Atrium, the St Paul's Alumni Magazine, Spring/Summer 2023

ATRIUM

The Interview

Anand Shah –Unicorn Founder

The Educator David Herman meets Ralph Blumenau

A Brave Front Pauline Sacrifice in WW1

ST PAUL’S ALUMNI MAGAZINE

Atrium now has an editorial board. It has become increasingly evident that the magazine would benefit from having the views and perspective of OPs from across the age range of its readership and the OPC’s membership, which is quite possibly 19 to 105 years old. I am delighted that David Herman (1973-75), Jonathan Foreman (1979-83), Theo Hobson (1985-90), Neil Wates (1999-2004) and Omar Burhanuddin (2017-22) have joined me on the board. It has been a pleasure working as a team over the last few months.

There is a list of Atrium’s contributors on page 3. These include Howard Bailes who is the St Paul’s Girls’ School Archivist, and OPs who were at School between 1939 and 2022; a period that spans ten decades, three school buildings and ten High Masters. It is also important to recognise the contributions made by Kate Wallace and Viera Ghods with the obituaries, Kelly Strickland who has recovered the images from the archives, John Dunkin (1964-69) for his diligent spotting of all things Pauline and our gracefully anonymous proof-readers who catch every typo and much more.

Our front cover is taken from Graham Seel’s wonderful book Scholars and Soldiers: a History of Alumni of St Paul’s School and the First World War. It shows boys from the St Paul’s Officer Training Corps’ camp in the summer of 1914. There is that eternal teenage cocktail of seriousness and cheekiness. Theo Hobson’s article “A Brave Front” based on Graham’s scholarship captures both these.

Thanks to Graham (former Head of Humanities), we now know that 511 Paulines died in the Great War. At last year’s Service of Remembrance, the current cohort of boys and young men of St Paul’s and St Paul’s Juniors

were lined up on ‘Big Side’. From the visitors’ platform one could imagine over a third of them lying down and never getting up. It brought the extent of their predecessors’ sacrifice charging home.

The School’s ‘Shaping Our Future’ campaign is proving brilliantly successful with over £16m raised so far, the majority of which is being directed towards the bursary programme. The goal of 153 pupils receiving a bursary is in sight. A more inclusive future is being shaped. But being an OP is not all about the future, as the Remembrance Service and hopefully this magazine show, it is also about celebrating our past. Whether it is visiting John Milton’s cottage, remembering remarkable members of staff or interviewing an OP German refugee who has dedicated his very long life to education, we have much about which to reflect in the centuries since Henry VIII was our monarch and our School was founded.

One of the main purposes of Atrium is to help all OPs’ experience of St Paul’s to be more than the five years of their time at School. It is a shame if any of us walk out of the gates at 18 and never look back, think back or give back.

Jeremy Withers Green (1975-80)

Cover photo: Paulines at 1914 Summer Camp Design: haime-butler.com

Print: Lavenham Press

David Herman profiles Ralph Blumenau

Archives, the High Master in the USA, Sport

40 Obituaries

Theo Hobson tells the story of the 511 Paulines who died in WW1

Including Brian Jones OPFC Captain and President and Oscar winner Robert Blalack

44

Pauline Relatives

Omar Burhanuddin meets Anand Shah

Trapp

Howard Bailes reveals Paulina life in WW1

Theo Hobson explores the cottage of one of his heroes

Simon Bishop profiles Pete Murray

Pauline writings about their time at School

Michael Simmons contrasts his and his grandson’s years at School

46 Past Times

Ralph Blumenau remembers WW2 evacuation to Crowthorne

47 Crossword

Lorie Church sets the puzzle

48 Last Word

Matthew Stadlen shares his passion for birds

ATRIUM EDITORIAL BOARD

Omar Burhanuddin (2017-22) is a recent St Paul’s leaver. He has previously held placements at Oxfam and the House of Commons. Now on a gap year, he is currently working as a Development and Engagement Assistant at St Paul’s, and will be taking up a fellowship with the non-profit Project Rousseau over the summer of 2023, serving low-income students across New York City. He aspires towards a career in public policy. Omar is also an amateur violinist and plays for the Fulham Symphony Orchestra and the Central London Orchestra.

Jonathan Foreman (1979-83) read History at Cambridge University, then Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has been a war correspondent, a film critic, a leader writer, and has reported from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. He is the author of two books, one on Foreign Aid and its challenges (Aiding and Abetting, Civitas 2015), and the other an anthology of American history (The Pocket Book of Patriotism, Sterling, 2005). He has written for many publications on both sides of the Atlantic and in Asia. He is currently writing a book on empires.

David Herman (1973-75) spent almost twenty years working in television and another fifteen writing for various newspapers, magazines and academic publications.

Theo Hobson (1985-90) studied English Literature at York, then Theology at Cambridge. He has written books on religion, and many articles. He has worked as a teacher as well as a writer and journalist. He recently went to art college, so he is now a struggling artist as well as a struggling writer.

Neil Wates (1999-2004) worked in the property sector for 15 years, latterly as Managing Director of his own firm. He is a trustee of a UK based charitable trust and an NGO committed to the alleviation of social violence in East Africa. He is the founding director of Friendship Adventure, a craft brewery and taproom in Brixton. Neil is the 30s age group representative on the OPC Executive Committee.

Jeremy Withers Green (1975-80) has worked on Atrium for four years. After thirty years in investment banking, he has worked at not-forprofit organisations for a decade as a trustee. He is Deputy President of the Old Pauline Club.

Members of the Editorial Board met at the St Paul’s Hotel, 153 Hammersmith Road, site of the School from 1864-1968 to plan Atrium Autumn/Winter 2023

Howard Bailes taught History at St Paul’s Girls’ School for some thirty years. He retired from teaching in 2014 but has stayed on as archivist. As well as earlier publications on the Victorian army, he has written a general history of the school (Once a Paulina, James & James, 2000) and supplemented this with various articles on Paulina history. He has also published an illustrated monograph on the architect of the 1904 school and the 1913 Music Wing (Gerald Callcott Horsley: Architect, 2017).

Graham Seel taught at St Paul’s from 2012 to 2021. He was Head of History from 2012 to 2017 and was then Head of Humanities. Graham realised that there were important gaps in the Pauline Community’s knowledge relating to the Great War and that there was a wealth of war-related material in the archives of The Pauline, and so proposed a major research project. The result is Scholars and Soldiers: a History of Alumni of St Paul’s School and the First World War It is in two volumes: the first is a general history of the school and the war, including its commemoration; the second is an in-depth study of OPs who fell in the Ypres area.

Ralph Blumenau (1939-43) arrived at St Paul’s as a refugee from Nazi Germany. He spent two years teaching at a prep school and then went to Wadham College, Oxford, from 1945-49, where he was awarded a First in History. By the time Ralph left Oxford he had been naturalised and was a British citizen. He became a schoolmaster at The King’s School, Canterbury. After four years he moved on to Malvern College. He became Head of History (1959–1985) writing a history of the school for its centenary. In 1985 Ralph retired, and then spent another thirty years lecturing on European history, the history of Philosophy and the history of the Jews at the University of the Third Age and wrote his best-known book, Philosophy and Living (2002).

Michael Simmons (1946-52) read Classics and Law at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He qualified as a solicitor and after two years as an officer in the RAF practised Law in the City and Central London for fifty years. Since retiring, he has pursued a new career as a writer. Michael is in touch with a sadly diminishing number of members of the Upper VIII of 1952.

Mark Lovell (1948-1952) became a Russian interpreter and a sublieutenant (RNVR) during his national service. Then he graduated from Jesus College, Cambridge, with an unusual double first: Pt.1 in Classics, Pt.2 in Natural Sciences (Psych.) His business career was in marketing research. He moved from the UK to Canada in 1976, where he became president of the Canadian marketing research association. Mark had several books published between the early 1970s and the early 2000s. Some were under his own name, others under a pseudonym, Peter Rowlands. The best-known is probably Saturday Parent. Mark lives in Montreal.

Simon Bishop (1962-65) is a former editor of Atrium. He has worked in publishing for most of his professional life including as art editor for Time Out magazine and for BBC Wildlife magazine.

Bob Phillips (1964-68) went to Churchill College, Cambridge. Since then, he has been a GMWU shop steward in a bleach works, a social worker, a university lecturer in psychology at Cambridge, a director of a Midlands company making sewers, and a partner in E&Y, running their Philadelphia management consulting office. In retirement, he writes books.

James Trapp (1972-77) graduated from SOAS, University of London, with an Honours degree in Chinese. He worked for 10 years as an art dealer in the West End of London before the art world became disillusioned with him and he with it. While waiting for

China and Chinese to rejoin the mainstream, he trained as a nurse and worked in the operating theatres at Queen Mary’s Roehampton, spent several years as the primary carer of his three daughters and trained as a primary school teacher. He spent seven years as the China Education Manager at the British Museum and went on to run a 5-year project at the UCL IoE Confucius Institute for Schools, developing Primary Mandarin. He now works as a free-lance literary translator, mainly translating prize-winning contemporary Chinese novels but he has also produced new translations of three of the Chinese classics: The Art of War, The Dao De Jing and selections from The Book of Songs

Lorie Church (1992-97) when he is away from the workplace, Lorie encourages people to put letters in little squares. He has had puzzles published in various titles internationally. As well as contributing to the Listener series, Mind Sports Olympiad and Times daily, he sets Atrium’s crossword.

Matthew Stadlen (1993-98) went to Clare College, Cambridge. He graduated with a first in Classics. Since then, he has presented and produced TV series at the BBC, written an interviews column for The Telegraph, hosted his own shows on LBC, interviewed hundreds of public figures on stage, appeared on Sky, the BBC, Channel 5, Radio 5 Live and elsewhere as a political commentator and recently launched a podcast, 20 Questions With.

Guy Ward-Jackson (2016-21) after finishing St Paul’s online during the first year of the Coronavirus pandemic, Guy went on to study History at Oxford and is currently in his third and final year. At Oxford, he has edited The Oxford Blue newspaper and is currently writing his undergraduate thesis on late Victorian magic.

a liberal, secular and moral ethos

Dear Editor,

I am an Old Malvernian (1957-1962), who envies the St Paul’s alumni for Atrium. I am passed on the magazine by an OP, Sawanit Kongsiri (1956-1960), a valued colleague and close friend at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand and the Thai Red Cross Society for 53 years.

I wish to refer to David Herman’s article “Refugees at St Paul’s”, which appeared in Atrium, Spring/Summer 2022. At Malvern, I was taught by an OP, Ralph Blumenau (1939-42). His family had immigrated from Cologne in 1936. He went from St Paul’s to Wadham College, Oxford, got a First, taught at King’s Canterbury before coming to Malvern where he became Head of History (1959-1985). He was a brilliant and inspiring teacher who taught me everything; not just history, but art history, classical music appreciation, even French and Latin in History with Foreign Texts A level. He carefully corrected our essays and style of writing and made sure that we cited our sources. Thanks to his superb teaching, I won an exhibition to King’s, Cambridge, where the senior history scholar of my year was Alan Howarth (now Lord Howarth of Newport), son of St Paul’s High Master Tom Howarth.

At Malvern, Ralph wrote “A History of Malvern College 1865-1965” (Macmillan 1965), which is the standard history of the school. In his retirement, he became a teacher at the University of the Third Age where, if I recall correctly, the Times Education Supplement called him a “star”. There he published “A History of the Jews in German-Speaking Lands” (University of the Third Age in London, 1995), followed by his translation of Joel Kotek’s Students and the Cold War (St. Antony’s Series, Macmillan, 1996). Ralph had been International Vice-President of the National Union of Students from 1949 to 1951. Finally in 2002 came his masterpiece. “Philosophy and Living” (Imprint Academic), where he distilled western philosophy from the Greek Cosmologists to Foucault.

I write the above to you for the record in gratitude to my teacher and mentor, Ralph Blumenau. He taught me everything especially instilling a liberal, secular and moral ethos, which has guided me throughout my life.

Yours sincerely,

Tej Bunnag – Secretary General, Thai Red Cross Society

exam results 90%, interview 20% and school reports minus 10% Dear Jeremy,

I enjoyed Jon Blair’s witty and perceptive piece on reading his Leaver’s Report. Knowing Jon, I was not surprised. I have not read mine but have no difficulty imagining what it might have said – not all flattering, to be sure!

Jon ends with the statement that “Reports are far more indicative of the prejudices of our teachers than of who we were or what we would make of our lives”. Undoubtedly true, but I wonder how many of us realise that this was already recognised even as long ago as Jon’s time and mine, at the end of the 1960s. I vividly remember the Admissions Tutor at my College saying that he scored exam results 90%, interview 20% and school reports minus 10%. Mind you, King’s College Cambridge was a bit radical in those heady days, so maybe not all tutors took the same approach.

Mike Segal (1964-68)

Malvern College

Tony Richards remembered Dear Editor,

Congratulations to you, your Deputy Editor, contributors and proof-readers on the latest issue of Atrium

A well-chosen front cover given the recent passing of Her late Majesty, but why no mention of Tony Richards (ANG Richards MA of Magdalene College, Cambridge) who features so prominently in the photo showing the Queen in the Walker Library on her visit to the School in May 1959?

Sadly, only those who left the school before c.1970 will recognise him – as he retired from over forty years’ full-time teaching at the School at the end of the summer term, 1966 – as form master of the Lower Classical Eighth from 1929 to 1966; as Senior English Master for many of those years; as Librarian of the Boys’ Library from 1930; as Librarian of the Walker Library from 1946; as editor of The Pauline from 1930 to 1966; and as Housemaster of Edgebarrow Hostel during the School’s exile at Easthampstead Park between 1939 and 1945; and continuing as School Archivist until December, 1968.

For me, I am eternally grateful to Tony Richards for his support and encouragement in my researching the history and development of Waterhouse’s school buildings at West Kensington during my last term at School, from which he drew for his slim, red volume – St Paul’s School in West Kensington, 1884-1968 – published in 1968, and for his wise counsel in the correspondence we maintained in the years thereafter. For me, too, as a reader of MR James’s ghost stories, I always valued and enjoyed Tony Richards’ recollections of his conversations with the famous author, antiquarian and Provost of Eton College (1918–1936) during his time as a scholar at Eton in the 1920s.

Yours ever, Paul Velluet (1962-1967)

Pothunters Dear Jeremy,

I write in connection with the leading letter from the former OPC archivist in the recent Atrium which included a most interesting photograph of the St Paul’s School Gymnastics Team of 1911.

I observe the letter just focused on the partially obscured arm tattoo of a PT instructor and the ‘Pauline Tattoos’ caption is a bit misleading as in those days it would have been risible for any Pauline scholar to sport such adornments.

Mention could have been made of the ‘Aldershot Badge’ on the vests of the Pauline team members which was introduced in 1895 for those competing in the prestigious ‘Public School Gymnastic, Boxing & Fencing Championships’ held annually at Aldershot. The original badge included boxing gloves, crossed swords and the School Arms.

Paulines were successful at the Aldershot Championships as were Old Paulines in the many Army, Navy and civilian boxing competitions of the era.

St Paul’s School’s reputation in boxing was mentioned in literature of the time. This is an excerpt from P G Wodehouse’s novel The Pothunters (1902):

“Any idea who’s against us?”

“Harrow, Felsted, Wellington. That’s all, I think.”

“St Paul’s?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Pip pip, John Dunkin (1964-69)

St Paul’s School in West Kensington 1884-1968

Letter from Vancouver: A Scout’s Road to Fiesole

Mark Lovell (1947-53) writes from Vancouver about his travels with the St Paul’s Air Scouts

“No, the Combined Cadet Force is not the only option for Monday afternoons.” My parents had been waiting hopefully for this message. I was 13: in a month’s time I would make my transition from The Hall to St Paul’s. I had got a scholarship, so they did not look elsewhere.

My father was glad I would be switching from soccer to rugby. He was less enthusiastic about khaki uniform once a week or my learning to clean a rifle. My mother wondered aloud “Is this obligatory?”

The alternative, my parents learnt, was to join one of the school’s two troops of Boy Scouts. One troop wore light brown, as had Baden Powell. The other uniform was grey, more up-to-date, and appealed to me personally: I became an Air Scout.

Most of my new St Paul’s friends went into the CCF. The Second World War had officially ended but a sense of military duty lingered. Opting to join the scouts seemed to some to be less than patriotic. Conscription disappeared but National Service (two years’ worth) loomed ahead. There was a widespread rumour that CCF experience gave you an edge there, if only because you saluted appropriately and knew the difference between the front and back of a rifle. Others, however, believed that SPS was offering a choice between individuality and premature regimentation.

There was another angle that certainly motivated me. The scout troops made trips abroad. A year before my entry, a lucky batch had gone to Sweden in the summer holidays. Foreign travel by British school children post-war was very limited. European expeditions organised by the Scouts opened the door just a chink. Many British families hungered to widen it.

Expectations of a better future, of a world without world wars, were high. This was during the period when the Cold War was still not fully apparent. “Going into Europe, are you? Next summer?” Note the personal pronoun my parents used: the Scouts had become ‘You’. My real European education was about to begin.

No description of Pauline scouts in the late 1940s and early 50s would be complete without mention of James E Pretty (Maths department and scoutmaster 1946-53). We added an ‘E’ to his initials and knew him as ‘Jeep’. He liked that. It meant more than acceptance, it registered proximity. Occasionally he added the second ‘E’ himself when signing a note. Jeep was a war hero, but this was rarely discussed. He had been held in a brutal Japanese POW camp for years in the Far East. Jeep himself rarely mentioned this spontaneously. He had somehow turned the page.

He was a great organiser where travel was concerned. He had acute perception of the individual potential of each scout at his disposal, calculating how much responsibility each could handle.

Mark Lovell’s scrapbook

A good organiser realises he cannot be everywhere. Jeep studied us individually and assigned duties appropriately. Small teams were sometimes put together: this meant I could be drafted in to help with French if an argument with locals turned sour. Similarly, I could summon a maths whizz if I was struggling with the budget and expenses.

In retrospect, Jeep’s skills were focussed mainly on encouraging everyone not just to perform, but to enjoy –to keep a sense of humour, even if given the laundry or the state of the tents to observe and improve.

I was fortunate in being able to participate in two major trips, in summer 1949 and summer 1950. Each was split between a week or so in the mountains, followed by time in cities that had impressive things to offer. There was always something unexpected and memorable to take away.

In the French Alps we put up our tents wherever seemed best. In Assisi, we were allowed into an olive grove beside a monastery. How this improbable deal was put together I simply do not know. Probably it resulted from Jeep’s smile and enthusiasm. I overheard him once explaining our needs to somebody important – an abbot, maybe – once we had scrupulously cleaned our campsite after breakfast. They shook hands warmly.

Later, a monk warned us against an imminent rainstorm. “Oh no, we’ll be fine in our tents,” was our answer. Mercifully the storm was short-lived. Then there was music: the monks were singing ‘Santa Lucia’ and the monastery windows were open.

I described this afterwards to my parents. “Very romantic, I’m sure,” was my father’s comment. He preferred me to talk about Giotto’s 14th century frescos in the San Francesco church nearby.

Memorable moments were sometimes linked to major sights, sometimes not. The first view of the cathedral in Florence was breath-taking, as was the Ponte Vecchio. But the moment that has lived in my memory most vividly was an afternoon visit by bus to neighbouring Fiesole.

Just three of us were the sub-group that made it to Florence: Michael Dale (1944-49) was the senior scout in charge, while Chris Westwick (1946-51) and I made up his team. We stayed in a youth hostel, making friends with a few French scouts. This kind of loose arrangement would probably have been anathema to an insurance company in the later 1950s.

“What’s in Fiesole?” A bus trip added to expenses. We were not exactly sure, but Dale felt it merited a try. There was supposed to be a Roman amphitheatre and a great view. Both materialised. And there was more…

We climbed up the amphitheatre levels, sometimes whispering to each other, testing the famous acoustics as suggested by a guidebook. At one point we heard an answering whisper, from a man in his forties dressed in grey. Bob greeted us politely. He was an American visitor. He told us he had been here before, with a US army unit on a ‘combined op’.

“See that little hill? …just to the right of the red rooftops?” He did not wait for an answer. “That’s where we were,” he said. “Advanced position.”

He switched to the battle without warning. They had been observed, studied and almost wiped out. Bob was the only survivor aside from two others still in hospital. He had already made two earlier trips to see it all again. Now he waved us goodbye.

He had taught us something we could not forget. 

But the moment that has lived in my memory most vividly was an afternoon visit by bus to neighbouring Fiesole.

Briefings

Masters Remembered Hugh Neill (Maths Department 1966-72) –“Well? Has anyone got it?”

Bob Phillips (1964-68) shares his memories of his inspirational maths teacher, who died in 2022.

Hugh Neill, who died in August 2022, was a Head of Maths at St Paul’s who presided over revolutionary change. His predecessor A J Moakes was something of a visionary, seeing the coming transformation in maths teaching that went under the label of “New Maths”. But, as this new wave approached, Mr Moakes was into retirement age. The appointment that he, and the then High Master, Tom Howarth, made to meet this challenge was revolutionary.

Hugh Neill was a very young man, catapulted into the lead of one of the most prestigious departments of mathematics in any school. I met him in my first year in the school, in 5X, in 1964, and I think that was also his first year at St Paul’s, too. A J Moakes was still around for a year – teaching the A level classes – so I guess that Hugh Neill did not formally take over the department until 1965.

he was asking from the front “Well? Has anyone got it?” A couple of boys had – in no time at all.

They were asked to explain, but Mr Neill put it in general terms – “Make a transformation. If the man crosses the river at right angles to the banks, you can transform the diagram as if the river didn’t exist. Then the path follows the straight line from A to B. Simple.”

I was devastated. I felt as if he had cheated and was prevailing upon us to cheat. That was not mathematics –mathematics is hard grind. That was sleight of hand.

of UK industry. The standard model A had a huge 16K memory. BP allowed the consortium – St Paul’s and a couple of other schools – to submit programs for execution on the night shift, when possible. Hugh Neill invested in a Hollerith machine for hand punching the 80-column cards that fed the computer. Another school invested in an interpreter that read the cards and printed the contents across the top.

Mr Neill created, over a summer holiday, a fat duplicated file of problems amenable to attack using the FORTRAN language. The enthusiasts among us, me included, picked a problem or two. There ensued a painful round of coding, punching, sending in the mail, interpreting, sending in the mail, correcting, etc., etc., before BP would mail to the school a printout on fan-fold paper that would tell the eager student what a mess he had made.

He certainly shook up the maths class. I can tell a personal story from 5X that shook me. It was probably my first maths class at St Paul’s.

Problem. A man needs to get from A to B but there is a river in the way. He can only cross the river at right-angles to the banks. What is his shortest route?

Terribly simple, isn’t it? The 13-yearold me set about diligently with trigonometry, but Mr. Neill allowed no time for that. In no time at all,

It took me weeks to come to terms with this, and more jolts kept coming. Matrices. Sets. Probability. He was setting the whole realm of mathematics in a new framework.

There was one “New Maths” innovation that I took to instantly. Hugh Neill introduced computer programming to St Paul’s after he had been there a couple of years. I guess that he had been working at this innovation for some time, because it took a collaboration of several different institutions to pull it off.

It was BP that had the computer – a magnificent ICL 1904 mainframe, pride

But it was so exciting! That is my chief memory of Hugh Neill –he made all of this so exciting. That mark of a brilliant teacher. Didn’t Howarth do well to bet on him as such a young man? 

Hugh Neill’s list of publications runs to over 70 titles, including the one that marked the revolution at St Paul’s: by A J Moakes and H Neill, Vectors, Matrices and Linear Equations. The paperback edition was printed in 1967. Hugh Neill moved on from St Paul’s, and found a huge audience for his brilliant teaching through his authorship of all these books. Hugh Neill was Chief Mathematics Inspector for the ILEA. He also taught at Durham University for 10 years and was Staff Inspector of Mathematics.

Dr Ed Beesley (History Department 2018-22)

Guy Ward-Jackson (2016-21) shares his memories of Ed Beesley who died in December 2022.

A keen, fresh-faced group of Lower Eighth students sit tentatively in a classroom laid out like a seminar-room, waiting to receive the feedback from their first A-level history essay. Shortly, an uncombed Dr Beesley with an untucked shirt (as ever) walks in holding a stack of papers, grinning as though he is about to have a lot of fun.

He leans against the side of his desk and looks up at all of us, still grinning, and with a slight twinkle in his eye which only finds itself on the best kinds of teachers. “They’re all crap”, he says, of our essays on post-war reconstruction in America. Our hearts sink as we ask ourselves why we decided to take history A-level. He relishes in our despair. Dr Beesley then proceeds to explain to us that this is not GCSE history anymore, and that listing a bunch of ‘factors’ is not going to get us anywhere. We nod silently. Then the devil’s advocate is unleashed upon us like a bursting dam: “Surely it’s not that complicated?”, he asks. “Reconstruction failed because they were all racist and didn’t want to offer African Americans real freedom. No?”. We sit, discombobulated. A class of eight supposedly clever Paulines –amidst all their clever factors and short-term, medium-term, and longterm causation – had failed to consider this simple question. After having his fun grilling us, he eventually reassures us that we have a lot of potential, but that we need to pull ourselves out of GCSEish ideas of causation.

From that moment, though, we all knew we had stumbled upon something special. Those Lower Eighth American history lessons still feel like some of the best and most lucid learning I have experienced. We were tackling the biggest issues of the most influential country in the world, sitting around that little seminar table, with Dr Beesley always leaning over desks or pacing around the room, bringing energy to every conversation. It was almost as if that room on the second floor was a gateway into a whole different world of thinking and academia. Dr Beesley reminds me of the young temporary teacher, Irwin, in The History Boys who invites intellectual dissent amongst the boys to get away from stuffy teaching

norms. Any discussion could be had, just so long as Ed was able once in a while to take a puff of his industrialsized vape. From American history, to witchcraft, to the English Civil War, he sparked endless interest in areas which still fascinate me (I decided to write my undergraduate dissertation on magic, a topic originally introduced to me by him).

I like to think that I had a special relationship with Ed but looking back on it I think that was his great skill. In his own way he had a close relationship with all his students, nor did he really have favourites or prefer the better historians (in fact he would often just tell me to chill out, especially in the run up to Oxbridge interviews when I epitomised the overly anxious Pauline). This much was clear on the tributes page to him: Dr Beesley to so many was not just a teacher but the teacher. The teacher every person dreams of but only some are lucky enough to have. The one who really made them interested in learning for learning’s sake. One contemporary of his described him as a ‘colossus’, and I think that is strangely apt.

A friend of mine also wrote about one run-in he had with Ed when the student had been particularly under the cosh: “I remember that after a particularly painful meeting during which it had become apparent, I had done not one iota of the work required for my coursework, he decided to compliment me on a recent theatrical performance. This, to me, embodies the man. Academically ruthless, but always in service of his student’s attainment. And, when all was said and done, and the textbooks and gobbets and love of all things ‘early modern’ was put away, he always made sure to say a kind word before running off to another hopeless Pauline”. His words are as accurate as

mine in trying to capture the man. He was intellectually razor sharp but all the while humble and wearing his capabilities lightly. Having said that, he did often boast about how he had beaten a fourteen-year-old Tim Henman back in his peak tennis days. A few decades and more than a few pints later you would never have guessed…

After I left St Paul’s we stayed in touch, at one point over the summer he called me to discuss my dissertation. Unsurprisingly, we ended up spending most of the time lamenting Liz Truss’s leadership campaign and our plans on moving country were she to become Prime Minister. In hindsight, I wish we had met in person to catchup. But, then again, Ed was always reminding his history students of the dangers of hindsight.

For so many I know, Ed Beesley opened a door to intellectual curiosity and interest in a way that only very rare teachers can. Some dent the door, but he threw it open. When you really think about it, it is a spectacular legacy to have. For every single student Ed Beesley taught, that door will always remain open. 

Paulines Streaming

Whether it is Netflix, Amazon Prime, Sky, ITV or the BBC, there are Paulines everywhere in what was once the post watershed drama slot when all good children were tucked up in bed.

It could be Blake Ritson (1991-96) playing the camply subversive Oscar van Rhijn in The Gilded Age, Leo Suter (2007-12) fresh from Sanditon playing Harold Hardrada in Viking Valhalla, the Lloyd-Hughes brothers – Ben (200106) in The Ipcress File or Henry (1998-2003) in Killing Eve, Shubham Saraf (2005-10), on stage recently in The Father and the Assassin at the National, as Firoz Ali Khan in A Suitable Boy, Will Attenborough (2004-09) as Lieutenant Hurst in

Our Girl, playing the slightly out of his depth officer struggling to be respected by his troops or Rory Kinnear (1991-96) playing a community hero on Netflix in Bank of Dave

On the other side of the camera, BAFTA winner Patrick Spence (1981-84) as Creative Director at ITV Studios is one of the forces behind the acclaimed dramas Maternal, Spy Among Friends and Litvinenko 

Pauline Gallantry

The Pauline June 1914 reported on an interclub boxing tournament.

‘SENIOR BANTAMS (8 st 4 lb). Final – Neville (C) beat Johnston (C). Neville was the more experienced. He attacked with his left and his footwork was good. Johnston was rather of the novice class; he tried hard to stave off his more experienced opponent, but was not quite able to do so.’

Johnston lost a more important scrap 3 years later.

Flight Commander Philip Andrew Johnston (1911-14) – Royal Naval Air Service. Served in 8th (Naval) Squadron and was accredited with 6 victories. He was killed in action on August 17th, 1917.

The Pauline October 1917 has an obituary which includes this eulogy from his Commanding Officer: “He was quite one of the finest pilots I have ever seen, and he was absolutely wrapped up in his profession. He loved flying, and also made a special study of the science of aviation and constructional problems. Before he came to me, he had made a big name for himself in the Service as an experimental and test pilot, and he proved his all-round efficiency when he came out to the Front with this squadron and did equally excellent work as a fighting pilot”. 

Will Attenborough

Blake Ritson

Leo Suter

Shubham Saraf

Henry Lloyd-Hughes

Ben Lloyd-Hughes

Sopwith Pup 9917

Pauline Psephologist

Pauline Appointments

Matthew Gould (1984-89) has been appointed the director-general of the Zoological Society of London. It appears to be his dream job.

Matthew had been the CEO of NHSX, The NHS’s digital transformation arm, where he was responsible for the largest digital transformation in the world. He was previously the British Ambassador to Israel and the Government’s cyber-security chief. In December 2022 Matthew wrote in The Times,

Sir David Butler (1938-42) who helped to invent the ‘swingometer’ and became an essential part of BBC Television’s all-night general election coverage, died on November 8, 2022, aged 98.

David was born on October 17, 1924, the day of the first radio election broadcast by the prime minister Stanley Baldwin. At School he was friends with Nicholas Parsons (1937-39) who later in life commented. “I remember him talking about Abyssinia, and the Italian invasion, he had great knowledge for a youngster." His masters were not as convinced with one school report bizarrely including, “Butler has many very nice traits but he is a bit whimsical, puerile, and I think probably suffers from having elder sisters.”

After St Paul’s, he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at New College, Oxford for two terms before joining the Staffordshire Yeomanry. He did officer training at Sandhurst and found himself – still only 19 – leading a daring crossing of the Rhine. On his return to Oxford, he struggled with the philosophy part of his PPE degree. Sir Isaiah Berlin (1922-28) regarded him as the “most unphilosophical pupil” he had taught. “I can’t remember which is deductive and which is inductive for more than ten minutes,” he told Berlin. As Butler was an ex-serviceman, Berlin was able to arrange for him to take a shortened course in PPE in 1946 which avoided any more philosophy. Butler dealt in numbers and facts not thoughts.

The founder of Polling Report, Anthony Wells said of David: “As a student of elections it was always sort of awe inspiring to be able to sit and talk to David Butler. It was like a mathematician getting to sit and talk to Archimedes, or a Physicist getting to meet Newton.”

At St Paul’s, David’s first love was cricket, especially working out the batting and bowling averages. The County Championship was suspended during World War Two and, when not in action he found himself with time on his hands, he applied the same mathematical rigour to past election results. The rest is psephological history. 

and “Do I miss my old life? I suppose I miss the car and driver, the house with a flag, the unearned respect that ambassadors get. Sometimes I am even wistful for the shenanigans and politics of Whitehall. But then I get to watch tiger cubs play.”

Old Paulines who received honours in the New Years’ Honours included James Reed (1976-80) CBE for services to business and to charity, Floyd Steadman (Colet Court Common Room, 1990-2001 and Honorary OP) OBE for services to Rugby Union Football, to education and to charity, Philip Souter (1982-86) OBE for services to medical research and Dominique Jacquesson (1984-88) MBE for services to technology and to entrepreneurship. 

“It is a job I have coveted for decades. When a friend and fellow ambassador was appointed to the role a few years ago, any joy I felt for him was obliterated by a sharp jealousy that he had got my job”

Matthew Gould in conversation with Ed Vaizey as part of The Future Of series at St Paul’s School

Sir David Butler

Pauline Founders

John Dunkin (1964-69) has shared with Atrium his research into Pauline founders of clubs, societies and organisations.

The Royal Humane Society

Co-founder and first Register

Dr William Hawes (c. 1748) in 1774 when known as The Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned.

Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade

Co-founder Thomas Clarkson (17751779) in 1787 who helped achieve passage of the Slave Act in 1807 which ended British trade in slaves.

Society for the Promotion of Permanent & Universal Peace

Co-founded by Thomas Clarkson and his brother Lieutenant John Clarkson (c. 1779) RN in 1816. Also known as the International Peace Society, this pioneering pacifist organisation was active until the 1930s.

The Cambridge Camden Club, later the Ecclesiological Society

Benjamin Webb (1828-1838) cofounder with John Mason Neale established in 1839 as an architectural society to study gothic architecture.

The Jesus College Society, Cambridge

Founded by Dr Henry Menzies (18801886), it was launched in 1903 with Menzies as Hon Secretary which he remained until his death in 1936. Henry Menzies was a first-class cricketer, he played for Middlesex CCC 1892-93 during which time he was credited with stumping the great ‘WG’ at Lord’s.

Toc H – Talbot House was co-founded in 1915 by The Reverend Philip Thomas Byard ‘Tubby’ Clayton (1897-1906) MC and Neville Talbot at Poperinge, Belgium. Tubby and Neville opened Talbot House, named after Neville’s brother, Gilbert who had recently been

killed in action. Over the entrance to the chaplain’s room at Talbot House were the words “All rank abandon, ye who enter here”. Tubby’s aim was that Toc H (morse signaller’s language for T.H.) should be open to anyone and everyone, to be a place of fun and games and God.

On his return to London, Tubby established Toc H in London with All Hallows by the Tower becoming the movement’s guild church in 1923. What had worked with all ranks at Poperinghe also worked as an ecumenical Christian movement focused on fellowship, service, fairmindedness and the kingdom of God. It caught the mood after the devastation of war and the Spanish flu. It gave meaning during the hard economic years of the late 1920s and 1930s. Toc H grew to have thousands of branches in the UK (there are still over a 100), hundreds overseas and a women’s association was set up.

The Jesters Club

A sports club founded by John Forbes ‘Jock’ Burnet (1923-29) while at School when he and a few friends wanted to play cricket in the holidays. It expanded into fives, squash and rackets and continues to flourish. Jock Burnet later became Bursar and Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge.

The Osler Club of London

Dr Walter Reginald Bett (1919-22) co-founded this club in 1928 in order to encourage the study of the history of medicine and to preserve the legacy of Sir William Osler, a celebrated international physician. The Club still meets eight times a year at the Royal College of Physicians.

British Exploring Society

Originally the Public Schools Exploring Society, the BES was founded in 1932 by Surgeon Commander George

Murray Levick (1891-1895), who had taken part in the final, fatal Scott expedition to the Antarctic in 1910-13. Based at the Royal Geographic Society building in London, it provides opportunities for young people to take part in wilderness expeditions. It received unfortunate publicity in 2011 after an Eton boy was killed by a polar bear while camping on Svalbard. Surgeon Commander Levick was also the founder of the Royal Navy Rugby Union.

The Royal British Legion

The premier veterans’ association and military charity of the UK – the red poppy is its trademark – was cofounded in 1921 by Major General Sir Frederick Barton Maurice GCB GCMG, GCVO, DSO. After the death of co-founder Earl Haig, he became the Legion’s president until 1947. Gen. Maurice (1917-18) was also a President of the Old Pauline Club and attended the official opening of the Old Pauline Football Club clubhouse at Thames Ditton in 1930.

The Labrador Club of South Africa

Founder and first Chairman – George Alfred Jenkin (1936-39) in the 1950s and on return to England in 1965 a member of the Labrador Club for 30 years and foremost expert in the country of the breed. As a young officer in East Yorkshire Yeomanry in June 1944 he won an immediate MC within 24 hours of landing in Normandy. The citation reads “exemplary coolness and courage”.

The Rhino Cricket Club

Co-founded in 1966 by John Dunkin, Peter Dunkin (1969-73), Colin Dring (1959-64) with Richard Felton nephew of Robert ‘Bob’ Felton (1924-29) who played for Middlesex CCC. 

Tubby Clayton

Jock Burnet

Pauline Books

Atrium unless otherwise described uses ‘reviews’ provided by authors or their publishers.

Todd M Endelman

The Last Anglo-Jewish Gentleman: The Life and Times of Redcliffe Nathan Salaman

David Herman (1973-75) reviewed Todd M Endelman’s: The Last Anglo-Jewish Gentleman: The Life and Times of Redcliffe Nathan Salaman for the TLS. We republish with permission.

For more than forty years Todd Endelman has been a leading historian of Anglo-Jewry, the author of The Jews of Georgian England, 1714-1830: Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society (1979), Radical Assimilation in Anglo-Jewish History, 1656-1945 (1990), and The Jews of Britain, 1656-2000 (2002). His latest book is a biography of Redcliffe Nathan Salaman (1886-92), who became a physician, philanthropist and botanist.

Salaman’s father, Myer, made a fortune out of ostrich feathers and London property dealings and his children, including Redcliffe, lived off it. There was a darker side to Redcliffe’s personal life. One child died young; another was mentally disabled. His first wife and two brothers died in their forties, another brother died in his twenties and a fourth in early childhood.

Redcliffe Salaman was educated at home until he was 10, when he was sent to live in a boarding house in West Kensington for Jewish boys attending Samuel Bewsher’s Preparatory School for St Paul’s. He entered St Paul’s in 1886. In the late 19th century few Jewish boys attended Britain’s public schools. According to Endelman, ‘the first Jewish boy entered the school only a few years before Salaman arrived.’ During his time at the school there were about thirty other Jewish boys, including his older brother Euston. He encountered anti-Jewish sentiment and was never really happy at the school but it does not seem to have scarred him, unlike Leonard Woolf, who arrived just after Salaman left. Later he and his wife did not send their sons to St Paul’s, writes Endelman, ‘because the current headmaster was antisemitic.’

In 1892 Salaman was awarded a science scholarship at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He then studied at medical school in London and briefly in Germany. He went on to live the life of a country gentleman in a grand house near Cambridge for the rest of his life (hence the book’s title) but served as an army doctor during the First World War. He became a major figure in Anglo-Jewish communal life between the wars, developed a lifelong interest in studying potatoes and published widely on race science and eugenics, until the rise of Nazism. Perhaps his greatest achievement, though, was as a philanthropist supporting Jewish charities. He helped found the Jewish Health Organization of Great Britain, set up to help improve the health of Jewish immigrants in the East End, became a governor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and was a key figure in the Academic Assistance Council, which helped many distinguished Jewish refugees from Nazism come to Britain during the 1930s.

Most interesting of all, though, Endelman constantly puts Salaman’s interests in a larger historical context, exploring British antisemitism, the rise of race science in the early 20th century, the history of the British Mandate of Palestine and the debates which divided Anglo-Jewry. All of Endelman’s strengths as a social historian come to the fore and what emerges through these chapters is a rich account of Anglo-Jewish history over a century.

Rob Stewart (1981-85) How to Do Research, and How to Be a Researcher

There are many textbooks on research methods, plenty of books on popular science, and specialist texts on a whole range of academic fields. However, few bring these together as a framework for a career involving research, and few attempt a practical appraisal of the challenges and opportunities involved in being ‘a researcher’. Here, the principles underlying humanity’s past and continuing acquisition of knowledge are illustrated across a variety of academic fields, from history to quantum physics – telling stories of clever and inventive people with good ideas, but also of personalities, politics and power. This book draws together these strands to provide an informal and concise account of knowledge acquisition in all its guises.

Having set out what research hopes to achieve, and why we are all researchers at heart, Rob Stewart, Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Clinical Informatics at King’s College London in the early chapters describes the basic principles underlying this – ways of thinking which may date back to the philosophers of the Athenian marketplace but are still powerful influences on the way research is carried out today. Drawing on a broad range of disciplines, Stewart takes the reader well beyond the pure ‘scientific method’, which might work well enough in physics or chemistry but falls apart in life sciences, let alone humanities. Later chapters consider the realities of carrying out research and the ways in which these continue to shape its progress – researchers and their personalities, their employers, funding, publication, political forces, and power structures.

Written in an accessible and engaging style, this book is for anyone embarking on a research project or beginning to think about a career involving research, and for those in need of refocusing on why they started research in the first place.

Erik Jensen (1947-50) The Struggle for Western Sahara: The UN and the Challenge to Diplomacy

The dispute over Western Sahara between Morocco and the Polisario Front evolved into full-scale war and after four decades remains unresolved. UN military observers separate the Polisario forces from Morocco’s vast army but progress towards a settlement has been halting and the UN mission in Western Sahara is now among the longest running peace-keeping operations in the world. Here, Jensen provides a unique insider’s account of the UN’s involvement in Western Sahara, how the UN Settlement Plan was, after numerous obstacles, eventually put into operation and why it stalled. The Polisario is now adamant that only a referendum of self-determination with the option of independence is acceptable while Morocco offers a compromise settlement based on regional autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty. Both entrenched positions are constantly reaffirmed and unlikely to vary without major political change in the region.

Damian Dibben (1979-83) The Colour Storm

The Evening Standard describes The Colour Storm as ‘an epic tale of love, of courage, of hope’ and The Mail on Sunday suggests the reader should ‘bask in the brilliance’.

Enter the world of Renaissance Venice, where the competition for fame and fortune can mean life or death. Artists flock here, not just for wealth and fame, but for revolutionary colour. Yet artist Giorgione ‘Zorzo’ Barbarelli’s career hangs in the balance. Competition is fierce, and his debts are piling up. So, when Zorzo hears a rumour of a mysterious new pigment, brought to Venice by the richest man in Europe, he sets out to acquire the colour and secure his name in history.

Winning a commission to paint a portrait of the man’s wife, Sybille, Zorzo thinks he has found a way into the merchant’s favour. Instead he finds himself caught up in a conspiracy that stretches across Europe and a marriage coming apart inside one of the city’s most illustrious palazzos.

As the water levels rise and the plague creeps ever closer, an increasingly desperate Zorzo is not sure whom he can trust.

Will Sybille prove to be the key to Zorzo’s success, or the reason for his downfall?

Atmospheric and suspenseful, and filled with the famous artists of the era, The Colour Storm is an intoxicating story of art and ambition, love and obsession.

John Matlin (1956-61) End Game

The San Francisco police are totally baffled when the leading Democratic candidate for California Governor is murdered. There are no clues or witnesses. San Diego police investigate another murder where there is only one piece of physical evidence. But there is nothing yet to connect the two killings. A major industrialist and the new Democratic contender for governor are in the frame but the evidence is merely circumstantial.

Retired journalist, David Driscoll, finds himself thrust into helping a candidate in the Democratic Governor race and the San Francisco Police Department by using contacts he made two years previously as a journalist in the Las Vegas criminal fraternity.

Police inquiries hit one dead end after another, driving the drama through California’s big cities and important towns, Congressional committee hearings in Sacramento and the underworld of Los Angeles. When suspicion arises that a murder for hire business is being marketed, the evidence that leads to solving the murders is startling and shocking. “Politics, murder, and the darker side of a bright California – End Game is faster than a Disneyland roller coaster and just as exciting” – Scott Lucas: Professor of International Politics, The Clinton Institute, University College, Dublin.

Peter Cromarty (1966-71) Death or Grievous Bodily Harm

Peter Cromarty spent his paid working life in aviation, first as an air traffic controller and pilot, and later as an air traffic control safety regulation specialist and manager. He finished his aviation career with nine years as an executive manager at the Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority. Peter is now a homemaker, aircraft builder, and writer.

In Death or Grievous Bodily Harm, Tobias Richmond is quietly enjoying his retirement until he plays good Samaritan at his local shops. Soon, he and his family are sucked into the violent world of ruthless drug dealers, police corruption, and competition for the lucrative drugs markets of Southeast Queensland.

This is a fast-paced story about a man drawn, against his will, into fighting for his life and the lives of his family. Not knowing who they can trust or where to turn for help, the Richmond family face threats to their lives and take on vicious killers who want what they know.

Alex Edmans (1993-98) Principles of Corporate Finance

Principles of Corporate Finance, first published in 1980, has long been known as the “bible” of finance. It was the core finance textbook when Alex read Economics and Management at Oxford University. After graduating, Alex joined Morgan Stanley’s investment banking division, where all new analysts were given a copy and the book sat on the shelves of all the senior bankers. Alex then embarked on a PhD in Financial Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he used it as a teaching assistant for Professor Stewart Myers, one of the original co-authors. His first academic position was at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he taught it as a professor for the first time. After earning tenure, he returned to the UK in 2013 as a Professor of Finance at London Business School. He was named worldwide Professor of the Year by Poets and Quants in 2021.

After studying, using, and then teaching the book for 24 years, Alex was invited to be the new co-author of the 14th edition, which was published in 2022. This new edition is more modern. Most notably, it stresses how a CEO has a responsibility to wider society (customers, employees, the environment, suppliers, communities, and taxpayers), rather than just generating short-term profit for his shareholders. But it equally emphasises that this responsibility is not “woke”, but good business – a manager that promotes the interest of all stakeholders will typically outperform his peers in the long-term. The new edition recognises that markets are not always efficient, but affected by psychological biases, building on Alex’s work on how the stock market is affected even by World Cup football results and music listening choices. It is truly global, rather than focused just on the US, and highlights ways in which FinTech is changing financial practice.

The new edition uses female pronouns for CEOs throughout (and male pronouns for investors). This is not a gimmick, but out of recognition for the role language plays in reinforcing or neutralising biases – particularly in a book which, to many, is their first experience of finance.

Anand Shah (1993-98)

Have you done an interview for St Paul’s before?

No, unfortunately not. I have lost touch with St Paul’s over the last decade when I left the UK – although I did recently meet with Nick Troen (Geography Department) to discuss the entrepreneurship work that he’s leading. That said, my way of staying in touch with St Paul’s is through a group of six mates that I’ve met regularly now for 30 years, one of whom is a co-founder, Alex Barrett (1993-98).

That leads into something I wanted to ask you about. Considering that you founded a company with someone who came from St Paul’s, I wonder if you could reflect on the importance of an alumni network and maintaining connections with your school. Do you think that is important? Yes, I definitely do think it’s important, although it was more serendipity for me and Alex in the way we came together. I know there’ve been some alumni meet-ups after 5, 10, 15, 20 years: I left the UK in 2011 so unfortunately, I’ve not been able to make the last couple. But those types of thing really help: it’s going to happen naturally through the friendships made at school, sometimes through sports teams, or boarding house for example. I spent all my time – I don’t even know whether St Paul’s still has a bowl – but I spent all my lunch breaks down at the bowl with these guys playing five-a-side football. That was great – that was something we did 5 days a week throughout the year, and those sorts of opportunity don’t come back again. 

Omar Burhanuddin (2017-22) discusses founding and running the tech ‘unicorn’ Databook with Anand Shah (1993-98)

It’s been written elsewhere that your path – from St Paul’s, to Imperial, to Goldman Sachs, to ICMA, to Columbia and LBS, and then Accenture – is more the path of a Senior Partner, and less that of an entrepreneur. What motivated you to diverge from that path, and set up your own business?

Looking back, I definitely could’ve stayed on that path. However, it became more and more obvious over time that all the entrepreneurs in my family had instilled a burning desire to create and innovate. When I was looking for a job out of university, I wanted to be a professional in a big corporate job, because I wanted to spend more time with my family on weekends – something I didn’t do with my parents growing up. The mythical allure of a Monday-to-Friday job at a large Corporate with time available on the weekends was attractive. The opportunity came with Accenture which I was very grateful for: I had many interesting projects whilst I was there. But every couple of years I felt quite itchy about whether I was doing the right thing, whether I should be somewhere else. After about six years at Accenture, and an MBA, I made the shift towards entrepreneurship but still internally, call it ‘intra-preneurship’. However, it’s a very different thing, when you’re creating something new within an existing organisation with a large safety-net. But it gave me a taster of building a team, funding the operation, training people, marketing, and delivering value for customers. Spending five years doing that within a larger organisation, it got to the point where I felt: ‘OK, I’m really getting itchy now, I really need to go and do something outside’. And so, I created a business plan, and here we are. I think, to go down the Senior Partner track, I would have needed to conform more. I’m very focused on improving the way the world works and I didn’t fit the constraints of a partnership model that was defined by others.

Another aspect of your shift to entrepreneurship I’d like to ask you about is the role of AI in your work. It’s something many people in our younger alumni network are looking at getting into. Surely AI is one of the most central aspects of Databook, as the world’s

first AI-powered customer intelligence platform. When did you spot the potential for AI to be used in that way?

I had a very interesting post-Accenture experience. Actually, leaving Accenture wasn’t an obvious choice with a young family and moving to California. So, we came to an agreement where I would lead a project between Accenture and the World Economic Forum: the project was called the ‘Digital Transformation Initiative’. The project was looking into the impact of technology on business and society to 2025. That was really a spark for me. I saw that there were technologies, such as robotics, drones, cybersecurity, AI, cloud computing and mobile, that were coming together and creating what we called a ‘combinatorial effect’, that was driving significant productivity improvements. For example, Google Maps now uses AI to predict the best time to leave from home and the best route to travel. That’s a very big change from 20 years ago when you had to open up your AA road map and plot your way from A to B.

The idea of a fully autonomous, functioning and thinking computer is still the end result everyone’s thinking of and wary of. That’s still a pipe dream, but the advances in deep learning such as DALL-E and ChatGPT are examples of where the future of AI is headed. When I started Databook with Alex [Barrett], we used more simple AI techniques such as natural language generation and natural language processing to help us to do things which a human could do but would take a really long time. We are now starting to use more advanced techniques that amplify human expertise by 100x. All that said, we use AI in our platform, but it’s certainly not our only technology, since we’ve had to build up a lot of skill and IP in other areas.

While Databook was essentially a first-of-its-kind, it now faces competitions in the Sales enablement market, from Seismic and Highspot to Showpad and Outreach. Where, whether technological or cultural, do you believe Databook’s differentiating edge lies?

If you build an AI system in 3-6 months and put it out on the market, it’s likely that someone else can build something very similar and put it out on the market

Anand and his business partner at Databook, Alex Barrett

immediately afterwards. We’ve instead been able to take decades of experience, and embed that into our algorithms and platform directly, allowing us to stack new insights on top of these. AI is a way of building mechanisms to speed up the algorithms and improve them, but it still requires a human expertise and practical experience to make ethical and business judgement calls. That’s a critical part of utilising AI: making sure that there’s good controls and explainability on the results. We’re still working with it, and I think there are going to be huge leaps about the way we’ll use AI in the future.

Databook has done brilliantly, with 300% growth year-on-year for the last four years. Do you think you’ll take the company public in the foreseeable future?

Growth at smaller scale isn’t easy but it certainly looks better in percentage terms! In terms of going public, not any time soon and especially in this market, but yes that is one of our stated goals. We hope to become a public company at some point, but you’ve got to grind away at these things for long periods of time and we just completed five years so we still have a way to go.

I want to go back to your family. You said your father, and his incredible work ethic, was one of the greatest motivating factors for you. Are there any figures in the corporate world today – or, considering your recent interest in history, from the past – who you would consider a role model?

Yes, for sure. A few examples – perhaps not necessarily role models, but people I think have done an exceptional job over long periods of time, say 30, 40, 50 years – are founders like Marc Benioff, the Founder-CEO of Salesforce, and Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and Peter Gassner, Founder and CEO of Veeva Systems. I admire individuals like them who’ve started companies, created jobs and innovation, and later tied it back to philanthropy and sustainability. It’s not a surprise that both Salesforce and Microsoft are strategic partners and investors in Databook. I’m keen to see how we can follow their footsteps in that regard. One of the things I was reflecting on recently was the case of my grandfather.

He started a civil engineering company in India and ran it for over 40 years. It takes a sustained amount of effort over a long period of time to do something like that.

I’d now also like to ask you some broader, more cultural questions about Databook. You’ve previously spoken about the importance of diversity for a workforce and leadership team. Are there any examples you can share of how a multiplicity of experiences and perspectives has streamlined and fuelled the work that Databook does?

Growing up in London, there really is such a diversity of cultures and ideas. You’ve probably seen that during your time at St Paul’s, looking at how many pupils are not only British, but Indian, Pakistani, maybe African, French – a wide variety. We had boys in our year from Japan and Malaysia. And that was just school, but I stayed in London for university and I was always accustomed to diversity – it wasn’t really unique – I just thought it was normal. We have over 150 people from around the world, from California to Canada to New York to London to Amsterdam to Sweden to India to Sydney. With our employees, we bring in different ideas and promote cultural differences amongst us – for example we celebrate Chinese New Year, Hanukah, Diwali and Eid throughout our offices. That builds awareness, something that not everyone will have experienced growing up in their local regions.

At the beginning of the pandemic, you talked about the importance of ‘serving, not selling’, when approaching sales conversations. This seems to be in line with a general trend towards promoting ‘empathy’ and flexible accommodation that permeated lots of corporate cultures post-March 2020. Now, however, there seems to be a reaction underway to this. As a CEO, do you worry about these reversals and what they might suggest? I think it’s easy to cherry-pick some examples, such as Elon Musk, whose approach is radically different to most others. At Meta for example when they’ve had to make changes and let people go, they’ve done it in a sensitive way. They’ve given people 5-6 months’ worth of salary on their transition out. That’s quite unprecedented in corporate history. 

“We hope to become a public company at some point, but you’ve got to grind away at these things for long periods of time and we just completed five years so we still have a way to go.”

“Just keep in mind that it’s a long road and there are few opportunities that are quick wins. It requires a lot of iteration, innovation, pivoting, trialand-error, before results come.”

They’re also looking at private placement support, and future alumni communities. There’s a host of things these organisations are doing that haven’t been done in the past. Despite our difficult global market environment, from commodity prices to inflation to interest rates to stock market volatility, I see most organisations being more empathetic with their employees than less. I don’t think it’s transient, and one of the reasons why is that there’s a lot more transparency in corporate communications. This is all for the better. When I started my career, everyone in the company was invited to dial in to listen to the CEO once a month. Now we have Zoom meetings, videos, presentations, Q&As, and internal and external social media channels on a daily and weekly basis. I think there’s a lot going on right now that’s improving how communication and collaboration happens across organisations.

Do you feel that’s true of Databook itself: from before COVID to now, do you feel there’s been a shift in how you’ve been operating? Prior to COVID, we had 10-12 people in our company. Today we’re 150+. So, I don’t think we’re the best bellwether for tracking the larger shifts – you’d need to look at more established, mature companies for that.

I remember my first job: it was a construction internship during one of my summers at St Paul’s. I was working in the Docklands on a civil engineering project to build the Millennium Bridge (which is still there) and I spent most of the summer sitting in a cabin with a chain smoking senior engineer! This was back in the mid-90s, when there was no law against smoking inside versus outside, and certainly no employee wellness programs. You came in, did your work, and left. Flash forward 25 years, and there’s a vast difference in the way things are done. For example, we just made improvements to our health benefits for employees and now offer them support for behavioural

health coaching, therapy and support if they need it. Most companies are now supporting employees much more than ever before. They may not always get it right, but I think we will continue to see even more improvements.

Is there any advice you can give to Paulines who are looking to create a start-up like you did?

I started my first start-up when I was 17 at St Paul’s. It was a web-design agency. Back in the late 90s, there were few websites and for example no arsenal.co.uk – it literally didn’t exist. I took an interest in technology and design and so I started my first company with a friend of mine (not from St Paul’s) and pitched to Arsenal’s Chairman. Unfortunately, we didn’t win that bid but it was my first taste of entrepreneurship and we made some money along the way creating websites and business cards for smaller organizations. I was also involved in the Young Entrepreneurs program at the school. There were about 15-20 of us that decided to do

this. We brainstormed a lot of different ideas and ended up finding a simple arbitrage opportunity – buying Jansport backpacks from Costco for a tenner each and we then sold them to Paulines for 20 quid. Good margins and within six months I think we had about 50% of the school carrying Jansport backpacks, plus we made about £1,000.

My main advice for Paulines who are considering a business is to just try something. I would say that it’s never too late. The average age of getting into entrepreneurship is in the early 40s. It’s not easy but if you have something you’re passionate about and want to create something new and differentiated then it can be a huge opportunity. Just keep in mind that it’s a long road and there are few opportunities that are quick wins. It requires a lot of iteration, innovation, pivoting, trial-and-error, before results come. I’m happy to offer any assistance to folks who might be thinking of an entrepreneurial future, but the best way to do it is by trialand-error and learning on the job. 

Anand during his time at St Paul’s

China Less Condemnation and More Courtesy

“Has he changed his mind yet?” was the basic tenor of several telephone calls the School made to my parents in late 1976. I had emerged from A Levels with results that surprised me as much as my masters and I was causing mild consternation with my determination to study Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Even now, more than 45 years later, it is a sad truth that I still find myself swimming against the tide when it comes to China.

A visit to an exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1973 changed my life and opened a door to a world of different understandings of language, art, philosophy, history, human relationships and politics. There are, of course, far more points of similarity and shared understanding between China and the West than there are of incomprehension and irreconcilable difference, but it is always the latter that are highlighted and magnified. As a recognised Sinophile, people might expect that I would mount some kind of defence of the Chinese

government’s actions in Xinjiang, but I cannot and do not. I do understand better than many, the historical and political reasons behind them, but that is to no purpose weighed against the human cost. I am also neither an epidemiologist nor an expert in military strategy so this article will not cover the Chinese government’s handling of Covid or its aspirations regarding Taiwan.

Hong Kong, however, is a major stick currently used to beat the Beijing regime, and is something of a different matter, because there, knowledge of the history of the place, how and why it was “acquired” and how it was run for 90% of its time as a British colony, should give some critics pause for thought.

Staying with history, most Westerners are unaware that for more than three-quarters of the last 2,500 years China has been one of the most powerful countries in the world economy. What has happened over the last 40 years since Deng Xiaoping’s “opening up and reform”, is nothing new. Monopolies on the production of silk, then porcelain, then tea, guaranteed China a dominant place in world trade. The influence of these commodities on national economies and societies was enormous from very early times. The Romans’ taste for Chinese silk (there was no other kind) led to them banning it twice, once on financial grounds because it was 

James Trapp (1972-76) argues that greater perspective is needed on modern China

bankrupting the Roman exchequer and once on moral grounds because the Senate believed it was corrupting Roman youth. Fast forward some 1,800 years, and the British taste for Chinese tea (there was no other kind) was emptying the British treasury so fast, urgent action was required. The British answer was to create the model for the international drugs trade: produce cheaply in industrial quantities, smuggle into your target country and sell cheap.

The British did this, at the start of the 19th century, using opium grown in British India, with which they flooded China, causing huge damage to the Chinese economy and Chinese society

Some aspects of Chinese attitudes to the West are still coloured by echoes of the Opium Wars and the subsequent attempt by Western powers to carve up China between them to exploit economically. British attitudes in particular are still influenced by the images of the devious, cruel, “fiendish” Chinese common in the British press of the time, starting with the Opium Wars and magnified by the Boxer Rebellion.

More recently, fear of Communism and of Red China undeniably influences the average Briton’s picture. In the mid-2000s I used to lead groups of well-educated, well-travelled Brits on tours of China. Many of them arrived in Beijing still expecting to see crowds of people in Mao suits waving little red books. Within days they had pretty much

as a whole. The enterprise was backed, sometimes reluctantly, by the British government, and proved so lucrative that they sanctioned two wars with China, who had the temerity to object, to cement the drugs trade in place and push for further foreign encroachment. Hong Kong was acquired at cannonpoint at the end of the First Opium War, to ensure a safe harbour for the drugs runners. In order further to undermine the Chinese trading power based on tea, the British also engaged in a form of “industrial espionage” and “intellectual property theft” by sending an undercover agent, a plant hunter called Robert Fortune, into China, disguised as a Chinese, to steal the secrets of tea cultivation and production. The aim was to start a British tea industry in India to undercut the Chinese. Does any of that sound familiar in a more modern context?

It is unfashionable in some quarters, to allow opinions on current affairs to be informed by history because, of course, history was the backward “then” and we are in the much more advanced “now”. Yet we are beset by ongoing national, racial and religious stereotypes and prejudices that hobble attempts at more enlightened international and intercultural relations.

all their preconceptions about the country turned on their heads and by the time they returned to the UK, if not as total China converts, they at least held very different views.

The best way to start understanding China properly is to visit, because so many aspects, its size, its scale, its diversity are impossible to comprehend from the outside. Equally difficult to appreciate second-hand is how it combines social cohesion with a vivid individuality, which most Westerners assume has been squeezed out of the populace by an over-bearing authoritarian regime. Free enterprise and free thinking thrive in modern China but sometimes find different ways of expressing themselves from those in the West. I acknowledge that I am laying myself open to attack as a Brit trying to “explain” China, but I do so with a greater depth of understanding and experience than most.

So, here goes. China is a highly layered and nuanced “entity”. Everything about it is, to an outsider, a complex code that has to be teased apart, but which will never be fully understood. Nothing more clearly illustrates this than the Chinese language which functions in a way

As a recognised Sinophile, people might expect that I would mount some kind of defence of the Chinese government’s actions in Xinjiang, but I cannot and do not.

The best way to start understanding China properly is to visit, because so many aspects, its size, its scale, its diversity are impossible to comprehend from the outside

entirely different from Western languages. It communicates meaning not through complex grammar and syntax but through context, combination, reference and suggestion. It is capable of being just as precise as any other language when necessary, but is naturally inclined to a precisely shaded ambiguity, an openness to alternative interpretation. Of course, I am not saying that is the case in everyday usage, that everybody goes around speaking in riddles, but it does allow for an extraordinary range of subtle innuendo and suggestion. Where it really comes into its own is in the fields of poetry, philosophy… and politics.

Thought, Jiang Zemin Thought and so on, all recorded in government annals. Secondly, the simple translation of 思想 as “Thought” is misleading and inaccurate. Misleading because it immediately conjures up images of “1984” and “thought police” and inaccurate because a far better translation would be “political thinking” or “political theory” – which is disappointing because it sounds much less threatening.

Chinese political, governmental and business bureaucracy are minefields to Westerners with no understanding of the language, and still pretty hairraising to those who do have some. Quite apart from the bafflingly complex layers of authority, responsibility and relationships, no statement should be taken at face value. Both the language used and the layers of responsibility through which it filters allow for great flexibility in interpretation and application. There is almost always something unsaid but implied or suggested that avoids the kind of “finality” prized in the West.

Another problem in the interpretation of apparently gnomic Chinese utterances is that inexpert or rigid translation distorts meaning and gives them an abruptness that is, in fact, absent in the original. An excellent illustration of this, which is currently exercising Western political pundits, is the appearance of 习近平思想 , universally translated as “Xi Jinping Thought”. There are immediate comparisons made with Mao Zedong Thought and it is asserted that giving Xi his own “Thought” is elevating him to the level of Chairman Mao. First, all Chinese premiers have their “Thought” enshrined, so there is Hu Jintao

Official Chinese government pronouncements and policies should always be filtered through the interpretative process of accurate and informed translation but never, or practically never, are. China is one of the most significant powers in play on the world stage, but a recent Freedom of Information Request revealed that our Foreign Office, with a staff of nearly 18,000, boasts 79 with a familiarity with Chinese, only 49 of whom have a significant competency. It is hard to see how ministers can possibly be properly informed of the realities and subtleties of China’s foreign and domestic policies on that basis.

I believe that the current regime in China deserves condemnation for some of its actions but also deserves the courtesy of a better attempt at understanding it on its own terms. Although less extreme, I doubt that many level-headed Brits would want this country judged solely on the record of its government over a similar period to that for which Xi Jinping has been in power. China is a country I love for its art, history, culture, people and food. It is a country I admire for the contributions it has made to the world and for those it can make in the future. I can say exactly the same about the UK, as I am sure can most of you, because you can see the whole picture rather than selected highlights.

All I would ask is that the British and the British government should try to do the same, as far as they can, with China and take the time to fill in the background and change the perspective. 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OPC, St Paul’s School or Atrium’s Editorial Board. We gladly publish in the Pauline spirit of open discussion and debate.

I believe that the current regime in China deserves condemnation for some of its actions but also deserves the courtesy of a better attempt at understanding it on its own terms

PAULINE PERSPECTIVE

Top: Ralph at School

Bottom: Ralph at 96

In 1975 I went with another Pauline to attend a residential course at Malvern College. The course was to help prepare Sixth Formers from various schools who were applying to study History at Oxbridge. It was enormous fun and was run by the Head of History at Malvern, Ralph Blumenau. A few months later I received a letter out of the blue congratulating me on my History Scholarship to Cambridge. I have never forgotten this act of kindness.

Almost fifty years later, I met up with Ralph to talk about his life and what it was like to be a Jewish refugee at St Paul’s during the war. He is now 97, but has lost none of his passion for history, or his warmth, or his gratitude to Britain and to St Paul’s.

Ralph was born Klaus Blumenau in Cologne in December 1924. He and his younger brother Tom (1927-2009), also a Pauline, both Anglicised their first names to help them settle in when they came to Britain. Their mother wanted the family to change their surname as well, but their father refused on the strange grounds that he was already more widely known by his German surname.

RALPH BLUMENAU Educator

David Herman (1973-75) interviews Ralph Blumenau (1939-43), one of many Paulines who were refugees from Nazi Germany

Like so many Jews in Weimar Germany, Ralph’s family were assimilated and ‘completely secular’. His father was a businessman who owned a corset factory. Ralph was sent to a non-Jewish primary school where he was one of only five Jewish boys. He still remembers the day Hitler came to power in 1933. It was his maternal grandfather’s birthday. ‘A lot of boys gave the Hitler salute,’ he says. ‘They were very enthused about Hitler.’ That was the day when Ralph found out who Hitler was. He remembers the antisemitic atmosphere: banners, caricatures of Jews with hooked noses. From then on, he was bullied at school. The next year, 1934, he and his brother were sent to a Jewish primary school (‘not very religious’) and then to a more religious Jewish secondary school. Soon his parents started exploring the idea of escaping to Britain.

His parents emigrated to Britain in 1936. They were lucky with their timing. His father was able to sell his firm, got ‘quite a bit of money out’ and, crucially, managed to export the machinery from his factory so he could start up a new business in London, where the majority of his workers were also Jewish refugees. His father’s brother came later, just after Kristallnacht, at the end of 1938. His grandparents did not leave and all died before the Holocaust, so they were spared the ghettoes and the death camps.

Ralph and his brother were sent to school in Switzerland for a year, paid for by their mother’s parents. They had English lessons there and Ralph spoke good English by the time he came to England in Spring 1937. The family settled in Hampstead and later in St John’s Wood. His parents stayed in north London for the rest of their lives.

Ralph had no difficulty in understanding English or in making himself understood. Perhaps surprisingly, he also remembers having ‘no difficulty in settling in’ at his Hampstead prep school. He then sat the scholarship exam for St Paul’s. Because he was a refugee, he was allowed to sit and win a scholarship at fourteen instead of thirteen.

Ralph was at St Paul’s from 1939-43 (his brother Tom, later a businessman and human rights campaigner, was there from 1941-46). St Paul’s had already been evacuated because of the War, to Crowthorne in Berkshire, about 35 miles from southwest London. There, until 1945, masters and boys lived in the village, and lessons took place in a nearby country house, Easthampstead Park, and nearby Wellington College lent the school its playing fields and laboratories. Though he was unathletic, he was fit, since he had to cycle sixteen miles a day: he cycled four miles from his hostel to the school, then back for lunch, and then back to school. And back again to the hostel. He had one very good friend at St Paul’s who was killed in the War. He was not unhappy at the school, he says, but ‘I was not as much in my element at St Paul’s as I was later [as a teacher] at Malvern.’

Was it difficult for a Jewish-German refugee to fit in?

‘The school was not at all antisemitic,’ he says emphatically. ‘Quite the opposite.’ I asked him several times about this because views differ about the experience of Jewish boys at St Paul’s. Ralph remembers that there were ‘a large number of Jewish boys then, including quite a few refugees.’ Did they stand out? ‘Absolutely not.’

Two teachers from his time at School stand out in his memory. His Housemaster (‘a lovely man’) and W H EynonSmith (History department 1924-44) ‘the man I owe most

Was it difficult for a Jewish-German refugee to fit in? ‘The school was not at all antisemitic,’ he says emphatically. ‘Quite the opposite.’

to’, who was sadly killed in the war by a German bomb. He was a polymath who covered a vast range of subjects during the eight periods of General Knowledge each week.

After St Paul’s Ralph spent two years teaching at a prep school and then went to Wadham College, Oxford, from 1945-49, where he was awarded a First in History. The philosopher Mary Warnock once said that what struck her, arriving at Oxford just after the War, was how important it was whether the dons, like Isaiah Berlin (1922-28) and Stuart Hampshire, had had a good War. What were Ralph’s impressions of Oxford after the War? ‘Blissful – the happiest years of my life until I got married.’ He went to lectures by Hugh Trevor-Roper (‘Remarkable. Two lectures per week for two terms’) and one of the most famous Old Paulines, Isaiah Berlin (‘He was fascinating. He never looked at the audience but at the corner of the ceiling and he spoke completely without notes’). The famous Classicist Maurice Bowra was the Warden of Wadham (he was Warden from 1938-70) and was also then Professor of Poetry at Oxford.

By the time Ralph left Oxford he had been naturalised and was a British citizen. After Oxford he became a schoolmaster at The King’s School, Canterbury. This was

a cathedral school, and the Headmaster, who was a canon at the cathedral, told him that because he was Jewish, he could not be a Housemaster or a head of department. So, after four years he moved on to Malvern College, a hugely happy and fulfilling experience. He became Head of History (1959–85) and wrote a history of the school for its centenary. He seems to have been much loved at Malvern. One former student wrote, ‘He was a brilliant and inspiring teacher, who taught me everything, not just history but art history, classical music appreciation, even French and Latin in History with Foreign Texts A level.’

In 1985 Ralph retired, and then spent another thirty years lecturing on European History, the History of Philosophy and the History of the Jews at the University of the Third Age and wrote his best-known book, Philosophy and Living (2002). His lectures on the History of the Jews led him to giving talks on the subject to many Jewish groups; and his parents, he says, would have been surprised that he should have become so involved with Jewish history. Though all their friends in England were German Jews, ‘they weren’t in the slightest bit interested in Jewish history.’

Did he feel an outsider in England? ‘In the whole of my life I remember only one person, a classmate at St Paul’s, who ever made antisemitic remarks to me.’ Ralph is definitely not an outsider. Educated at St Paul’s and Oxford, a public school teacher for almost forty years, he seems untroubled by the traumas of displacement. ‘I feel very British’, he says. But not too British. ‘I have felt the privilege of a different background, which has given me a perspective, a broad-mindedness, an interest in foreign affairs.’ ‘Of course, I’m British,’ he goes on. ‘There’s no question. British with a continental background which I value. But British first.’

Ralph went back to Germany in 1950 as the Director of the UNESCO Youth Institute in Munich. His appointment was a stopgap for six months and he was told that it was not likely to be renewed: there was hostility towards him from some members of the governing body, and from the Munich municipality. Did it feel strange going back so soon after the War? In Bavaria, I did feel an outsider. I was very conscious that the Germans I talked to…’ He pauses. ‘I made a lot of mistakes. My German wasn’t good enough.’ Apart from talking about his German schooldays in the early 1930s, it is the only time during our conversation that he speaks of not fitting in somewhere. 

A Brave Front

The School marked the centenary of the First World War in 2018 in various ways, including the display of 490 crosses around the school war memorial, one for each of the OPs believed to have died in the conflict. To put these deaths in context, the history department produced a slim booklet about Old Pauline combatants. While helping to produce it, Graham Seel, then Head of Humanities, realised that there were important gaps in our knowledge, and that there was a wealth of war-related material in the archives of The Pauline, and proposed a major research project.

The result is a hefty work of historical scholarship, entitled Scholars and Soldiers: a History of Alumni of St Paul’s School and the First World War. It is in two volumes: the first is a general history of the school and the war, including its commemoration; the second is an in-depth study of OPs who fell in the Ypres area. As well as unearthing many dramatic stories from the archives, the project found that another twenty-one names should be added to the roll of honour. So, the sad figure now stands at 511, which is seventeen per cent of the nearly three thousand OPs who fought.

In the first years of the war, it was not just a high proportion of recent school-leavers who volunteered. Almost all did. Though we are familiar with the patriotic mood of the day, this near unanimity is

Theo Hobson (1985-90) with the help of Graham Seel (History Department 2012-21) tells the story of the 511 (not 490) Paulines who died in the Great War

St Paul's School OTC Officers and NCOs, 1916

still surprising. Mr Seel’s research helps us to understand it. A military ethos had been in the ascendant since 1888, when the Cadet Corps was set up, later re-named the Officer Training Corps. In theory it was voluntary, but pressure to join soon crept in. A writer in The Pauline contributed to this pressure: ‘no boy of average pluck would be content to find that a national call to arms would find him helpless’. A decade later the military mood was ramped up by the Boer War, and a large monument* was erected to OPs who died in the conflict. The High Master gave a speech that included that famous quote that we now associate with bitter irony, ‘Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori’. There was no irony surrounding the phrase then; it was a mantra of public piety. By 1914 military service was central to the school’s ethos, bolstered by Muscular Christianity, the study of the classics (which made military death seem ‘swift, clean and bold’), and of course team games, especially rugby. When the war started, the drumbeat became louder still: the OTC paraded three times a week.

In September 1914 the High Master, Rev Albert Hilliard, gave a speech that was realistic about what lay ahead: the war is likely to be long, and to demand ‘great tenacity of purpose to counterbalance the inevitable weariness and loathing’. With the two sides

evenly matched in material resources, psychology will be crucial: we can only win with ‘the supreme conviction which makes victory a solemn duty’. Some have said that France, being under attack, ‘has found its soul again’, and has found a higher sense of purpose, and this may become true of Britain too. ‘If all that is sane and healthy in us gains the day over all that is inert and ease-loving and selfish, then our nation too may be said to have found its soul again.’ Some say that the young men volunteering are too young to understand what they are signing up for. ‘I answer that they understand the difference between what is worthy and what is mean, that they can distinguish between justice and oppression, that liberty has not become a cant word to them, that they understand what duty to friends is, and that they feel with a sensitiveness that many of the great intellectuals cannot emulate.’

At the next Apposition, in July 1915, the Captain of School, Harry Waldo Yoxall (1908-1915), took up the theme: ‘It is better to read in the papers of Old Paulines joining the forces, mentioned in dispatches, honoured with the various medals and orders, even dying – or rather, more than anything, dying – than to read of their exploits at Lord’s, or Henley, or Queen’s Club.’ By now nearly 2,000 OPs were fighting, almost all as officers (around 90%). Public school was a pretty sure ticket to officer status, which partly explains the enthusiasm to volunteer: the desire to do one’s duty merged with the urge to be a leader.

So, what did these volunteers make of the trenches? Did their earnest idealism survive the horrific conditions and mounting death-toll? It is hard to say: not only did every man experience the war differently, but it is hard to interpret the impressions that were recorded in letters home, many of which were printed in The Pauline, and are reproduced in an appendix to the book. The tone is typically rather jaunty: downplaying adversity seemed to come naturally to this generation. Was this an attempt to reassure those at home, or did many soldiers genuinely feel upbeat, and even enjoy aspects of the conflict? Also, of course it is likely that more negative letters were censored or held back by families if they made it home. 

The sad figure now stands at 511, which is seventeen per cent of the nearly three thousand OPs who fought.

The OTC band playing at the Annual Inspection, 1915

In 1915 The Pauline printed extracts from the letters of Captain Arthur Ritchie (1893-1897), who was often upbeat almost to the point of absurdity. He relates his pride in his men, and there is an interesting hint that rubbing shoulders with the working-class is an enriching new experience. ‘I love the way they chaff, and their jolly spirit…The man next to me in the trench is delightful. He quite forgets any differences of rank, and today I found him with his arm round my neck pointing out a German whom I was trying to snipe at 700 yards’ range.’ For a moment he sounds a bit like the Hugh Laurie character in Blackadder Goes Forth: ‘I have sat here three days and two nights already – whizz, whizz, bash, bang, etc…It is all very, very jolly.’ One night he creeps into no man’s land to set a haystack on fire. ‘It was gloriously exciting – more so than stalking buffalo, as the German sharpshooters were all about.’ Even getting shot sounds fun. ‘It was splendid the way [my men] brought me down, the stretcher under fire…I had my little show all to myself. I thought I was dying, but when I came to my senses… it was all very jolly – but only a little bit of a thing.’ He died from another injury just a week later.

there is an element of shell-shocked excitement. In August 1916 he was hit in the neck by a fragment of shell and paralysed; he died a year later aged 25. An acquaintance wrote to his mother: ‘I for one shall always thank God for such Christian Knighthood as was typified in Ken.’

A more rounded picture is painted by Ewart Alan Macintosh (1909-1912), who was studying Classics at Oxford when the war started: he enlisted with the Seaforth Highlanders, a link with his Scottish ancestry (he even learned to play the bagpipes). In 1916 he was awarded the Military Cross for a raid on the enemy’s trenches. According to the citation, ‘Several of the enemy were disposed of and a strong point destroyed. He also brought back two wounded men under heavy fire.’ Another version of the event is provided by Ewart himself, in a letter to his sister. ‘We killed seven Germans in the trench and about thirty or forty more in their dug-out. Our losses were slight but three of our men had their legs blown off and we had to get them back. I can tell you it was no joke pulling a helpless man a yard and then throwing a bomb to keep the Boches back and then pulling him another yard, and throwing another bomb…The shrapnel was bursting right in my face,

The enthusiasm in many letters is not just a matter of stiff upper lip: it seems that war contained exciting new experiences, among other things. John Carpenter (assistant master 1910-19), related that ‘Life has been very varied and contains both unpleasant and very pleasant things.’ Even the unpleasant things are recounted with happy gusto: when shelling forced him into his dug-out ‘then the fun started in earnest and continued for over an hour’. A few days later there is a successful attack on the German trenches: ‘Poor old Boche, he’d had a concentrated crumping for nearly a week; the large fountains of earth rising from [their trenches] were magnificent, and shaped like the Welsh feathers.’ He was not alone is finding aesthetic interest in the grim surroundings. The painter Paul Nash (1903-1906) admitted to his wife that he was half-horrified, half-thrilled by such good material. ‘Oh these wonderful trenches at night, at dawn, at sundown. Shall I ever lose the picture they have made on my mind.’ And the response of poets was not entirely doom-laden. For Paul Bewsher (1907-1912), war entailed the thrilling new experience of flying, which he recorded in a memorable couplet: ‘Kind is the God who lets me fly/In sweet seclusion through the sky.’

‘Life is good out here, despite the great depth of mud and the fact that we live in dugouts’, wrote Kenneth Gordon Garnett (1904-1911) in November 1915, adding that mice and rats running over one’s face at night was another downside. He soon related a ‘beastly’ gas attack: ‘I felt sure we were done in though I was not in a funk – I told the men (and I had to shout through the helmet) to trust in Jesus and this was an easy way to die…Never mind – many rats and mice here in the trenches have been slain – bless the Boche for that! … Yes, it is a great life – I really thought my end had come this morning – a curious feeling – Heaps of love to all.’ A ‘great life’? This does not seem ironic, so maybe

and the machine guns – ugh! I didn’t stop swearing the whole time, except when I was praying – but I’d promised my men I wouldn’t leave the Boche trench while there was a man alive in it and I kept my word…All the men I have brought in have died. I believe I have been recommended for a Military Cross, but I’d rather have the boys’ lives. If I get one, I will get home on special leave soon. I’ve had my taste of a show. It’s not romantic. It’s hell.’ Soon after this he was injured and spent eight months convalescing in England, during which time he wrote some short stories and poems that were well received. Then he returned to the front and was killed in 1917.

One writer, ‘C.S’, provides an insight into the adrenalin-fuelled bravado: ‘When you are in the thick of it, nothing worries you. I can honestly say that I was not a scrap afraid when I went over the top (I didn’t dare to be); in fact, it sounds foolish and trivial enough, I expect, but I went over smoking a cigarette and wearing an eyeglass, just to let the men see that I didn’t (apparently) care a hang.’ This is a vivid, manic version of ‘putting a brave face on it’. He goes on in text-book jaunty fashion: ‘We appear to have got on top-hole, but will have a nasty job when resistance stiffens.’

By 1914 military service was central to the school’s ethos, bolstered by Muscular Christianity, the study of the classics (which made military death seem ‘swift, clean and bold’), and of course team games, especially rugby

The enthusiasm in many letters is not just a matter of stiff upper lip: it seems that war contained exciting new experiences

Of course, finding excitement in war has a darker side: in a few letters killing the enemy is related with an element of flippancy. But again, it is hard to say how much irony, shellshock and stiff-upper-lip are involved in such accounts. Arthur Broad (1908-1914) was captain of the Rowing Club before he volunteered (and a keen collector of dragonflies). He wrote of a fierce battle in which ‘I myself shot three Germans with a rifle…We only took two prisoners yesterday morning, but we left a legacy of about two dozen dead Boches in the strong point, just to encourage them. It’s good fun, only a little shelling, but plenty of rifle potting and bombing. The men are all in good spirits.’ He died soon after writing this. A similarly exciting, but uncomfortable, account of battle comes from Arthur Ballard (1911-1914), a tank gunner. A village had been taken from the Germans, ‘but we managed to come in for a bit of the “mopping up” …. I was laying the right gun, and it was great – houses full of the swine at about fifty yards range – one couldn’t miss.’ But such gung-ho moments are rare: understatement rules.

The most illustrious OP warrior, Bernard Law Montgomery (19021906), recounts an episode of derring-

do: a long march in pursuit of the enemy, sleeping in the open: ‘It is extraordinary how fit you get on a show of this kind.’ Back in the trenches, one must keep one’s head down, he tells his correspondent, or ‘a hail of bullets whistles by you. But we do our share of sniping too, and this morning I bagged one man and one horse off my own bat, though the officers don’t as a rule fire themselves.’ Then the letter changes tack rather abruptly. ‘I suppose you are hard at football right now; what will the XV be like this year? The latest copy of The Pauline would be very acceptable, as I should like to know the latest school news.’ Plenty of other letter-writers show a similar interest in the fortunes of various school teams; others relate chance meetings with fellow OPs. One writer makes a stranger mental connection with the School: ‘I wonder how far up the creepers [on the school building] will have reached, towards the clock, by the time the war is over…One’s mind reverts to trivial thoughts such as these at the front.’

Another, Arthur Burbury (19081914), put a similar sentiment in verse. When ‘all this purgatory is over…I shall return to thy red walls / Splendid Saint Paul’s!’ 

Scan the QR code below to visit the online St Paul’s Great War archive:

* Mike Graham (1952-56) advised Atrium in Spring 2022, “the Boer War memorial was eventually sold to an OP, who had it resurrected in his garden. That was Professor Alfred Ubbelohde CBE (1920-26)”

1912 1st XI (All served, five killed in action)

Back row (L-R): Kerry (Pro), AG Sclacht, BH Street, JTA Riddle, MA Ward, Hind (Pro)

Front row (L-R): WAC Rebbin, SHF Skeet, FL Wainright (captain), MW Von Winckler, AJW Pearson

Cross-legged: RHF Speed, ML Hayne

PAULINE PERSPECTIVE

St Paul’s Girls’ School and The Great War

Howard Bailes, the St Paul’s Girls’ School archivist tells of Paulinas’ contributions to the war effort.

Unlike the Second World War, in which St Paul’s Girls’ School was evacuated for a year to Wycombe Abbey and, in 1940, suffered aerial bombing, the Great War did not transform the daily tenor of institutional life. Paulinas, naturally, engaged in various worthy activities: supporting the Red Cross, knitting for refugees, turning part of the lawns at Bute House (purchased by the governors in 1916) into a potato field.

According to Katharine Shuffrey (1912-19) there were also ‘formidable weeks when we spoke only French as a gesture of sympathy for our allies’. In contrast, the German mistress was dismissed. ‘I could no longer retain the services of Miss Warschauer’, Miss Gray told the Governors. The High Mistress insisted, though, that the redundancy occurred not because of the teacher’s nationality but because so few Paulinas wished to study the language. More gravely, news of casualties brought the war close to home. Paulina, the original school magazine, began to carry Rolls of Honour, recording the deaths of those who were close relations to Paulinas: mostly brothers, but also husbands of Old Paulinas who, as the school was new, were still quite young. To take one example: Kathleen FearnsideSpeed was an original Paulina, one of the 54 who entered St Paul’s on 19th January 1904. All three of her brothers enlisted in 1914. The oldest, Ronald, was killed on the first day of the battle of Loos, 25th September 1915, when

Rudyard Kipling’s son also died in action. In December of that year, Kathleen, aged 21 or so, married Lieutenant Arthur Bagley, Royal Dublin Fusiliers. He was wounded in combat on the 17th October 1918 and died thirteen days before the armistice. Staff were affected too. The Rev. William Webber, brother of Miss Phoebe Webber (Modern Languages, 1910-47) was a chaplain with the Royal Navy. During the battle of Jutland, his ship, HMS Black Prince, (31st May 1916), was blown up, ‘with an incandescent white light and a gigantic thunderclap of noise ….’ (Robert Massie, Castles of Steel, 2003, p 647). The entire crew of 858 was lost. Lydia Webb, the sister of Dr Helen Webb, the school’s medical officer from its opening until 1923, died with nearly 200 others when the RMS Leinster was torpedoed on the 10th October 1918.

Many Paulinas volunteered for war work. Some joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD): we have reports from a number of hospitals, including the Military Hospital, Endell St, WC2, where Elizabeth Garrett Anderson,

no less, and in her old age, was Chief Surgeon. An unnamed Paulina sent a despatch from Cairo in 1915, where she was in the typhoid wards of the government hospital there: the men, she wrote ‘are all so grateful and cheerful, that I enjoy my work immensely’. Others joined the Civil Service: eight alumnae were in the War Office by the end of 1915; another Old Paulina became a groom in a Remount Depot ‘run entirely by women’. Sybil Medley (1908-10), at the Royal Herbert Hospital, Woolwich, gave a detailed account of a typical day (December 1916): up at 4.00 am for washing (‘I do the helpless cases while the Orderly gives basins round to those who can wash themselves’) and on duty until 7.30pm.

Nor was music forgotten. Grace Stettauer (1909-13) helped to organise concert parties to entertain the troops and described (December 1916) an entertainment held in a roadside barn. This was packed: ‘there were Tommies in the door-way, Tommies peeping through slits in the wall, Tommies perched on the rafters ….’. As the war

was ending, Mr Holst himself joined the British Expeditionary Force in Salonika (Thessaloniki) to provide music and raise the troops’ morale. Holst became remarkably popular with the soldiers, as his leading biographer affirms. At a concert of British music, for instance, there was, Holst wrote to Vaughan Williams, ‘a jolly, keen rowdy audience who hardly breathed during the music, who kindly laughed noisily at my jokes’ (Michael Short, Holst, 1990/ Circaidy Gregory Press 2014, pp 106). Before his departure, Holst thought it politic to drop the aristocratic part of his surname, which he did by deed poll on 18th September 1918.

‘We must all give up something for the war’, Miss Gray told the girls at Prayers, and Mr Holst has ‘volunteered to give up his ‘von’’. 

Willy Stoewer, ‘Destruction of the British Armoured Cruiser HMS Black Prince during the night 31st May 1916’

‘We must all give up something for the war’, Miss Gray told the girls at Prayers, and Mr Holst has ‘volunteered to give up his ‘von’’.

An unnamed Paulina sent a despatch from Cairo in 1915, where she was in the typhoid wards of the government hospital there: the men, she wrote ‘are all so grateful and cheerful, that I enjoy my work immensely’.

Milton’s Haven

Why did it take me so long to visit Milton’s cottage? I am one of his biggest fans, and I have even written a book on his religious thought. But somehow I had never got round to visiting his only remaining home, even though it is just forty minutes from West London.

Maybe it is that I am a bit of a sceptic when it comes to literary pilgrimages. It is a writer’s works that matter, not the quaint aura of an antique dwelling, re-packaged for vaguely curious tourists. This is especially so in relation to Milton, arch-enemy of outward ritual, of empty traditionalism, of alluring superficial distractions from the essential invisible meaning of things. Why should I join the idle browsers who have never ventured beyond the first few lines of Paradise Lost, who have never heard of Comus, who cannot spell Areopagitica? But maybe my youthful puritanism on this matter is fading. When I google the area, I am rather pleased to see ‘Milton’s Cottage’ pop up on the screen. He is part of the cultural landscape, so it feels right that he has a place in the actual landscape too.

Milton: a downbeat trochee, a dull thud of a name, like ‘London’ – and ‘John’ does not liven it up much. He seemed too tied up with official grandeur, institutional authority, the epic scale, the Feast Service, a marble bust near the High Master’s office. When our English A-level texts were decided, everyone, including the teacher, was relieved that he was not on the list.

When I studied English at university, and actually started reading the man’s poetry, I was pleasantly amazed. Why had no one told me how vivid and engaging it was, this re-imagining of the creation story? I was becoming more interested in theology, so it was Milton’s clear religious passion that grabbed me, as well as the beauty of the language. There is another aspect to the appeal of Paradise Lost, which I hesitate to mention, as it might make me seem a bit sleazy and weird, but the description of Adam and Eve getting acquainted in Eden is full of unique erotic power. Why had no one told us about this at school? I had assumed we were being shielded from something awesomely dull, but maybe the teachers were nervous of this text on other grounds entirely.

Later, studying theology, I became more focused on his religious thought. This resulted in a book, Milton’s Vision: the Birth of Christian Liberty. As the title suggests, I see him as a key architect of modern Christianity – he shows how it is compatible with political freedom. This makes him as important as Luther or Calvin in my eyes.

Anyway, this article is meant to be about Milton’s Cottage. On a nice sunny winter day I drive through suburban Buckinghamshire to the village of Chalfont

St Giles, hoping that a little brown sign will come to my aid any minute now. I have been given directions but decide to follow my nose and see what happens. There is an old-looking pub: did he come here for a drink? There is a church with a stubby tower: did he ever swallow his dissenting pride and attend a service? How much of this high street did Milton set eyes on? No, hang on, he was already blind when he lived here. He came here in 1665, seeking refuge from the Great Plague. Though he stayed for less than two years, it was an important time for him: he completed Paradise Lost and started planning its sequel, Paradise Regained. This poem is about Jesus being tempted by Satan in the wilderness and replying with speeches of holy power, like a sort of pacifist superhero. Also, he was still keeping his head down for political reasons: the monarchy had been restored just five years earlier, and Milton, as Cromwell’s chief propagandist, was lucky to have escaped prosecution, after a brief stint in the Tower of London. His blindness may have saved him: royalists saw it as divine retribution, and punishment enough.

I seem to be in luck: ‘Milton’s Indian Restaurant’ is on the left. (It is fun to imagine his ghost seeing this sign and trying to decode it.) And here it is on the right: a pretty, little house, right on the street, with a hanging sign, like those adorning ye olde teashops: Milton’s Cottage.

I knock on the door. Maybe Milton sometimes heard a knock on this very door late at night and wondered if his past had finally caught up with him. There I meet a nice man called John – but not that John! He is a retired chemical engineer who moved to the village six years ago and has become quite the Milton expert, through showing visitors around, often four times a week. He tells some good anecdotes and sometimes recites a few lines of poetry in a dramatic voice. I bet he tells his grandchildren a good bedtime story. He shows me into a small room with a low ceiling: a taller man than me would have to duck under the wooden beam. It is dominated by a writing desk and a large fireplace. There are three portraits: of an angelic ten-year-old, an androgynous teenager (at Cambridge he was called ‘the lady of Christ’s’), and finally a grim-looking middle-aged man, with a greenish tinge to his face. Writing epic poetry does not seem to be good for one’s skin.

On one side of the room is a display cabinet: John shows me the nifty LED lighting that has recently been installed. And then he shows me a first edition of Paradise Lost, and I glance at the familiar opening lines. ‘So, this is how he would have first seen it in print!’ I say. ‘No, because he was blind by this time’, says John. Whoops.

Theo Hobson visits the only remaining home of the greatest literary Old Pauline

John Milton (1608-1674), age 21, 1731

The next room, the kitchen, has an even larger fireplace and some antique furniture that might have been Milton’s (but probably was not, John admits). I imagine his wife, Elizabeth, calling him in to supper. In fact, his daughter Deborah might have been helping in the study, taking dictation. What did the three of them talk about round the table? The pomposity and brutality of the royalists, perhaps. Or maybe he reminisced about his days serving the Commonwealth, as his womenfolk made faces at each other, expressive of exaggerated boredom. He was blind, you know.

This room features his other poetic works, such as Lycidas, his elegy for a drowned university friend, and Comus, a play about a forest spirit who seduces innocent young women (he has a sort of rock’n’roll glamour like a woodland Mick Jagger). As in Paradise Regained, evil is blown away by the power of the feisty heroine’s virtuous speech. Some of the books are accompanied by QR codes that allow one to hear bits of the poetry. John tells me about another bit of tech, aimed at younger visitors. An ‘augmented reality’ app enables them to hunt demons as they walk through the cottage, zapping them back to hell. The climax of the game involves a ring of fire appearing in the floor and St Michael descending from the ceiling.

There is also a letter from Queen Victoria from 1887. She was one of the first to contribute to a public subscription that bought the cottage, saving it for the nation (she paid £20). It was nearly bought by an American who intended to dismantle it and ship it home. It is a reminder that Milton’s political thought has been shown greater respect on that side of the Atlantic. In fact, he was seen as a major influence on the founding fathers. Over here we find it hard to categorise someone who was in some ways deeply in tune with English tradition, yet who angrily opposed the Church of England and the monarchy. We prefer to keep him in the Great Poet box and downplay his radical thought. Another problem is that his radicalism has become taken for granted: political liberalism seems hardly worth celebrating; in fact, we are more likely to find fault with that whole tradition.

The final room of the museum, the parlour, is devoted to his political works, including Eikonoklastes, his polemical response to Charles I’s memoir in which he posed as a martyr. By pressing a button on the wall you can hear Cromwell berating one of his lily-livered parliaments. Framed on the wall is a proclamation from 1660, announcing the illegality of his political writing. John tells me that the Bodleian Library in Oxford was ordered to surrender its copies of his prose, but calmly claimed they had got lost (even a royalist university puts books first). Other items on display include some rather diminutive cannon balls that were found in the roof of the local church, which Cromwell’s troops used for target practice, so the story goes. There is also a lock of Milton’s hair, which is the sort of thing he floridly derided. One could draw a far-fetched analogy here to his last epic, Samson Agonistes, the work of a grumpy prophet disappointed by his fickle compatriots, deserving of being crushed by a collapsing stadium.

Exit through the gift shop and you can choose from a wide selection of mementoes. I left with a pencil, a rubber (‘Paradise Eras’d’), a Manga version of his famous epic, and a biographical version of snakes and ladders. There is also honey, made by the bees in the garden, which John now shows me. It is pretty even in mid-winter; there is a rambling English cottage garden feel. It contains all the plants named in his poems, and a statue of Eve plus apple. (The omission of Adam strikes me as wrong, and maybe a bit sexist; they are surely the mother and father of double acts.) There is a frosty lawn where friends of the museum like to drink Pimm’s in the summer and listen to poetry recitals.

After my tour I am invited upstairs to meet Kelly, who runs the museum. Over coffee and biscuits, we discuss Milton’s contemporary image – do the people who visit like him? A lot of people find him daunting, she says, due to the length of the poems and also due to how religious he is. But when they see the scope of his career, and its links to the civil war era, they want to find out more. And if they give the poems a whirl, they tend to be pleasantly surprised, as I was. I think this separates Milton from other great writers: it takes time to see his appeal, he is not immediately approachable.

Then our conversation takes a practical turn. She explains that the museum, which has never received state funding, came close to closing nine years ago; thanks to some generous donors, including the Mercers, it was given a new lease of life and now, largely thanks to Kelly’s hard work, it has links with other arts organisations and local schools and hosts musical events, lectures and art exhibitions. To ensure that such work continues, and that there is no danger of the place being dismantled and exported, an endowment fund called Paradise Maintain’d has been launched. The target is £4 million, and it is hoped that Old Paulines will do their bit to ensure that this awkward giant of literature remains firmly on the map, eternally. Find out more at www.miltonscottage.org

Milton’s cottage

Pauline Pop Picker

Simon Bishop (1962-65) profiles Pete Murray

The Daddy of DJ’s

Peter Murray James (193940), better known as Pete Murray the DJ, might be surprised to read about himself in the St Paul’s alumni magazine. Not happy at the School, Peter’s mother agreed to take him away, a mere 11 months after joining form 4C, to attend the Pitman College in Holborn where he was to enjoy co-education for the first time.

At St Paul’s, then decamped to Crowthorne for the duration of WWII, sleeping six to a room in an unheated house, ‘Pete’, as he became known later, remembers the ‘joys’ of being fed a concoction of steamed stinging nettles.

Showing some aptitude for boxing, then an important sport at the School, Pete remembers beating a boy from Wellington College, which shared its sports facilities with St Paul’s during the war years. This provided him with some respect from those quarters during a time of tense rivalry between the two establishments.

Success is not necessarily the result of one’s schooling of course. Offered an opportunity, Pete was to blaze very much his own trail as Britain’s very first disc jockey; a hitherto unknown profession.

I remember as a newbie 4th former in the early 1960s experiencing a frisson of surprise and delight to learn that this ‘maverick’, suave radio star had once graced the corridors of West Kensington. Looking back, I think in some way he inspired a sense in us young and impressionable Paulines that we could aspire to be anything we wished to be, and not simply follow the crowd. And he provided us with some sort of role model for the emerging ‘Swinging Sixties’.

In 1954, the BBC rejected Bill Haley’s Rock Around the Clock as being too risqué refusing it airtime. Pete saw its potential and immediately added the song to his playlist while working as an announcer at Radio Luxembourg. So it was that rock’n’roll was heard on British radio for the first time. Many millions of young listeners were avidly tuning in to the magic 208 dial, often having to finely adjust the radio setting to maximise the reception, which seemed to swirl in and out of signal, particularly in London, for some reason.

Pete had not set out to be a DJ. Rather, he wanted to act. Inspired by his mother who also had interests in the stage and armed with some fledgling experiences as a film extra, Pete boldly, if shyly, presented himself

at the portals of RADA where he was brought before Sir Kenneth Barnes, the Director. He was accepted on face value and found himself alongside luminaries such as Richard Attenborough. But following too solemn a delivery of the light-hearted role of Gratiano in The Merchant of Venice, Barnes was to tell him flatly, “My advice to you is to give up immediately.” Pete was to dig deep into some sense of self-determination and asked to be given a second chance. Helped somewhat by there being a dearth of other young men available, he lived to fight another day.

At RADA, it was Colin Chandler, tasked with producing the play Musical Chairs by Ronald MacKenzie, that changed Pete’s acting fortunes. Despite telling Pete that the performance he had seen him give as Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice was “possibly the worst performance I’ve ever seen in my life”, he handed Pete the plum role of Josef Schindler for which he received a rare (and rule breaking) standing ovation at the institution. He was later awarded the RADA Bronze Medal for his performance as Dunois in St Joan The presentation was made by the then Queen, later Queen Mother.

(L-R) BBC radio DJs Jimmy Young, Tony Blackburn, Pete Murray, Terry Wogan and Ed Stewart celebrating signing the longest contract (for three years) in the BBC’s history in 1972

Pete’s agent, Herbert de Leon, was convinced that Pete’s future lay in films. Believing he was “…on an express train to fame.” Pete was to find out the hard way that “the journey would be made on a stopping train.” Small parts followed, often with a single line to deliver. Stage appearances followed his film debut; first as a Scots Guard in a production of Marigold at the Kew Theatre, followed by a part in The Idiot by Dostoyevsky in Cambridge. A review in the Times remarked, “This marks the debut of a young 17-year-old actor who has a tremendous future.” He later joined Robert Morley at The Savoy Theatre, playing the boy in The Man Who Came to Dinner.

The show toured, and Pete vividly remembers the experience in his autobiography One Day I’ll Forget My Trousers, published in 1975. “During the war, with unheated trains, the black-out, miserable digs, it became the ultimate in the disagreeable.”

He recalls waking up in Bristol to find himself crawling with bedbugs. And in Grimsby, he was to fend off a landlady who removed her teeth, declaring it was better that way for kissing! But all that was to end prematurely in 1943, as Pete received his call to duty, reporting to the RAF at Carshalton, an old Zeppelin base. Pete, with five others, would eventually be given the task of looking after a fleet of gliders, stationed miles from anywhere in a hut. After a prolonged stomach bug, Pete was discharged in May 1945.

More film roles were to follow: in Caravan, with Stewart Grainger starring, then as a cavalry officer in Hungry Hill, working alongside Dennis Price. He remembers being delighted to see his name on a poster for the film on the back of a bus.

After two attempts to audition for plays going to Broadway, it was third time lucky for Pete, when he was picked to tour with a production of Power Without Glory which originally starred Dirk Bogarde and Kenneth More, then unknown actors at the Gate Theatre. Sadly, poor reviews ensured a swift return home where he was soon to be offered a job in radio for the first time; for three months as an announcer for Radio Luxembourg.

As far as Pete was concerned, this radio job was just a ‘filler’. His ambition to be an actor remained. Despite a brief

break from the microphone to appear in the film No Highway, starring James Stewart, Marlene Dietrich and Glynis Johns, along with Jack Hawkins and Kenneth More, Pete returned to the Grand Duchy to resume his duties as a DJ. Pete could pretty much do as he liked – he had the freedom to develop his own style of presenting in which he enjoyed inventing character voices for Irish and American listeners amongst others.

It was at this time that Pete definitively became ‘Pete’, rather than Peter Murray. The James surname long discarded, there were simply too many other ‘Peters’ on Luxembourg’s books, so ‘Pete’ became the distinguishing Murray moniker.

Three months extended to five years. Life in the Duchy was proving enjoyable. So much so, that despite an invitation to join a Peter Brook production of Macbeth, Pete turned it down. Radio Luxembourg’s stock was rising, and Pete was beginning to get notoriety from being in the right place at the right time. And it would be his experience at the ‘Ring-a-ding Station of the Stars’ that would later vault him into becoming the presenter of BBC’s first rock’n’roll TV music show – the 6-5 Special, launched in 1957 to great acclaim.

After appearing as host for the UK heat of the Eurovision Song contest in 1959, Pete provided radio commentary for the show itself on seven other occasions, and as TV host twice. He became TV compère for Come Dancing, the precursor to Strictly Come Dancing

Other classic pop music shows were to follow: With David Jacobs in the chair, Pete was a regular panellist on Juke Box Jury, before becoming one of four presenters of the hit show Top of the Pops which launched in 1964. The first song to be featured was Dusty Springfield singing I Only Want to be with You. Three years later, Pete was one of the original DJs working for the newly formed BBC Radio One, along with Tony Blackburn, Kenny Everett and John Peel, all lured from the successful pirate station Radio Caroline.

Moving across to Radio 2, Pete began a very successful interview format on his show Open House which ran for 10 years from 1969. Amongst many greats on his show

were Margaret Thatcher and Marlene Dietrich, who was to talk of her love of Irish stew.

Pete began to move in high society, becoming a personal friend of Prime Minister Harold Wilson, though not sharing his politics. He appeared twice on the Morecambe and Wise Show and ran a showbiz football XI, that included Sean Connery and Des O’Connor, to raise money for charity, appearing before crowds of 20,000 at West Ham’s and Charlton’s grounds. He remains a lifelong supporter of Arsenal FC.

In 1970, Pete was awarded an OBE for Services to Broadcasting, which was again presented to him by the Queen Mother. In 1973 he won the BBC Radio Personality of the Year Award at the Royal Variety Awards.

In 1981, Pete began a move into more serious, speech only radio with Midweek on Radio 4. In 1984 he joined LBC, the local talk radio station, for which he won the Variety Club of Great Britain Award for his show which ran until 2002.

Pete returned to the airwaves last year, aged 97, for a Boxing Day special in which he played some of his favourite records on Boom Radio. And as part of its centenary celebrations last year, the BBC featured Pete in a special programme, Pete Murray, In His Own Words in which he was interviewed by friend and former colleague David Hamilton, which was broadcast on Radio 2 in October.

Although Pete never quite gained the recognition he desired on the boards, he certainly made up for it by writing the template for what it means to be a radio jock. Many have him to thank for his example and style. He is, without any doubt, the Daddy of DJ’s. 

Pete Murray being interviewed by David Hamilton in 2015

ET CETERA

St Paul’s has always proved to be fertile ground for writers. Vivid memories of schooldays have spilled out across the literary spectrum from novels, autobiographies, memoirs and anthologies. Autumn 2022’s Atrium highlighted examples by Paulines who were at School in the first half of the 20th Century. Here are some examples from the second half of that century.

It was the first straw in the wind

Sir Nigel Thompson (1952-55) in The Architect’s Engineer: Memoir of a Life in Building Engineering and Restorative Development shares Bo Langham’s (President of Boxing 1916-56) notes on his boxing bout against Wellington College in 1953. Nigel weighed in at 5 stone 13 pounds. His Wellingtonian opponent Caldecott was 6 stone 5 pounds.

“Thompson set out to avoid defeat by accurate timing. Caldecott tried to make a fight of it. The harder he tried the harder he ran on to Thompson’s left. Finally, he flung caution to the winds and endeavoured to win by thugging it. Thompson, still watching carefully, took every opportunity and kept Caldecott away. Thompson as cool as ever, made it all look quite simple and gained one of the most creditable wins of the team. It was the first straw in the wind. We won this match by 12 bouts to 4”.

He made of maths a language of illumination

Bob Phillips (1964-68) has written Climbing Out: the beginning of a life It describes sympathetically and at times very amusingly life with an uncontrolled bipolar disorder while at St Paul’s. Bob was excellent at swimming and mathematics. Other parts of school life did not go as well. Bob went to Cambridge. His career has been varied. He has been a shop steward in a bleach works, a social worker, a university lecturer in psychology, a director of a sewer manufacturer and a partner in E&Y. In retirement, Bob writes books.

His hero at School was Hugh Neill (Maths department 1966-72).

“Neill taught us vectors and matrices and Venn diagrams and other magic to bring simplicity to situations for which traditional mathematics brought lots of hard work…. He made of maths a language of illumination rather than a discipline of hard work and rules to be learned”.

But I had nothing to do

Robin Hirsch (1956-61) includes memories of his St Paul’s days in his memoir Last Dance at the Hotel Kempinski. A chapter is dedicated to the Queen’s visit in 1959, when a special lavatory was built but never used. Monty’s inspection of the Combined Cadet Force on a boiling hot day is hilariously described. Robin is an Oxford, Fulbright and EnglishSpeaking Union Scholar, who has taught, published, acted, directed and produced theatre on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1977 together with two other starving artists, he founded the Cornelia Street Cafe in New York’s Greenwich Village. In 1987 the City of New York proclaimed it “a culinary as well as a cultural landmark.” Cornelia Street Cafe is now ‘in exile’ having been forced to close by greedy landlords. In short, Robin is a delightful flâneur.

Robin’s description of his final St Paul’s term captures his tone wonderfully.

“At St Paul’s when the new term started, I was like a lame-duck president. As an Oxford Scholar I was allowed to parade around in my gown. I was accorded a great deal of respect. But I had nothing to do”.

Little changed since the 1850s Tim Razzall’s (1957-62) autobiography Chance Encounters Tales From A Varied Life includes his memories of his years at Colet Court and St Paul’s. He went to Oxford, representing the university at cricket. For many seasons he was captain of the Old Pauline Cricket club. A solicitor, he worked for Frere Cholmeley Bischoff, becoming a partner. In 1974 he was elected a Councillor for Mortlake Ward in Richmond which he represented for 24 years. In 1986 he became joint treasurer of the Liberal Party and then treasurer of the newly merged Liberal Democrats. He was appointed CBE in 1993 and was created a Life Peer in 1997 as Baron Razzall of Mortlake.

His hero at School was Christopher Train (Classics Department 1957-67) who taught Tim ancient history. Chris left teaching to join the Civil Service where he rose to be head of the prison service. Teaching methods assured academic success, if that is judged by Oxbridge awards, but hardly seems in tune with the swinging sixties.

“At St Paul’s I received an education that had changed little since the 1850s; indeed, some might say from the date of foundation in 1509. One week all Latin, one week all Greek, relieved only by a weekly period of ancient history”.

The High Master in the USA

The High Master, Sally-Anne Huang, and Director of Development & Engagement, Ellie Sleeman, visited New York, Boston and San Francisco between 13th and 18th October 2022.

This was the first time the High Master has been able to travel to the US to meet our largest Pauline Community outside London. Alongside the events organised in each area, Sally-Anne and Ellie were delighted to organise 1-1 meetings with OPs and parents of former pupils.

The first group event was held at Nicholas Josefowitz’s (1996-2001) house in San Francisco. 17 OPs came for drinks and canapés, and an enjoyable evening of conversation, meeting old friends and new, and sharing of information between school and alumni resulted.

On 15th October, the next event was held, this time at Pretty Ricky’s bar in the Big Apple, owned by Jaime Felber (1999-2004). 48 OPs attended the evening, which provided the chance to hear updates from the school and for NYC-based OPs to meet and network.

While Sally-Anne and Ellie were in New York, the Colet Foundation held its Annual General Meeting. The meeting was held in a Nomadworks office space, where Steven Cohen (1986-88) is the Founder and CEO. The Colet Foundation was founded in 1991 and has, for many years, played a significant part in allowing our USA communities to support the School’s aims and ambitions generously. The USA Colet Foundation Bursary Fund provides for one of the named bursary places, with a target to raise $252,000 over seven years to fund a full bursary place for one pupil.

In Boston, a meal was generously hosted by Katherine, Karl and Andrew (2016-21) Spielmann at Henrietta’s Table. With 20 OPs in attendance from a range of age groups.

Further events at US universities were held at Columbia and Yale with recent leavers sharing their experiences of studying in the US. 

85 OPs

attended the US events

(L-R) Arjun Kalia (2016-21), Chance Leviatin (2016-21), Yang Hsu (2014-19), the High Master, Elias Fizesan (2020-22), Lucas Ho (2015-20)

OPC Archives

A new Archivist, The Pauline Memory Project and an appeal for missing photographs.

Kelly Strickland is the new OPC Archivist. She took over from Ginny Dawe-Woodings in September 2022. Kelly is originally from Houston, Texas. After graduating, she worked in Moscow for a year as an English teacher. Kelly then worked as an analyst before returning to university to gain her Masters in Archives Management from Simmons University in Boston. Since then, she has been based in the UK. Her most recent post was volunteering as an archivist at Westminster Cathedral.

Her first task as archivist has been to continue Ginny’s work in sorting and cataloguing the Club’s archive.

At the Earliest Vintage Lunch in March 2022 The Pauline Memory Project was launched. The project currently has 48 OPs signed up as contributors. Questionnaires are being distributed and a link will be available on the OPC website.

While the war years at Crowthorne are well documented, there is a shortage of memories from the final two decades at the Hammersmith site. The Pauline Memory Project is seeking to capture and record the personal, student, and ephemeral history of life at St Paul’s. While the archives of both the School and the Old Pauline Club reflect both the professional and organisational memory of the institution, there is an absence of personal and ‘un-official’ memories.

This project is looking to fill these gaps with memories sourced from the alumni community as a way of adding to the history of the School. Once the 1950s and 1960s are covered the intention is to move on to the 1970s and so on. If you would like to take part, please send your name, dates at School and contact details to Archivist@stpaulsschool.org.uk

Kelly in her early work on the Club’s and School’s archives has found gaps in photographic records particularly the 1950s and 1960s and asks OPs to check whether they have any images from those years they could send to her.

Old Pauline Lodge

The autumn meeting of the Old Pauline Lodge took place in October and was held in the Montgomery room at the School.

At the meeting, our new member who joined earlier this year Paul Baksh (1981-85), (pictured below) completed his progress to the degree of a Master Mason. After the meeting the members and guests from other School Lodges dined in the Atrium.

In the summer several of our members together with wives and partners attended the annual Public Schools Masonic Festival, which was held at Ardingly College, with most of us staying over the weekend at local hotels. OP Lodge Secretary Zvi Solomons (1981-85) participated in the proceedings, as an Assistant Grand Chaplain. Next year the festival will be held at Stowe School.

The Old Pauline Lodge was formed and consecrated in 1919 and meets four times a year at Barnes with the kind permission of the School. Members are all OPs and members of staff.

Freemasonry is a worldwide organisation, providing a unique environment for people to learn skills, make lasting friendships and achieve their potential and above all to have fun.

We welcome new members and if any OP is interested he should contact Secretary Zvi Solomons for more information or a meeting. secretary@oldpaulinelodge.org.uk 07828742282.

Old Pauline Club

Spring 2023

President

The Rt Hon the Lord Vaizey of Didcot

Past Presidents

C D L Hogbin, C J W Madge, F W Neate, Sir Alexander Graham GBE DCL, R C Cunis, Professor the Rt Hon the Lord McColl of Dulwich, The Rt Hon the Lord Baker of Dorking CH, J M Dennis, J H M East, Sir Nigel Thompson KCMG CBE, R J Smith, B M Jones

Vice Presidents

Professor D S H Abulafia, T M Adeyoola, Rt Revd R W B Atkinson OBE, Professor M D Bailey, P R A Baker, R S Baldock, S C H Bishop, J R Blair CBE, Sir David Brewer CMG, CVO, N St J Brooks, R D Burton, W M A Carroll, Professor P A Cartledge, M A Colato, R K Compton, T J D Cunis, A C Day, S J Dennis MBE, Sir Lloyd Dorfman CVO, CBE, C R Dring, C G Duckworth, A R Duncan, J A H Ellis, R A Engel, D H P Etherton, The Rt Hon the Lord Etherton of Marylebone PC, Sir Brian Fall GCVO KCMG, N J Fitch, Sir Simon Fraser CMG, KCMG, GCMG, B R Girvan, The Rt Hon the Lord Godson of Thorney Island, T J R Goode, D J Gordon-Smith, Lt Gen Sir Peter Graham KCB CBE, The Rt Hon the Lord Greenhalgh of Fulham, Professor F D M Haldane, S R Harding, R J G Holman, J A Howard, S A Hyman, S D Kerrigan, P J King, T G Knight, J W S Lyons, I C MacDougall, G C Matthews, Professor C P Mayer CBE, R G McIntosh, A R M McLean CLH, I C McNicol, J D Morgan, A K Nigam, N H Norgren, The Rt Hon George Osborne, Sir Mene Pangalos FRS, T B Peters, D M Porteus, R M Rayner, The Rt Hon the Lord Razzall of Mortlake CBE, The Rt Hon the Lord Renwick of Clifton KCMG, B M Roberts, J M Robertson, J E Rolfe, M K Seigel, J Sherjan, J C F Simpson CBE, D R Snow MBE, S Strauss, A G Summers, R Summers, J L Thorn, R Ticciati OBE, Sir Mark Walport FRS, Professor the Lord Winston of Hammersmith, J Withers Green

Executive Committee

Ed Vaizey (President & Chairman of the Committee), Jeremy Withers Green (Deputy President)

Sam Turner (Secretary), Nick Brooks (Treasurer), James Grant (40s Decade), Sam Hyman (Co-Opted, Surveyor), Brian Jones (Co-Opted, Strategy), Elizabeth Monro-Davies (Parent), Nog Norgren (50s Decade), Ali Palmer (Governor), Rishi Patel-Warr (20s Decade), Jehan Sherjan (Thames Ditton), Ellie Sleeman (Development), Simon Strauss (Overseas), Jack Turner (Sports), Neil Wates (30s Decade), Nick Troen (Staff and AROPS)

Nominations Committee

Ed Vaizey (Chairman), John Dennis, Brian Jones, Peter King

Strategy Implementation Committee

Brian Jones (Chairman), Nick Brooks, Michael Colato, Simon Hardy

Sports Committee

Jack Turner (Chairman), Rob Rayner, Jehan Sherjan, Nick Troen

Advisory Council

John East (Chairman)

David Abulafia, Richard Atkinson, Peter Baker, Simon Bishop, Jon Blair, Paul Cartledge, Michael Colato, Ross Compton, Richard Cunis, Tim Cunis, Alan Day, John Dennis, Charles Duckworth, John Ellis, Robert Engel, Brian Fall, Simon Fraser, Dean Godson, Mike Graham, Stephen Greenhalgh, Richard Holman, Peter King, Charles Madge, Alan McLean, Jon Morgan, Francis Neate, Robert Rayner, Tim Razzall, James Rolfe, Mike Seigel, Rob Smith, Nigel Thompson

Archivist

Kelly Strickland

Accountants

Kreston Reeves LLP

Trustee

OPC Trustee Company Limited

Paul Baksh

OLD PAULINE GOLF SOCIETY

2023 is a year of change for the Golf Society after a successful 2022 under Captain David Pincott.

First, Neil Fitch has retired as Honorary Secretary after an outstanding 21 years. We are all very grateful to Neil for his unstinting work on behalf of the Society. Philip Francis, Treasurer since 2014, has also stood down. James Grant takes over as Hon. Sec. while Toby Bain becomes Treasurer. In addition, Chris Vallender has joined the Committee.

We are looking forward to an exciting calendar of golf this year under new Captain Nigel Williams. The St Paul’s Halford Hewitt team are in action in March led by Charlie Prior, taking over from Hugh Roberts as Captain. The team lost in the second round in 2022 to a very strong Charterhouse team but are looking forward to a strong run this year. Our seasonal meetings take place this year at Bletchworth Park, Hayling Island, Wyke Green and West Hill, while we play regular matches against many schools including SPS on 26th April.

With the exception of the Halford Hewitt, Alba Trophy and Cyril Gray Trophy, all matches and meetings are handicap events with prizes on offer as well as a warm welcome.

We are keen to recruit players of all ages and abilities to the Society. Members play at excellent courses at good society rates, paying a small annual subscription of just £30. This is reduced to £10 for Members under 25 years of age and non-playing Members.

We would like to hear from as many OP golfers as possible; for more information please email James Grant on jamesgrant50@hotmail.com

OLD PAULINE FOOTBALL CLUB

Following the success of last season, the 1st XV has continued its rich vein of form during the first half of the 2022/23 season.

Strong wins against Harlequin Amateurs, Guildfordians and Streatham-Croydon have been the highlights so far in a campaign that sees us sit second in the league, the only loss to date, being to the league leaders Bec Old Boys.

The style of the rugby played has been pleasing on the eye. Free flowing and attacking, tries have been plentiful. The emergence of a core nucleus of players in the squad, committed to playing week in week out has helped no end in ensuring we continue to maintain a high level of consistency. While there remain a number of challenging fixtures left in the season, we are well placed to push for a second consecutive promotion.

Elsewhere, opportunities to play outside of the 1st XV have come in the form of the 2nd XV and the ‘B’ XV

OLD PAULINE SPORT

OLD PAULINE ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL CLUB

The OPAFC has made an encouraging start to 2023.

The 1st XI finds itself just below the automatic promotion places and started the year with a fantastic away win at the league leaders. League aspirations are complemented by a strong determination to keep their hands on the AFA Challenge Cup. A quarter-final berth has been secured at the time of writing. Watch this space!

The 2nd XI shares the dream of Cup glory and have advanced to the semi-finals of the London Old Boys Junior Cup, having beaten teams from higher leagues in every round. They are currently fourth in the league with a game in hand on the two teams immediately above them.

The 3rd XI is focused on the league – and with good reason – as they find themselves at the summit of Division 5 South halfway through the season. Strong availability and an attacking philosophy bode well for an exciting title charge.

The Vets are enjoying their first season in the league competition format and find themselves well placed to secure a Champions League slot (or equivalent) by the end of the campaign.

The Club experience has been further enhanced by the recently refurbished bar at Colets, which provides post-match facilities to rival the quality of the playing surfaces.

Plans are being formulated for this year’s Tour, so anyone interested in finding out how to become involved with OPAFC, at any level, please contact ciaran.harries@btinternet.com

with Friday night ‘Vets’ rugby proving particularly popular. Only one other game has been lost across the club in all competitions with notable wins against Harlequin Amateurs 2nd XV and Old Cranleighans ‘B’ XV.

While the first half of the season has been overwhelmingly positive for

the Club, a real disappointment was the cancellation of the annual school leavers XV versus St Paul’s 1st XV match in December. Regrettably, freezing conditions and unplayable pitch conditions put paid to the much-anticipated fixture. We hope for better luck next season.

In Memoriam

Michael P Avery (1957-61)

Nicolas J Belfrage (1955-58)

David M Bigwood (1947-52)

Sir David H E Butler (1938-42)

Anish K Chandaria (1980-84)

Clive Coates (1955-59)

Christopher B (Barry) Cox (1945-50)

Michael H Draisey (1948-53)

Ralph R M Ehrmann (1938-1940)

Jesse C M Ferguson (1987-92)

Paul A Ginsborg (1958-63)

Derek C Goldrei (1961-66)

Anthony J Harbott (1944-48)

Robert D Harman KC (1945-47)

Schuyler W Henderson (1985-90)

Anthony M V Hoare (1959-63)

Richard M Hone KC (1960-65)

John Hudson English Department

1999-2018

Brian P Jones (1949-53)

Trevor H Levere (1958-62)

J A H (Hugh) MacBride (1949-54)

Nicholas P Magill (2000-05)

Thomas R Marsh (1974-78)

Edward S Max (1977-82)

Geoffrey N Meadon (1958-62)

Hugh Neill Head of Maths (1966-72)

John R Peppitt QC (1945-50)

Peter I Reed (1945-48)

Alan M Rind CVO (1954-59)

Henry J Roche (1958-63)

David M Rollitt Maths Department and Rugby Coach 1977-2003

Gavin D Siggers (1982-86)

Peter K Symes (1947-52)

David K Wakefield Director of Art

1978-2001

Peter N Waters (1976-81)

In February 2022, Robert Blalack passed away in Paris, where he was living with his son (Paul Blalack, 23, screenwriter) and wife (Caroline Charron-Blalack, 57, journalist-author).

Robert studied Maths, Physics and Chemistry at St Paul’s School while his father, an officer in the US Navy, was stationed in England. Robert then attended Pomona College in California where he obtained a BA in English Literature and theatre arts. He then went to Cal-Arts where he directed experimental films, some with his professor and mentor, Pat O’Neil. He left Cal-Arts with an MFA in Film Studies.

At first, Robert worked with optical printers, creating visual effects for several projects. He launched his company, Praxis Film Works Inc. in 1975. The same year, Robert was called to work on George Lucas’ newest film project Star Wars Robert was one of the founders of Industrial, Light & Magic (ILM), creating the visual effects facility for the first Star Wars movie. For his major work on Star Wars, Blalack was awarded an Oscar in 1978 for Best Visual Effects. He continued working on challenging movies such as The Day After (for which he received a Best Visual Effects Emmy Award in 1984), Wolfen, Cosmos: a personal voyage, Blues Brother, Airplane!, Robocop, Cat People Robert also produced and directed commercials and movies for theme parks. Attracted to the creative aspect of his work, he was constantly looking for new challenges.

Robert gave numerous lectures, in China, Germany, but also in France at the Cinematheque Française or La Femis film school. In his final years, he was developing an original and unique visual experience called “Living Paintings”, still unseen by the general public.

Robert’s wife and son now focus on displaying his work and perpetuating his legacy. Robert Blalack will always be remembered as a generous and passionate artist. In the landscape of modern visual effects, he should be counted as one of its pioneers.

Caroline Charron-Blalack and Paul

Blalack

Nigel Ian Cameron arrived at St Paul’s from Willington School, Putney along with lifelong friends Geoffery McAra and Jon Grugeon. He enjoyed boxing and cricket, played bridge and became interested in philately. Inspired by the senior history master, Philip Whiting, he founded the Historical Society in 1950 (other notable members being Lord Baker of Dorking and John Adair) and won a place at Cambridge.

He did national service in the RAF where he was proud to have learned to fly before he could drive but actively decided to qualify as a navigator. He was proud to have commanded the RAF street lining contingent in Belfast for the Queen’s visit in 1953, just one month after her coronation. He went up to Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1954 to read history and geography. He enjoyed travelling and had made his first forays in continental Europe immediately after the war.

Cameron was one of the founders of the Cambridge University Explorers & Travellers Club. He ended his time at Cambridge by travelling overland to India and back over four months.

Having arrived back from India in 1957, Cameron joined the Post Office almost the following day, an employer he was to remain with for the next thirty-six years. Notably he directed the Norwich team that laid out the first postcodes in the world.

Most of the principles they established endured for the postcoding of the whole of the UK. Aged 43 he was appointed as Chairman of the Midland Postal Board, serving a population of 8 million with a staff of 26,000. Energetic, inquisitive and decisive he built a loyal and effective team. After a series of re-organisations with which he had little sympathy, he retired in 1993.

Thereafter he developed his interest in genealogy and local history in which he wrote two published books and some articles in specialist magazines. He also spent time on philately, his garden, and his family, including some further adventurous travel with his wife to, inter alia, Uzbekistan, Yemen and various parts of Africa. He had married Angela Twyford in 1964 and they had three sons, all of whom survive him. He died on 19 December 2021 aged 87. The Cameron Family

Robert C Blalack (1965-66)

Nigel I Cameron (1947-52)

Richard G W Codd (1955-61)

Richard Codd died in his sleep at home in Winchester on 21 May 2022. He was 80 and a bachelor and had lived alone since the death of his mother Rosalie in 2014. He was not unused to living alone, as he did so as a young man when he lived in Notting Hill and worked for the Institute of Chartered Accountants.

At St Paul’s (1955-61) he was in the H8 and remained in contact with Philip Whitting for many years after leaving. He had a hugely retentive memory and reminiscence was recurrent in his conversation, but not necessarily about his own exploits: history remained an enduring interest and he could talk in detail about places he had seen, buildings he had visited, and books he had read long ago. One of his last foreign holidays was to western Sicily, which he enjoyed so much that he returned to the eastern end of the island the next year. Affable, sociable, and embarrassingly generous, he must have made an interesting companion on a coach tour, but with a determination to learn every detail about what there was to be seen and little sense of time he might have been the bane of many a tour leader’s party.

Following a breakdown in early middle age he was unemployed for much of his life, and this gave him opportunities to indulge his other main interest, music. At SPS he sang in the school choir and an informal madrigal group led by Ben Pearce-Higgins and took organ lessons from Ivor Davies. In the 1970s he enjoyed visits to the Durham Oriental Music Festival, where he assisted as a volunteer and was much struck by Egyptian and Vietnamese music. A convert to Catholicism, he played as a part-time church organist until the end of his life and attended gatherings of organisations in which he had been active, including the Old Choristers of Chichester Cathedral.

Keith Pratt (1951-56)

St Paul's School is incredibly grateful for the generous legacy left by Richard Codd to the school of £500,000, which will fund music-related projects including a full bursary.

Michael H Draisey (1948-53)

Dr Michael Harold Draisey TD born 27 April 1935, died late August 2022. He came to St Paul’s from Hamilton House in 1948 having been evacuated to a Welsh farm during the War. His elder brother P A Draisey also attended the school, both at the then Hammersmith site. He left in 1953 and qualified as a doctor from Westminster Medical School in 1960. He went on to be a GP in Newhaven as well as police surgeon and member of the local RNLI. He enjoyed his work as a doctor and carried on in all aspects after NHS retirement. He enjoyed his education and thought highly of the school. He eventually retired and kept active dog walking and enjoying a reasonably priced wine. Michael is much missed by all and especially by his three children and grandson.

Richard Draisey (youngest son)

Schuyler W Henderson (1985-90)

Dr. Schuyler Henderson died unexpectedly on the 21st of November 2022, in New York. During a career that included positions at some of the medical field’s most renowned institutions, Dr. Henderson was respected for his clinical expertise in treating children and adolescents with psychiatric issues.

Schuyler Wheelock Henderson was born on May 24, 1972, in New York. He was raised in London, attending Hill House Preparatory School and St Paul’s School, where he enjoyed rowing and rugby. He returned to the United States to attend Dartmouth College; while there, he spent three months working in Romania at an orphanage for severely disabled children and was subsequently awarded Dartmouth’s Lombard Public Service Fellowship to work with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, India.

After college, Schuyler moved to Chicago, where he attended the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical School. He worked at New York University/Bellevue in adult and child psychiatry, completed a Fellowship at Columbia University, and earned a master’s degree in Public Health from Columbia University. He published extensively in medical journals on the topics of medical humanities, child and family mental health, refugee mental health, and children’s rights. He taught at New York University and the Mount Sinai School of Public Health and was the Deputy Editor of the Journal of American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

When Schuyler loved something or someone, he loved deeply and devotedly: his family; his friends; Manhattan; London; bars and restaurants; music, art and films; good jokes and laughter; telling stories and listening to his wife tell stories; fires in beautiful old fireplaces; reading, writing, and drawing; animals, particularly cats; games; swimming in the ocean; biking; Christmas; traveling; coffee; steak; skinny pants and blazers; carrying on and passing down traditions; and recalling fond memories while making new ones. Schuyler Henderson is survived by his wife, Kate, his three children, Neko, Sunhi, and Henrietta, and his mother.

Schuyler’s family

Anthony M V Hoare (1959-63)

Anthony (Tony) Hoare was born in St. John’s Wood, London in February 1946. He became fascinated by butterflies by the age of six, first in Sweden, then on a Woodcraft Folk trip to Dorset. This became a fascination that would stay with him his entire life and take him to the furthest flung corners of the world. At the age of just ten, his Hungarian mother died, a terrible loss for Tony and his older brother Ian. Tony’s father remarried and the family moved to Barnes, making St Paul’s an obvious choice to educate him. Even in the snows of the unimaginably cold winter of 1962/63, Tony made it into school.

After St Paul’s, Tony gained his Chartered Accountancy qualifications and in 1973 was invited to join the family firm of C. Hoare & Co., the oldest private Bank in the UK. He oversaw the introduction of computers to the Bank in the 1980s and his diligence, knowledge and generous nature, saw him rise to become Chief Executive.

While working in the City, Tony spent as much of his spare time as possible pursuing his love of butterflies. He was instrumental in the creation of Butterfly Conservation (BC), the charity that has grown from a handful of volunteers in the 1960s to a large, successful and influential one today. A highpoint of his work with BC was sponsoring a butterfly-friendly garden at Chelsea Flower Show, which won a Gold Medal.

In retirement, he travelled to many remote (and sometimes dangerous) locations, searching out the rarest and most beautiful butterflies.

Tony is survived by Gay (they had recently celebrated 50 years of marriage), their two daughters Annabel and Caroline, and their five grandchildren. His sudden death has left them all with a deep sense of loss.

Miles King, son-in-law, with contributions from Anthony’s family

Brian leaves: Mary, wife of 63 years, sons Mark P. Jones (1974-78), Bruce A. P. Jones (1975-79), Guy J. P. Jones (1977-82), brother Colin P. Jones (1951-55), nephew Nigel. P. Jones (1977-82), 10 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren.

Brian’s primary education was disrupted. He was evacuated with his mother and younger brother Colin (1951-55) to mid Wales during the war. Notwithstanding, Common Entrance to St Paul’s was achieved, where he had sporting success, First XV colours twice, and represented the school at boxing, water polo, cross country running and was in the school Combined Cadet Force. He lined the route at King George VI’s funeral.

National Service in the Royal Artillery followed, where in Oldenburg, Germany he was made regimental sports officer which involved running rugby, football and cricket teams, a dinghy sailing club and passage racing in the Baltic.

Then at Old Pauline rugby, where he was Captain and later President, Brian held the record for the most OPFC 1st XV caps. When records showed that Nick Carr (1963-67) had overtaken, it was Nick himself who refused the mantle, arguing vehemently that Brian retains that record, because Brian played many games for the OP 1st XV before the records began.

Holidays were invariably Studland, Dorset and there Brian met Mary and together they developed their love of sailing.

As three sons reached their late teens, great family friend, Andrew Puddifoot’s (1977-82) widowed mum died; Brian and Mary gave him a home.

In retirement new sporting prowess was achieved. Having excelled as a prop and backrow forward Brian then turned to distance running. Many age category wins and podium finishes came. Notably his 2006 London Marathon – when he ran, on his 70th birthday, the incredible time of 3 hours 57 minutes. This defined him as “elite” with London Marathon organisers, thereby earning an automatic entry the following year.

On 13th May 2023, there will be a celebration and beach party at Studland. Brian’s family, Ed, Guy Jones (1977-82)

Sydney A Levinson (1967-72)

Sydney Levinson had a wide and eclectic range of interests. Although an accountant by trade, he had a fascination with the arts and was a passionate supporter of creative businesses and charities. He was chair of Cockpit Arts and a founder member of Soho House.

Sydney loved people, particularly budding designers and those involved with the visual arts, many of whom he mentored. He could take a pool of jumbled thoughts and nudge you towards the concise idea they had sprung from; he could give a speech with the perfect balance of gravitas and side-splitting laughter.

Sydney loved music, which manifested itself in his side-lining as a DJ under his alter ego “Barry’s Lounge”. He had a skill at composing rhymes, always infected with zany humour. The School House housemaster Philip McGuinness used to complain that we were stuffing too much loo paper down the lavatories so soft paper was banned and replaced by Bronco or Izal. Sydney wrote a song: Oh your Izal shine brightly forever your Izal shine brightly all day it’s Jeyes or its Bronco or Izal cos the soft stuff will not flush away There were more verses which sadly I forget.

In fashion, Sydney was always ahead of his time and designer clothes were his trademark, not to mention the constantly changing style, colour and size of his glasses.

He loved the trendiest restaurants, cocktails and Chelsea Football Club. He died in a hospital room overlooking Stamford Bridge, where his father had been the original architect: only Sydney would organise his exit so perfectly.

Sydney was one of those unsung heroes – not interested in capturing the limelight but quietly having an impact on hundreds of lives. As Old Pauline, Mark Mishon, observed: “whilst sadly he has been deprived of a life full of years, he was rewarded with years full of life”

He leaves a widow Anne and two daughters, Emma and Sophie.

Peter Fineman (1966-71), fellow Pauline, School House resident and Kensington neighbour

Brian P Jones (1949-53)

Martin L Rantzen (1949-1955)

Martin took a lifelong pride in having been at St Paul’s, where his extraordinary ear, voice and talent for piano playing ensured that he was part of the backbone of musical life. He composed, sang and accompanied in school plays and the annual Colet Clubs review – recordings still exist of him performing some of his arrangements for The Tempest. He was an NCO in the CCF and Captain of Shooting, also travelling to Canada as a member of the England U21 shooting team.

Spending the war years in the Chilterns, he developed a profound love of the countryside and, after St Paul’s, opted to leave London and study farming. Settling in Warwickshire, he ran a mixed livestock and arable enterprise: he once joked that to his knowledge, he and Lord Sieff were the only OPs involved in farming, but he suspected that Lord Sieff had other sources of income.

Despite the intensity of farming life, he and his wife Barbara became integrally involved in Warwickshire’s musical scene: to critical acclaim he sang in and directed many Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, of which he had an encyclopaedic knowledge, and was a frequent prize winner in the Leamington Spa Music Festival, which he also chaired for many years. Visiting musicians regularly stayed in their countryside home, often forging lifelong friendships; they also actively supported other early career musicians and actors.

In his later years, he became the full-time carer for Barbara, who had become immobilised by arthritis, but they continued to attend numerous concerts, plays and operas. He continued completing The Times crossword daily before breakfast until very shortly before his death and had an unfailing capacity to recite or sing from memory.

He is survived by his wife, three daughters (a son having predeceased him, dying in childhood), one of whom is married to John Ashford (1975-79), and seven grandchildren, including Joel Ashford (2009-15).

Martin’s family

Dr Peter Reed, FRCP FRCS, passed away peacefully, after a long illness, on 12th September 2022 in the Algarve, Portugal. He is survived by his loving wife, Susie and his daughter, Nikki and grandson, Alexander.

Peter was born on 20th August 1929 in Bratislava and came over to the UK when he was 10 years of age. After qualifying as a doctor in 1953, he accepted various positions in Canada and America for six years. During that time his interest was in neurology but he decided to change to become a gastroenterologist, in Chicago. He returned to London and was offered a job as a Senior Registrar at St Thomas’s Hospital where he worked for several years. Then he was appointed senior lecturer and consultant gastroenterologist at Hammersmith Hospital, Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Wexham Park Hospital, Windsor Hospital and the Canadian Red Cross Memorial Hospital. He later had two private practices in consulting rooms in Sheet Street, Windsor and Harley Street, London.

In his middle years, he set up a charitable trust that would lead him to the opening and running ‘The Lady Sobell Unit’ at Wexham Park Hospital.

Peter had a lifetime of interest and research into stomach cancer and carried out trials collaborated with various pharmaceutical companies. He followed that with writing many articles for The Lancet and published other papers too.

Once Peter retired, he dedicated the rest of his life to ‘The Barretts Oesophageal Cancer’ charity, which he set up together with Professor Tony Watson and Christine Caghill.

He was the most kind and caring husband, father, grandfather and doctor, always going out of his way to offer his medical advice not only professionally but also to his friends.

What a wonderful, fulfilled and blessed life Peter had. He will be sorely missed by all who knew him.

The Reed Family

Leslie Rubinstein MBE (1941-45)

Leslie Rubinstein MBE, died on December 30, 2021, at his home near Montpellier, France, following a short illness. He was survived by Helena, his wife of 66 years, and by his daughter Diane and family.

Leslie was born in London, on June 14, 1928. After his family was evacuated during the war, he attended St Paul’s as a scholarship student from 1941 to 1945, billeting at Crowthorne and attending classes at Easthampstead Park. He had fond memories of his time at St Paul’s.

After the war, Leslie worked in the family business, while pursuing interests in motorcycles and the clarinet, until a double date where he met a Finnish woman, Hanna Helena Jämsen, then working at the London Hospital for Tropical Diseases. It was love at first sight.

They left for Stockholm, where they married in 1955. Leslie spent a few years in industry and then became a commercial attaché at the British Embassy. Their daughter was born in 1961. The family remained in Sweden through the 1960s and relocated to Copenhagen in 1971, with Leslie still at the British Embassy, receiving an MBE for services to industry in 1977, and Helena at the South African Embassy. They were a popular couple, hosting parties for an expanding international group of friends and co-workers.

In 1982 they sought some relief from the cold and moved to the South of France, buying land in a village near the sea. Leslie continued to work, as an English teacher at the Chamber of Commerce and translator, but there was time enough for beaches, saxophone lessons, and trips to Japan and later England to visit Diane and her growing family.

Leslie and Helena remained happily together in the home they built, where Leslie passed away at the end of 2021. Helena followed not long after, on 4 March 2022. Leslie and Helena are hugely missed by their daughter and son-in-law and three grandchildren, Alice, Georgia, and Joseph.

Diane Clothier, daughter

Peter I Reed (1945-48)

Peter K Symes (1947-52)

Peter was born in Kensington in 1933. From 1943, he attended Colet Court and then St Paul’s, where he was in the 1st VIII and rowed at the Henley Royal regatta in 1951 and 1952.

Peter’s National Service began in September 1953, and, after 6 weeks’ training, he applied for a commission. He passed the War Office Selection Board Examination and, after 18 months at Eton Hall Officer Cadet School, was granted a regular commission and given the choice of a post to Germany or East Africa. He chose the more exciting post at Nyeri, Kenya before filling a Captain’s vacancy in Nairobi. It was here that he met his wife, Shona.

He decided to stay in East Africa, resigned his commission in 1958 and joined Sterling-Winthrop International, a US Pharmaceutical company. Serving his two-year apprenticeship in Kampala, Uganda, he was then appointed Manager for that region. Peter and Shona married at St Andrew’s Church, Nairobi in October 1959.

Peter followed a successful business career in Africa with roles in Nigeria –where he and Shona enjoyed the social life of Lagos, taking up sailing and making lifelong friends – and Ghana, where he was appointed Country Manager.

Sterling transferred the family to South Africa (SA) in 1971; Peter was Area Manager in Johannesburg and was then moved to the Head Office in Durban as Manager of the Winthrop Division for SA, and in 1988 Marketing Director of Sterling Drug SA. His final appointment was Export General Manager for the Adcock Ingram Group. During this period, his achievements included the opening of markets in Eastern Europe and the Far East.

Taking early retirement in 1996, Peter and Shona returned to the UK. Retirement meant travel and meeting up with those African Expat friends. A much-loved family man, Peter passed away in July 2022. He was married to Shona for 62 years and they had two children, Graham and Louise.

The Symes Family

A Climate of Fear

David K Wakefield

Head of Art, St Paul’s School, 1978–2001

David Wakefield, one of the longest serving Heads of Art at St Paul’s, has died aged 81.

David took up his post in 1978, at a time when the status of Art as a subject at the school was very much in the shade of Classics and the Sciences. He slowly but surely turned that perception around, significantly increasing year-onyear the numbers doing Art at O Level/ GCSE and Art and History of Art at A Level. Ultimately, he was rewarded by the building of the Art block at St Paul’s, known colloquially by many at its inception as ‘Wakefield Towers’, where he was able to host high-quality art exhibitions while also embracing emerging technologies such as photography’s move from wet-film to digital, thereby ensuring Paulines were kept at the leading edge, something he cared about passionately.

He contributed so much to life at the school, not least with the play sets he designed and then built by hand on a seemingly unrelenting termly cycle; few who trod the boards during his time at the school will be able to forget the quality of those sets.

Born in Leamington Spa during the blitz and attending grammar school there, he went on to attend Kingston Art School where his forte was stone sculpting. He qualified as a teacher and was then Head of Art at King Edward VI’s in Southampton until 1978 when he moved to St Paul’s. By that time, he had emerged as an exceptional potter, having spent several months living in the hills in Japan with a Raku master where he refined his range of Japaneseinfluenced pottery styles and glazes.

He will be remembered by all who knew him as compassionate, considerate, creative and constant. Brigadier David Wakefield (1981-86), son, and Douglas Ayling (1993-97), stepson

Michael Simmons

(1946-52) – contrasts his time at St Paul’s with his grandson’s, Harry

I must stress that these are very much my own personal experiences. Others may tell an entirely different story. Please do not think that I did not enjoy my time at St Paul’s. I look back very fondly on a total of eight years, including Colet Court, some of them not as well spent as others. Could they have been better? Of course, they could. The process of growing up can be quite painful at times but I cannot blame the School for my own inadequacies. St Paul’s moulded me, even if I sometimes fought back. I am prompted to write this article by observing and talking to my twelveyear-old grandson, Harry who is working his way up and through St Paul’s Junior School, as well as from my occasional visits and from reading The Pauline. I suppose that it is not surprising how much the School has changed in seventy years but it is surely worth recording.

I joined the London branch of what was then Colet Court in September 1944 at the age of eleven. I came from a small, co-educational preparatory school in Wembley called Buxlow, run entirely by women. All the men were away fighting the War. Three of my contemporaries had joined Colet Court from Buxlow a year earlier. My mother asked their mothers to make sure their sons looked after me. She did me no favours. William Golding taught in a boys’ school and knew what he was talking about when he wrote Lord of the Flies, even if he did grossly exaggerate for literary effect. I was ill equipped to join as a “new bug” at a school where the other boys had had time to settle down together. My chief tormentors of course included the former Buxlow boys. It all got too much for me at the end of my first week. We were in the playground at mid-morning break. Christopher W was a small and lightly built boy. I

could take no more and lashed out. He flew across the playground and somehow caught the lobe of his ear on one of the spikes of the surrounding railings. There was blood everywhere. I could see my career at St Paul’s brought to an extremely premature end. I was led trembling before the headmaster, a wise old man, who sent me back to my class.

Nothing more was said but my bullies were not discouraged. I had the unfortunate habit of crying, if I was suddenly hit on the head with a book. This therefore became a regular experience. I eventually stopped crying and nobody from then on bothered to hit me on the head. With the benefit of hindsight, I learned a valuable lesson, but I do not think I got it at the time. My grandson joined St Paul’s Junior School at much the same age. I asked him if he had had any similar experiences. He looked at me with complete incomprehension. It was abundantly clear that no such conduct was allowed and great pains were taken to introduce the new boys smoothly into the system. I believe that designated “buddies” took pride in making sure that Harry was happy from the very first day.

The move to the senior school was bound to be traumatic but at least I had company. The classroom of V Alpha quickly became a haven once I realised that Pat Cotter’s (1917-23 and Classics Department 1928-65) bark was far worse than his bite. Unlike most masters, he tended to treat us as grown-ups and it was difficult not to respond appropriately. Outside was the jungle. The High Master, Doctor R L James, had a reputation as a disciplinarian. He was a small man, but he exuded menace. He terrified me. It was impossible not to listen to the rumour mill. Certain masters were known as over enthusiastic floggers who enjoyed their work. However, exaggerated the stories, I eagerly lapped them up. Prefects were allowed to punish recalcitrant boys by beating them. Such beatings were becoming increasingly rare but that did not affect the morale of a nervous fifth former when faced by a seemingly enormous and angry prefect. It is worthy of note that the victim of the last recorded prefect’s beating was none other than Jonathan Miller (1947-53). Poor Jonathan, one of our polymaths, could never keep out of trouble and adhere to the school rules and regulations. For my own part much as I lived in fear of it, I survived my school career unscathed and unbeaten.

My fear started with the very fact of getting to school. I had a rather complex journey involving a bus and the Piccadilly line. My punctuality was not helped by my tendency to leave the house at the last moment. There was always safety in numbers. If the group of late arrivals

was sufficiently large and we had the same plausible excuse, we could escape punishment. Forgetting to alight and being carried on to Earls Court felt like Scott exploring the South Pole. Waiting in a side room to be summoned before Mr R E D Brown (Maths Department 1932-64), a monosyllabic Ulsterman, the master in charge of late arrivals, was an unpleasant experience giving you a chance to survey your life’s progress or the lack of it to date. Red Brown could have compiled an interesting memoir made up solely of the most ingenious excuses for lateness concocted over the ages by Paulines. It would have been a best seller.

In those days, most schools imposed lines as a punishment. Writing out stupid extracts was a mindless and boring activity. St Paul’s had Prefects’ Regulations: “Boys must familiarise themselves with these regulations. Ignorance is no defence.” It is nearly seventy five years since I last wrote that sentence but it is printed firmly in my mind. Next up in the order of punishments was detention. Detention combined with writing out Prefects’ Regulations was doubly soul destroying. However, detention alone was not so bad, as there was the opportunity to get stuck into one’s prep. Mr A B Cook (1929-64 and Surmaster 1952-64) oversaw proceedings in the Large Lecture Theatre where all kinds of odd balls congregated after school, not solely limited to those suffering punishment.

(Classics Department 1939-50) who was in charge of Latin at the top of the School. I was being particularly obnoxious. “Take your glasses off, Simmons. I’m going to hit you.” I did as I was commanded and sat there paralysed by fear as he slowly walked round me. I felt as if I aged at least three years as I waited for my punishment. “Put ’em on again. I can’t do it.” The anticipation of the punishment was far worse than the punishment itself, if he had proceeded.

The next year in the Remove passed quickly under Mr McIntosh (Classics Department 1927-65), another Ulsterman, who could not have been a greater contrast to Pat Cotter but an excellent teacher none the less. Then followed my year of delinquency. Some from the Remove bypassed the Lower Eighth and moved straight to the Middle Eighth. I was one of those considered not sufficiently mature & was left to be taught by Mr A N G. Richards (English Department 192966) in the Lower Eighth. Tony Richards, an Old Etonian, loved the sound of his own, rather beautiful, voice but he did not inspire me. Ian McColl (1948-51), later to become Professor Lord McColl of Dulwich, and I wrote a sketch for the Colet Clubs’ Review. Tony Richards was the master who had to vet its contents. He did not understand our jokes and re-wrote it. I was ashamed that my name was attached to such an unfunny load of rubbish. One day, for reasons I do not recall, we were being taught by Mr Robin Mathewson

Despite pithy comments by the High Master at the end of my reports like “the leopard has not changed his spots” which I tried to persuade my parents was great praise, I eventually made it to the Middle Eighth. For the very first time, I felt at home and no longer afraid. It had taken five years of, I think, deliberately induced fear to reach that stage. I suppose it was much easier to keep a load of potentially rebellious and recalcitrant boys in order by cruelty rather than kindness. The teachers now must have a far harder job. Any attempt today to replicate the conditions under which we went to school would have the OFSTED Inspectors buzzing round like bees circling a honey pot. The Standard would be chronicling each actual or mythical stroke of the cane. Were we any the worse for it? Frankly, I do not think so. It toughened us up to experience life itself. That is what I call education. 

Michael and his grandson

“Take your glasses off, Simmons, I’m going to hit you.”

He was a small man but he exuded menace.

Ralph Blumenau (1939-43) shares his memories of when St Paul’s was evacuated

Richard and Grace Bird

When the autumn term of l939 began, I joined St Paul’s School in its new home at Crowthorne. The boys were billeted either in private homes in the village or in four or five hostels, large houses which the school had been able to rent.

I was allocated to one of these, a house called Trevear, which accommodated about 30 boys. Wellington College allowed us to share some of their facilities, notably their science laboratories and their games fields. But the bulk of the teaching was done four miles away, in the large country house set in Easthampstead Park and belonging to the Marquess of Downshire; and all non scientists (of whom I was one) would be cycling there and back from Crowthorne every morning, and then again in the afternoon on the days when there was afternoon school. If our bicycles had a puncture (and how often that happened!) we would have to walk (though then a short cut through the fields would cut off a mile).

The classroom was for me at St Paul’s the place where I felt happiest and most fulfilled and whose challenges I met with pleasure and a sense of excitement. The same cannot be said of my life in Trevear, even though there, too, I was fortunate to be in the charge of a housemaster whose qualities I admired every bit as much as those of WH Eynon-Smith. The two men could not have been more different. Eynon-Smith produced intellectual pyrotechnics but was personally distant and cold. FG Bird (Mathematics department 1928-43) was inevitably nicknamed Dicky by the boys and called Richard by his wife and his colleagues, though his first name was actually Francis. He taught mathematics but was otherwise not much interested in intellectual ideas. He was, however, wonderfully warm hearted, kind and sensitive. He had common sense and was a relaxed person. His young wife Grace was fun loving and really enjoyed looking after 30 adolescent boys as well as after her own two

small children. She would take every opportunity – say, someone’s birthday to have a “binge” for the whole house, war time rationing notwithstanding; and she was not above playing practical jokes if she felt people were being too solemn.

As St Paul’s in London had been mainly a day school, the masters and their wives had really never expected to run a house and did not have the usual public school models to follow. As a result, there were in Crowthorne a minimum of rules and none of the tiresome hierarchy that in the l940s was still the case with the traditional public boarding school. Thirty or forty years before this was the case in most public schools, the Birds called us all by our first names. When Mrs Bird discovered that my first name was "really" Klaus, she insisted on using it on the grounds that a German name and especially a nice unusual one was nothing to be ashamed of. At Trevear we were really all like a large family. In the evenings after supper most of us would gather in the

WWII, Easthampstead Park

Mr Bird…was the model of the pastoral aspects of schoolmastering

kitchen to help with the washing up: plates were passed from the sink to the cupboards in a chain, amid much merry badinage; and on a Sunday we would generally stay on there, tea mug in hand, to listen to a radio show like In Town Tonight or The Brains Trust. I saw something of Mrs Bird on and off in later years until her death in l987, just after her 80th birthday. For the last twelve years of her life she lay, paralyzed by a stroke, in a Gloucestershire hospital; but she never complained, was comforted by her strong religious beliefs, and frequently said how lucky she was to have a devoted daughter who visited her every day and brought cheerfulness along with her.

Atrium by istenem

All answers straddling the larger middle square share the same 5 letters (which should be entered as a symbol).

To my great regret, as in the case of Eynon-Smith, I was unable as an adult to continue contact with a man who had so greatly influenced me in my adolescence; for Mr Bird also died very suddenly, less than six months after I left school. He died of heart failure in his sleep one night. There had been no suspicion of any ill health at all. He was only 36 years old. To Eynon-Smith I owe the debt that he was for me the model of an inspired teacher in the classroom; and when I came to become a schoolmaster, I was able without much difficulty to base my own teaching methods on his example. In the case of Mr Bird, I was always aware that he was the model of the pastoral aspects of schoolmastering; but I was still personally too immature when I began teaching and it was to take a very long time before I felt that I was no longer disgracing the example that he had set me. 

Across

1 Celebration of Eucharist providing for range of the French (6)

4 Traders leave Hampshire in luxury vehicle (4)

6 Invisible ink protects Hawaiian garland (3)

7 One sick of your fancy multicultural cuisine (6,7)

9 Despair as bridge player might? (4,5)

10 Dreamboat sets the pulse racing (10)

12 Extremely moving tweet hears toots (10)

10 Acid reflux when “she loves me not” (5-4)

13 Soda with ice cream van following carnival after cheer that may be raised in cheers (4,4,5)

15 Rhubarb crumble (3)

16 Jokes with children (4)

17 Attractive female goalie (6)

Down

1 Bungle fur keeping hands warm (4)

2 Morse’s trainees, they may check diving craft? (13)

3 Whiteish middle, it won’t impress fair maiden (5,5)

4 Using potassium chemical, tool broke crust of Mars (4,9)

5 Angry mob cry for bunch of flowers (6)

6 Richard aka heron-tail mistakenly (4-5)

8 It has now been decriminalised to serve up walnut without serving time (5)

11 Carmen was essentially uncooperative (5)

12 Flash flash (6)

10 Second rush of blood (9)

10 Utter devastation of ‘earth’ (10)

14 Foremost thunder herald of Ragnarök (4)

To Eynon–Smith I owe the debt that he was for me the model of an inspired teacher in the class room

“A Stubbornly Proud Birdwatcher”

Matthew Stadlen (199398) shares his passion

Thinking back to the 10 years I spent on the grounds of St Paul’s, I probably did not fully appreciate the beauty of its location, set on the banks of the Thames and flanked by the green of the sprawling playing fields.

For those living north of the river, it is one of the great privileges of being a Pauline to walk over Hammersmith Bridge at sunrise and, in the heart of winter, walk back at sunset. My late grandfather, Tom Howarth, was High Master when the school switched sites from Hammersmith to Barnes. My mother, herself a Paulina, would walk the site picking stones from land that had once been a reservoir but that would come to feel the tread of thousands of boys, large and small, playing football, rugby and cricket.

We were spoilt, of course, not just by the sporting facilities – all the more extraordinary for being so close to the centre of London – but by the music, art, theatre and debating on offer at St Paul’s. I do not, though, recall nature, let alone birdwatching, being much on the agenda. Strange, perhaps, given that the houses at the old Colet Court were named after ash, thorn, oak and beech trees. Instead, I developed my passion for birds further afield, in the rolling hills of Wales and, during a trip in search of Golden Eagles and Ospreys, in the foothills of the Highlands. I need not have travelled so far. Herons, cormorants, kingfishers, a variety of gulls, warblers, families of Long-tailed Tits, and even falcons will all be making homes along the old towpath, and many within the perimeters of the school itself.

When I wrote my bird book, How To See Birds, illustrated with my own photographs, I wanted to give readers

a key to a magical world. Wherever you live, you are within eyesight, and earshot, of rich bird life. I have counted more than twenty species in my parents’ garden in west London alone, and goldfinches nest in the wisteria that climbs up my house nearby. Canada Geese might be a nuisance when they do their business on the school’s rugby pitches, but they are a stunning sight as they fly in arrowhead across the river in the late evening light. There is beauty on our doorstep – and in abundance if you are lucky enough to be a pupil at St Paul’s.

I was stubbornly proud of being a birdwatcher at school, nerdy though it might have seemed to my classmates. Taking pleasure in the natural world around us, whether we live in towns and cities or in a remote rural paradise, is something to be encouraged. If we take an interest in our local environment, we are more likely to want to protect it, and to care about the climate crisis we all face.

Birdwatching certainly appeals to an obsessive streak in me. My lifetime’s species list numbers 626. And there is a hint of competition about it, although mostly I am competing with myself. There is the thrill of seeing a species for the first time, too. But at its most profound, birding is about immersing oneself in nature and experiencing the wildlife with which we share our world. I have never found sitting still and urging my mind towards emptiness to be an easy experience, but sometimes, when I am looking for birds, I lose myself as profoundly as more conventional meditators might lose themselves.

This is how it can work: I take myself off to a sunlit wood in the early morning. At first, I cannot see a single bird; but then I spot one. A Marsh Tit perhaps. In following the trajectory of that tiny bird, I am led on to others and then to others that sing and call in the boughs of the trees above me. Soon I have become almost part of their avian society, in sync with my surroundings. The distraction of the ego fades away. Body and mind are in harmony.

I am not alone in my enthusiasm. Last time I checked there were more than a million members of the RSPB and initiatives such as the Big Garden Birdwatch engage amateurs and professionals across the country. I have made friends while out watching and photographing birds, and Instagram and other apps allow you to

share your photographs and learn from the skills of others.

I am definitely not an expert – either in birds or photography. I do not know much about cameras. Other than during a brief stint in the magnificent art school at St Paul’s, I have never been taught how to do it. But I do have a strong sense of what I think is beautiful. The essential thing is to take an interest in the bird. The more you understand your subject, the better the photograph is likely to be. And it is a virtuous circle: the better your photography, the more you are likely to appreciate the bird.

First as a Telegraph columnist, then as a radio host on LBC, and now as an on-stage interviewer and political commentator on TV and radio, my schedule has, since I left my staff job at the BBC, afforded me the freedom to explore the British Isles in search of species as grand as the White-tailed Eagle, whose wingspan can reach upwards of two metres. But a walk through Kensington Gardens can yield sightings of Little Owls, Cetti’s Warblers and Grey Wagtails. And just up the road from St Paul’s lies the London Wetland Centre, diverse in native as well as visiting birds.

Birds are incredible. Willow Warblers, little more than 10cm long, fly five thousand miles from subSaharan Africa to reach our shores in the spring, across desert, sea and mountain. Juvenile Cuckoos are able to migrate in the opposite direction despite never having met their parents. How they are programmed to find their way is one of the great unsolved mysteries of nature. Arctic Terns, which I photographed on the glaciers of Iceland, can travel 70,000 miles in a single year.

Just as playing and watching sport, passions forged at St Paul’s, add to my life, so too does watching – and taking photographs of – birds. Capturing a Rufous-breasted Hummingbird with its long beak engorged in a Californian flower or tracing the flight of a Peregrine across Welsh cliffs with my lens, could not be much more different to playing football on Big Side or being at Lord’s as England take on Australia in the Ashes. But it is no less exciting. Birdwatching is a hobby I will carry with me forever, and I hope that the Paulines of today take advantage of the school’s stunning setting and the birds for whom it is home. 

SHAPING OUR FUTURE

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