The Pembrokian, Issue 35, Jul 2011

A day in the life of The Hall

Pink Panther, Berliner Bahnhof, Zumba, Stomp and Gargoyles

Leader of the Band

The Tutorial System

Not just a City Breakfast

ISSUE NO. NO. 35 35 - JULY 2011 ISSUE JULY 2011

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PEMBROKIAN Contents A sense of togetherness Andrew Seton

The Tutorial System Tim Farrant

3 It’s great time to be a neuroimaging scientist 6 Irene Tracey ‘I’ve come to Earth’

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David Knowles (1979) Life in a croft

Pink Panther, Berliner Bahnhof, Zumba, Stomp and Gargoyles 8 More interesting (and better value?)

Lydia Lewis than the large Hadron Collider MCR-Alumni Seminar Hilary 2011 10 Ben Davis Sam Wills ‘An Incandescent experience’ Accessing Oxford and Beyond 11 Sam Baker Peter Claus and Ian Power College Life A Day in the Life of the Hall 12 Not just a city Breakfast Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat Robin Wilson

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Clive Stainton + Nigel Jackson

16 Pembroke students go NorthWest

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Rebecca Wilson

Pembroke as a Venue With the new kitchens, refurbished hall and, of course the spectacular bar, there has perhaps never been a better time for alumni to think about using the facilities of their College as a venue for a special occasion – whether a private family event or for corporate entertaining. We can offer a range of catered functions even in term time and, of course, out of term we can usually offer overnight accommodation too, with a large number of high quality en-suite rooms.

accommodate conferences of up to around 40 guests (depending on preferred layout), as can the Mary Hyde Eccles room in the Samuel Johnson building (formerly staircase 8), itself extensively renovated just a few years ago.

We look forward, naturally, to the completion of the new build and the superb additional facilities it will offer, especially the 170 seat multifunction theatre but for smaller conferences, there is no need to wait – the Forte Room, enlarged and beautifully re-appointed as part of the kitchen/hall refurbishment project, can

Heather Earwicker Conference & Events Manager Joanne Bowley Conference Assistant Email: conferences@pmb.ox.ac.uk Telephone: 01865 276484 Pembroke College, Oxford, Oxon. OX1 1DW Web: www.pmb.ox.ac.uk/conferences

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If you are interested in using the College for your event (whether for yourself or your company), please contact the Conference and Events team to discuss your requirements.

Photos by Quintin Lake

Greg Neale (1999)

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A SENSE OF

By Andrew Seton Strategic Development Director

TOGETHERNESS

For much of last year, and until the end of Hilary Term this year, Pembroke suffered a temporary loss of that most collegiate of spaces: its dining hall. We ate in a Nissen hut for a while – and we survived the blitz of builders. How fantastic then, to celebrate the Spring re-opening of the Hall this year, the successful functioning of the new kitchen and servery, not to mention the new bar, and the much smarter, enlarged Forte Room. And all on time, on budget and according to original specification. Good on us, we put up with

all that discomfort and a strong bursar-led team to make it all bearable. The result - a superlative boost to the facilities which help make Pembroke fundamentally a College.

There is an awful lot of talk about colleges being communities. It is certainly a source of strength that we are smaller than universities and, that we are multi-disciplinary. However my recollection of Oxford several decades ago, was that my college community was no more than that, and had no plans to get

better: it consisted mainly of students and to a lesser extent, tutors who taught them besides doing their own thing (i.e. research), with a smattering of post-graduates who occasionally turned up to a meal but did not really seem to belong in the place. Being one of the less engaged members of this community par excellence, i.e. a student destined to leave it after 3 years, it was difficult in those days to see any need to question either the ‘future direction’ of this community, or indeed, the apparent treading of water I could see

Breakout Session at Ditchley Park

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everywhere around me. It all felt comfortable and bound to continue for ever. I am sure everyone has felt like that about some or other place where they have spent time during their lives, be it home, workplace, or school/college.

Perceptions might differ, of course, depending on your role in the place, and whether you are a mover and shaker or just enjoying the ride.

At various times, and in some colleges, the direction might have been characterised as no more than an instinct for survival. Today our existence at Pembroke, whether we like it or not, is questioned far more than in the past: the questions are many and varied, not always the ones we wish to be asked but always insistent.

They range from the reasonable: “are tutorials economically viable?” to the more outlandish “is Oxford doing enough to promote social mobility?” (which is not the same as encouraging talented sixth-formers from all backgrounds to aim high and thus widen our pool of excellent applicants to help us advance learning and science). As public money gets ever tighter, and as more such questions are asked, we cannot rely on just a survival strategy to survive, we have to swim and not just tread water.

At Pembroke, we have never had the luxury of a substantial endowment in terms of land, money or other assets, and perhaps this has been one of the major drivers in a search to shape and plan the future more deliberately than others.

Perhaps in recent times, another driver has been the sense that the broad community has become closer than before and more people within it are aware and interested in what happens next; in how to make it exciting and not merely durable.

And so, while much of the past academic year has seen the Campaign bus drive round the world connecting our alumni groups in the USA, Dubai, Hong Kong as well as Edinburgh and Manchester with our community in Oxford, we have also paused for a deep breath nearer to home – in the Cotswolds as it happens. In leafy surroundings, we considered, over a weekend in the company of an invited group of alumni from around the world, our longer-term strategy - beyond Bridging Centuries.

That event, held at Ditchley Park conference centre, was a high point in the year for many of us and I think for all the participants. It proved that our alumni can choose to be serious stakeholders, and that the Pembroke community does not shrink, or simply remain the same size

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with an annual replenishment, each time our students graduate. At Ditchley Park, friends, alumni and their partners could rub shoulders with many of our Fellows, as well as JCR and MCR officers (who show much more engagement than was the case in my day with the common aspirations of the Oxford community). They took part in discussions which will help to shape our academic future, as well as examining our financial goals, encouraged by drop-in visits from the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor.

The event was a serious milestone in the College’s planning agenda, no mere entertainment for an outside audience. When the current strategy cycle is complete later in the year, we shall have more to tell everyone about Pembroke’s plans but be aware that we received every encouragement to be bold and ambitious. Treading water is not an option: the shape of undergraduate teaching, the increasing importance of post-graduate research and a clear identity for the College need to be established and properly communicated. For a flavour of those debates, consider Tim Farrant’s piece on the tutorial system, something that needs a clear and proper definition, with its true contribution spelt out and convincingly communicated to an often sceptical -public.

Back on the ‘bus’ now, ready to raise the final £7m to complete the commitments needed for Bridging Centuries. Let this year’s Pembrokian offering show you once more what an extraordinary place you belong to. What these pages reveal is more of the College’s heritage of fascinating personalities (Viz, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Bat), its living body of distinguished and prominent alumni (viz. the revealing visit of Lord (Michael) Heseltine) and the life and thoughts of its dynamic community. From the honouring of Pembroke’s very own birdman, Alex Kacelnik to the leadership of the University Orchestra by our Junior Organ Scholar, Henry Chandler; from the joys of friends reunited at the savoury delights of a ‘well-regulated’ City Breakfast to the saccharine future, predicted by Professor Ben Davis. Enjoy!

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1 Kitchen Tour (Ossulston Lunch) 2 Campaign Launch UK 3 Campaign Launch Edinburgh 4 Campaign Launch Dubai 5 Careers Fest 6 4th City Breakfast – Hector Sants 7 Gaudy 1998-2000 8 Gaudy 1989-1991

9 Gaudy 1995-1997 10 New Building – breaking ground 11 Pembroke down under – N Zealand 12 Pembroke down under – Australia 13 Ossulston Lunch 14 Tesdale Lunch 15 Campaign Launch USA 16 Paris Alumni Dinner

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The Tutorial System teaching, interface, synergy

By Tim Farrant Vicegerent and tutor in French

Tutorials are often said to be one of Oxford’s “unique selling points”, but what are they, what do they really mean? From his special perspective as a tutor in the classical humanities, Tim Farrant attempts to define what the tutorial system as a whole entails and to identify the particular benefits which it brings as an “interface”.

Oxford is seen as indissociable from ‘the tutorial system’. But what is a tutorial, what is this system, and what factors in our way of running it might be special to Pembroke?

The tutorial system is often thought of as the one-to-one teaching of students in colleges as the main or sole means of of education. But, while much teaching is still done one-to-one, paired tutorials are now the norm, and they can often be in threes and fours. If courses are still built around the frequent, generally weekly, encounter with the tutor, for which the student’s essays are prepared and read, tutorials exist in dialogue, interface and synergy with many other forms of learning, both in College and outside, in lectures, seminars, and in individual reading, reflection, and research – not to mention the many vibrant, spontaneous, ongoing conversations which continue outside formal fora, and which are central to Oxford life.

Dialogue is at the heart of the tutorial system.

Its crucial features are: rigour; proximity; responsiveness; partnership; continuity; and care.

The tutor has stewardship of the students, from

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their first contact with college, at, say, Open Days, and supports them throughout their career.

The tutorial system is at least as much a tutelary system, whereby the tutor may both teach them personally and oversee their progress in other hands. It is a personal system, from beginning to end – from the candidate’s choice of college, and the tutor’s choice of students, on the basis of potential as well as achievement, on perception and responsiveness, the ability to spot things and make connections, as well as on what has already been learnt. A tutorial is a live encounter, a conversation, and a partnership, based on a common and ongoing commitment to discovery, judgement, and the development of learning.

The student’s essay forms the core of the tutorial, as the answer to a question, and the first move in a quest for knowledge and understanding which grows in the tutorial and beyond. The essay is, at root, a weighing, a balance, an attempt, and it is from that attempt to get to grips with a subject that dialogue and understanding comes. Learning emerges from the student’s, as well as the tutor’s input, from the essay’s particular emphases and argument; the

dialogue develops as the tutor picks up, directs and corrects points and positions, suggests, modifies and criticises interpretations and lines of enquiry – all things the student is equally free to do. The system is incremental – the course, conclusions and outcome of one tutorial may inflect the subject of another, as understanding builds – permissive, and enabling: tutorial essays are rarely coursework, directly contributing to final marks in an exam. The tutorial gives the freedom to make education what it really is, a drawing-out of what is present in potential in the scholar and the subject; to engage in at attempts at understanding which may not always succeed, but from whose failures and mistakes we can learn. Tutorials can teach more rigorously than any other system the close analysis and critical reflexivity indispensable to confident and firmly-grounded autonomous study, action, and judgement. Our courses not only cover more, and more intensively, than courses almost anywhere else: the weekly discipline of defending views before tutors and peers at close quarters encourages judiciousness, precision, and circumspection, and equips students with

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the ability to work quickly and efficiently, to analyse and synthesize large amounts of reading and other material and to construct robust arguments for the weekly essay or the threehour exam. Students are prepared for work at a high level, under pressure, with a key skill which is transferable, as well as knowledge in their own subject. These are the features which make the tutorial system so indispensable, and our graduates so sought after by employers, and so successful in many careers. The tutorial system, because it is so rigorously academic, provides an unrivalled education for life.

The tutorial system, then, makes teaching here different, not just in tutorials themselves, but in terms of what may be more broadly called interface, not just electronic, but actual: the personal presence of scholars at all levels interacting for a common goal. World-class experts are on-site and accessible, not just delivering one-off, set-piece lectures, but selecting and teaching first-years as much as graduates, or giving papers to colleagues, experimenting, researching, discovering, and making a full contribution to running the college and university as well. Hardly anywhere else has this close and multifaceted engagement: in most world universities, education is a matter of mass lectures, classes and seminars, and of detachment between teaching and other aspects of university life. But we are small enough to be individual, and big enough to be significant: world class, with the top departments, research, teaching, people, yet reachable, and here.

The system, then, is an interface, and Pembroke is taking its interface further than ever before.

Our reachability, and outreach, function at many levels, from pre-application mentoring and open days to finals, postgraduate study, and beyond. It takes many forms – not just pedagogic (tutorials, lectures, classes), but also ‘meta-’ and ‘extrapedagogic’ – the conceptual, policy-making, domestic, pastoral, practical, administrative, financial, and operational business which goes on in the college. Not to mention, of course, the extra-curricular – all the other activities, sporting, social, artistic, musical, ethical, dramatic, outreach, which are at the heart of college life.

Pembroke has them in peculiar concentration, quality and abundance, by dint of the exceptional character and commitment of its members, starting with the Master, Fellows and lecturers, but not ending with the students or the staff.

Pembroke is truly tutelary in the fostering of its activities, and in the clarity, drive, and focus with which it pursues its aims. One of the College’s particular features is in the close involvement of its students, but Junior and Middle Common Rooms, not just in study, but in management and strategy. One thing we all learn, and learn to do well here, is how to work together. Pembroke is a synergy. And it’s a peculiarly vibrant synergy because of its focus, talents, energy, and drive.

We need to build on that synergy and interface, not just tutorially, or at one level (undergraduate, postgraduate) but ‘horizontally’, via the interdisciplinary mixing of disciplines, at undergraduate, postgraduate, and research (including research centre) level. We need to do it ‘vertically’, from mentoring pre-Admissions, preapplication (for example via, but not exclusively via, access) to careers networking and beyond.

And we need to do it across time, using both experienced colleagues with the long view, and new recruits, postgraduate teaching assistants and researchers, and who will bring fresh impetus and ideas – as well as, of course, with students and alumni. Our tremendous assets will need protection, husbanding and development for us to continue defining ourselves as we wish.

Strong outside pressures to rationalise teaching, particularly in the Humanities, may jeopardise the tutorial and college system as we know it, grouping students together in larger groups with fewer, less frequent ‘assignments’, distancing the close engagement between tutors and students which is our greatest asset.

I believe Pembroke is bigger than this, because our ‘tutorial system’ goes far beyond what is usually understood by the phrase. It encompasses the centripetal, internal, interface, but also

centrifugal, outreach energies which make our college strong. But we will have to make a firm case for the value of close, small group, regular, tutorial engagement, especially in the Humanities, because teaching history, literature, philosophy, is not just teaching a skill, because the input of the individual, small-scale dialogue, is that much more important. We need to make a case for the Humanities tout court: they are at the centre of cultural, political (and by extension economic and social) gravity, and of what makes us human, of our memory and identity; they cast our past, and shape our future. We need the Humanities more than ever, to understand, articulate and mediate our place in the world, and our engagement with others. Pembroke today is strong in arts, in music, in drama, as well as strong in sport. Pembroke is young, cosmopolitan, outward-facing and international, forward-looking and progressive, as well as anchored in tradition. But we need to ensure that we attract the best candidates, whatever their background, and that they stay here, rather than going to institutions with more resources – accommodation, bursaries, scholarships. We will need many more resources to ensure that students and tutors stay here, and to make a success of access, which we must.

We need resources to protect and develop the tutorial system, and the freedom of its students, researchers, and tutors. Pembroke can only operate optimally if those scholars retain a high degree of autonomy in terms of what they do and how. The tutorial system has at its heart interaction and autonomy: engagement between its participants, yet autonomy in encouraging and enabling freedom of enquiry, argument and judgement which sets its members free. Its best success comes when students outstrip their tutor; its enduring reward is a dialogue for life.

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Pink Panther, Berliner, Bahnhof, Zumba, Stomp and Gargoyles...

It’s Pembroke Arts Week!

By Lydia Lewis JCR President

Photo by Adam Lindley 1st and 3rd prize winners Dyedra Just and Fitzroy Morrissey with the competition’s judge, Michael Stanley.

Art...

We kicked off Arts Week in style with a typically Pembrokian-themed ‘Big Art Attack’, as inspired by the nineties children’s TV show, coordinated by Matilda Smith. After having pondered the feasibility of recreating Samuel Johnson’s head through the medium of ‘anything-we-could-find-nearby’, we decided this was perhaps a little over-ambitious and settled for the suitably-coloured Pembroke mascot, the Pink Panther.

We attempted this via an assortment of pink shower curtains, various fruits, plates, highly appropriate ‘pink panther’ wafers etc.; even getting one helpful fresher to don the Pink Panther outfit for photos once we had created our masterpiece in giant form on Chapel Quad.

This was followed two days later by a landscape class in the beautiful surroundings of Christ Church meadows, and the next day by our grand finale, the annual student Art Prize. The standard of work this year reached a new high, with more than ten students submitting artworks, from photographs to sculptures, videos to paintings, and all displayed (and standing their ground next to) the collection in our stunning Emery Gallery, including works

by Dame Elizabeth Frink, Lynn Chadwick, Minton, and our newest purchase, a highly-intricate Tom Phillips collage.

We were very privileged to have as our judge Michael Stanley, Director of Modern Art Oxford, who gave first prize to a quirky and ‘logical’ film of the Berliner Bahnhof

by First-year student Dyedra Just. A wonderful display of the breadth of artistic talent to be found at Pembroke and a fantastic way to finish the week on a high!

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Music...

Music both opened and closed Pembroke’s arts week, providing melodic interludes to brighten the day. The week began with a concert in the chapel featuring internationally renowned performers Yvonne Friedli and Cristoph Ostendorf from Berlin, as well as several numbers from the Pembroke Choir. Tuesday things began to get interactive, with a Zumba class for all those wanting to exercise through dancing to an exciting fusion of Latin styles from salsa to samba. For those less physically inclined, there was a superb recital in the Master’s house which saw a diverse range of musical styles, from Adele to Beethoven, with highlights including an “angelic” rendition of Elgar’s ‘The Snow’. Wednesday, was similarly varied offering a workshop exploring the rhythmic techniques used by the show STOMP!, and a concert in the chapel to raise money for Japan showcasing a wide variety of talent both from within Pembroke and without

Drama...

On the Wednesday night of Arts Week, in the wake of a successful performance of Maths Fellow Robin Wilson’s ‘Alice in Pembrokeland’ on the evening of the previous Monday in the JCR, a big crowd which included Pembroke students from across the year groups gathered in the marquee that had been set up on Chapel Quad to enjoy the one and only performance of a short play which had been written by a group of their peers. The play, about a Pembroke

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alumnus and his dreams to attain recognition as a scriptwriter and actor (even if only through an outrageous involvement in Pembroke Arts Week!), was incredibly funny, and perfectly pitched for the audience and the event. Particularly well received was the onstage representation of current JCR President Lydia Lewis by a male actor!

The admiring crowd were highly amused throughout, and the performance represented a great achievement for its writers and large cast of performers.

The Big Event After a jam-packed and entertaining Arts Week we held a final event to round the week off.

Performers from across the University came and performed in the marquee on Chapel Quad. We had musical performances from some of our own very talented students, followed by stand-up comedians and rounded off with Oxford’s current number one a capella group - The Gargoyles. It was an outstanding evening of entertainment showing off some of Oxford’s best talent, and enjoyed by a large crowd of Pembroke supporters.

A massive thank you to all those involved in Arts Week, yet again Pembroke pulled together to put on a very enjoyable week for all.

Matilda Smith, William Tyrrell, Samuel Elwin and Lydia Lewis.

Photo by jakegalson.com

Photo by Adam Lindley

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MCR-Alumni Seminar Hilary 2011 diligent student in his early days, failing all three of his preliminaries on their first attempt, he did redeem himself before going down. On completing his finals with a second his tutor, Neville Ward-Perkins, described the result as a “great and undeserved triumph”. Whilst studying for finals in his tenth term Lord Heseltine also served as President of the Oxford Union, realising a fixation held since his schooldays. Amongst a number of achievements during his term, perhaps none has been so fondly remembered as the establishment of the Union’s cellar bar, now in service as the Purple Turtle some fifty years later.

By Sam Wills MCR President

From his undergraduate days Lord Heseltine moved on to his experiences in business. His first forays were in property with fellow Pembrokian Ian Josephs (1951).

Rapid success was to follow in publishing, with the opportunity to acquire the magazine “Man about Town”.

The subsequent growth of his publishing company, Haymarket, assured financial independence. Lord Heseltine credited his success in politics to the freedom this independence provided: being flexible enough to bide time in both opposition and on the backbench.

“I’m a glass half-full person” was how Lord Michael Heseltine (PPE, 1951) characterised himself, and this was the lasting impression he left on the packed audience in Broadgates Hall at the MCR-Alumni Seminar in Hilary 2011. Such optimism seemed to lie at the foundation of Lord Heseltine’s considerable achievements in both business and politics, illustrating to the students present the power of self confidence and a positive outlook.

Speaking effortlessly and candidly, Lord Heseltine succeeded in shrinking Broadgates Hall to something approximating a fireside chat and led those in attendance on a short tour of his life. Starting with what was described as a modest childhood, Lord Heseltine touched on a flirtation with politics in the 1951 General Election, before coming up to Pembroke to read PPE. Expressing a deep affection for his years at Oxford, Lord Heseltine confessed that he was swept away more by the student politics of the day, and their manifestation in the debates at the Oxford Union, than by his tutorials in Pembroke. While this meant that he was not the most

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Lord Heseltine then described his political life through a series of episodes. One such snapshot was his work with foreign governments on funding the Concorde, as Minister for Aerospace in 1973. Lord Heseltine recalled these negotiations with great fondness, and an appetite for foreign policy that was to characterise his support for European integration in his later years. Lord Heseltine spent less time on the more heavily publicised aspects of domestic policy. Little comment was given on the 1990 Conservative Party leadership contest with Margaret Thatcher and John Major, except on the mutual admiration held between Heseltine and Major.

The seminar concluded with a brief insight into Lord Heseltine’s passion for gardening. In this arena too Lord Heseltine showed his fascination with the foreign, describing his enjoyment of bringing floral species from abroad to his arboretum in Northamptonshire.

For the audience, the talk was enlightening and wellreceived. For Pembroke, the seminar was an opportunity to invite another distinguished alumnus back to share his experiences with a new generation of students. The MCR-Alumni Series continues in 2011 with what looks to be another excellent schedule of speakers.

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Accessing Oxford and beyond

By Peter Claus.

Pembroke College Ian Power, BSix Sixth Form College

Another successful year of the ‘Pem-Brooke’ collaborative outreach programme will come to an end in August when 25 A’Level students from East London come to Pembroke College for a week long residential summer school.

The group of select students from BSix Brooke House Sixth Form, Hackney and NewVic Sixth Form in Newham have completed an intense schedule of multi-disciplinary lectures which began in February and concluded with a Study Skills programme during the Easter Break.

The aim of the programme is to challenge talented students with undergraduate style lectures as they study for their A’Levels while at the same time giving the students an insight into the student experience at Oxford and informing their University choices by providing course information and admissions guidance.

This year saw participants attend six lectures based on themes connected to Enlightenment and Romanticism at the CitiBank headquarters in Canary Wharf, London. The students examined the impact the Enlightenment had across a number of different areas including politics, philosophy, literature, history, economics and science.

Students engaged with the topics through readings, lectures and discussion and most delivered presentations to the group.

The programme is taught mainly by Pembroke historian Dr Peter Claus and has seen a number of students progress into courses at Oxbridge and Russell Group universities. Shirley Tetteh is one such student, currently studying an A’Level Humanities at BSix, who has been offered a place to read English at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford.

Shirley, who took her GCSEs at Woodside Park school in north Finchley, joined BSix in September 2009. As a member of the Pem-Brooke programme, she has attended all the seminars, visits to Oxford and the summer school. At the summer school,

Shirley won a Pembroke JCR sponsored Scholars prize for being the best student on the programme. This involved Shirley attending a week long residential school at a major educational charity at a campus outside Cambridge. Shirley was praised by the Oxford undergraduates, who assist in the running of the summer school, for “already studying like an undergraduate”.

“I really enjoyed the time I spent at Oxford” says Shirley. “There was a really nice atmosphere and some of the academic lectures we attended were simply amazing, including a fascinating one delivered by the College chaplain [Andrew Teal] on saints through the ages”. “The programme really helped me to get my head around a lot of the application information and in getting a general idea of what it would be like to live and study at Oxford”. “A key concern was whether I would fit in at Oxford, but having taken part in the programme I now

know I will fit in just fine. Not only did the programme help me get sorted for the future, it helped to motivate me to do the work required to get into somewhere like Oxford” concludes Shirley.

The Pem-Brooke programme continues this summer with the residential summer school at the Pembroke College campus in Oxford to be taught by Pembroke College undergraduates and postgraduates with contributions from Fellows.

Dr Claus expressed his gratitude for charitable and JCR funding received to run the programme and efforts made

by Pembroke students that help deliver this innovative programme. “Pembroke contributes to the university’s widening participation strategy in the north-west, and with the “Pem-brooke” scheme the college is in the forefront of Access activity across the collegiate university’.

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Halt Dinner, 6th Week For more information please check the intranet

Sunday - Formal Half, be seated by 19.10 Carrot arid Coriander Soup Breast of Chicken with Wild Mushroom Sauce Wild Mushroom and hutterbean Crepe Chocolate Fudge Cake and Cream Monday - 18.30-19.30 Informal Hall Carvery Selection or Meats SorFid with Yorkshire Pudding Red Onion and Goat's Cheese Tart Selection of Sweets and Fruit Tuesday - Formal Half, be seated by 18.10 Mexican night Chilli Con Came kin th Rice.

Tortilla Wrap, Nachos and Dips and 5 Bean Salad Slices of Fresh Fruit

Wednesday - 17.30-78.30 Early Informal Half Selection of Pasta and Sauces served with Garlic Bread Selection of Sweets and Fresh Fruit Thursday - Formal Hall. be seated by 19.10 Mushrooms sauteed in Garlic and Parsley hurter served with a Bread Cradle Beef and Veg. Cobbler Veg. Cobbler Strawberry Fool Friday - 17.30-18.30 Early Informal Nall

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“It’s exciting. We’ve got more space, everything’s brighter and lighter, we’ve got great new equipment – it’s really a happier place to work.” It’s mid-afternoon on the Wednesday of Sixth week, and Chris Allnutt is already well into his stride. Pembroke’s 29-year-old sous chef – he is second in command to head chef, Kevin Dudley - is looking ahead to the evening’s work, and commenting on life since a £3.7 million refurbishment of the College Hall and kitchens was completed earlier this year.

In many ways, the Hall is the social centre of Pembroke life. Every Pembrokian will have memories of meals, formal and informal, and every year those memories are rekindled at gaudies and other gatherings. But most Pembrokians will have little idea of what goes on behind the scenes in the building. I set out to watch a day unfold there.

For more than a year, the college has resounded to work on the Hall, part of Pembroke’s planned expansion, via a bridge across Brewer Street, to a new quadrangle and set of buildings that are currently under construction. the temporary cooking and dining accommodation – based in in a very cramped temporary building in North Quad has now been removed, and life has returned, renewed, to the Hall complex. Inside the Hall itself, with its magnificent hammerbeam roof, stained glass windows, oil paintings and heraldic crests, little seems changed.

Underfloor heating has been installed,

however, and tiles restored. But a clue to the wider changes is already apparent: the clutter of movable serving trolleys that used to greet entrants to the Screens Passage immediately on entering the Hall has now gone, and a gleaming new servery now awaits informal dinners, though it is hidden from formal dinners by carved wooden “secret” doors within the panelling.

Before I can inspect it, my tour takes me, via a newly installed lift, to the new basement ‘prep’ kitchens – and a series of gleaming rooms in which food is stored and prepared.

Chris Allnutt takes time out from working for the night’s two evening meals - an informal serving from 5.30-6.30 and the Boat Club’s formal Summer Eights dinner an hour later – to show me around. Vegetables are being peeled, chopped and diced. Meat is being prepared, and bread has already been baked.

or diced chicken, sausages by the yard and spuds by the sack full.

For most students, their immediate contact with the kitchens will come in the shiny new servery just a few feet from the ovens. Here food is cooked and then transferred to a serving island. Cold food and drinks are served from other units.

It’s 4.30, and in an hour it will be time for informal dinner. I leave Chris Allnutt and his team, and search out the Bursar, John Church. The man who is overseeing the entire Pembroke: Bridging Centuries project is delighted at the completion of the latest stage. “We’ve brought it in on time and on budget,” he tells me. “We’ve stripped the building to its core for the first time since it was built (the Hall dates from 1848-1850), installed a service lift, a public lift, toilets and showers, extended the Forte Room (it can now accommodate 50 people), built and equipped the new kitchens and servery, and we’ve also built a new Cellar Bar, running underneath the Hall itself.”

John Church also points out that Pembroke’s commitment to involving local companies has benefited from skills including architects Berman Guedes Stretton and builders Benfield and Loxley, as well as the support of Oxford City Council’s various departments. “It’s been a real team effort,” he stresses. The result, he thinks, was summed up when he recently took a group of bursars from other colleges around the Hall complex. “They were all very impressed,” he says. “I think we’ve now got some of the best kitchen and bar facilities in Oxford”.

“The new kitchens have made a hell of a difference,” Chris says. “We’ve two-to-three times as much space as before, we’ve got natural light, we’ve state-of-the-art equipment including eight ovens instead of the two we had before. Now, we can think of cooking a wider range of food, we can provide new menus – and we don’t have to worry about the odd tile falling off the walls!”

Clearly journalistic investigation of the new bar will be required later, but before then, it’s time to consult consumer opinion. Students are already in the new servery when I return to the Hall. Tonight’s informal dinner menu includes a selection of pasta and sauces, sweets and fruit.

Other days give an indication of the variety now available – there’s a ‘Mexican Night’ and a ‘BBQ’ promised, while formal dinners are equally varied.

The new kitchens are designed to handle a heavy load. Head Chef, Kevin Dudley, reels off lists of some of the foodstuffs that are handled each week – cases of eggs and tomatoes, blocks of butter, kilos-worth of peas

Sam Elwin, a first-year History student, is enthusiastic about the new service. “It’s light, clean and airy”, he says of the servery, while Matthew Garner, a Chemistry undergraduate

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thinks it has improved the speed food can be served. In the Hall itself, I find a general sense that Pembroke’s new kitchens are meeting the needs of a new generation. “It’s more practical, but at the same time, it hasn’t changed the atmosphere of a formal dinner,” says Piotr Galeziak, a Polish student who is reading History and Politics. Hiba Mohamad is also in her first year, reading Arabic and Islamic Studies. She appreciates a diversity of food and cooking that can meet the dietary requirements of a wider range of students. “It’s really good: there is more choice,” she says.

Just as the informal dinner is proceeding, so the kitchen and serving staff are getting ready for tonight’s formal dinner. Robert Wilson, the College Steward, is in no doubt that the Hall’s refurbishment is a success. “It’s already difficult to imagine how we coped before,” he says.

By 6.30, the last informal diners are leaving, and the Hall is being prepared for the formal dinner that will follow in an hour. I watch tables being set, as College silver and glassware appears, and candles put in place.

Meanwhile, Chris Allnutt and his team – it includes young chefs who are training for their NVQ qualifications – are bringing a second menu to the point of readiness. The Pembroke Boat Club and their guests will enjoy an entrée of sea bass, garnished with lime and chives, before a main course of pan-fried breast of duck, cooked in honey. Strawberry cheesecake and fresh strawberries to follow, with a sauvignon blanc and a rioja on the wine list.

Half an hour later, as he decants bottles of port, Robert Wilson tells me of a menu that came to light some years ago, for a formal dinner held just before the First World War. “Ten courses,” he remarks, “most of which we’d never heard of”. Today’s meals are less elaborate, perhaps, but the skills with which they are brought to table are no less accomplished. A small team of cooks and serving staff will ensure that some sixty people will enjoy the Boat Club dinner as much as any of their Pembroke forebears.

Outside, in the early June evening, Boat Club members are gathering for a photograph.

Inside, Robert Wilson overseas the final preparations in the Hall, while Chris Allnutt times the final moments of cooking to the second, ensuring that all is ready in the

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Photo by Quintin Lake

servery. Over the next hours, there’s a steady progression of plates to place; and an equally steady return of china and cutlery to the impressive washing up machines in another part of the new kitchens. At one point, a guest arrives late; she is seated and being served, I note, within 48 seconds.

The dinner proceeding smoothly, this correspondent adjourns to the other new feature of the refurbished Hall. A basement cellar bar, with fine vaulted brick ceilings, stylish tables and chairs, and an impressive array of beer pumps, now runs the length of the basement. Presiding over it, Len Weekes – himself a Pembroke institution – and his assistant, Karen Seeley – find themselves in surroundings that seem a lifetime away from the cramped bar that has been replaced.

I’ve no desire to intrude into private grief, so I wait till Len has poured my pint before I ask him about Chelsea’s season. Meanwhile, I ask him how students have reacted to the move.

“Cherwell once described the old bar as a bear pit – adding ‘not that there was anything wrong with a bear pit’,” he laughs. “As soon as you got five or six people in the old bar, it would feel crowded. Now we’ve got more space, but we’ll not want for atmosphere. I think this could be the best college bar in Oxford.”

It won’t just be students who will benefit from the Hall’s refurbishment, of course, and the development will boost conference and other visiting activities. But there is a sense of continuing tradition amid the change as I walk back upstairs. In the Hall, the Boat Club dinner ends with speeches and toasts. All has gone well. Another day’s work in the kitchens is already planned and prepared, just as the celebrations continue in the cellar bar. All in all, the day’s demonstrated an impressive step in Pembroke’s development, and a testament to the ideas of continuity and change: bridging the centuries.

Greg Neale (1999) came to Pembroke to study for an MSt in Modern History after working in Fleet Street as a journalist for newspapers including The Times, The Observer and The Sunday Telegraph. After college, he went to the BBC to launch the monthly BBC History Magazine as editor; worked as a “resident historian” for BBC Newsnight; edited the University alumni magazine, Oxford Today; and is now a freelance journalist and university teacher.

Details of the refurbishment work to the Hall, together with the Pembroke: Bridging Centuries project and campaign can be found on the College website

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Steward’s Diary When I’m covering an evening shift my day might go something like this:

14:00

I arrive at College and check with the morning crew (who

have been busy dealing with Lunch and any catered meetings as well as polishing cutlery and glass for tonight’s dinner) how things have been and if there’s anything I need to know. I then Check emails – if I’ve haven’t already done this on my iPhone at home!

14:30

I need to have had a caffeine fix by this time and am usually

munching on an M&S sandwich or I start to get grumpy as I won’t have

18:30

had lunch at home and arrive too late to grab a bite in the Hall.

and set out on the tables with fresh candles. Team brief including a final

15:00

delegation of roles is given to the waiting staff: who will serve reception

Ensure that the evening team know what events are taking

Any silver is now brought out, checked for wax deposits

place and that all the preparation is in hand including making sure that the

drinks, take care of food/wine service

correct wines are either chilling or at getting up to room temperature.

19:00

15:30

check that the Hall lay up is complete and that water, bread rolls and

By this time I have been over to the Conference and Events

Guests begin to arrive for the drinks reception while I

Office a number of times and taken several phone calls detailing changes

butters are in place.

of seating plans and/or guest numbers and requirements.

19:25 19:30

16:00

Check that preparation is going to plan, including table

I announce dinner and the guests make their way to the Hall.

Dinner is served. This is where things get a little easier

settings and cleanliness of the Hall. I will have collected the menus and

and I can relax. With a good team, a logical serving system and plenty of

seating plans ready for display.

forward planning everything should happen automatically!

17:00 18:00

Await the arrival of the evening casual team.

22:00

Final preparations now begin, including moving all the

the really hard work starts: the clear up!

furniture in Broagates Hall and the setting up of serving tables in the

23:00

The event is over and guests are beginning to leave. Now

Last orders and a London Pride for me.

vestibule in readiness for the drinks reception.

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Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat!

By Robin Wilson Lecturer in Pure Mathematics

The Reverend Bartholomew (‘Bat’) Price, D.D., F.R.S., was at Pembroke College for over 60 years, as student, Fellow and Master. A distinguished mathematician who contributed a great deal to the running of the University, especially through his long involvement with the Oxford University Press, he is now best remembered for his association with his friend and former pupil Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). being selected as a candidate for an award at Pembroke College. He took his matriculation examinations in March 1837 and was admitted as an exhibitioner. Three years later he was awarded First Class Honours in his Mathematics and Physics Finals, and a Third Class in Classics (which were then compulsory for everyone). In 1841 he was awarded a Benet scholarship and in the following year he won the University’s Mathematical Scholarship. He received his M.A. in 1843, and became a Fellow of the College in June 1844. At that time, all dons were required to proceed to Holy Orders, and he was ordained Deacon by the Bishop of Oxford in December 1841, and Priest in 1844, nine days before his Fellowship.

Bartholomew Price as Master of Pembroke; this portrait, painted by Marmaduke Flower in 1896, now hangs in the gallery above the College Hall.

Bartholomew Price was born on 18 May 1818, one of seven children. His father had been a Fellow of Pembroke College, but had to resign when he married, becoming Rector of Coln St Dennis in Gloucestershire. His mother died when he was only 9. As a child, the boy showed great interest in science, and when

16

the Parish Church Clock gave up the ghost, he studied its mechanism, designed new parts that were made by the village blacksmith, and got it to run again (which it then did for more than 100 years).

He enjoyed a very successful school career at Northleach Grammar School, leading to his

From this time on, Price became one of the University’s main mathematical tutors and examiners. He wrote two important textbooks, his Treatise on the Differential Calculus and its Applications to Geometry, which appeared in 1848, and the influential Treatise on the Infinitesimal Calculus in four volumes (on Differential and integral calculus, Calculus of variations, Applications to algebra and geometry, and Analytical mechanics), published between 1852 and 1860. Shortly after the appearance of the first volume, Price was elected to Fellowships of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, and was appointed to the University’s Sedleian Chair of Natural Philosophy, a position that dates back to 1620. One of the earliest Oxford professors to be allowed to marry, he and his wife, Amy

THE PEMBROKIAN

Eliza Cole, brought up their seven children in a house in St Giles.

In January 1851, Charles Dodgson arrived at Christ Church to read Classics and Mathematics. In the summer of 1854, shortly before taking his Mathematics Finals, he joined a reading party, organised by Bartholomew Price in Whitby in Yorkshire, and enthused: I am doing Integral Calculus with him now, and getting on very swimmingly.

Thus began a long and fruitful friendship.

In the event, Dodgson emerged top of the Mathematics Finals list in December 1854, but was unsuccessful in gaining the University’s mathematical scholarship, in spite of receiving some personal tuition from Price. Their mathematical partnership continued for the rest of their lives, with Dodgson frequently asking Price for advice on various matters, especially in his early years as Mathematical lecturer at Christ Church, and the two of them regularly collaborating on the setting of University examinations and the award of mathematical studentships.

In this book Dodgson presented a new method, still used, for calculating algebraic determinants of matrices, which Price subsequently presented on his behalf at a meeting of the Royal Society in London.

Bartholomew Price was widely known in Oxford by the abbreviation ‘Bat’, reportedly because his lectures were said to be way above his audiences (which is unlikely, because he was a fine and respected teacher), but probably because he was always seen to be flying energetically between committees or lectures. He is memorialised in the Hatter’s famous nursery rhyme parody that appeared in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!

How I wonder what you’re at!

Up above the world you fly, Like a tea-tray in the sky.

‘41,L-7,'.077' " •,:

References

Probably the most noteworthy of Price’s involvements was that of Delegate to the Oxford University Press, a position that he held for many years. In 1861, at the time of his appointment, the Press published Bibles and little else of note (the two main exceptions being Wordsworth’s Grammar and the Greek Lexicon of Liddell & Scott). Price and his colleagues immediately began to set the Press on a proper financial footing, expanding the publication list with many worthwhile educational books to enhance the University’s reputation while making a satisfactory profit.

By 1870, the Press had fifty titles in its list in a wide range of subjects, and continued to go from strength to strength from then on.

It was expected that Bartholomew Price might proceed to the Mastership of Pembroke when a vacancy arose in 1864, but a financial scandal involving his brother, who was College Bursar at the time, prevented this (see [1]). In the event, he was not elected Master until 1892, and that was only on the casting vote of the newly appointed Visitor, Lord Salisbury. Associated with the Mastership was a canonry of Gloucester Cathedral, and Price took his Bachelor and Doctor of Divinity degrees in the same year.

A well-known story, probably apocryphal (see [4]), relates that Queen Victoria was so utterly charmed by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that she demanded to be sent the author’s next book: this was An Elementary Treatise on Determinants with their Application to Simultaneous Linear Equations and Algebraical Geometry. The Queen was not amused.

A photograph of Bartholomew Price, taken

by Charles Dodgson in 1860.

labelled as “unstable” or “extreme”. It was said that ‘a few plain words from Price settled many a debate in Congregation’.

Bat Price was a weighty figure in the life of the University, being appointed, at various times, Curator of the University Chest and the Bodleian Library, Proctor, Member of the Hebdomadal Council, Member of the Faculty of Medicine and Chairman of the Faculty of Natural Science, Member of the Ashmolean Society, Delegate of the University Museum, Honorary Fellow of Queen’s College, Visitor to the University Observatory and the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, and a Royal Commissioner for several enquiries into the running of the University. It has been claimed (see [3], p. 257) that ‘Such was his standing that those who disagreed with Price were

Although he did not assume the Mastership until the age of 73, Price was still vigorous in body and lively in mind. In College, he played an active role, and when the undergraduates petitioned the Master and Fellows to introduce music into their Chapel services and to build an organ, he covered most of the costs of transplanting Dr Sheldon’s organ case from the Sheldonian Theatre to Pembroke (see [2], p.

368). In 1897, the University chose Price as its representative at the Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Ceremony at St Paul’s Cathedral.

In January 1898 Bartholomew Price was greatly saddened by Charles Dodgson’s untimely death from pneumonia; later that year he himself fell ill, and died in the Master’s Lodgings on 29 December at the age of 80; he was buried in Holywell Cemetary on 3 January 1899.

1. E. I. Carlyle, ‘Bartholomew Price (1818–1898)’, Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.

2. Douglas Macleane, A History of Pembroke College, Oxford, Anciently Broadgates Hall, Oxford Historical Society, 1897.

3. Edward Wakeling, ‘Lewis Carroll and the Bat’, Antiquarian Book Monthly Review IX No. 7, Issue 99 (July 1982), 252–259.

4. Robin Wilson, Lewis Carroll in Numberland – his Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life, Penguin Books, 2009

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THE PEMBROKIAN

It’s a great time to be a neuroimaging scientist

Irene Tracey, Nuffield Professor Anaesthetic Science (Head, Nuffield Division Anaesthetics) & Director, Oxford Centre for FMRI of Brain (FMRIB), Nuffield Department Clinical Neurosciences There has been an explosion in our understanding of how the human brain works over the past decade. This has largely been afforded due to rapid developments in our ability to ‘image’ the brain as it works (functional imaging) and image its structure and chemistry (structural/chemical imaging) in more sensitive and spatially resolved ways. I have had the luck and fun of being involved in this revolution over the past fifteen years and I want to share some of this excitement with you here.

The FMRIB Centre, which I direct, is a multidisciplinary neuroimaging research laboratory where cutting edge developments in image analysis and physics are exploited to answer neuroscientific questions of clinical relevance.

FMRIB is the hub for neuroimaging within the University of Oxford and is recognized as one of the world’s leading laboratories. The Centre is composed of research groups interested in all aspects of brain imaging research, including physics, image analysis, basic and clinical neuroscience (Figure 1). In addition to our strengths in magnetic resonance methods, we actively use related technologies, such as Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to ‘manipulate’ the brain as well as Electroencephalography to measure neuronal electrical events directly. We recently installed a state of the art 3 Tesla MR system and this July 2011 we are installing a whole body 7T machine, funded by an £8.2 million investment from the MRC, EPSRC, Wolfson Foundation and University of Oxford.

This leading-edge MRI system will enable imaging of brain structure and function at even higher spatial resolution and signal to noise than currently possible giving us unprecedented opportunities to discover new features of brain structure and function. This critical investment will allow Oxford and the UK to retain its position as leaders in neuroimaging science.

In parallel with developments in ‘functional’ imaging’ – where we exploit the observation made by Charles Sherrington in the 1890’s, here in Oxford, that neuronal activity was directly coupled to blood flow and oxygen

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Fig 1 I IIII FMR1B Os

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Fig 2

consumption to spatially ‘map’ which brain regions are involved in our everyday sensory, motor, cognitive and emotional experiences (and how they go wrong in diseases affecting the brain), we can now use diffusion weighted imaging and tractography analysis have allowed us to image white matter connections.

Measuring how these connections change in the human brain during development, learning and disease processes have overturned our ‘textbook’ understanding of brain anatomy and its adaptive capacity. Linking brain function to structure and how this adapts to injury or alters during normal learning forms the next era of projects being undertaken, with plans to create databases pooling this information globally to catalogue these observations. Application of chemical neuroimaging using Positron Emission Tomography via development of novel radioligands and improved chemistry is one of the more exciting areas of neuroscience research, and linking endogenous neurochemistry to brain function and behaviour should form part of the next phase of research but will require more PET centres and investment in radiochemistry to occur. Stand-alone developments within the fields of evoked related potentials (ERP) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) are adding

to our knowledge about brain function and are now being applied increasingly to disease led problems. It is a great time to be a neuroimaging scientist as we have a plethora of methods available that allow us to probe the human brain to better understand how this most complicated of organs works.

My own line of research within this rich area of neuroimaging science is acute and chronic pain.

While acute pain is essential to survival – it is your body’s alarm system – and is reasonably well managed, chronic pain is not essential and ruins rather than saves lives. Also, we are very poor at treating and managing it. In fact, chronic pain is one of the largest medical health problems in the developed world affecting 1 in 5 adults and costing society billions of Euros per annum in care, treatment and days lost from work. Many sufferers are left with unmanaged pain that significantly reduces their quality of life and increases their mortality. Until recently it has been difficult to obtain reliable objective information regarding this private and subjective pain experience; this has been greatly wanted as over-reliance on the verbal report and description of pain makes diagnoses and determination of treatment efficacy difficult. With the advent of functional neuroimaging

methods, such as those listed above, this has been made feasible. Using such noninvasive brain imaging tools, we can now identify what brain regions become active during painful experiences and relate this to an individual’s specific pain experience or measure of pain relief, bringing potential diagnostic value as well as a better neuroscientific understanding of pain perception.

This activation, often considered an “objective” readout of the subjective phenomenon, can be related to what the subject describes, allowing issues such as how anxiety, depression, attention, and physiological changes alter the pain experience to be better understood at a neuroanatomical level. We have performed many experiments that have specifically isolated areas of brain and brainstem central to these processes; particularly those involved in the transition from the acute to chronic state. More recently, pharmacological functional magnetic resonance imaging (phMRI) has been developed and applied to the field of pain research within our laboratory. Again, many advances have been made that illustrate the neural correlates of analgesia (pain relief) in the human brain.

New thoughts related to how pain and pleasure interact force us to broaden our understanding of relief mechanisms and wellbeing. Combined these data provide evidence that neuroimaging tools will play an increasing role in clinical decision making, analgesic drug development and perhaps even the legal profession in the coming decade (see figures 1 and 2).

For more information, go to www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk.

The Nuffield Division of Anaesthesia, which I am also Head of, has major research interests in four core aspects of anaesthesia: pain and consciousness, respiration and hypoxia, adult intensive and vasospasm in neurointensive care, Simulation and Human Factors training (OxSTAR).

Further, we have nationally and internationally recognised teaching programmes in a range of anaesthetic related areas (e.g. primary trauma care (China), regional anaesthesia, anaesthesia in developed world).

Finally, but most importantly, I am married to Professor Myles Allen, a climate physicist, and we have three wonderful and irrepressible children: a daughter, Colette, and two sons, John and Jim.

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“I’ve come to earth”

By David Knowles (1979)

David Knowles studied Physics and Philosophy at Pembroke (1979-82) before joining the Royal Air Force. During his RAF career he flew over 3000 hours on frontline tours in the Tornado GR1/4, and was awarded a DFC for his actions during the opening nights of the invasion of Iraq, 2003. He retired from the RAF in 2007 to become a crofter and the poetry editor of Two Ravens Press. His poetry, based on his experiences in Iraq, published as Meeting the Jet Man, was shortlisted for the Scottish Arts Council First Book of the Year and Highly Commended in the Forward Poetry Prize.

Photo by Jamie Hunter of Aviacom

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A little after five every morning my young sheepdog nuzzles me awake, gently insisting that there is work to do. Through a half-dream I hear the distant rumble of heavy traffic. Strange - because there isn’t a trunk road within a hundred miles of here. If there are two cars an hour through the crofting village of Breanish it counts as congestion. Fully awake and I hear it more clearly. The wind is, for once, near calm. I am hearing the Atlantic swell at the end of its thousand-mile journey from an origin in some tropical storm, sucking at the geos, assaulting again the stubborn cliffs of the Aird.

This is the far west coast of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. On a clear day you can see St Kilda from the kitchen window. We live on a croft with about six acres of its own rough grazing and the right to graze over many hundreds of acres of hillside and moorland. Last year we moved here from the mainland on a ferry that could have been mistaken for Noah’s Ark. We brought with us a small flock of Hebridean sheep (the little black ones), some Jacob sheep (the piebald, biblical ones), four Roman geese, some Cayuga ducks, a hive of bees and a bunch of chickens, various breeds. Plus numerous packets of vegetable seeds and cuttings. Oh, and a small, fiercely independent publishing company more of which later. This is the croft, literally at the end of the road, where I have come to earth some 30 years after leaving Pembroke.

I say ‘come to earth’ because that best captures the feel of it. I could have said ‘where I’ve washed up’ or just ‘where I’ve arrived’ - even ‘where I’ve finally found my place’. But ‘coming to earth’ seems most apt; and only partly because I spent almost all the years between Pembroke and the Outer Hebrides in the front cockpit of a Tornado bomber. So it isn’t that I’ve spent all those years just marking time until I could finally go ‘out west’. I was overhead the outskirts of Bagdhad on the opening night of the 2003 invasion - and a number of nights thereafter. I was, I promise you, totally focused on the job!

served there with three frontline squadrons - including an unforgettable tour with the legendary 617 ‘Dambuster’ Squadron. From Lossiemouth it was a few hours’ drive to the west coast of the Highlands, to Assynt and Suilven and the magical mountains of Norman MacCaig’s poetry. When I left the Air Force in 2007 I initially went to live on a croft near Ullapool - the ‘capital’ of the north-west Highlands. I thought it would be perfect.

My wife, Sharon Blackie, had set up a small publishing company - Two Ravens Press (www.tworavenspress.com) - to publish the sort of literary work for which the modern mass-production publishing industry rarely finds room. The aim fitted with crofting - independent and grounded.

We publish books that matter, books that change the way people think.

Books you won’t find on supermarket shelves - though you will find them from time to time in Waterstones. We threw ourselves totally into making a success of a venture that everyone advised us was Quixotic at best. And in a modest way we succeeded. At the same time we learnt to handle sheep and to run a croft.

And yet... And yet the compass of our lives still pointed resolutely westward. There was no ignoring it. We sold up and moved in just a couple of months, and are now fighting to keep a small company thriving in nationally hard times while driving ourselves to the physical end-stops to renovate an old crofthouse and get our long-neglected croft re-fenced and fit for the beautiful animals we keep, breed and eat. And to grow enough vegetables that we don’t need the bendy broccoli that has struggled halfway around the world to reach here. For us it is heaven. Not a retreat from life, much less a retirement from the game of life - but life itself. For others it would be hell - the seemingly endless days of driving rain, the sheep that insist on getting stuck in a peat-bog, the three-day round trip to a dentist! But like the old crofter up the road says - it’s easy to get what you want: the tricky thing is to know what it is you want in the first place.

Nevertheless, throughout the to and fro of a career in the RAF there was always an underlying drift northward and westward - in quiet moments my eyes always turned towards these outer margins, my feet were always setting off in this direction. Whenever possible I got myself posted to RAF Lossiemouth on the coast of the Moray Firth. I

21

THE PEMBROKIAN

More interesting (and better value?) than the Large Hadron Collider Sugars are everywhere - most will know of their roles in diet but their roles in Biology and Medicine appear to be much more widespread. for the first text book I wrote on Carbohydrates.

By Ben Davis Professor of Chemistry

n(05\

0*01-C1

;Me n(01) It is becoming increasingly clear that oligosaccharides (sugars in small clusters) and alterations in proteins (modifications) are examples of chemically complex biological markers that can act in important recognition processes such as microbial infection, cancer metastasis and cellular adhesion in inflammation, in addition to many intracellular communication events. Their remarkable structural diversity means that they can often mediate highly specific and therefore complex processes. In our group it’s application of an understanding of such systems on a fundamental level that leads to the design, synthesis and modification of potential therapeutic and biotechnologically applicable systems – for us this is one of the most remarkable stomping grounds of science.

For many years sugar molecules have long been known to adopt chemically unusual shapes – an observation attributed to a global effect known as the ‘anomeric effect’.

It’s an archetypal effect that we teach to all Chemistry and Biochemistry undergraduates in their 1st year – it’s so much part of background of science that I chose this as the image

22

However, as for many models, the origins of this ‘effect’ have been argued about for over half-a-century. Some scientists attributed it to the presence and influence of water or other substances, at least in part. So to test this theory and others, our group teamed up with another Oxford research group led by Emeritus Professor John Simons in the same department; together we found a way of isolating the sugars from all other substances – by turning them into a gas – and then a method of monitoring their behaviour once in the gas phase.

We discovered that the molecules maintained their unusual chemical appearance despite their isolation and we were fortunate to have this work published in the first issue of the journal Nature in this year, the UN International Year of Chemistry. The discovery might have implications for many things given the prevalence of sugars.

For example, sugars are the most abundant organic molecules in the world; their use as a feedstock must be part of our future planning for the manufacture of products currently reliant on waning supplies of oil - knowing their shape allows us to understand their chemistry. In biology, if sugars didn’t change shape, life would be radically different and some, perhaps many, biological processes just wouldn’t work anymore.

The implications for medicine could be equally significant but will need much additional research. Much less is understood about sugars than other molecules such as DNA and proteins. Translating sugar biology into medicine is one of the great, last frontiers of biology but the rewards could be huge. Personal perspectives need to be taken with a pinch of salt but, to me, this is certainly to me more exciting and, I think, potentially useful than, for example, finding the Higg’s boson. In this era when many try to naïvely drive science from the top into so-called predictable alleys (‘pathways to impact’), I think it is useful to recognize that simple fundamental questions may have a totally unpredictable value when answered.

THE PEMBROKIAN

‘An Incandescent Experience’

Pembroke Choir Tour to Berlin 2011

By Sam Baker 2nd Year Music, Organ Scholar

Quite a busy Hilary Term for the College Chapel Choir ended with a hectic but brilliant 5 day tour of Berlin. We checked out, performed and crossed off an eclectic mix of Baroque, High Romantic and modernist churches in this very special city, allowing enough time to explore and discover it at leisure. Not that there was a great deal of room in our tightly fitted schedule for the tourist trail, other than the monumental sights savoured as we sung in and journeyed from place to place.

On most days the choir had two performing engagements. Our singing began with a short afternoon concert right in the heart of the Prussian centre of Berlin in the “Friedrichstadtkirche”, and ended with a large scale concert in the “Kreuzkirche” in Schmargendorf. We were very lucky to have been able to sing for an evening service at the impressive ”Berliner Dom” (Berlin Cathedral) as well as to have lead a service and given an evening concert in the striking “Gedächtniskirche” in former West-Berlin.

Our programme of English Choral Music, running through the ages from Tallis to Tavener, without missing Byrd and Britten, seemed to go down a real treat among the tourists and native audiences, many of whom remarked upon the rarity of performances in Germany of the sorts of English motets and anthems that Oxford audiences and choirs tend to take for granted.

Berlin culture, nightlife, and extraordinarily good times were not to be left out of our tour, and I’m sure all who were on board felt they made quite the most out of such a short time.

Our snap-shot comments capture the spirit and energy of this delightful adventure, do read on.

Our choir tour this year was a musical exploration, in which our performances continued to evolve with each venue we performed in; not only did we present polished performances, but we simultaneously honed the musical skills of blend, balance, and intonation as a group.

Amanda Williams visiting student reading English

From the fantastic performing venues to the filthy ex-nazibunker night clubs, Berlin was an experience never to forget. Singing fantastic repertoire in the Berliner Dom, the city s largest athedral, was absolutely incredible, and luckily attracted a large audience.

Cycling through the Brandenburg Gate was definitely a highlight to the trip, despite then nearly being killed by oncoming traffic...

Henry Chandler 1st year Music; Organ Scholar

Berlin is such an inspiring city, with a history so raw and recent. Singing in places of worship which had been wholly or partially destroyed by allied bombings was quite a moving experience.

Elliot Malkin 2nd year Mathematics

Pembroke’s Berlin is a surprisingly dulcet Berlin - and from the quirky, prestigious venues to the stellarlyreceived music and everything in between. In short: I smile unreservedly when I think on it, and have a new favourite perspective on my old favourite capital.

Ashley Werner-de-Sondberg 2nd year History

It was an incandescent experience.

The venues were beautiful and had incredible acoustics, the audience was unbelievably supportive, and we were able to explore many different neighborhoods in Berlin – not only the touristy areas, but also the more off-the-beaten-path enclaves only reachable by S-bahn. In short: fun, rewarding, memorable, intoxicating, and exhausting in the best possible way.

Yin Lu visiting student reading English

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COLLEGE LIFE

THE PEMBROKIAN

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Boat Races

Out of seven athletes from PCBC that trialled this year, we had 5 in the boat races, and all 5 brought home wins for the University.

George Blessley and Alex Woods were in Isis and pulled out a dominant performance over a much heavier and stronger Goldie crew to win by 6 lengths in a fast time.

Brianna Stubbs, Ellie Piggott, both from last year’s winning crew, and Natalie Redgrave were in the women’s Blue Boat. They started as underdogs after having suffered a sobering 21 second defeat only weeks previously at Henley Fours and Eights Head, but led within the first 500m of the race to grind out a 1 length win against a resurgent CUWBC, the only Oxford women’s win of the day.

Eights

This year saw 8 crews racing for PCBC, 4 women’s and 4 men’s. W3 and W4 were unfortunate to not qualify in a strong rowing on field, but M4 were one of the fastest rowing on crews. The luck of the draw, however, put them amongst some fast invitational and schools crews and they were unlucky to drop a few places. It is worthy of note that they nearly managed a triple

24

overbump on the final day. M3 unfortunately went down 4, W2 W1 started in fourth position, and after rowing over behind an inevitable bump on Wednesday managed 2 consecutive bumps to put them in striking distance of the headship on Saturday.

They closed to a large amount of overlap on Balliol but immediately before contact had a boat stopping crab. They then rowed out of their skins to escape the crew behind. There was an appeal over whether we had managed contact on Balliol but unfortunately the evidence, whilst compelling, wasn’t conclusive and W1 ended eights at 2nd. M1 bumped Christchurch to take second place, breaking their bows in the process, but couldn’t manage better than even distance on Oriel, who had managed to recruit 5 university rowers to their cause. Once again we’re within striking distance of a double headship and this speaks volumes about the strength and breadth of rowing at Pembroke as compared to other colleges.

W2 were a strong crew and managed overlap several times in some close racing, but after failing to bump some strong crews ahead, they fell to an experienced women’s second crew over the whole distance, finishing down 2 for the week.

Sporting Round Up In hockey we won mixed cuppers and got to the final of mens’ cuppers.

In football, we had our first good year in living memory and achieved two promotions by winning two divisions with the 1sts and 3rds (the 1sts went unbeaten all season).

The rugby team got promoted and then relegated and got to the Bowl final.

Kate Sage is a women’s rugby blue and vicecaptain of the Oxford Rugby League Warriors.

The tennis team have beaten rivals Christchurch 11-1 recently.

The ladies basketball team are in cuppers semifinals hoping to defend their crown.

In blues sport, we have a few high achievers.

Ellie Piggott, Natalie Redgrave and Brianna Stubbs raced on the 1sts blues ladies boat, Ellie and Brianna for the second year running (they won).

Jos Charman has been appointed blues hockey captain for the next year.

And Josh Fields captained the Blues boxing team to victory away against Cambridge 6-3, winning his bout.

COLLEGE LIFE

THE PEMBROKIAN

Professor Alex Kacelnik Elected Fellow of Royal Society Professor Alex Kacelnik, Professor of Behavioural Ecology at the Department of Zoology and EP Abraham Fellow of Pembroke College. has been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society. He founded and heads the Behavioural Ecology Research Group and currently works on decisionmaking under risk, brood parasitism, and comparative cognition. Professor Kacelnik pioneered the use of microeconomic models and experimental psychology techniques to investigate problems in the ecology and evolution of animal behaviour. His team discovered the ability of New Caledonian

The Leader of the band...

Henry Chandler (2010), first year Organ Scholar, had the great honour of being appointed the Leader of the University Orchestra – in his first year at Pembroke!

crows to invent new tools according to need, hitherto unknown outside apes. Professor Kacelnik is also a co-founder of OxfordRisk, a spin-out company of Oxford University. He won the Research Award of the Comparative Cognition Society earlier this year.

Alex said “I am absolutely delighted, and, of course, immensely grateful to Pembroke for its support over the last 21 years. I can hardly imagine a more congenial and stimulating College environment. The danger is that I enjoy this work so much that I may not want to stop when the time comes….”

Is there a musical tradition in your family?

My brother is also a musician, but the rest of the family aren’t. Although, my great grandfather was a professional violinist, and had an extremely nice (Nicolo Amati) violin which was passed down the family. Unfortunately my uncle didn’t practise, so they sold it.

What were your first musical tastes?

I can’t really remember my first musical tastes; although I was immediately drawn to the Beatles before anything classical.

How many hours do you practise?

I aim to practise for at least 2 hours a day during term, and much more during the holidays when I’m less busy.

What is your favourite piece of music and why?

I couldn’t name a favourite piece – it changes all the time depending on my mood!

How do you think you might pursue your musical career?

The plan is to go to a Conservatoire after University although with a career in music there’s a lot of luck involved, so I’ll hope for the best and see what happens.

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THE PEMBROKIAN

Not just a city breakfast

By Clive Stainton (1978) and Nigel Jackson (1971) Nigel and I met at the Pembroke City breakfast in March and had the pleasurable experience of not only an extremely high profile and interesting speaker, (Hector Sants CFO of the FSA) but the chance to meet some old friends. Although Nigel and I had met before at a similar Pembroke event some years ago, we had not realised our shared love of music, and the writing of it. It transpired both of us had performed self penned works to reasonably sized audiences whilst undergrads. I remember playing a kazoo to a formal occasion at the Master’s lodge accompanied by a now celebrated Royal School of Music Prof on the Steinway. I remember being in awe of his talents, but I doubt this was reciprocated! My version of a Jilted John song whilst experimenting with different guitar tunings was sandwiched between venerable classics on flute and piano played by distinguished music scholars with rare diplomas; my own qualifications having been won from the High Wycombe multi-racial centre community committee on the Bob Marley method of playing reggae guitar.

Pembroke students go North West

By Rebecca Wilson, Admissions and Access Officer Our outgoing JCR Access Rep, Rachael Lindsay, has organised a road trip to a number of state schools and sixth form colleges in the North West following the roll-out of the University’s regionalisation scheme. This scheme aims to simplify the college system for schools that might have little or no experience of the Oxford application system, providing each region of the UK with an Oxford college to contact as a first port of call. Pembroke has been linked with Hammersmith & Fulham in West London, and with areas in the North West comprising Bolton, Bury, Cheshire, Halton, Rochdale, Warrington and Wigan.

From Cheshire herself, Rachael will be visiting six schools and sixth form colleges in this region from 29 June to 1 July, along with three other Pembroke undergraduates who between them will cover a range of subjects that Oxford offers in the Arts,

26

Sciences and Social Sciences. They plan to give a short presentation about Oxford and the application process, followed by smaller informal workshops in subject groups where each undergraduate will tackle the typical kinds of interview questions that applicants may get asked. They will also showcase Pembroke with the short video produced by Nick Gulliver last year.

There has been a very positive response to the initiative and many of the schools have asked other local schools to participate, ensuring that there will be a targeted audience of Year 11 and Year 12 students who are seriously considering applying to a top university. We hope that the road trip goes well and may become one of the yearly features of access work at Pembroke in the future.

Today Nigel runs his own law practice in the West End but still finds time to write and record his music, and splendid it is too, having now enjoyed his CD since meeting at the breakfast.

My trusty old guitar now tours with a variety of artists from Joan Armatrading to Paul Carrack, with my daughter Elisabeth under the name Lisbee Stainton (www. lisbee.com). I’m honoured to say I did contribute a strum (that’s all) to her early works: now I just get to sit in the control room at Abbey Road and imagine if I ever had the talent to sing and play like her. Apparently the strings on my old guitar are permanently tuned to D-A-D-G-A-D, which was a favourite of Crosby Stills Nash and Young, and I wonder how much D-A-D-G-A-Ding they still get to do? These days I’m more like D-A-D-H-A-D.

MBB R RO OK KI A N T H E PPEEM

Open for for Business Business Len Weekes, Weekes, Bar Bar Manager

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EVENTS

THE PEMBROKIAN

Future Events Dates for your diary. Full details for all of these events will be sent to you in due course.

2011 AU GUST 12 Fri

Gaudy (1965-67)

S E P T EMBER 2 Fri 16-18

Gaudy (2005-2006) Oxford Alumni Reunion Weekend

16 Sat

Pembroke Alumni Dinner

N OV EMBER 16 Wed London Reception and Concert, Royal College of Music

2012 JA N UARY 28 Sat

Annual Meeting + Lunch

M ARCH 10 Sat

Tesdale Lunch

A P RIL 13 Fri

Gaudy (Up to 1957) 60 years on for some

J UNE 22 Fri

Gaudy (2001-2003)

AU GUST 31 Fri

Gaudy (1972-1973)

Gaudy invitations with full details will be sent out three months before the event.

All future events, including some still in the planning stages, will be posted on the Events section of our website. We also highlight all events in our monthly email newsletter. If you are not receiving these newsletters, please let us have your current email address.

Contacting The Development Office

The Pembrokian

The Development Office, Pembroke College, Oxford OX1 1DW E: development@pmb.ox.ac.uk | T: 01865 276501 | F: 01865 276482 Contact details for individual members of the Development Office, and details of the areas each member of staff handles, are available on the Pembroke Alumni website: www.pembrokecollege.org.

Alternatively, please feel free to call the general office number above, and our Development Assistant will be pleased to connect you with the right person to handle your enquiry.

Editor

Juanita Hughes E Juanita.hughes@pmb.ox.ac.uk

Design

www.fortioridesign.com