bone marrow and organ transplants are everyday occurrences. She says King’s gave her the opportunity to begin a fulfilling career that has lasted a lifetime. Today, at 83, she is still working from home for a contract laboratory in the field of cytogenetics, analysing cell cultures for chromosome abnormalities. ‘I have my microscope and although my mobility is now limited, my eyesight still allows me to make the most of my skills and knowledge.’ Doak says her King’s education shaped her interests, skills and professional life, and therefore helped her overcome inevitable bumps on the long road of life. In gratitude to her College, Doak has been supporting King’s for many years. Moreover, she has pledged a gift to the College in her will. ‘My means are very modest, but King’s has always been important to me and I would like to help in whatever

Sheila Doak: she appreciates how King’s shaped her skills and professional life

For information about supporting the College with a legacy, email legacy-info@kcl.ac.uk

way I can,’ she says. ‘There are thousands of us alumni, and our gifts add up. So I feel that my bequest to my alma mater is the best way to give future generations of young people the same start in life that I had all these years ago and the same satisfying career that I still have.’ One of the misconceptions surrounding legacies is that it’s a means for only the wealthy to give – which simply is not true. Through the generosity and foresight of people like Sheila Doak, the cumulative impact of legacies is significant. Legacies can support scholarships, medical and other research, student societies and a nearly endless range of projects that enrich students’ learning, research, cultural and career opportunities. Relatively small amounts of money make a tremendous difference. In 2011, for less than £5,000 staff and students at the

MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology were able to explore the learning benefits of using real human brain material in neuroanatomy teaching. Finally, legacy gifts to the College also have a financial benefit to legators themselves. Under UK inheritance tax regulations revised in April 2012, the tax threshold is £325,000. After taking into consideration the value of their home, car, savings, pensions and personal belongings, many people have an estate that exceeds this amount. By leaving a portion of their estate to a nonprofit organisation such as King’s, UK residents can reduce their inheritance tax burden. Financial planning is a personal matter. However, if you have questions about where to turn for planning help, please contact Legacy Manager Elena Kuryleva at +44 (0)20 7848 4700 or legacy-info@kcl.ac.uk autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

Campaign Update gary calton

Bringing novelists, opera and more to King’s

£1 million and counting Passing a milestone, £1,000 at a time

From the rugby pitch to medical research lab, the Annual Fund makes innovative academic programmes and student activities possible

Phil Sayer

Alumni support continues to provide a rich mix of academic programmes and student activities. The Annual Fund, made possible through the generosity of alumni and friends, touches the lives of students on every campus, every year, making innovative academic programmes and popular student activities possible. Over the years, donors to the Annual Fund have brought music to the College, introduced cutting-edge teaching techniques, helped students keep fit and established high-profile clubs – in short, some of the most enriching and memorable experiences for students. In July, the College announced 26 Annual Fund grants, distributing more than £227,000 to student organisations and academic programmes to improve curricular and extracurricular activities, plus another £150,000 for scholarships. From women’s rugby to medical

manikins to a trilogy of Shakespearean parodies, the Annual Fund provided much-needed support to a rich mix of projects. Three examples:

The Moot Library The Annual Fund awarded £6,000 to establish a Moot Library, comprising reference materials that will help law students prepare for mooting competitions. These competitions – highly contested and realistically simulated court proceedings – provide excellent experience for students. The Dickson Poon School of Law has recorded several successes in moot competitions over the years; students staged a brief moot for Her Majesty The Queen during her February visit.

Novelists at King’s A £6,000 grant will allow the English Department to establish a series of readings that will bring six prominent

Cumulative impacts

alumni each giving £100 purchased an indoor rowing suite for the Boat Club, allowing the crew to train together, no matter what the weather

alumni each giving £20 enabled King’s Classics students from less advantaged backgrounds to attend the University of London’s Latin and Ancient Greek summer schools

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donors each giving £30 funded the School of Medicine’s advanced interactive course to enhance third-year students’ understanding of how to identify and react to a range of mental illnesses

alumni and parents of students each giving £200 established a programme to help nursing and medical students communicate effectively with dying patients and their families

Mooting has long been part of a King’s legal education; the Moot Library will strengthen that tradition

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English-language novelists to King’s, helping to further establish the College as a hub for modern writing and performance. ‘Novelists at King’s will act as a creative resource for current students and academics at King’s, provide a focus for alumni engagement within the life of the College, and will reach out to the wider community,’ says Professor Andrew O’Hagan. ‘None of the London colleges has found a way to celebrate the art of writing as we can do here at King’s with this initiative, and I believe it will have a long-term impact on our public profile to create such a platform.’ Students will be involved in designing the programme, liaising with novelists and organising the events.

King’s Opera A £7,000 grant to King’s Opera will allow the student opera company to stage productions in the 2012-3 academic year. The grant will help the company lease a venue, purchase costumes and props and develop publicity and programmes, complementing the College’s emphasis on bringing a wider range of cultural activities to the campuses. ‘King’s Opera provides a rare opportunity for young instrumentalists to play in an opera,’ said Imogen Rose Burgess, President of the King’s Opera Committee. ‘There are a number of chamber ensembles as well as the university symphony orchestra for King’s students, but no other means by which a classical orchestra can get experience in being the backbone of an operatic production, a skill they can take into their future careers not only as instrumentalists, but essential to any career where teamwork and coordination are paramount to success.’

Why I give to King’s

For more info, visit alumni.kcl.ac.uk/ circles

Jack Tams Computer Science, 2012 King’s youngest circle member, Jack Tams created a series of successful businesses before and during his time at university. As a student, he helped create the World questions|King’s answers website. He is currently taking a break from self-employment and is working for Oracle as a software developer. I started my first business in the loosest sense when I was about 13, and have dabbled in all sorts of things, from websites to telephone systems. I started by creating a website when I was at high school. The school had introduced a blocking system to filter various websites, so

I created a games website that they couldn’t block and added a bit of advertising. The trick was getting the teachers hooked: then it would never be blocked. It worked surprisingly well and I’ve never looked back. My businesses paid for a good portion of my London living whilst at uni, and completely by accident I ended up working on the Alumni Online and campaign websites. I became a circle member in part because I was involved in the campaign and could see what goes on behind the doors, as it were. King’s is uniquely placed to fund research that bridges many disciplines, something which I think should be encouraged and funded to achieve its goals.

Members of the College’s giving circles have invested in the future of King’s students with more than £1 million in donations. Circle gifts have benefited thousands of students, in every school and on each campus. Circle donors have funded scholarships, grants for students experiencing financial hardship, state-of-the-art teaching equipment, theatrical productions and muchneeded kit for sporting clubs. Such gifts allow students to benefit from opportunities that do not occur elsewhere, and, in turn, the students learn valuable skills that enable them to benefit wider society. Given the seismic changes in how the government funds higher education, the circles are now an especially important way for alumni to give back in recognition of their time as a student. ‘In a climate of ever-increasing austerity, I’m proud to help keep King’s a global centre of excellence and return the enormous contribution the College has played in my life for the generations of students to come,’ says Robin Taher (Pharmacology, 2005). Starting with eight individuals in 2006, membership in the circles had grown to 181 by the close of the 2011-12 academic year. Alumni and friends have given £1,170,000 to the College through the circles during the past six years. Three of the circles – the Principal’s, Medical and Dental Circles – honour donors who have made a gift of £1,000 or more in a single year to the College. Twenty per cent of circle members live overseas in 13 different nations. ‘The growth of the circles in south east Asia reflects the international nature of the issues King’s is tackling. The circles are becoming a truly global community,’ says Dr Yee Cheau Hwang (Dentistry, KCSMD, 1983). To learn more about the circles, please contact +44 (0)20 7848 4701 autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

eventy years ago, King’s College London wasn’t in London; most of the College had moved to Bristol. Guy’s Hospital was treating patients at its home by London Bridge, but its education programmes had been relocated to Tunbridge Wells. St Thomas’, damaged by multiple bombs, had sent its students to Surrey. ‘The war came and it changed our lives completely,’ says Dr Bill Jeanes, a Guy’s graduate, one of more than 40 alumni who shared memories of life during the Second World War with In Touch in recent months. Exhibiting a sangfroid nearly unimaginable today, members of Dr Jeanes’s generation ignored the destruction around them as best they could. Most of them carried on with their studies, enjoyed hops, sport and theatre and lost countless hours of sleep to fire-watch duty. Despite the incendiaries, the V1s (aka buzz bombs or doodlebugs) and V2s (which exploded before anyone heard them coming), they maintained an unflagging confidence. The stories here are not intended to paint

a full picture of life during the war. Rather, we asked alumni to share their most potent memories from those years. Unfortunately, we could not fit all of the stories collected during the past few months on these pages – there were simply too many. However, you can find the wartime memories of more than 40 alumni, including longer versions of the recollections on these pages, and many archival photos online at alumni.kcl.ac.uk/WW2stories. We invite you to share your wartime memories, whether you were a child, university student or adult during the war. Send them to us, and we’ll add your recollections to the website. Please email them to InTouch@kcl.ac.uk or post them to In Touch, King’s College London, Strand Bridge House, 138-142 Strand, London, wc2r 1hh. On behalf of the King’s community, we thank all of these alumni for sharing their memories, and we encourage you to share yours. James Bressor, Editor Photography by Michael Donald

Douglas Howe Guy’s, Dentistry, 1937

Remembering the

War

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Dr Peter Trafford

After qualifying, Douglas Howe went directly into the Royal Navy. He had several assignments during the war, sailing with a battleship and a submarine depot ship. He received a permanent commission after the war and retired as a surgeon-captain. I was appointed to a battleship in May ’38, the Barham. I joined her in Portsmouth and we went straight out to the Mediterranean. Going into action I teamed up with the medicos. I was in charge of stretcher parties around the ship. When war broke out, we came home from the Mediterranean and went up off Iceland and patrolled from Iceland to the top of Scotland, backwards and forwards, in case a German raider got out. I was in my cabin at the time when we were hit. The cabin I was in was four decks down, quite in the bowels of the ship. It was a terrific bang and the whole ship shook, so I knew exactly what had happened. I rushed out of my cabin because I wanted to see daylight. A vertical ladder goes up the four decks, through various hatches, with an increasing number of chaps trying to get on it. After a while we were all sitting on each other’s shoulders going up this ladder. The chap who was in front suddenly yelled out when his head came up on to the quarterdeck and he saw daylight, ‘I’ve forgotten my hat!’ He was shouting. Well, he ended up still sitting on the shoulders of the chap below him while the chap was walking on the deck, and he never got his hat. Unfortunately we lost four men. They were down in the B magazine, which we had to flood immediately. I’m afraid that was it for them. It took four days to get back to Liverpool, which was the only dock that could take us at that time. I was relieved from the Barham then – I’d done my two years. I went to the Royal Marine Infirmary at Chatham. The first night I was there the sirens went, as it was the beginning of the Battle of Britain. I came out of my cabin, put my tin hat on and went belting along a corridor to get to underground air raid shelters. I came up against a beam. They had reinforced the ceilings. I didn’t know this. I had only joined them in the afternoon. I hit my head and if I hadn’t had my tin hat on, I wouldn’t be here. Little things like that would cheer you up. autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

Shyam Sarwal King’s, Engineering, 1944 Shyam Sarwal left India on 2 September 1939, the day before the UK and France declared war on Germany. As a King's student in Bristol, he founded a youth organisation that participated in fire-watching and helped local residents affected by the trauma and destruction of air raids. I booked my passage for England on a merchant ship coming from Australia. It was on the second of September 1939. Prior to that I had made all my preparations. We were in Rajasthan, a state in the centre of India. I travelled all the way south to Bombay to catch this ship. Just as we were about to depart on the ship, my father got a telegram from the maharajah of the kingdom of Bikaner – where we lived and who had given me a scholarship to come to England to study engineering – saying, ‘War declared. Don’t send son.’ My father was in a quandary of what to do, not least of all you do not go against the wishes of the maharajah, who was the benefactor. He knew that if I had not left then, I might never go, as no one knew how long the war would last. He decided to ignore the telegram and the day after I had sailed he sent a message back to the maharajah: ‘Received message too late. Son already sailed.’ On the ship right up to Aden we had no problem. Through the Suez Canal we had no problem. Then through the Mediterranean we also had little or no problem and made for Gibraltar to join a naval convoy. We had been waiting four days in Gibraltar for the naval escort when our captain got the devastating message saying, ‘No convoy. Travel alone. Make as fast as you can for Liverpool.’ The captain’s face was drawn. He was really in a panic because with no convoy, it was the easiest way for a lone ship to be sunk. As we cast off from Gibraltar he told us, ‘Eat and drink as much as you can because if you’re sunk the food is of no use. It’ll all go down to the bottom of the sea.’ Can you imagine somebody telling you that? Orange juice three times a day. Food to our hearts’ content. Ice cream as much as we could eat. Suffice it to say we took advantage of this offer, but thankfully, we also made it to Liverpool! Shyam Sarwal died 17 August 2012 18

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Edwin Gifford OBE King’s, Civil Engineering, 1943 Joyce Gifford King’s, Geography, 1944 Edwin ‘Giff’ Gifford joined the Royal Navy after graduating and served in the Pacific. Joyce Gifford, like her husband, rowed while at King’s. She later became a lecturer at Southampton University College, and he was a bridge engineer for Hampshire. Joyce: We both fire-watched when in Bristol. It was a useful bit of pocket money. I was watching atop the mortuary. We had to go through the bodies under cloths with a torch. We never had any bombings when I was there, but Giff was there when one raid hit the King’s library. We had hops on Saturday mornings occasionally at the Victoria Rooms. We had very few formal dances. The height of luxury was to go out and have beans on toast or something very simple to eat because we were not given to eating very much. Giff: There wasn’t much cash about the place. The whole country was in a tough way. Joyce: I remember that some of the

meat stuff was called blotting paper because it was pink, but it bore little relationship to meat proper. Giff: The food was horrible. Joyce: On VE Day we were in Trafalgar Square and that was very exciting. Everybody joined hands and sang and kissed each other. A remarkable atmosphere. VE Day was when we knew that my brother, who was a prisoner of war, taken in north Africa – and he’d been down the mines – would come home.

He came back a skeleton, but VE Day meant more to my sister and me because we had our brother in the war camp. It was more immediate. We kissed strangers. Giff: The British aren’t famous for kissing strangers. Joyce: Giff was in the Pacific still. On VJ Day I was having lunch with an old school friend when we heard the news. I knew that was the end of the war, and Giff would come back.

in on it. It’s Churchill. He’s coming aboard. We’re going to take him so he can have lunch with Montgomery.’ In due season we came alongside in Portsmouth, and I kept out of the way. We got him aboard. He had a nap while we were going back to the beaches, back to Courseulles. There was Winnie, smoking like hell. The sailors were picking up his cigarette butts as souvenirs. The ship’s motorboat took him ashore to meet Montgomery. We loaded our guns with antiaircraft ammunition and paraded

up and down in case any German aircraft appeared. I suppose we did this for about four or five hours, and then we were meant to pick Churchill up, which is in fact what we did. We were ready to rush him back to Portsmouth. He was supposed to have a nap [on the way back], but of course he didn’t. He went stomping around, talking to the sailors. Before we left, he said, ‘I want to fire on the Germans!’ The bombardment liaison officer was at his station above the guns and another officer was plotting the positions we were going to fire at. Churchill said, ‘Go south to fire on the enemy.’ Well, there wasn’t any enemy there. The liaison officer poked his nose out of the control tower and said, ‘Captain, sir, what are we firing at?’ And the captain said, ‘Just the Germans. Get on with it!’ And the BLO said, ‘Right, sir.’ It was only after it had all gone off that they realised that instead of firing high-explosive ammunition we had fired anti-aircraft ammunition, which is a totally different kettle of fish. So, that’s what happened when Churchill fired at the enemy.

Dr Roy Webb Guy’s, Medicine, 1943 Dr Roy Webb served as a surgeonlieutenant on HMS Kelvin, a destroyer that took part in D-Day, at Sword Beach, and one week later gave Prime Minister Churchill an opportunity to fire on the enemy – who by then were many miles inland. The Kelvin had six 4.7-inch guns and they were jolly good for close work, I suppose four and a half miles. She could fire accurately at about four miles. We had a bombardment liaison officer [BLO] aboard, a captain, a large gentleman who was great fun. He would be given a target and it was our job to fire our 4.7s at the target. We spent D-Day, until it was dark, firing at our targets. We did this for six days. Six days later we didn’t have a role until we got a signal to go back to Portsmouth – fast. We geared up to our maximum speed – 30, 32 knots. The captain sent for me and he said, ‘Doc, I’m not supposed to tell you anything, but there aren’t many people aboard I can tell who aren’t

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Donald S Leggett King’s College School of Medicine & Dentistry, Dentistry, 1940

Dr Peter Sabine Chelsea, Geology, 1942 Peggy Sabine Chelsea, Mathematics, 1943

Following his graduation from King’s and four months at the University of Edinburgh, Donald Leggett (see cover) joined the Royal Navy, first serving with Coastal Forces before travelling to the Pacific aboard HMS Speaker, an escort aircraft carrier. From his ship in Tokyo Bay, he witnessed the Japanese surrendering on the deck of USS Missouri, ending the Second World War. My nearest attempt to getting killed was friendly fire. That was in May 1945. When naval aircraft fold their wings to go down into the hangar, the guns that normally point forward sometimes point straight down. This day, the armourer forgot to de-ammunition one plane. The next morning, a fitter who was checking circuits in the thing pressed the button and he fired the guns, 20 millimetre armourpiercing incendiary shells, and they came straight through the steel deck, straight through my bunk and straight through two more steel decks underneath before they came to rest. If I had been in my bunk I would’ve been dead. My ship was an American-built ship with a wooden deck. If we had to do the job that we were sent there to do, which was to cover beach landings on Japan, we shouldn’t have lasted an hour. But of course the nuclear bomb saved our lives. It brought the war to a very abrupt end. It was obvious even to me that the big battleships had been rendered obsolete in one giant flash. Only the carriers and the escort vessels would continue to have a role. We heard that this bomb had dropped, and then a couple of days later they’d dropped another one. Then there was a silence. We just steamed up and down quietly for quite a few days – I don’t remember how many exactly. The Japanese were making up their minds whether they had to surrender or not. They decided it would be futile to go on. We all went into Tokyo Bay. It was the most unbelievable sight. I realised that we were seeing something nobody would ever see again. There were scores and scores of warships. We had an enormous Pacific Fleet by that time, and all the American ships as well. There were just warships at anchor as far as you could see. It was intensely emotional.

Peter Sabine attended Chelsea for one year before moving on to Imperial. Peggy Sabine started at Chelsea in 1940, joined the staff in 1943 and taught there for more than 40 years. ‘We’ve been married 66 years, which is a long time,’ she says. He adds, ‘We’re getting used to each other.’ Peggy: Chelsea had a tremendous number of ex-servicemen after the war. They were most peculiar because they were out of service, and the officers always sat in the

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front row, the sergeants would be right behind them and the privates and others would be in the back. And they never spoke to each other. They were all in civvies, but they never mixed. The only time I had trouble was when, during the war, the professor said to me – and I was just 20, just starting – ‘The sailors’ teacher has gone sick. Can you go down and teach them fractions?’ I went down and there were 50 ratings and they were supposed to learn fractions. But I couldn’t teach them. For one thing, I didn’t know how to teach fractions, and they were just trouble and I was 20. It was hopeless. Peter: I was in the volunteer

stretcher party. It involved being on duty one night a week or two nights a week, which was at St Dunston’s College at Catford, a mile away. I remember quite clearly going up to a school which had been bombed. A lot of kids had been killed. By the time we were there in the evening, most of the casualties had already been taken away. But there were still piles of debris in the school, so you moved it by hand. One aspect of the war was that you grew up quickly. Now we’re both young teenagers. Peggy is now 89 and I’m 87. We’re in our second childhoods.

It was the most magical night I can remember in my life. The beautiful sky, and ferry after ferry coming across with Italian prisoners. The happiest lot of prisoners you could ever imagine. And they were all singing – singing arias from Italian opera. I had never been to an opera at that time. Since we’ve been married, we’ve been to 628 operas. Monica: On VE Day, the three of us went out together. Now Brompton Square is easy walking distance from Buckingham Palace. So we walked down to Buckingham Palace and we were in the crowd outside the palace. For all I knew,

I could have rubbed shoulders with the [future] Queen because it’s alleged she went out into the crowd outside Buckingham Palace that night. We cheered until the King and Queen came out on the balcony. Then we walked on to Whitehall and stood there and called for Winston Churchill to come out. He came out on a balcony of the Home Office and he spoke to us. My memory of that was that he had certainly been drinking. But he had earned it. We just joined up with the huge crowd of people that went into the centre of London to celebrate.

Clifford Robinson AKC King’s, Mathematics, 1941 and 1947 Monica Robinson King’s, Mathematics, 1947 Clifford Robinson started at King’s in 1939. He received a degree in two years, when the College was in Bristol, and returned for one more year after the war, finishing with an MSc. Monica Robinson arrived at King’s in 1944, after the College's return to London. She remembers going to VE Day celebrations with her two roommates. Clifford: Our maths faculty was tucked in a building called the Royal Fort. That’s where I spent my two years, living in digs and walking there in the morning. And I was out of touch with everybody else in the university other than the half-dozen of us who were doing maths degrees. [The six of us] were called up afterward. Because we were mathematicians and potentially serious people, we were sent to the Royal Corps of Signals. We enrolled on the same day in September. We were immediately set to training as officer cadets. I spent about three months there. They didn’t know what to do with us. The six of us used to drill each other, marching up and down squares. Then oddly enough, we were all sent to India, and we embarked on the same boat. I had a most magical night in Port Said. All the troops had disembarked from the ship except the few who were left to look after the ship overnight. It was a beautiful, moonlit night, not a cloud in the sky. And all night was spent embarking – but you couldn’t get into the docks, so they all came out by ferry – Italian prisoners of war.

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Dr Brandon Lush King’s College School of Medicine & Dentistry, Medicine, 1942 Dr Margaret Lush King’s College School of Medicine & Dentistry, Medicine, 1946 Brandon Lush remembers a pre-war parade that insulted the German ambassador. After qualifying, he joined the army and was part of the forces that swept across north Africa, invaded Sicily and successfully landed in Italy, where he was nearly killed by a bomb. ‘I had a lot of holes in me,’ he simply says. Margaret Lush remembers doing her preclinical work in Birmingham, temporary home for KCSMD. Margaret: At one occasion at Croydon General, where there was an air raid, it started quite early, so I didn’t go back to the digs where we were living until about 2 in the morning after we were finished coping with the air raid casualties. The landlady wouldn’t let me in because she must’ve felt I was no better than I should be turning up at 2 in the morning. She just wouldn’t believe that I could have been in the theatre all night. VE Day was really exciting. I went up to London, which went quite mad. The streets were full and you literally could walk, if you wanted to, across the stationary parked car roofs. In fact, I think one or two people did on Oxford Street getting up toward the palace. Brandon: The student body, as a whole, not just the medical faculty, took a really dim view of Hitler and Mussolini and – it couldn’t happen in these days, of course – the student body got a procession going in the Strand and Fleet Street. They had a couple of chaps,

Emel Rochat King’s, French, 1949 Emel Rochat was living in south Wales when war broke out. She came to King’s in the autumn of 1945. I arrived in September or October, and we all lived in grotty digs. There were no hostels in those days. What did we have for our supper? A packet of crisps between two people, something like that. There was even more rationing at the end of the war, and it felt worse because you expected there to be no rationing. I remember queuing up for potatoes for our 22

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Dr Peter Trafford St Thomas’, Medicine, 1942

one dressed as Hitler and one as Mussolini, standing up in the car which led the procession slowly down the Strand. This held the traffic back. They periodically did sort-of Hitler salutes and shouted nonsense. The rest of us all walked behind them to the end of the Strand and then turned around and came back all the way back to Fleet Street and back again, making fun of Hitler and Mussolini. Apparently, Ribbentrop, the German ambassador in London, took a really dim view of Hitler being mocked and complained to the Foreign Office. The Foreign Office complained to the Principal landlady when we were in London. You were not hungry, but there was rationing into well after the war. What was outstanding was being alive, being in London. I went to the first Armistice Day at the Cenotaph at Whitehall in ’45, the first one after the war. It was very moving. We had veterans coming to King’s. Oh, they were terribly old. We were 18ish. The men were 24, 25, but they were old. They’d been in war. They had served. They’d had such experiences in their lives. But they never talked about their experiences.

St Thomas’ took several direct hits in the opening days of the Blitz and Peter Trafford remembers them well. Called into the army after the end of the war, he served in the occupational force and rose to the rank of major. In Casualty, there was a little spiral staircase behind where the head porter used to sit just inside the Casualty entrance. A chap with a long frock coat, and he sat behind a high desk and he ruled the roost. Behind him there was a little door and a spiral staircase down in to the basement and a loo, which was very convenient for students and staff in Casualty. I got down there at about half past seven in the evening. We were just hanging around in Casualty so we could be useful, possibly. I was down there and I heard something coming down – a noise like an express train. There was a cluster of bombs coming down close to you, and then the explosion followed. This spiral staircase was just showered in glass. It was enclosed in glass as it was outside the building, but it was painted over in black paint for the black-out. I collected my thoughts and came up again, and Casualty was still there. I said to someone, ‘That was a close one, wasn’t it?’ We agreed it must have been in the road outside. We walked through the passage from Casualty into the main corridor, which was about a quarter of a mile long and connected right through all of the blocks. We could see there was a fire in the passage a little way up, so we picked up a fire extinguisher, walked up there and realised that the fire extinguisher was completely useless. The whole dispensary had gone

of King’s. He had the two ringleaders on the mat and gave them a ticking off, which we all thought was a very poor show. I was in the final, successful Battle of Cassino, supporting the troops there. We went up to a place called Valmontone where we joined up with the Americans, where I think I was probably the first British troop to enter Rome. We were told by our commanding officers that we had to let the Americans go into Rome first. But I disobeyed orders, and with my batman and corporal I went into Rome and I had my first proper haircut for three years.

The Revd Stephen Davis AKC King’s, Theology, 1948 Stephen Davis was a POW for most of the war. He lived for five years in Stalag XXA, a complex with up to 20,000 prisoners in Poland; he worked in the stalag’s hospital. He studied theology after the war and became a priest in the Church of England in 1950. A lot of people were brought home on boats from Dunkirk. I missed the boat. So the Germans caught me. I was made to march 450 miles in 10 days with no food, no water, nowhere to sleep.

Then we packed into a cattle truck to Toruń in Poland, and the cattle trucks on the outside said, ‘Dix cheveaux ou quarante hommes’. That’s ‘10 horses or 40 men’. We were 80 men. There was only a little top window, and everybody had to defecate and urinate in their boots and then tip it out the window. The place stank to hell. It was hideous. And it was one of the hottest summers we’ve had, 1940. It was absolute hell. Fortunately, I was in the Royal Army Medical Corps. So I didn’t have to go out and work with everybody else. The prisoners had

to go out in working parties, building roads, farming, anything. Terrible jobs. Being in the Royal Army Medical Corps, I got a job in this hospital. We had a commandant called Scarface. He had been a prisoner of war in England in the First World War. He was very friendly. The Gestapo came to search us every six months. He would come around before that, and if we had any chocolate or cigarettes we’d give them to him and he’d stuff them in his pockets and then bring it all back to us afterward. Stephen Davis died 21 July 2012

Please visit alumni.kcl.ac.uk/ WW2stories to read the complete reminiscences of the 15 alumni featured in the magazine and the wartime memories of the alumni listed below. The website also features many archival photographs. David Baker, Guy’s, Dentistry, 1945 Dr John Barham, King’s, Medicine, 1944 Dr Thomas Calverley, King’s, Electrical Engineering, 1940 Commander Clement Cambrook, King’s, Physics & Mathematics, 1944 Dr Geoffrey Carriett, St Thomas’, Medicine, 1947 Alwyn Carruthers AKC, King’s, Mathematics, 1945 Margaret Audrey (Dodds) Chadwick AKC, King’s, English, 1942 Joan Ellison, KCHSS, Household & Social Sciences, 1948

through into the basement. It just went sshhp, like a firework. There was a lot of surgical spirit amongst other things. It was a terrific blaze and it cut the main corridor off, so we didn’t know what was going on beyond that. We discovered that the bomb had come right through College House, residence quarters, and exploded in the long corridor. It had exploded in the corridor underneath, alongside where they had built these so-called bomb-proof theatres. This bomb had come down and exploded immediately outside the theatre. A couple of house surgeons were killed, and several nurses. The patients in the theatre survived. But the house surgeons – one was Sir Bernard Spilway’s son. We tried to make ourselves useful. By this time, all the plumbing and all the electrics were gone. Heating pipes and water pipes were all pouring water. We went into theatre and the sister said, ‘If you’re going to help, take some dressings out. If you clear those cupboards and take them down to somewhere safe. We can’t stay here, we’ll have to take them somewhere else.’ She was so cool. From then on, St Thomas’ ceased to exist as a hospital. We never saw our hospital function as it should in our clinical years.

Dr Jack Fine, Guy’s, Medicine, 1948 Harold Fletcher, King’s, Mechanical Engineering, 1945 Hedley Grabaskey, Guy’s, Dentistry, 1944 Reg Grant, King’s, Engineering, 1945 Dr Leslie Hale, King’s, Zoology, 1940 Dr Bill Jeanes, Guy’s, Medicine and Dentistry, 1943 James Kirkwood, Guy’s, Dentistry, 1945 Alec Leggatt, King’s, Civil Engineering, 1948 Denis Mace, Guy’s, Dentistry, 1938 Dr Betty Mather, KCSMD, Medicine, 1950 Dr Oliver Musgrave, King’s, Chemistry, 1949 The Revd John Ouless, AKC, Theology, 1949 Denis Reid, Guy’s, Dentistry, 1945 Dr Thomas Richards, KCSMD, Medicine, 1945

Dr Tony Sampson, KCSMD, Dentistry, 1940 Margaret Thresh, Normanby College School of Physiotherapy, Physiotherapy, 1948 Anthony Titford, King’s, Civil Engineering, 1939 Dr Walter Walker AKC, King’s, Theology, 1942 Professor Robert Walton, Guy’s, Medicine, 1945 Dr Robert Welch, St Thomas’, Medicine, 1945 We also invite you to visit Lest we forget, a website – www. kingscollections.org/warmemorials – commemorating students and staff who lost their lives in 20th century conflicts. Created by King’s Archives and the University of the Third Age, it contains biographical information about those honoured on war memorials across the College campuses.

autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

suki dhanda

All of us will benefit from working together

A new era of clinical research Whether exploring how the brain functions or pioneering treatments straight out of a sci-fi movie, collaboration is essential

he days of the lone researcher beavering away unsupported in an underground lab are long gone. It’s now recognised that the best research results come from collaboration between institutions, plus a critical mass of researchers. That’s the thinking behind the brand new Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility (CRF), a state-of-the-art facility dedicated to moving experimental medicine from the laboratory bench to the patient’s bedside in areas as diverse as preventing heart disease and treating phobias. The CRF is based at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust on the Denmark Hill Campus of King’s College London. Within King’s Health Partners, it’s the result of co-operation between the College, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College Hospital, culminating in a successful bid to the Wellcome Trust and the Department of Health via the

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National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The Maudsley Hospital and the Institute of Psychiatry will lead studies in neurosciences and mental health. The academic drivers include specialists in cardiovascular disease, haematology, haemato-oncology, liver disease and diabetes, along with psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience experts. Consequently, the CRF will serve a wide range of clinical and academic interests. ‘The ethos of King’s Health Partners is that the best patient care will come from clinical care which is integrated with academe,’ says Alan McGregor, Professor of Medicine at King’s College London, Campus Dean for Denmark Hill and the Director of the Wellcome Trust CRF. ‘All of us will benefit from working together. We as academics can enhance the academic performance of the two NHS Trusts and their staff. Our NHS partners bring considerable clinical expertise and skill and will ensure that issues such as governance are managed appropriately.’

Professor Alan McGregor

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Research in the real world: how drug trials cured Joan’s hepatitis C

I wanted to go for it. I didn't want to go in a low-dosage group

Joan Thomas

Being diagnosed with hepatitis C two summers ago was a big shock to Joan Thomas, 51. She’d been experiencing hot sweats, dry skin and a fuzzy brain but thought this was due to the menopause. After diagnosis, Joan was referred to the liver clinic at King’s College Hospital in September 2010. It was then that she was offered the chance to participate in clinical trials of two new drugs. ‘Of course, I had concerns,’ she says. ‘I was going to be testing out drugs that hadn’t yet been tested fully. Also, I was worried which group I’d be put in. I wanted to go for it, so I didn’t want to go in a low-dosage group, or the control group that had a placebo! ‘But it was very well organised and I was regularly monitored. For example, when my white blood count dropped, it was picked up straight away.’ Being on the trial was hard work and Joan suffered both physical and emotional side effects. But, she says, it was worth it. The new drugs worked and her viral load has gone from almost nine million to negligible. She is now cured. Joan adds: ‘What would have made the experience even better would have been an automatic referral to a specialist community organisation such as the Hepatitis C Trust, which offers more holistic, practical non-medical support. But overall, I’m so glad to have been given the opportunity of being part of the trial. I’d like to say a big thank you to King’s and especially to my wonderful liver nurse, Gin.’ autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

suki dhanda

The CRF will consist of three main areas. The Experimental Medicine Facility (EMF) will have an intensive care unit for brain-injured patients. It will be equipped with the very latest neuro-imaging and EEG technology, enabling researchers to study brain function as well as brain structure, and will have a virtual reality suite for investigating patients with behavioural disorders. The Cell Therapy Unit (CTU) will be the largest single purpose-built cell- and gene-based therapy unit in Europe. Cell and gene therapies offer considerable therapeutic potential, says Professor McGregor. ‘But to date they have under-delivered. There’s been a lot of hype and not a lot of end output – partly because the biology is very complex but also because you need the capacity to do the studies. The CTU will provide capacity for such therapies, as well as routine but complex clinical treatments such as bone marrow transplantation. But we will also be developing novel stem cell and gene-based therapies. Currently, those programmes have either been in a test tube with human cells or in animal models. We are now getting to the stage where people are utilising gene and stem cell treatments in humans.’ And thirdly, commercially sponsored trials will also find a home in the CTU. ‘There is a major problem in the UK at the moment in attracting and sustaining clinical commercial trial activity,’ says Professor McGregor. ‘That is a reflection of both the cost of doing clinical trials in the UK but also the capacity. That’s why we’ve created a purpose-built, high-quality facility that meets the expectations and criteria of the pharmaceutical industry.’ However complex the science and technology, the aim of the CRF is simple – to help develop better treatments for patients. The virtual reality suite, for example, may sound like a Star Trek-style fantasy, but it’s actually a hugely practical tool. ‘For example, you could study people who are frightened of animals,’ explains Professor McGregor. ‘You could expose them to animals in the suite and see how they react and then you could modify their behaviour and, hopefully, help them.’ The College is already a major centre for neurosciences, and it’s hoped that the quality of the research will match the quality of the new building, resulting in even better outcomes for patients. ‘In King’s College Hospital, we have one of the best performing acute stroke units in the country,’ says Professor McGregor. ‘We can carry out novel, interventional assessments and treatments in the EMF. The very first experimental medicine studies in the facility, when it opens, will actually be in stroke medicine, using the neuro-imaging facilities of the EMF.’ The CRF is already partially open and the partners are aiming to have the entire building fully operational by April 2013. So the message is this: it’s an exciting and fruitful time to be a clinical researcher in King’s Health Partners. ‘I want to advertise widely to the very active academic and clinical community to ensure that they realise what a fantastic facility we have, what huge potential there is to work in it and that much of this work will be subsidised by the considerable financial support from the NIHR,’ says Professor McGregor. ‘We will have the staff, state-of-theart equipment and facilities to allow investigators to carry out studies that they previously only dreamed of being able to do, without having to raise significant funding themselves. It is a fantastic opportunity.’

Community

jim winslett

Start the countdown to Alumni Weekend 2013 – King’s: your global passport. Download your global Reggie and take a picture with him wherever you are in the world! For details, please visit alumni.kcl.ac.uk/reggie

Celebrating London From brewing the perfect cup of oolong to exploring the Bank of England, our amazing city and its traditions headlined this year’s Alumni Weekend

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Tea, Dickens and a stunning addition to the Strand Campus highlighted this year’s Alumni Weekend, a three-day celebration of London. More than 700 alumni and friends attended, making it the College’s most successful weekend yet. Alumni from 14 countries and every class year from 1946-2012 were represented, as well as members from the class of 1940. Friday’s events were especially popular and included a tour of the Imperial War Museum and an after-hours visit to the Museum of London, where alumni learned about Charles Dickens’s relationship with the city that served as his home and inspiration. The much-discussed stunning addition was Somerset House East Wing, now renovated to its original splendour. The Georgian landmark houses The Dickson Poon School of

Law, which made the East Wing tours particularly appealing to law alumni, who recalled decades of students toiling in less-than-spectacular facilities. ‘In 1954, when I first became a student, the building was, well, different, very different. I won’t say it was dilapidated – that’s the wrong word. It was comparatively primitive, but in a rather nice way,’ said David Dunlop (Law, 1957). ‘The East Wing is a tremendous improvement, and I hope it has enhanced the students’ ability to learn.’ His law classmate Rochelle Gelman (now Shapiro) recalled the school having a twisting staircase leading to the space where they had tutorials. ‘It was so narrow you couldn’t pass each other,’ she said. ‘I wish I were a student now.’ John Hodgson (Law, 1962) added, ‘Even when I was here 1959-62, the situation was ridiculous. We looked at Somerset House and thought, “We ought to have a slice of that.”’ The Twinings tea-tasting workshop drew a large crowd, with alumni

learning about the history of tea-making and how varieties such as oolong and black tea differ from one another. The session included a slurping competition, as attendees learned the correct way to evaluate tea. It had to be resolved through a slurp-off, with Robert Mullally (French, 2007) winning. Speaking at Saturday’s lunch, the Principal, Professor Sir Richard Trainor, thanked everyone for the many ways they support King’s. He highlighted the Annual Fund, which in 2012 has awarded more than £227,000 to co-curricular and academic projects. ‘I hope that coming back here today has brought back memories of encouragement and inspiration,’ the Principal told attendees. ‘You are always welcome to visit the campus throughout the year.’ You can see more photos from this year’s Alumni Weekend at Alumni Online, alumni.kcl.ac.uk. Hold the date for next year’s Alumni Weekend – King’s: your global passport – scheduled for 7-9 June 2013.

2012 Alumni Awards Alumna of the Year Award, for exceptional success in her field

Anne Dudley (Music, 1978) Reggie Award, for contributions to Alumni Weekend and the King’s alumni community

Geoffrey Gower-Kerslake (Law, 1968) Reunion Award, for contributions in bringing together the alumni community

Catching up with friends Helen Hudson Award, for exemplary contributions to the College or to the alumni body International alumnus:

Trevor Moniz (Law, 1975) UK alumnus:

John Cook (Mathematics & Physics, 1961) Annual Giving Award, for commitment through philanthropy and promotion of the annual giving programme

Pamela Jacobs (Law, 1973)

Malcolm Forsythe (Guy’s, Medicine, 1961) Staff Award, for enhancing the College’s profile through outstanding commitment to alumni and supporters

Professor Alan Read Professor of Theatre and Director of the Performance Foundation

Organise a reunion in 2013!

This year’s Alumni Weekend provided the perfect setting for groups of alumni who wished to reunite with their classmates back on the College campus. A wide range of subject groups, affinities and reunion years chose Alumni Weekend for their reunion. From law to medicine, French to physics, geography to the AKC Group, many alumni celebrated milestone anniversaries of their graduation. In the year of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the Class of 1952 marked their own special celebration. After enjoying a complimentary drinks reception, reunion alumni attended the Principal’s Lunch and Alumni Awards, where they were acknowledged by the Principal, Professor Sir Richard Trainor. All alumni celebrating a reunion received a commemorative engraved glass to

mark the special occasion and were able to see archive photographs from their student days, a source of reminiscing for many. A photographer was also on hand to capture the special day and reunion alumni received a photo of their group after the weekend. Now is the time to start thinking about leading a reunion group for next year’s Alumni Weekend, 7-9 June, or the Dental Alumni Weekend, 1-2 March. The Alumni Office will be delighted to help you organise your reunion and can offer you exciting benefits. Find out more by emailing reunions@kcl.ac.uk or call +44 (0)20 7848 3053. To view photos of reunion celebrations at this year’s Alumni Weekend, visit www.alumni.kcl.ac.uk From left, above, gathering at the Museum of London, mingling on the Strand Campus and sharing smiles and tea

autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

Community Events National Theatre Live

19.00, 1 November 2012, Anatomy Lecture Theatre, Strand Campus Alumni are invited to take advantage of this exclusive discount to attend the National Theatre Live screening of Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, with Simon Russell Beale in the title role. The alumni ticket price includes the choice of wine or soft drink during intermission. Tickets are £12.50 for alumni, £15 for the general public. To learn more, please contact the Alumni Office at alumoff@ kcl.ac.uk or +44 (0)20 7848 3053. KCLA Annual Dinner and AGM

2 November 2012, House of Lords King’s College London Association will hold its AGM at 18.00, followed by a reception at 19.00 and the Annual Dinner at 19.45. Sarah Newton MP (History, 1981) will be the dinner speaker. Tickets are £75. Book early to avoid disappointment. For more details and to book, please contact the Alumni Office at alumoff@kcl.ac.uk or +44 (0)20 7848 3053. Law Alumni Autumn Lecture

18.30, 15 November 2012, Edmond J. Safra Lecture Theatre, Strand Campus Sir David Foskett will be the speaker. For more information, please contact the Alumni Office at alumoff@kcl.ac.uk or +44 (0)20 7848 3053. KCSMD Dentistry Class of 1979 Reunion

19.00, 24 November 2012, The Old Bell at Malmesbury, Cotswolds The Old Bell Hotel at Malmesbury is reputed to be the oldest purpose-built hotel in England and provides the perfect venue for a memorable reunion. Rooms are limited and will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. The cost is £179 per couple for dinner, bed and breakfast. Contact Lesley Trivett at sallyslap@yahoo.com to confirm attendance and menu choices. Advent Carols at King’s

17.30, 7 December 2012, Strand Campus Chapel The candlelit Advent Carol service includes readings and a classical music performance by the Chapel Choir, followed by a reception with mince pies and mulled wine. Tickets are free and will be allocated on a first-come, 32

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Tickets for the Advent Carol service are available on a first-come, first-served basis

first-served basis, with a maximum of two tickets per person. Please contact the Alumni Office at alumoff@kcl.ac.uk or +44 (0)20 7848 3053 to request tickets.

2013 KCLA Address on the topic of ‘Terrorism and Human Rights: Law or Politics?’ To learn more, please contact the Alumni Office at alumoff@kcl.ac.uk or +44 (0)20 7848 3053.

Guy’s and St Thomas’ Community Carols

Greek Play

17.30, 11 December 2012, St Thomas’ Hospital Chapel Join a traditional carol service in St Thomas’ Hospital Chapel to bring together the community of Guy’s and St Thomas’. For more information, contact gsttinfo@togetherwecan.org.uk or +44 (0)20 7848 3053.

14.30 (reception at 16.30), 8 February 2013, Greenwood Theatre, 55 Weston Street, London Bridge Celebrating its 60th anniversary, the King’s Greek Play will be Sophocles’s Oedipus at Colonus, directed by Ian Wong. To learn more, please contact the Alumni Office at alumoff@kcl.ac.uk or +44 (0)20 7848 3053.

Denmark Hill Community Carols

19.30, 12 December 2012, Saint Luke’s Chapel Enjoy a carol service in King’s College Hospital chapel to bring together the communities of King’s College Hospital and South London and Maudsley. For more information, contact info@togetherwecan.org. uk or +44 (0)20 7848 3053.

The Principal’s South-East Asia Tour

25 February -1 March 2013, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong The Principal, Professor Sir Richard Trainor, will host a series of events in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. For more information, please contact the Alumni Office at alumoff@kcl.ac.uk or +44 (0)20 7848 3053.

Southwark Cathedral, 7 February 2013 Lord Carlile, right, will give the

Brad: Although we often chose similar classes, we didn’t really speak until our year abroad. Emma: Whilst living in Paris, my flat was broken into. I returned to find a ladder coming down from my skylight – needless to say I was very scared. Brad was the first to visit me, bringing a bunch of flowers and supporting me when the police came – my knight in shining armour! This was the turning point and after returning to London, Brad and I became good friends. From this friendship blossomed love. Brad: After a while we started to speak more and more on the phone and many a time those calls would run into the early hours of the morning. One night we were together watching the movie Home Alone. Emma couldn’t believe it was my favourite film as it was also hers. It was then that we had our first kiss and chatted away until it got light outside.

1-2 March 2013, Guy’s Campus Dental Alumni Weekend brings together professional development and social

Elephants may never forget, but Reggie probably wishes he could forget this unfortunate day more than 80 years ago.

For information on any of the following events, please visit www.togetherwecan. org.uk, call +44 (0)20 7848 4701 or email support@togetherwecan.org.uk Brighton Marathon

14 April 2013 A beautiful coastline marathon London Marathon

21 April 2013 One of the world’s most popular fundraising events

Nightrider

8 June 2013 A 100-kilometre cycle through London at night

Team Bremma

Our first ‘proper’ date was at Dans Le Noir, a restaurant where you eat in the pitch black. I thought it was the perfect way to put Emma at ease. Emma: It was so relaxed. We laughed and joked and all the awkwardness of eating in front of someone you fancy disappeared. Brad: The South Bank and Waterloo Bridge hold a lot of memories for us. We used to go for long walks and eat fish and chips by the river. Emma: The gardens at the Maughan Library were also pretty romantic. We would have picnics there in breaks from

revising. Dubai is also very special to us as this is where Brad proposed to me. Brad: I was so nervous, I couldn’t eat dinner. Emma kept asking me what was wrong as I love my food! At the proposal I cried – a lot! Emma: Brad suddenly got down on one knee, told me how much I meant to him and asked me to be his wife. I had taken all of my make-up off and didn’t look remotely glamorous, but I felt like a million dollars. Brad: We call ourselves ‘Team Bremma’, so I guess our hope for the future is to have lots of team members!

Reflecting its status as a global university, King’s recently opened two overseas offices. In September, the College opened a base in Delhi and, just a few weeks later, an office in Alexandria, Virginia. These overseas offices will act as a central hub for all of the College’s activities in their regions, facilitating research collaboration, partnerships and opportunities for staff and students. They will also allow the College to step up its overseas alumni activity. King’s has close to 900 alumni in India and more than 5,000 in the US. To find out more about the College’s global connections, please see the King’s Worldwide website, www.kcl.ac.uk/ worldwide

King’s: now in Delhi

The Incredible Adventures of Reggie

Fundraising events in aid of King’s Health Partners hospitals

27 May 2013 A 10-kilometre run past many of London’s most famous sights

King’s opens bases in India and the US

Proving that grey clouds really do have a silver lining, a burglary in one of the world’s most romantic cities sparked love between Emma and Brad Sandford (both French with English, 2006). They were married in September of this year.

BUPA 10,000 Dental Alumni Weekend

KCLA Address

opportunities for alumni and friends of the Dental Institute. The 2013 programme will include specialist section meetings and the annual Dental Dinner on Friday, followed by Clinical Day on Saturday. More details will be posted on Alumni Online in early January. For further information, please contact the Alumni Office at alumoff@ kcl.ac.uk or +44 (0)20 7848 3053.

We met at King’s

Get involved! Tell us your favourite Reggie tale

Reggie has ruled the Strand for many decades. As with all royals, however, a few blemishes have stained his reign. Dr AJ Sampson (King’s College Hospital Dental School, 1941) recalls the Lord Mayor’s Show of 1930, when he was eight years old. Reggie, riding on the shoulders of several well-meaning students, nearly caused a catastrophe. That year’s procession included four Indian elephants, and Reggie’s sudden appearance ignited a stampede. ‘My mother was a volunteer St John Ambulance first aider and was a member of a contingent from Surrey who were on duty at the Lord Mayor’s Show,’ says Dr Sampson. ‘She was in the Strand as the procession came past headed by the elephants, when students from King’s paraded Reggie in front of the procession. The elephants took fright and stampeded into the crowd lining the route, causing several casualties that needed treatment.’ News of stampeding elephants on one of London’s most famous streets travelled around the world. The story appeared on the front page of newspapers from Miami to Montreal

to Melbourne. Most accounts provided the information in a straightforward fashion: a student rag spooked four elephants, causing them to run through the streets and injuring 30 spectators, fortunately none of them seriously. Some news articles, however, scolded the King’s students for an egregious lack of judgment. One article stated that it was fortunate that no student had dressed in a lion costume. ‘Elephants are slow-thinking creatures.

If they can mistake a rag lion for a live lion they might easily have scattered fragments of an undergraduate over the Thames Embankment before regretfully realising their error.’ Thank you to everyone who has sent us stories about Reggie. We’re always keen for more tales about King’s beloved mascot. If you have a Reggie adventure to share with us, please email it to alumoff@kcl.ac.uk or mail it to the address found on page 4.

Getty Images

paul grundy/ jo mieszkowski photographer

Want to get involved? Contact alumoff@kcl.ac.uk or call +44 (0)20 7848 3053

Not Reggie’s finest day

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Community

For more information on alumni groups call +44 (0)20 7848 3053 or see alumni.kcl.ac.uk

Can’t see your country on the list below? Would you like to volunteer as a country contact? For details on getting in touch with a country contact, please visit alumoff@kcl.ac.uk UK alumni subject groups AKC Alumni Group Peter King (Law, 1970) Bar Society Bahar Ala-Eddini (Law, 2007) Chemistry and Physics Rob Edwards (Chemistry, 1970) Dental Alumni Association Warren Birnbaum (KCSMD, Dentistry, 1971) Geography Joint School Society Jo Crocker (Geography, 1956) King’s College Construction Law Association (KCCLA) Joe Bellhouse (Construction Law, 1996) King’s College London Engineering Association (KCLEA) Graham Raven (Civil Engineering, 1963) Law Alumni Group Robin Healey (Law, 1968) Theology & Religious Studies Giles Legood (Theology & Religious Studies, 1988)

Other UK groups Former Staff Barrie Morgan (former Geography staff) King’s Alumni Theatre Society (KATS) Kos Mantzakos (German & Modern Greek, 2001) Queen Elizabeth College Association Dr Sally Henderson (QEC, Biochemistry PhD, 1980) Southampton & Hampshire Tope Omitola (Mathematics, 1994) Student and Alumni Boat Club Rachel Fellows (current student)

If you don’t see your country listed here, please contact us at alumoff@kcl.ac.uk

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The number of alumni in each area that we have a country contact listed 01: Angola Alumni in Region: 1 02: Argentina 56 03: Australia NSW 333 04: Australia QLD 108 05: Bahamas 31 06: Bangladesh 76 07: Belgium 644 08: Brazil 243 09: Brunei 109 10: Canada 1014 11: Chile 72 12: China Beijing 256 13: China Shanghai 115 14: Croatia 26 15: Cyprus 636 16: Denmark 159 17: Egypt 105 18: France 1663 19: Germany Berlin 310 20: Germany Bonn 178 21: Germany Munich 208 22: Grand Cayman 14 23: Greece 1824 24: Hong Kong 1470 25: Hungary 54 26: India Delhi 183 27: India Mumbai 108 28: Indonesia 74 29: Iran 115 30: Ireland 815 31: Israel 141 32: Italy Milan 137 33: Italy Rome 136 34: Japan 549 35: Kenya 141 36: Kuwait 64 37: Malaysia 978 38: Mauritius 87 39: Mexico 106 40: Netherlands 339 41: New Zealand 254 42: Nigeria 323 43: Norway 220 44: Pakistan 462 45: Portugal 305 46: Qatar 38 47: Saudi Arabia 224 48: Singapore 1000 49: Slovakia 37 50: South Korea 322 51: Spain 796 52: Switzerland 417 53: Syria 27 54: Taiwan 313 55: Turkey 226 56: UAE 210 57: USA Boston Area 551 58: USA Chicago 59 59: USA New York Tri-State 1160 60: USA Philadelphia 61 61: USA San Francisco 98 62: USA Southern California 183 63: USA Southern Tri-State 247 64: USA Washington DC Area 609 65: Vietnam 22

43 16 40

10 45

32 33

21 52 14

25 23

55 15

53 31

63 64

47 46 05

34 50

65 56

26 27

48 35 08

09 28

38 04 11

03 41

Israel’s new country contact Jasmine Mann (LLM, 2007)

Milan’s new contact Elodie Denieul Rescaldani (LLM, 2001)

There are so many things to consider when choosing an HE institution. You’re looking for somewhere with a good academic record, a varied selection of courses taught by leading experts in their field, a good location and also – fun! For me, that was King’s College London, and it was quite honestly one of the most enjoyable periods of my life. I was lucky enough to take part in the University of London Intercollegiate LLM programme, which meant I essentially studied at four different London universities. I still keep in touch with many friends from all four institutions, who are now spread around the globe.

When I had to select between the schools I chose to study at, I was told by British lawyers and law professors that King’s was the best place to study in London. Indeed, the location of King’s at the heart of London was key, as I wanted to live in this vibrant city. The international mix at the Strand Campus was one of the aspects I enjoyed most at King’s. I also enjoyed the way law is taught – having studied law for five years in France, it was really interesting to discover the Anglo-Saxon approach, much more economy-oriented. I made lots of friends during my year at King’s from all over Europe. I have been lucky enough to be invited to the weddings of some of those I met in

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at King’s and would be very proud to recommend it to any prospective student. Moreover, maintaining my contact with King’s reminds me of my wonderful experiences, and I am delighted to be the contact for alumni in Israel. Tel Aviv is a bustling metropolis, with students, cafes, shops, arts and businesses from the world over. It truly is a city that does not sleep. However, there is one particular spot I thoroughly enjoy: ‘The Cliff’ Beach, in the north of Tel Aviv. It is a relatively small, quiet spot, of blue skies and blue Mediterranean waters. No buses. No traffic. No tourists. Just bliss.

Germany and Belgium. Having moved to Milan recently, I came to wonder how I could meet interesting people. I contacted the international team in the Alumni Office and learned there wasn’t a King’s contact in Milan. I thought it was a fantastic opportunity to meet people and to give back to the College. If any alumni happen to have an hour or two to spend in Milan, I would recommend visiting L’ultima Cena da Leonardo da Vinci at Santa Maria delle Grazie, Sant Ambroggio Church, the top of the Duomo, the parco Sempione, the department store La Rinascente, the Brera Academy Museum and the area’s vibrant little streets.

Too good to miss! Here’s a taste of international alumni events during the past year:  Receptions hosted by the Principal in Amsterdam and Chicago and by Vice-Principals in Delhi, Melbourne, Mumbai and Seoul  Drinks gatherings with visiting academic staff in Nicosia, San Francisco and Sydney  Lectures by distinguished alumni in Boston, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, New York and Singapore  Joint events with other UK alumni, including a sunset cruise down the Hudson River in New York and

speed-dating in Hong Kong  Alumni-led gatherings in the Netherlands, Italy and Germany  Duel Day celebrations in Belgium, US and Singapore Even more is planned for the coming year – don’t miss out! Invitations are often sent via email, so please make sure the Alumni Office (alumoff@kcl.ac.uk) has your email address. You can also look out for event details on our social media pages: www.facebook.com/KCLalumni and King’s College London on LinkedIn.

autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

Community

IN TOUCH

autumn 2012

It sounds like an Agatha Christie plot: a bungled break-in, an arsenic-laced teapot, the unexplained death of an innocent man. Nearly 50 years on, Chelsea College’s ‘murder in a teacup’ case remains a mystery. Alumnus Keith Shaw (Chelsea, Chemistry, 1968) shares his memories of those dark days.

I was in the first year of my chemistry degree, and living in Lightfoot Hall in Chelsea. I was at home for Christmas when it came on the news: ‘Chelsea hall porter found dead of arsenic poisoning.’ I couldn’t believe it. We didn’t even have a phone, so I couldn’t talk to anyone about what had happened until we all got back after the holidays. By then the preliminary investigations had taken place and a notice was up stating the bare facts. There’d been a break-in on New Year’s Eve and one of the watchmen had been hit on the head. When he returned from hospital, he’d had a cup of tea with the caretaker and the porter, William Barnett. Soon, they were all doubled over in pain. They went to hospital, but were sent away. In the early afternoon, Barnett collapsed in a corridor and died. A cabinet in one of the labs had been forced open, and a bottle of arsenic trioxide removed. Other than that, there was very little information. The warden had his pet theories, but we students were totally baffled. It seemed like a completely motiveless crime. Even if the murder was somehow linked to the break-in, why choose arsenic? It’s such a slow-acting poison. Of course, it was a shock, too. The porters were part of our lives. They were always

Alumni benefits and services If you studied at King’s, or at one of the colleges with which we have merged, you are automatically a member of the Alumni Association and entitled to several great benefits and discounts. Please visit alumni.kcl.ac.uk or call +44 (0)20 7848 3053 for more details. Online alumni.kcl.ac.uk Facebook facebook.com/KCLalumni Twitter twitter.com/KCL alumni King’s Alumni is also on LinkedIn

Card has been carefully designed to provide great value while supporting King’s. To apply, please call 080 0028 2440, quoting King’s College London credit card.

Online library journals

Special offers & discounts

New for 2012: King’s is pleased to announce it has secured free alumni subscription to JSTOR, providing alumni with access to hundreds of online academic journals. To learn more, please contact the Alumni Office on +44 (0)20 7848 3053 or alumoff@ kcl.ac.uk.

The Alumni Office is pleased to present a range of exclusive discounts and offers for our alumni. Please visit Alumni Online for a full listing. Discounts include:

Mailed twice a year to all alumni. If you or somebody you know would like to receive In Touch and currently do not, please contact us at InTouch@kcl. ac.uk or on +44 (0)20 7848 4703. E-newsletter

Remembering a tragic New Year’s Day

friendly, stopping for a chat, looking after parcels and luggage, making sure you got upstairs without falling over when you came back from a boozy night. They were also the first line of defence for the warden when it came to keeping the male and female students apart. Needless to say, that didn’t always work out. There were fingerprints on the bottle, so everyone linked to the college had to have their prints taken. We all had to provide an alibi too. The local police in Nottingham even went and

interviewed my parents to check that I’d really been with them! Scotland Yard took 4,000 statements but there were no leads and I think they pretty much gave up. Personally, I still don’t have a clue what happened. Whoever took the poison got in without being challenged, and knew where to find what they were looking for. So my guess is that it was someone from within the college – but who, and why, is impossible to say. Better minds than mine have pondered that question and drawn a blank. Do you remember the Lightfoot Hall murder? Send your memories to us at InTouch@kcl.ac.uk

President Professor The Lord Ian McColl of Dulwich CBE FKC (Guy’s, Medicine, 1957) Vice-President Professor Nairn Wilson CBE FKC Past Chairman Steven Rhodes (Theology & Religious Studies, 1988) Chairman Andrew Parrish (Chemistry, 1966) SecretaryValerie Beynon (Geography, 1961) Treasurer Nicholas Goulding (Physics, 1968) Events Officer Alison Taylor (Human Environmental Science, 1990)

Alumni Online

Another way of staying in touch with your College friends. It’s free and you can update your personal details and network professionally. Alumni email

Join Alumni Online to register for your alumni email address.

10 per cent Visit website, use code X225265

The Modern Language Centre Evening Programme offers a wide range of languages at all levels. King’s alumni are eligible for a 30 per cent discount. Courses start in October, January and April. For more information, email modern.language@kcl.ac.uk.

10 per cent Call 0845 268 1414, quote KCL10 Glasses Direct

25 per cent Visit website, use code GDSTUDY25 Grange Hotels

special rates Call hotel, quote ID 21270

Short courses: King’s Professional and Executive Development

King’s offers a range of short courses, with many available to alumni at a reduced fee. For more information, please visit www.kcl.ac.uk/prospectus/ shortcourses/home or call +44 (0)20 7848 6814. Get fit at King’s

Special discounted rates are available for alumni if you would like to join KCLSU Kinetic gym in Stamford Street, Waterloo. Call +44 (0)20 7848 4650 for more details.

King’s Connections

For more details, please visit alumni.kcl.ac.uk

A careers advice directory which lists alumni willing to give their advice to fellow alumni and students.

Stay at King’s

The stopover service can help you to find accommodation at one of our halls of residence during the summer.

Use the libraries

The College’s Information Service Centre and libraries are available to Elected members Waheed Aslam Khan (M.Sc Management IT Law & Computing, 2010) Aprill Barry (Biomedical Science, 2011) Robert Edwards (Chemistry, 1970) Robin Healey (Law, 1968) Dr Andrew Papanikitas (Medical Ethics & Law, 2002) Professor Patricia Reynolds (Guy’s Dentistry, 1977) John Ricketts (War Studies, 2010) Mary Zagoritou (Mathematics Education, 2007)

Avis

Cottages4you

InTouch magazine

King’s College London Association KCLA is the alumni association for all former students, staff and friends of King’s and the colleges with which it has merged. All alumni are encouraged to participate in KCLA’s work by attending events and voting in its elections. KCLA will hold its next Annual General Meeting and elections on Friday 2 November 2012. Patron Archbishop Desmond Tutu FKC (Theology, 1965; MTh, 1966) Past President Dame Jinty Nelson (Former staff, Emeritus Professor of Medieval History)

alumni. Reading in the libraries is free, and you can borrow books and materials for an annual fee of £60. Download an application form from our website.

Learn a language

King’s College London Credit Card

The King’s College London Credit

ConnectUS: providing mentors on the US East Coast

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Andy Parrish (Chemistry, 1966) You read this in early autumn, still thrilled by a memorable Olympics, in which King’s played an important and medal-winning part, inside and outside the arenas. We also enjoyed our Ninth Alumni Weekend this past summer, with record numbers attending and most events sold out. Increasing alumni involvement in the life of King’s has been a developing theme of 2012. The range of subject-based alumni groups has continued to grow and the new Chemistry and Physics Group held a well-attended reception in June, where we also welcomed four staff members from the successfully re-launched Chemistry Department. I have invited alumnus Professor Peter Higgs to be the new group’s Patron. We have also launched a branch for alumni of Greek origin, of which there are a surprising (to me) number in London. Still on a Greek theme, next year marks the diamond jubilee – another one! – of King’s first-ever Greek play. Alumni – including, hopefully, members of the original 1953 cast – will be performing to celebrate this momentous anniversary, probably within the 2013 Alumni Weekend. Sophia Murday is organising this as Project Dionysia; visit www.kcla.co.uk to learn more. I gratefully acknowledge the substantially increased grant which the College provides annually to support KCLA’s work. This allowed us to offer financial help to a widening range of programmes, often geared to subsidising student attendance at events like the Duel Day Dinner, to encourage their awareness of KCLA. Our largest 2012 expenditure was our sponsorship of KCLSU’s inaugural, magnificently successful, Graduation Ball. We now look forward to our Annual Dinner at the House of Lords on 2 November, at which 20 per cent of attendees will be current students.

Hall of residence memory: Lightfoot Hall mystery

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The KCLA Chairman

For the latest information about all of our alumni groups go to alumni.kcl.ac.uk

In June, King’s celebrated the launch of ConnectUS, its first international alumni mentoring programme, with a series of events in Boston, New York and Washington DC, where many of the 24 ConnectUS mentoring pairs met for the first time. The ConnectUS programme is designed to facilitate connections between recent graduates and those

more established in their careers, and to help alumni who might be finding the first steps in today’s competitive job market challenging. As well as one-on-one meetings, the programme also includes opportunities for all participants to get together, creating an ideal forum for networking and enabling recent graduates to gain a valuable insight into the

ConnectUS links alumni with current students

careers of other alumni. If you are based on the East Coast of the US and would like to be involved in the next round of the US mentoring programme, scheduled for spring 2013, please see alumni.ac.uk/connectUS for more information and application forms. Watch this space for news of mentoring programmes in other parts of the world! autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

Class notes While we make every effort to verify the information here, which is selected and edited for space, we cannot guarantee its accuracy. If you have concerns over any content, please contact the Alumni Office. And remember, you can also update your personal records at Alumni Online. Visit alumni.kcl.ac.uk

Chelsea College

You can view lots of fabulous old class photographs at alumni.kcl.ac.uk

Keith Ritchie

Peter Cliffe

Malcolm Gerroll

Malcolm Crundwell

Medicine, 1980 Retired in 2012 after 27 years as a GP principal to enjoy life.

Medicine, 1984 GP in Lingfield, Surrey, since 1990. Married to another GP, Caroline. Two kids at university.

Dentistry, 1956 I am retired, after 43 years in dental practice in Stanmore, Middlesex. I was also a part-time lecturer in minor oral surgery at the Royal Dental Hospital. I have taken up an interest in art history.

Medicine, 1988 My daughter Ellie has kept the family tradition and is now studying Spanish and English at King’s.

Jonathan Lovett

Medicine and Surgery, 1981 Retired April 2012 after 22 years as a consultant child psychiatrist in the NHS. Intending to return to an adolescent love – painting!

Lorna Speid

Pharmacy, 1983 My company, Speid & Associates, is working in the area of biosimilars and contributing to the development of regulatory systems for developing markets.

Lisetta Flower-Hill (now Lovett)

Guy’s

Medicine, 1982 Retired March 2012 but continue to work independently in the field of medical humanities. Co-directing a masters degree in same at Keele University. Co-authoring a book relating to medical history teaching. Recently contributed a chapter in a lit-crit book on the ‘neuro novel’.

Thomas Madden

Veronica Ambrose (now Ferguson)

Medicine, 1946 Co-investigator in the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation, at the Chicago Center.

Medicine, 1983 Full-time ophthalmologist at Imperial College, London. Surgeon oculist to HM’s household. Still keeping bees and horses.

Anusha Arasu

Medicine, 1991 Moved from consultant post at Luton and Dunstable Hospital to neonatal consultant post at King’s College Hospital. Zaki Kanaan

Dentistry, 1996 Have just been awarded ‘UK Dentist of the Year 2012’ at the prestigious Dental Awards.

Harry Oxer

Medicine, 1957 I was at Cambridge, then at King’s College Hospital Medical School from 1954-8. I was honoured this year to be appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM). I’m still working, consulting and teaching, and still indulging in my hobby of piloting my own sailplane. I had my 80th birthday this April, to my amazement! Hannah Troop Bowen

KCSMD

Medicine, 1974 Enjoying retirement from several practices in Cornwall.

E Farley

Dentistry, 1954 Would like to get in touch with anyone who studied dentistry at King’s from 1950-54.

Ian Dunn

Medicine, 1978 Retired from general practice in May to avoid the oncoming perfect storm.

John Lloyd-Jones

Medicine, 1956 Chairman of the Council of the British Horological Institute 2008-10; President, 2010-12. Brian Pound

Medicine, 1963 Family physician, psychotherapist and hypnotherapist. Associate professor at the University of Victoria School of Nursing; consultant in investigative and forensic hypnosis; pain therapist at the Burn Unit, Royal Jubilee Hospital. Michael Lavelle

Medicine, 1971 Retired in June 2012 and planning to do even more music, both classical and jazz. Have taken up making musical instruments of the violin family. Susan Gaunt (now Overal)

Pharmacology, 1974 Approaching 60 this year, I am organising a local birthday celebration. It would be great to catch up with long-lost medical colleagues. Get in touch if you are interested: susan. overal@nhs.nex 38

IN TOUCH

autumn 2012

Puppets and paediatrics Dr Ranj Singh

Get Well Soon, a new television series presented by paediatrician Dr Ranj Singh (Medicine and Pharmacology, 2003), aims to enlighten CBeebies’ young audience about health and medical issues. Through the use of music, games and puppet characters, it will help children to understand their bodies and see the medical world as an environment in which they feel safe. ‘I have been involved in the media for a few years now,’ says Dr Ranj, ‘mainly in an advisory or “couch doctor” role where I get asked for a medical opinion on various subjects. I came up with the original concept for Get Well Soon and co-developed it with Kindle Entertainment. It has given me the chance to use my medical experience in a fun and entertaining way and the perfect opportunity to marry my passion for health promotion in children with my media work.’ Dr Ranj has worked at both King’s College Hospital and Evelina Children’s Hospital at St Thomas’. ‘The best thing about working with

kids in the healthcare setting is that they have a remarkable ability to deal with and overcome illness. They bring out the best in people and it’s not uncommon for people to go that extra mile for their patients. Unfortunately, there is a very sad and serious side to it and you can’t help but get emotionally involved.

That’s part of being human and is what makes doctors even better.’ Get Well Soon is all about making learning about health interesting and entertaining. ‘Never underestimate the power of play,’ says Dr Ranj. ‘Working with puppets has been the best part – I’ve never had so much fun at work!’

King’s College London NHE Ahlers

Physics, 1945 Glad to hear from Sybil Blackwell, Theology, 1943.

Jeremy Joel

Civil Engineering, 1954 I have virtually retired, consultancywise. I have nothing but happy memories of my time at King’s. Sadly, very sadly, the Civil Engineering Department is now closed. Rose Heaword

Emel Rochat

French, 1949 I have an old (1946 or 1947) photograph of the French Honours students plus staff, including Professor Denis Sarrat. One of the students in it is Robert Gibson (later a professor). Also Bill Wittnall, who has written in In Touch. Muriel Dover (now Curtis)

1951 I am very pleased to be in touch with two friends from the Honours Maths class in spite of having to transfer to a BA General – which proved very adequate for teaching.

History, 1957 A background in historical studies can have wide applications. I am currently engaged on archaeological illustration, mainly finds. Having been encouraged by working as a volunteer on-site by the Bath and Camerton Archaeological Society, I successfully completed a week-long module for this subject at Birkbeck College, London (self-funded). Again as a volunteer, I organised an art conservation programme for Frome Museum, including fundraising and engaging superb conservators to rescue three badly damaged Georgian portraits. The magnificent transformation justifies all the effort and anxiety!

Mary Austin

Mathematics and Physics, 1952 Am still pottering around in Milton Keynes. In sheltered housing, participating in Scrabble, aquaerobics and aerobics groups. Greetings to those who remember me. Do call if you are in MK. John Rose

English, 1952 Appeared earlier this year in the film The Iron Lady with Meryl Streep. She was a joy, but alas, most of my contribution ended up on the cutting room floor. Ronald Friar

‘Never underestimate the power of play’

I recall the History Department, the Rugby Club, the Athletics Club (Geoff Elliot being almost the whole team) and finally Halliday Hall inmates. My three chief friends of these days have sadly passed on, but there may be others who remember me.

History, 1953 Could I use the pages of In Touch to pass greetings to the many other octogenarians who, back in 1950, first tightroped round the edge of what became the Quad. Especially,

Wayne Thomas

Law, 1959 Awarded an MBE in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to young people in Rhondda. John Cloudsley-Thompson

Zoology, 1960 I was a lecturer in zoology under Professor JF Danielli. Bob (Robert) Russell

Spanish, 1960 I have been retired from insurance and associated consultancy business since 1995, latterly dealing with multinational corporate clients. Am still very much in contact with several of the Spanish class of 1960 and try to arrange annual get-togethers. I’m still loving my rugby and am a board member of my local club, East Grimstead RFC.

Royal Society fellowship awarded Professor Ian MacLennan

Professor Ian MacLennan (Guy’s, Medicine, 1965) has been awarded the distinguished Fellowship of the Royal Society. According to the society’s commendation, Professor MacLennan ‘has made several landmark contributions to immunology and especially to our understanding of antibody production’. ‘I am glad to be associated with the Royal Society,’ says Professor MacLennan. ‘It promotes high-quality research and the understanding of science both nationally and internationally. It is pleasing to receive this recognition from my scientific peers.’ Much of Professor MacLennan’s research has focused on how an antibody that protects against infection is produced, and the way cells that produce antibodies that bind to the body’s own tissues – autoantibodies – are eliminated. ‘Almost nothing was known of the cellular, let alone the molecular, basis of antibody production, when I was a student at Guy’s. There was evidence that lymphocytes might be involved, but they way in which they led to antibody production was totally obscure,’ he says. ‘Most of the

common diseases that we associate now with autoimmunity – like rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes – were recognised as clinical entities. With increasing understanding of the mechanisms that regulate recognition between self and non-self, there is hope that specific treatments of autoimmunity will be developed.’ An emeritus professor at the University of Birmingham MRC Centre for Immune Regulation, Professor MacLennan has no intention of an idle retirement. ‘I still find research fascinating and I continue to get my work published. Why should I retire, so long as I have time to walk in the high hills, where I can mull over my thoughts?’ And what has been most inspirational to him over the course of his career? ‘The appreciation that there is much more to be found out while respecting, but questioning, that which has already been discovered.’ Professor MacLennan

Alan Thomas

Geoff (Geoffrey) Brammall

Theology, 1960 I celebrated my 50th priesting anniversary on 17 June 2012. Enjoying an active retirement.

German, 1969 I completed a PhD at the University of Manchester in June 2011 on the subject of pupils’ reading strategies in GCSE German.

Norman Vaughton

Geography, 1961 Following a career as a geologist in Jamaica, an educationist in England and Papua New Guinea and then as a therapist and property developer, I am now enjoying my retirement. Recently returned from an expedition through the North East Passage from Murmansk to Anadyr.

Roger Paige

Theology, 1969 Recently published The Choir Girls and Other Stories, my fourth collection of short stories. Now working on a fifth. William Reed

Theology, 1969 Retired February 2012. Now PTO in Norwich Diocese.

Richard (John) Lewis

Theology, 1966 Recently published Sampans and Saffron Cake, based on my grandfather’s diaries from his years in Cornwall and China, 1872-1950.

Stephen Carter

Geography, 1970 I retired as a Norfolk secondary school headteacher in 2008 and, having spent three years as a consultant on the Department for Education’s autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

Class notes Value for Money programme, am now fully retired. I continue my voluntary work as a reader in the Church of England in the Diocese of Gloucester. Geoffrey Hales

English, 1970 Still running the Travelling Theatre, cricket umpiring and scoring. In touch with English Department contemporaries from 1967-70. Trevor Stubbs

Theology, 1970 Since 2009, I have been involved in the regeneration of Bishop Gwynne Theological College in Juba, South Sudan. After two years as interim administrator, we appointed a new local principal. I am now the international link person. I would love to hear from anyone interested in Sudan or South Sudan. Peter Barnett

Theology, 1971 After 39 years as an Anglican priest, I have retired – along with my wife Mary – to our former holiday home in Gower, Wales. We led the Pilsdon Community in Dorset for 18 years and founded the Pilsdon at Malling Community in Kent. Mary spent 2011-2 recovering from leukaemia. Lister Tonge

Theology and Religious Studies, 1974 I became Dean of Monmouth (Newport Cathedral) in March following a phone call from the Bishop. There’s a huge amount to do to catch up with this energetic diocese and to become of some use in this city which has suffered huge decline. Jane Wallbank (Dowie) (now Reynolds)

Theology, 1974 After several years as a single parent, I married Tony in 2003. I have one son, Stephen, and two stepsons, Mark and Tom. All are grown up now. I teach religious studies at Altrincham Grammar School for Girls and I enjoy hill-walking, gardening, skiing and travel. Recently I visited India, China and Rome and skied in Bulgaria. I would love to hear from anyone who was at King’s from 1971-4 and remembers me. 40

IN TOUCH

autumn 2012

And remember you can register at alumni.kcl.ac.uk to update your personal details

Himmet Umunc

Alan Mason

English Language and Literature, 1974 Following my retirement from Hacettepe University in Turkey in 2012, I have been affiliated with Baskent University, which is a young and vibrant centre of learning and research. It is with deep respect and warm affection that I remember my tutor and supervisor Reg Hill at King’s.

Biology and Physics, 1980 Working in the nuclear sector, got married for the second time last year. Best thing I have ever done. Struggling with teenagers. Love living by the sea.

Andrew Skinner

Biochemistry, 1975 After graduating, I worked as a science technician at Portsmouth Polytechnic, then Kew Gardens. I moved to the British Council in the mid-80s and to Roehampton Institute (now University) in 1990, first in planning, then as academic secretary, now as deputy university secretary. Would love to hear from King’s contemporaries in biochemistry or French.

Tewkesbury Schola Cantorum. Would love to meet up with other King’s graduates in the Peterborough area and regain contact with those who also studied English in those bygone years 1978-82. David Rogers

Nigel Banks

Geography, 1981 Left Yorkshire Bank in 2006 after 26 years. Moved 100 yards up the road. Will have worked for every bank by the time I finish!

Geography, 1982 Now working as a transitional minister assisting struggling churches in the East Midlands. Sue also has a new role, assisting the exams officer in a busy academy.

Stephen Spencer

English, 1986 Have worked for many years in the heritage tourism and visitor attraction sectors. Currently coordinating passenger service experience for the new Emirates Air Line cable car linking the Greenwich Peninsula and Royal Victoria Docks.

Richard Hillier

David Thomas

Michael Markham

Mathematics, 1981 Since leaving King’s, I’ve worked for IBM in the UK, US, France and South Africa for a total of 30 years. I recently ‘retired’ and am now pursuing more leisurely interests like travel and photography.

Civil Engineering, 1983 Moved in September 2011 to take up the post of technical director of The Heightec Group Ltd, a supplier of products and training for professional work at height and rescue.

Mathematics, 1987 After working in the City for 18 years as a fixed interest fund manager, I left to work for software company thinkFolio. I have recently recovered from acute myeloid leukaemia and continue to be happily married to Bev with two children, Ollie and Lizzie.

Eugene Lambert Michael Steeden

Mike (Paul) Schenk

Physics, 1975 Now working part-time for the Ministry of Defence science and technology laboratory, and grappling with the challenges of partial retirement. Granddaughter Colette (18 months) and grandson Benedict (four months) more than take care of any ‘spare’ time not already committed to chairmanship of the Royal Aeronautical Society medals awards committee.

Biochemistry, 1981 GP in mid-Cornwall since 1995. Married to Catherine. Five children. Would be good to have a reunion for the KCSMD class of 1986.

Electronics and Computer Science, 1984 I have left the world of high technology and enrolled in a MA programme at Bath Spa University doing creative writing for young adults. Everyone has a novel in them, apparently; I’m trying to find mine!

Helen Haines (now Wells)

English, 1982 Still teaching! Mother to three: twin daughters and a son, who sings with

Gerda Mamott

Geology, 1985 Retired in 2007. Very busy teaching

An eternal conversation expressed in many forms Andre Bagoo

Andre Bagoo (LLB, 2006) is a 29-year-old Trinidadian who is comfortable using nearly any form of the written word – journalism, poetry, fiction, blogging – to express himself and occasionally to afflict the comfortable. ‘Ezra Pound once said, “Literature is news that stays news.” I think that encapsulates the relationship between journalism and literature,’ says Bagoo. ‘Both aim at bringing news to the people: presenting a snapshot of the state of the land. Their tools are different (though not necessarily exclusive) but they aim at interrogating truth and communicating something about it. ‘Blogging is, to some extent, an amplification of that aspect of journalism that involves commentary,

leisure courses in German and retrained as a certified tourist guide for Cambridge, which is great fun!

Using poetry to assert his will

analysis and critique.’ Bagoo says he started writing poetry in part as a means to rebel against the cultural norm of poetry being for girls and not boys. He says he uses poetry today to assert his will and to serve as ‘a mysterious faculty within my inner self’. ‘Or I just do it now because I like to

feel as though it is part of one long, eternal conversation that I am trying to have.’ But if he has quieted down, his poetry does not reflect that. The vivid music of the Caribbean sea features heavily in his first book of poems, Trick Vessels, published in March by Shearsman Books. ‘In Trinidad and Tobago, we grow up having knowledge of the sea. Perhaps Trinis are obsessed with it,’ he says. ‘Trinidadian poet Vahni Capildeo wrote a book of poems entitled Undraining Sea. Recently, another Trinidadian poet, Mervyn Taylor, published a book of poems entitled called No Back Door in which the sea is a central symbol. Perhaps poems are just drops in one large eternal sea of words.’ Bagoo’s blog Tattoo is available at www.andrebagoo.tumblr.com

Paul Sandor

Mathematics, 1987 It is nearly 25 years since I studied for my MSc at King’s. Currently working at Legal and General in Surrey in the actuarial department and am a part qualified actuary. I am married and live in west London. Happy memories of my time at King’s. Jean Johnson

Theology and Religious Studies, 1989 Kabale University in Uganda made me an honorary professor in recognition of the teacher training of secondary chemistry teachers which I do (in conjunction with the Royal Society of Chemistry) in Uganda. I did theology at King’s and chemistry long ago at Manchester. Sarah Bowyer

Nutrition and Dietetics, 1990 Studying for a PhD with the Centre for Rural Health, University of the Highlands and Islands. Living in Inverness.

Irfan Latif

Anil Saddi

Alicia Heeneman (now Heeneman Wong)

Chemistry, 1992 Happily married to Jocelyn and proud father to Zara, aged four, and Emma, aged two. Deputy Head at Bedford School and just got back from Nepal having trekked to Everest Base Camp.

International Management, 1997 I successfully completed my MSc in International Management in 1997.

Law, 2001 Now working as a government lawyer in Defra. Married Jun Wong in 2012 and expecting our first child in October.

Sacha Ackland

Philosophy, 1994 Living in London with partner and three-year-old daughter. Full-time barrister and part-time district judge. Ali Zli (now Ahmed)

War Studies, 1995 Now assistant professor at the Nelson Mandela Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi. Charles Banigo

Management Studies, 1995 I relish the opportunity to teach as a part-time lecturer in business management and information communications technology. I have over 16 years’ teaching experience in higher education. Anthony Banks

English, 1996 Recently directed Lucinda Coxon’s new play Herding Cats at the Hampstead Theatre and a national tour of Dennis Kelly’s DNA. Directing a new play by Bryony Lavery called Cesario for the World Shakespeare Festival, and the London 2012 Festival.

Law, 1997 Still working in the City but currently enjoying some time at home with our beautiful new daughter, Emilia Kate. Joanne Fisher (now Hobbs)

Pharmacology, 1998 Married with two wonderful boys, Nicholas and Jonathan. Sarah Carter

Nursing Studies, 1999 I have recently had a project paper, Reducing Healthcare Associated Infections in Critical Care, published online on the Foundation of Nursing Studies website. The project was supported by the FoNS Developing and Sustaining a Practice-based Strategy for Reducing Healthcare Associated Infections Programme with NHS London. Charlie (Charles) Gray

Geography, 1999 My wife Alexis and I are very proud to announce the birth of our beautiful baby daughter, Perdita Daphne Eliza Gray, on 30 April 2012.

Jonathan McCotter

Biological Sciences, 2001 After graduating, I went on to study veterinary medicine in Grenada, West Indies. Adrian Pereira

Biopharmacy, 2001 Now married, with three children – all girls. Working as a mass spectrometrist for GlaxoSmithKline R&D at Ware, Hertfordshire. Simon Robbins

War Studies, 2001 I have worked at the Imperial War Museum since 1989 and have published British Generalship on the Western Front, 1914-18 (2004), The First World War Letters of General Lord Horne (2009) and British Generalship during the Great War (2010). My next book is Dirty Wars: A Century of Counterinsurgency (2013). Timothy Martin

Law, 2000 Duncan and I welcomed Kitty Mae Shrapnell-West on 7 April 2012.

International Studies, 2002 Retired from the Royal Navy and now using my legal/social work background to good effect as CEO of SBA, The Solicitors’ Charity, based beside Wandsworth Common in south west London.

Scott Allan

Neelam Halari

Mental Health Nursing, 2001 I have recently started as the lead nurse for CAMHS NHS Forth Valley.

Nutrition and Dietetics, 2003 Knowledge is the key. Let’s reunite and share. Class of Dietetics 2003.

Toby Burns

Rebecca Kershaw (now Dyball)

War Studies, 2001 A short stint in Kent police to pay off the student loan is now looking dangerously like a career! Guarding the frontiers of the UK – it’s not exactly the Khyber Pass but it pays for nappies and baby milk for two.

Law, 2004 Married David Dyball at Dartington Hall in December 2011.

Lucy Shrapnell (now Shrapnell-West)

Richard Osborne

Communications and Radio Engineering, 1996 After spending six years in New York, I am now back in London working for BSkyB. Christopher Robbins

Nursing Studies, 1996 Fully retired and now live in Herefordshire. Enjoying the countryside and being away from the city.

Graeme Ware

Electrical Engineering, 1990 Living in sunny California (13 years now) and still keeping in touch with a few ex-King’s students.

Kirsten Singleton (now Singleton-Watson)

Noreen Shaikh

Biochemistry and Microbiology, 1996 Working with a new Birth Defect Research Centre in conjunction with Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Simon Coulson

Ancient History, 2001 Our first son arrived just after Christmas 2011, Max Benjamin Coulson.

Alexander Jackson

War Studies and History, 2004 I received my PhD in football history from Leeds Metropolitan University in July 2012 and now work at the National Football Museum. autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

Class notes Jane Johnson

Physiotherapy, 2004 Continue to work as a locum physiotherapist and love doing the jobs no one else wants! Fourth book published, Therapeutic Stretching. Helen Murphy

English, 2005 Bought a house, got engaged and run the media department of a local school. Very happy! Matthew Scott

Law, 2005 I am very excited to be practising in my favourite area of law, namely stamp taxes, after a few years taken in the industry to develop some common sense of the business variety, which I am now putting to very good use in developing a market-leading tax practice! Martin Booth

Mathematics and Computer Science, 2006 The Reichenbach Problem, a novel about Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, due to be published by Lion Hudson this autumn. Robert Fellows

War Studies, 2006 Currently serving as a company second in command of a rifle co-deployed on operations in Afghanistan. Robert Kippin

Music, 2006 Studying for an MA in Music at Bangor University. April Lesser (now Keller)

English, 2006 Got married to Neil in 2007 and celebrated the birth of our son Cody in 2008 and daughter Laney in 2010.

Email us at alumoff@kcl.ac.uk for advice on planning reunions and looking up old friends

From choristers to Capone Andrew O’Brien

Choirmaster Andrew O’Brien (MA Visual & Performing Arts, 2005) led Hertfordshire’s Heath Mount School to triumph as the BBC School Choir of the Year 2012. O’Brien, also a professional singer and recitalist, says, ‘I’ve been in lots of big concerts but I’ve never been as nervous as this. I really wanted the kids to win because they had worked so hard.’ O’Brien, a former principal in the Welsh National Youth Orchestra, fell into music education ‘by accident. I covered a friend’s piano teaching at the school and within a year I was Head of Music. The Music Department has a life of its own. At break, lunch or after school, children can be heard practising, rehearsing, composing their next masterpiece or just jamming with friends. ‘Watching the kids grow through music is most satisfying. You have to be yourself – they see through you if you’re not. They are honest, genuine

English, 2007 Married in Surrey in October 2011.

Law, 2011 Upon graduation with my LLM, I served as a consultant to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, specliaising in protecting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex refugees. I then returned to my law practice in America. Abidemi Ikharia

Medicine, 2011 In June, I cycled from London to Brighton for the Bristol Heart Foundation and in March I undertook the ‘step challenge’, running up the Gherkin for the NSPCC. John Wiblin

UK, EC & US Copyright Law, 2011 I became a partner at my firm, Longmores, in January this year.

A successful, sometimes noisy, career

Angela Fergus (now Fergus-Stallard)

Natalia Biglou

Dental & Maxillofacial Radiology, 2008 Graduated in 2008. Now moving from Belgium to the US. Thank you for all you’ve taught me and for who I am now.

Law, 2008 Working at litigation boutique firm in Washington DC, specialising in policy-holder (corporate) side insurance coverage litigation.

Mental Health Social Work with Children & Adults, 2010 Now an independent social worker freelancing in private and public law cases; keen to hear from other alumni.

Law, 2012 Juliet in Romeo and Juliet at the Oval House Theatre.

Adam Hughes

John (Ioannis) Vardakis

Christopher Jenkins

Environmental Monitoring, Modelling and Management, 2008 I am cycling from New Zealand to Switzerland to raise funds and awareness for skin cancer. I started my journey in New Zealand on 11 January 2011 and as of mid-September of this year I had reached Turkey. For more details about my journey, please visit my website at keeptheaspidistraflying.com.

Computer Aided Mechanical Engineering, 2008 I am disappointed to see no new developments in the Faculty of Engineering. As an alumnus, I would very much appreciate a more thoroughly engaging approach to the new developments that are being considered under the umbrella of engineering science. More information is needed, as there are many wishing to take an active role in reshaping the image of past developments.

Advanced Physiotherapy (Sport & Performance), 2009 Head physiotherapist for five years. Helped London Welsh RFC to become a premiership team!

Defence Studies, 2008 ACSC 10. Deploying to HQ ISAF for six months then to SHAPE. Emma Potter

English and French Law, 2007 Still enjoying government work. Recently bought a house in Croydon – now working on its gentrification!

Business Management, 2008 Working as a management consultant at a global IT and business consultancy company.

autumn 2012

Laura Gray

Krishan Thakker

Christopher Mahood

IN TOUCH

performing but I love the human voice above everything. [The tenor] Peter Pears once said: “a violin is a violin, but a voice is a human being”.’ And music runs in the family. Speaking to the Merthyr Express, his dad revealed that O’Brien’s greatgrandfather was Al Capone’s favourite singer, adding: ‘I just hope Andrew’s current fans are more reputable!’

Johan Aps

Dougie (Douglas) Mackay Lisette Le Hur (now Sturt)

and want to learn – always ready to face a new challenge. I would love to see them taking solo roles at the Royal Opera House or the English National Opera, or see them singing in Britten’s War Requiem in a vast cathedral.’ O’Brien’s passion for music was sparked by his church background. ‘I used to sit in the congregation in awe of the organ. I love both directing and

Training Programme in history but will be returning to King’s this September to start my PhD in geography, specifically oil and its impact on indigenous peoples in Peru. I’m very much looking forward to being back at the Strand again!

Julia Coleman

Oncology, 2009 Progressing in my new-ish career in science-medical writing. Came back to give a talk to PhD students and postgrads on medical communications. Doing as much acting as I can this year as well!

Barzan Sadiq

Human Sciences, 2010 Nothing new in this unforgivable economy. Hammad Ahmed

Physiology, 2011 Some of the best times I had as a student were at King’s. Those memories will never be forgotten. Friendships will never be broken. Adrian Gonzalez

War Studies, 2011 Am just completing a Graduate

Agnieszka Szreder (now Szubert)

Forensic Science, 2012 I have just started my career as a DNA

forensic analyst. I hope to see you all at the Forensic Science 2010-11 reunion. Samuel Tranter

History of Warfare, 2012 I have accepted a scholarship to read for my PhD in history at the University of St. Andrews.

1961-79, started Student Health Service University of Melbourne as director; 1980, changed my occupation. Married to Capt. Pamela M. Baird QARANC since 1952. Eleven grandchildren. First President Rover Car Club of Australia 1965-70; Kyneton Hospital Board Member 1983-92. Peter Trafford

Royal Dental Hospital

Medicine, 1942 Still soldiering on, despite a minor stroke. President of Wells Branch Royal British Legion. Hoping to celebrate 68th wedding anniversary shortly.

Alan Howe

Dentistry, 1951 Retired after 21 years but still do voluntary work as a Mental Health Act manager. Belong to the ‘Wallace Collection’, a group of retired CDS dentists that meet every other month at The George for lunch.

Donald Craig

Medicine, 1954 A triad of locomotor problems, knee replacement, polymyalgia rheumatica and lumbar spinal stenosis have impaired my mobility but not my mental agility.

management’s destruction of good medical practice. More from St Thomas’ graduates, please. Michael Frampton

Medicine, 1975 Finally retiring from the NHS in July 2012. Son Charlie now happily married and daughter Sarah busy working in marketing. Pamela Walker (now West)

Medicine, 1976 Husband Jonathan and I are proud grandparents to Oliver Hades West, born 27 July 2010. David Anderson

Medicine, 1979 Awarded professor of paediatric cardiac surgery in 2011. Susan Edgley

Bryan Markwell

Gilbert Thompson

Dentistry, 1953 Would welcome contact with or information about any fellow students.

Medicine, 1956 Edited Nobel Prizes that Changed Medicine, published by Imperial College Press, 2012.

St Thomas’ Harold Hetherington

Medicine, 1942 Service in RAMC 1942-55 (UK, Kenya, Madagascar, Ethiopia and Malaya); 1955-61, Student Health Service University of Manchester;

David Houghton

Medicine, 1971 I graduated from St Thomas’ in 1971 and, after junior jobs at St Thomas’, Queen Charlotte’s and Barts, was appointed consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at Medway in 1983. After 28 years as a consultant, I took early retirement as I could no longer stand the

Medicine, 1984 Happily married and working as a therapist with individuals and groups in Stroud and Bristol.

UMDS Kathreena Kurian

Medicine and Surgery, 1994 Consultant neuropathologist in Bristol. Started brain tumour bank for the south west. Writing book. Two daughters, Christina and Sarina.

Reunion round-up KCH Dental 45th

Fourteen dental graduates from King’s College Hospital, plus partners, celebrated their 45th anniversary of qualifying with an enjoyable May weekend in Kingsbridge, Devon. Having donned our Reggie badges, kindly supplied by the Alumni Office, we caught up with one another while enjoying the hotel’s fine dining. Saturday saw us travelling to Sharpham Vineyard for lunch and wine-tasting, followed by a walk along the River Dart to Totnes. In the evening, taxis conveyed us to and from the house of one of the group overlooking Salcombe Bay. Sunday morning we gathered for breakfast and

were able to enjoy the coastal path and golf course. We have agreed to meet in two years and to hold another large gathering for our 50th anniversary, possibly abroad. Martin F S Miller

Show of 1959; many present had performed or worked behind the scenes. Conversations continued late into the night and next day many explored local places of interest, such as the lovely Stanway House. Jillian Mann and Michael Willoughby

St Thomas’ Medical 50th

In April, 35 graduates and their partners celebrated at a dinner in the Cotswolds, including Jennifer Ashby and Michael Mayo (USA), Richard Hartley (Australia), James Nwozo (Nigeria) and Izabella E Horsfall (Bahamas). Hugh Pennington gave the address, and Tim Apthorpe toasted absent friends. The formalities concluded with a recording of St Thomas’s Christmas

King’s Dentistry 50th

Seventeen King’s graduates arrived at the Burford Bridge Hotel at Box Hill in March, most bringing partners. Jenny Coleman (now Smyth) travelled from Australia for the occasion, with others coming from all parts of England. The venue proved to be excellent and a warm spring day allowed us to sit in the garden reminiscing during the

afternoon. As people arrived, it was amusing to guess at a distance which were in our group, and which were attending a party in the hotel. In spite of all the years, we were able to recognise each other. We met in the bar before moving into a private dining room to enjoy an excellent dinner. We moved between tables during the meal and enjoyed catching up on old times. Reconvening over breakfast before leaving, all agreed that planning another event in 50 years time would be optimistic, but maybe we will try again in five years. Maggie Williams (now Joscelyne) Please contact reunions@kcl.ac.uk for help organising your reunion

autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

Obituaries On these pages we remember former students, staff and friends of King’s and its associated colleges and institutions.In Touch makes every effort to accommodate fitting tributes, and friends, family and former colleagues are welcome to submit obituaries to alumoff@kcl.ac.uk. However, constraints occasionally mean we may have to edit the entries. Steven K. Chitkara

King’s, Management Studies, 1995 A successful investment manager and visionary entrepreneur, Steven Chitkara defied the business world’s status quo. Charismatic, compassionate and elegant, he could move seamlessly between vastly different business environments, from startup to corporate. Most recently, he served as Managing Director of Focus Ironclad Limited, a Zambia-based privateequity fund investing in Africa. After King’s, Chitkara earned an MBA from Columbia University and an MS in Finance from the London Business School. An avid marathonrunner and inspiring mentor, he sat on the King’s College London Friends of the US Board; he was also active in non-profits dedicated to assisting at-risk youth and home foreclosure prevention. Above all, he was a loving family man. He is survived by his wife Jessica and their children Andy and Olivia. Neil Clarke

King’s, Law, 1955 Neil Clarke took over as chairman of British Coal in 1991, tasked with continuing the cost-cutting and commercialisation that had been under way since the miners’ strike.

Chelsea College Valerie Baynes Pharmacy, 1956 Jeffery Carson Pharmacy, 1956 John Megson Pharmacy, 1956 John Brooks Pharmacy, 1959 Sir David Jack CBE FKC Pharmaceutical Chemistry, 1960 Kazimer Strupinski Physiology, 1969 Karen Stringer Biochemistry, 1980

Guy’s Surgeon Captain John Hanson Medicine, 1943 Norman Crane Dentistry, 1944 Michael Hudson Dentistry, 1945 Dr John Moffatt Medicine, 1947 Dr Robert Doy Medicine, 1948

IN TOUCH

autumn 2012

Email us at alumoff@kcl.ac.uk

His turbulent style perhaps explains why he never attained the bishopric or deanery that many thought he merited. Yet he was always an inspirational figure wherever he served. He was also friend and confessor to a great company of people, some in high office in church and state, who turned to him when they were in trouble and found a devout priest of unusual insight.

An RAF legend Squadron Leader Norman Crookes MBE

King’s, History, 1948 An outstanding night fighter navigator, Squadron Leader Norman Crookes became an RAF legend literally overnight in July 1944 when his two-man Mosquito shot down four enemy bombers in a mere 20 minutes – an achievement unequalled by any Allied fighter crew in the north west European theatre. That remarkable night was the highlight of an exceptional partnership with New Zealander pilot Bill ‘Jamie’ Jameson, begun in Beaufighters in 1941, which accounted for a total of 11 enemy aircraft. When Jameson returned to New Zealand soon after that historic

He also had to manage the organisation through to privatisation; that the 1994 sale was successful was due in large part to his hard work, wise advice and low-key, measured leadership of the management team. He remained a doughty and largely successful fighter for the interests of British Coal employees throughout. Previously, Clarke had risen through the ranks of industrial and engineering group Charter Consolidated, ultimately becoming its Chief Executive and Deputy Chairman. Other career highlights include serving as Director of Anglo American and Consolidated Gold Fields, and as Chairman of shipping services provider Genchem Holdings and building merchant Travis Perkins.

Dr Anthony Worssam Medicine, 1948 Douglas Burnapp Dentistry, 1950 Dr John Hooper Medicine, 1950 Dr Patrick Russell Medicine, 1951 Dr James Vergano Medicine, 1951 Dr Edward Herst Medicine, 1952 Dr Derek Wilkins CBE Medicine, 1952 Ian Fraser Medicine, 1954 Michael O’Brien Dentistry, 1956 Dr Douglas Wood Medicine, 1956 Dr Robert Cox Medicine, 1957 Soli Lam Medicine, 1957 Peter Shaw Medicine, 1957 Dr Iain Hanham Medicine, 1960 Dr Philip Lang Dentistry, 1962 Dr John Beckerson Dentistry, 1970 Frederick Moorhouse Dentistry, 1974

July sortie, Crookes teamed up with Ray Jeffs and saw combat in the American sector during the Battle of the Bulge, winning an American Distinguished Flying Cross. In the course of the war, Crookes also received three RAF DFCs, a remarkable feat, gaining his second Bar for ‘unfailing devotion to duty’. Ironically, Crookes was declared unfit for peacetime service because he was colour blind. He returned to civilian life and became a schoolteacher and headmaster, but maintained his interest in flying and aircraft for the rest of his life. He was a keen supporter of the Air Training Corps, for which he was appointed MBE in 1974.

The Very Revd John Lang

Squadron Leader Norman Crookes

King’s, Theology, 1951 Canon Eric James was a fluent and charismatic preacher, a prolific author and one of the most familiar voices on BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day. His was an eclectic life: he grew up in Dagenham, left school at 15, became a Cambridge college chaplain, vicar in a tough inner-city borough, preacher to the barristers and judges of Gray’s Inn and a Chaplain to the Queen. Firmly on the left – he always sported a red hankie in his breast pocket – he was a guiding influence among Anglican liberals. He was a prime mover behind the Church of England’s controversial 1985 report Faith in the City (‘a Marxist document,’ said Norman Tebbitt), indicting the effects

of Thatcherism in inner-city areas. He served as director of Parish and People and Christian Action, both reformist groups, only to resign from both. He was not an institutional man. He had an irreverence for authority that began young: while a student at King’s, he pinched the Bishop of London’s hat and requested a gift to charity for its return. He could be controversial. He publicly outed himself during a robust defence of homosexual priests in a television programme in 1990 while dressed in the scarlet cassock of a royal chaplain. He chose a 1998 lecture at Westminster Abbey, one of the so-called Royal Peculiars, under the monarch’s rather than the church’s patronage, to denounce the hereditary monarchy as a lottery and suggest that it ought to become elective instead.

Institute of Psychiatry

King’s College London

Professor Hugh Freeman Psychological Medicine, 1958 Dr David Blend 1968

Radford Dagnall AKC Theology, 1939 Edward Eates Law, 1939 Audrey Turner (latterly Tate) AKC Geography & Mathematics, 1940 Mr John Williams Civil Engineering, 1940 Rt Revd Bishop Ambrose Weekes FKC Theology, 1941 James Rolland Mechanical Engineering, 1944 Dr Antony Essex-Cater Medicine, 1945 Ronald Ayerst Chemical Engineering, 1948 Emeritus Professor Michael Barnett Chemistry, 1948 Dr Dennis Thompson Chemistry, 1949 Donald Carpenter AKC French, 1950 Revd Edgar Hornsby Theology, 1950 Peter Care Geography, 1951

Revd Canon Eric James FKC AKC

KCSMD Dr D W J Radcliffe Medicine, 1937 Dr Joyce Grant (latterly Elsom) Medicine, 1946 Dr Harold Cantwell Medicine, 1948 Dr James Hobbs Medicine, 1951 Dr Bernard Poole Medicine, 1954 Dr Christopher Goodwill Medicine, 1957 Andrew Eyles Dentistry, 1964 Dr John Bostock Medicine, 1966 Dr Christopher Wallace Medicine, 1967 Dr Nigel Minett Medicine, 1981

King’s, Theology, 1960 The Very Revd John Lang became Dean of Lichfield in 1980 after heading the BBC’s Religious Broadcasting Department for the best part of a decade. It was not an easy transition. A high-calibre administrator and enabler, at the BBC he had skillfully secured resources which were far beyond reach not long after his departure; at Lichfield, he found an administrative staff consisting of one part-time secretary. Undaunted, and in the face of stiff resistance to change, he set about overhauling Lichfield’s administration, appointing a new headmaster to the struggling cathedral school and raising £1.25 million badly needed for restoration work. More initiatives followed, including the annual Lichfield Festival, which quickly became one of the major arts events in the Midlands. Lang’s career in Holy Orders began as curate at St Mary’s Church, Portsea. Later he became priest-vicar of Southwark Cathedral and chaplain of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, before embarking on his 16-year religious broadcasting career at the BBC. He was appointed a Chaplain to the Queen in 1976. He is survived by his wife, Frances, and three daughters.

John Mumford History, 1951 Revd John Patrick Theology, 1951 Maria Barb (latterly Randall) Chemistry, 1953 George Knapp Spanish, 1953 Roy Thomas AKC Electrical Engineering, 1953 Reginald Browning Law, 1954 John Andrews AKC History, 1955 Kenneth Waller AKC Classics, 1955 Leslie Owen History, 1956 Lord St. John of Fawlsley Law, 1957 Revd Francis Madge AKC Theology, 1958 Sister Margaret Murdock Geography, 1958 Malcolm Pine Classics, 1958 Simon Nugent Classics, 1959 Revd Alfred Tedman AKC Theology, 1959 The Very Revd Dean John Lang Theology, 1960

Judge, benefactor, friend Judge John Toulmin CMG QC FKC

A distinguished judge, former President of the European Bar and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Academy of European Law, John Toulmin was an active member of the King’s community for more than three decades, with a particular interest in the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) and The Dickson Poon School of Law. A reflection of his commitment to the two was the recent benefaction which he and his wife Carolyn made to the College, establishing a lecture series to explore issues connecting law and psychiatry. Carolyn, who survives him, received her law degree from King’s and both have volunteered countless hours to the College. Judge Toulmin served as a Trustee of the IoP, becoming Chairman and a member of the IoP’s Advisory Board. He was nominated by the IoP as an independent member of King’s College Council. He was elected a Fellow of King’s College, appointed an Honorary Visiting Professor in The Dickson Poon School of Law and honoured with the Helen Hudson Award, in recognition of his service.

Jean Phillips (latterly Williams)

King’s, Zoology and Biology, 1944 As Senior Woman Student in 1943, Jean Phillips was instrumental in organising the clean-up of King’s Strand premises and the return of the student body after wartime evacuation. At a celebratory dinner in 1944, the Principal said that he had never known

Dr R Orme 1960 Maurice Parkes Engineering, 1961 Revd Dr Allan Jenkins AKC Theology, 1963 Revd Russell Thomson AKC Theology, 1963 John Crawford Engineering, 1964 Dr John Brown History, 1965 Revd Robert Jones Theology, 1965 Raymond Whitaker French, 1965 John Hughes Law, 1966 Dr Adrienne Simpson (latterly Chilton) Music, 1966 Christopher Esmond AKC Biophysics, 1968 Canon Roger Mason AKC Theology, 1968 Dr Gareth Roberts Chemistry, 1983 Milan Civsa 1986 Michael Batchelor AKC History, 1990 Paul Dyer AKC 1990

Judge John Toulmin

the Student Union to be so well run – quite an accolade in such tough times, which its President later attributed in large part to ‘Jean’s calm and upright stance and maturity’. After graduation, Phillips qualified as a teacher and went on to become Principal of Portsmouth Teacher Training College, the youngest head of any such establishment in the UK.

During her 19 years in charge, she oversaw a five-fold expansion from around 200 to nearly 1,000 students. When it merged with Portsmouth Polytechnic in 1976, she became Vice President of the combined organisation. In 1962 she married Leonard Williams. They had two daughters, also King’s alumni: Heather (Law, 1984) and Mary (English, 1987).

Revd Thomas Heffer AKC Theology & Religious Studies, 1990 Bridget Barlow (latterly Mitchell) Music, 1995 Alison Budden Midwifery, 1996 Shane Donovan PhD, 1997 Dr Nirav Patel Medicine, 1999 Stephen Hodge German with Film Studies, 2005 Robert Scourfield

Dr Percy Praill Chemistry, 1954

Dr David Lawson Medicine, 1942 Dr Errol Edwards Medicine, 1943 Dr David Lyle Medicine, 1944 Dr Charles Palmer Medicine, 1944 Dr Geoffrey Thomas Medicine, 1948 Dr Barrie Bayston Medicine, 1958 Dr Christopher Bartley Medicine, 1962 Dr James Thomas Medicine, 1965 Professor David Morrell OBE Medicine, 1972 Dr Valerie Turnbull (latterly Newman) Medicine, 1972 Dr John Davis Medicine

St Thomas’

College not known

Dr Norman Crofts Medicine, 1942

Iris Whealton (latterly Jones)

Queen Elizabeth College

autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

Letters This summer, a King’s undergraduate named Andrea took a part-time job as a bank cashier in her hometown of Manchester. One morning, a nattily dressed man in his late 40s came to her window. ‘I hope you can help me,’ he said as he approached Andrea. ‘I’m an English professor from the University of Virginia. I’m visiting England for a month with my wife and our two daughters, but I’m afraid I need some help. My wife and my oldest daughter have taken our rental car and gone to Liverpool for the day. It so happens that my phone and wallet are in the car, and our other daughter has just taken ill. I need to buy her some medication immediately, but all of my cash, my credit cards and my ID are in my wallet.’ Andrea looked him over. His accent was certainly American, and he looked like Hollywood’s

interpretation of an English professor: sporting smartly pressed trousers and a corduroy jacket with the requisite elbow patches. He continued, ‘If you would be kind enough to cash a cheque for £50, I would be most grateful.’ ‘And you don’t have any identification?’ said Andrea. ‘No, I’m afraid not. It’s in the rental car,’ he replied. ‘This matter is really urgent. Could you cash the cheque right now?’ Andrea asked, ‘Which of your daughters is sick?’ ‘My youngest,’ he answered. ‘Now will you help me or do I need to speak with your manager?’ ‘Actually,’ Andrea said, ‘I’m going to call my manager right now, because I think you’re a fraud.’ It turns out that she was correct – he was a fraud. What tipped her off? michael kirkham

English professor or fraudster?

Send your solutions to: Logic Puzzle, In Touch, King’s College London, Ground Floor, Strand Bridge House, 138-142 Strand, London, WC2R 1HH or email InTouch@kcl.ac.uk. The three best solutions received before 15 January 2013 will each win a £10 book token

Last issue’s puzzle… Die Hard

IN TOUCH

autumn 2012

Getty Images

Logic Puzzle

In the previous issue of In Touch, you read about a Die Hard-loving student who asked this question: ‘You have a four-gallon jug, a nine-gallon jug and an endless supply of water. What’s the fewest number of steps you need to measure exactly six gallons?’ The answer is you can do it in eight steps, counting each discrete action as a single step: 1. Fill the nine-gallon jug with water. 2. Next, pour the water in the

nine-gallon jug into the four-gallon jug, until it is full. This leaves five gallons in the nine-gallon jug. 3. Empty the four-gallon jug. 4. Fill the four-gallon jug, using the remaining water from the nine-gallon jug. Once the four-gallon jug is filled, you’re left with just one gallon of water in the nine-gallon jug. 5. Empty the four-gallon jug again. 6. Transfer the one gallon of water from the nine-gallon jug into the

four-gallon jug. 7. Fill the nine-gallon jug with water. 8. Begin pouring water from the ninegallon jug into the four-gallon jug. Since the four-gallon jug already had one gallon of water in it, you can only pour another three gallons into it. That leaves six gallons in the nine-gallon jug. Our winners, drawn at random, are Miles Galaska (Classics, 2008), Tashmeen Siddiqui (staff member) and Mike Taylor (Guy’s, Dentistry, 1967)

We always love to hear from our readers, so please drop us a line. The best letter wins a £20 book token. We reserve the right to edit for space and clarity. Write to InTouch@kcl.ac.uk or Letters, In Touch, King’s College London, Ground Floor, Strand Bridge House, 138-142 Strand, London, WC2R 1HH

Last farewell to Churchill

On Saturday 30 January Prize letter 1965 the funeral took place of Sir Winston Churchill. His body lay in state for three days in the Palace of Westminster and a state funeral service was held at St Paul’s Cathedral. I had been attending the Eucharist on a Thursday lunchtime at St Mary-le-Strand, facing King’s. The parish priest was the Revd Bertram Chambers, a lovely man well past retirement age. He realised that the funeral procession from Westminster to

St Paul’s would pass along the Strand, and the tiny churchyard of St Mary-le-Strand would give a wonderful view of the proceedings. He therefore had some tickets produced, simply because the churchyard was so small. He gave some to me, and I gave them to friends – quite forgetting to keep one for myself. On the day itself I presented myself to the policeman on the gate at the churchyard and sought admission. Quite rightly, he asked for my ticket. I explained that I was the person who had been giving out the tickets but had forgotten to keep one for myself. I waited a few seconds while he stared at me. Eventually he let me in. I don’t know whether he thought I had an honest face – or whether he thought no one would be so

stupid as to invent such a story! It was a magnificent occasion, memories of which are still very much with me today. The Revd Prebdy Brian Tubbs AKC, Theology, 1963 A lovely note

The spring 2012 edition of In Touch is the best I have read over a number of years. Full of interesting articles and professionally published. Congratulations to the editorial staff. Dawson Pratt, War Studies, 2001 Memories of Mollison

I was saddened to see the death of Pat Mollison reported in your spring issue. I met him first in Belsen in April 1945 when I was with the 98 medical students sent in as a relieving party. He was in the Royal Army Medical Corps with Alan Prior who turned up later as consultant pathologist in Warwick, where I found him when I moved to Stratford-uponAvon in 1954. When Pat Mollison came to St Thomas’ at the end of the war, I was in my final year having spent the greater part of the war as a student, which I chose to do rather than go down the mines as a Bevin (not Bevan!) Boy. At one point he went to America to meet Dr Wiener who, I believe, with Landsteiner of ABO blood group system fame, had, in 1940, lighted on the Rhesus blood factor. On his return to St Thomas’, Pat Mollison buttonholed Alex Paton (St Thomas’, Medicine, 1947) and me, probably because of our Belsen association, produced some anti-Rhesus serum (which he had brought back from the USA), and asked if we were interested in doing some routine Rhesus typing in Mothercraft, the ante-natal clinic. We were thrilled and flattered to be asked to do the first Rhesus typing this side of the Atlantic, and carried out this work for some time. Professor R A Fisher, the Cambridge geneticist and

mathematician, then came on the scene and predicted the genetic nature of the Rhesus factor, resulting in the adoption by haematologists of the Fisher Cc Dd Ee nomenclature which was simpler and more direct than Wiener’s. This produced some interesting adversarial correspondence in The Lancet. I remember Pat Mollison as a quiet, kind man wedded to his subject, and as someone who has given me a lifelong interest in haematology, which included a two-year stint under John Dacie at Hammersmith, before I decided to devote myself to clinical medicine. Dr Michael Coigley, St Thomas’, Medicine, 1947 A yoo-hoo to ULU

The letter from Margaret Ellis (now Kingston) in the spring issue of In Touch attracted my attention on two counts. 1939 was my first visit to London, when all the talk was the bombing of Croydon Airport. Her mention of funding for a proper University of London Union also awoke memories. Circumstances being what they were at the time, for the fortunate to partake of tertiary education, the decision on my further education was gently guided by a) no tradition, b) no family source of financial support, c) imminent call to serve in the Armed Forces and d) not the least, meager exam results. (The regulator, of something, seems to think that examinations have got easier now.) Being a two-thirds qualified wandering quality surveyor, I worked on the tender documents for the construction of ULU and adjoining buildings. It will be no surprise that, subsequently, for many exservicemen, evening students, postgraduates and those studying for subsequent professional examinations, ULU became a centre for their social activities (including the swimming pool). John Hosking, MSc Law, 1991 autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

ith half of the funding coming from Hong Kong philanthropist Dickson Poon CBE, King’s is investing £40 million in its law school, transforming it into a world leader in the study and analysis of legal issues that extend beyond national boundaries. Mr Poon’s £20 million gift is the largest donation in the College’s history, and the largest ever to a British or European law faculty. The College has renamed the school as The Dickson Poon School of Law in recognition of Mr Poon’s generosity. ‘We now find ourselves in the happy position, almost uniquely amongst law schools, of being able to look to the future in the confidence that we are blessed with the resources we need to overcome the challenges that the future presents,’ says Professor Timothy Macklem, Head of School. Long recognised as one of the most prestigious in Europe, King’s law school is in the midst of a remarkable year. The school moved into Somerset House East Wing in January, and Her Majesty The Queen visited the Strand Campus in February to officially open the renovated landmark. The £40 million investment will establish The Dickson Poon School of Law as a pioneering force in transnational law, a burgeoning field that is becoming ever more vital due to the globalisation of business and legal practice. Part of the outstanding balance will be raised from alumni and friends of the school in the coming years. King’s will use Mr Poon’s gift to drive a worldwide recruitment campaign for eight new distinguished chair positions and a further seven ‘rising stars’. These distinguished chairs will draw the finest junior academics, ensuring the faculty’s long-term development. The process will span five years and the chair appointments will strengthen all areas of teaching. ‘The real attraction to staff is being a member of an academic community of the very highest order,’ says Professor Macklem. ‘This will establish the school, in the eyes of the world, as an unrivalled centre for legal research.’ The gift will also benefit up to 75 students annually

through a scholarship programme targeting the best and brightest; 15 of these scholarships will be reserved for students resident in Hong Kong or mainland China. The donation has been well-received by the existing student body, says Jillian Lee, a law undergraduate and President of the King’s Law Student Council. She hails the scholarships as both ‘an incentive for students to constantly seek to improve themselves’ and ‘much-needed assistance to students, especially in this current economic climate’. Lee also believes the donation reflects both the cultural diversity within the student body and King’s global standing. ‘As an Asian myself, I think that this will put King’s in a different light compared to other European law faculties and will bring in a lot more students from Asia in the future.’ Mr Poon is Group Executive Chairman of the Dickson Group of Companies and is well-known for his philanthropic support of education and healthcare. ‘My donation reflects a shared enthusiasm with the distinguished Law Faculty at King’s to set new standards in legal education and research,’ Mr Poon said at the gift’s announcement in Hong Kong. ‘Our unique focus on transnational law will groom the future leaders needed to guide an increasingly connected world.’ Also speaking at the announcement, the Principal, Professor Sir Richard Trainor, stated: ‘This £40 million project has only been made possible thanks to the extraordinary vision of Dickson Poon. The creation of The Dickson Poon School of Law is a milestone achievement in the 180-year history of King’s College London and will open a new era of academic opportunity.’ The investment will fund several initiatives, including a regular Davos-like transnational law conference, a major legal meeting for all the top contributors to create a global consensus, an executive MBA-style LLM programme and a distinguished visitor series. ‘We will have to show ourselves to be worthy of the investment that has been made in us, worthy of the fabulous physical setting in which we now work, worthy of the lofty ambitions that the Dickson Poon project has set for us,’ says Professor Macklem. ‘There is no doubt in my mind that the School of Law that we all hold in our mind’s eye is capable of this.’

Left, Dickson Poon in Somerset House East Wing

This will put King’s in a different light

Thanks to a remarkably generous gift, The Dickson Poon School of Law is set to become a pioneering force in transnational law

Law

IN TOUCH

autumn 2012

more information

karen robinson

for an increasingly connected world

Help make King's the leader in transnational law. Call +44 (0)20 7848 4701 or email giving@kcl.ac.uk

autumn 2012 IN TOUCH

Erich Auerbach/Getty Images

london & me

nights at the opera

The singing of Geraint Evans, above, was a special part of Jill Lister’s time at King’s

IN TOUCH

autumn 2012

When I first came to King’s I had accommodation in north London, far from the campus, and I soon tired of the Tube ride. I wanted to be much closer to King’s, so I went to see the Lodgings Bureau. That’s how I learned about Mrs Miller, who was willing to let a room to a student. Mrs Miller, a very charming lady, lived in a large flat on the fourth floor of Irving House, which was located in Irving Street, just off of Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square. It was within walking distance of the College. I was so very lucky to find Mrs Miller and I stayed at Irving House for the most of the rest of my time at King’s, either with Mrs Miller or her friend and neighbour Miss Roberts. My lodgings with kindly Mrs Miller comprised a very comfortable bed-sitting room in a flat right in the centre of the action – the rush and hurry of the capital city. Needless to say, I loved everything about it. There was another wonderful benefit to living at Irving House: Mrs Miller had contacts with Covent Garden and on occasions when a box became free she was

telephoned and offered the box, and she would sometimes invite me to join her. She’d ask, ‘Would you like to see Aida, my dear?’ Of course I would say yes. ‘Would any of your friends care to join us?’ So I would call some of my fellow students and we were welcomed by Mrs Miller as her guests for performances such as Aida and The Marriage of Figaro. I have only to hear a recording of John Pritchard conducting the overture to The Marriage of Figaro to recall the wonderful singing of Geraint Evans and so many other memorable associations of my time at King’s – not forgetting the excellent legal education and college life, in particular the lively exchanges in the debating society, which I so enjoyed during those very happy student days. Opera was, however, an important part of what made attending university in London special. I didn’t realise at the time how fortunate I was. All thanks to the Lodgings Bureau! Jill Lister, Law, 1957

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Visit alumni.kcl.ac.uk to learn how you can access JSTOR journals and also take advantage of many other exclusive alumni beneﬁts, including: z Library membership z King’s Connections career directory z Discounts for language courses and KCLSU Kinetic Gym z Information on international alumni groups, ﬁnding friends and message-forwarding If you’re not already part of Alumni Online, register to become a member. It’s free and only takes a few minutes. For more information, contact the Alumni Office on +44 (0)20 7848 3053 or alumoff@kcl.ac.uk 2

IN TOUCH

AUTUMN 2011

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