Atrium, Old Pauline News, Autumn/Winter 2021

AUTUMN / WINTER 2021

ATRIUM THE ST PAUL’S SCHOOL ALUMNI MAGAZINE

Tom Tugendhat is interviewed by Mark Lobel

Last Word

In Conversation

Teenage Toxic Masculinity

Jonny Dymond in praise of doubt

Paul Cartledge hosts eight other Pauline Professors

Theo Hobson treads carefully

Editorial The oldest Pauline is 104-year-old Dennis Frank (1930-33).

The youngest featured in this magazine are Adam and Nathaniel Rachman (2012-17). Dennis left St Paul’s at 16 to work in the family tie firm. His great friend, Dennis Orlik (1930-34) also left School to join his family’s pipe (the smoking variety) business.

Adam and Nathaniel, aged 22 are swapping universities for their postgraduate degrees with Adam going to Oxford and Nathaniel to Cambridge. The contrast in late teens experience of the Dennis’s and the Rachman twins is stark.

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upert Birtles (1963-66) while helping with the research for Mark Schofield’s (1973-77) article ‘Alternatives to Oxbridge’, found some fascinating glimpses in The Pauline of the 1960s and 1970s – how an 18-year-old Pauline’s world has changed in half a century. He was reminded that there were job advertisements from banks, oil and cement companies seeking out school leavers as well as the list of the university destinations. In 1972, for example Oxbridge awards come first at 21, then Oxbridge places at 25, followed by London at 6 and other UK universities at 30. In addition, 1 pupil went to each of Lincoln’s Inn, St Luke’s Exeter, Kingston Polytechnic and Hammersmith Art School. The best entry though is “an Australian university”. There is no mention of any US institution.

How things have changed. In 2021 all leavers are set to go on to further education.

The current offers include: Oxbridge 39, US 33, Canada 11, Italy 3, France, Ireland and Korea 1 each. St Paul’s has gone global.

discusses the impact of their time at School with eight Pauline Professors from different age groups, geographies and disciplines.

Continuing with the academic theme there are contributions on Mathematics at St Paul’s since the 1960s from Bob Phillips (1964-68), Bruce Balden (1969-73), Owen Toller (Maths Department 1977-88 and 2006-19) and Matthew Conrad (1979-84).

Over 80% of pupils at St Paul’s now study Mathematics in the Lower Eighth.

The Old Pauline Club has reviewed its governance and structure as it looks to engage with all members of the Pauline Community. The proposed single committee is set to be far more diverse. Members are going to come from all age groups. Men and women who have not been alumni can be on it. Ed Vaizey (1981-85), our new President, in his message to OPs in July’s eNews wrote that the Annual Dinner in October “in keeping with the Club’s new approach, will be aggressively informal and enjoyable.” Our 150th Anniversary Year is set to be celebratory, different and exciting.

Mark Lobel’s (1992-97) talks with Tom Tugendhat (1986-91) in ‘The Interview’.

Tom for many years has seemed a lone voice as he shone a light on Beijing’s aggressive suppression of dissent. Now his views are becoming more mainstream. Could it be that St Paul’s School has made the right decision by not establishing or partnering with schools in China?

The strength of this magazine is its content so it is with much gratitude that I record my appreciation of the work of all Atrium’s contributors (listed on Page 2) and the support I have again received from Kate East, Jessica Silvester, Hilary Cummings, Ginny Dawe-Woodings, Viera Ghods and Alex Wilson.

Pauline Professor, Paul Cartledge (1960-64) has written ‘In Conversation’ where he

Jeremy Withers Green (1975-80) jeremy.withersgreen@gmail.com

Cover photo: Tom Tugendhat by Milton Boyne Design: haime-butler.com Print: Lavenham Press

CONTENTS

06

24 02 Letters OPs and a wife comment on Don Pirkis, Michael Manning and Arts funding

06 Pauline Letter Kareem Tayara writes from Lebanon

08 Briefings including War Memorials, Statues, Books and Album Covers

20 The Interview

30

48

46

56

34 Mathematics at St Paul’s

52 Obituaries

Bob Phillips, Bruce Balden, Owen Toller and Matthew Conrad

42 Alternatives to Oxbridge Mark Schofield comments on a changing landscape

44 Et Cetera

including Peter Leonard, schoolmaster and Latin translator of JK Rowling

55 Old Pauline Sport Pauline Cycling Initiative

56 Past Times Rupert Birtles and Rory Johnston remember the early 1960s

58 Pauline Relatives

Mark Lobel tackles Tom Tugendhat

Robin Hirsch’s on the coffee bean’s odyssey

24 ‘In Conversation’

46 A Pauline About Town

59 Crossword

with Pauline Professors: Paul Cartledge hosts

Simon Bishop on what to do and where to go in Bristol

Lorie Church sets the puzzle

30 Masculine Toxicity

48 Old Pauline Club News

Theo Hobson tiptoes through a minefield

Ed Vaizey, the new President and other appointments

Gideon, Adam and Nathaniel Rachman

60 Last Word Jonny Dymond in praise of doubt

01

ATRIUM CONTRIBUTORS

Listed below are those who contributed to the magazine.

Graham Seel taught at St Paul’s 2012-21.

He was Head of History 2012-17 and Head of Humanities 2017-21.

Owen Toller taught at St Paul’s 1977-88 and 2006-19. He was Head of Mathematics 2007-16.

Keith Pratt (1951-56) National Service fed his lifelong love of travel, especially in East Asia on which much of his career was focussed. After teaching Chinese for over 30 years, the administrative demands as Head of East Asian Studies in Durham University led him to take early retirement in 1997 and then, after a heart attack in Taiwan, to concentrate on Korean studies. He enjoyed the presidency of the British Association for Korean Studies and published his two most successful books on Korean history. Now his Chinese priorities are focussed on his Taiwanese daughter-in-law and her family.

Robin Hirsch (1956-61) is an Oxford, Fulbright and English-Speaking 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.

Paul Cartledge (1960-64) was an undergraduate in Mods and Greats at New College Oxford and a Junior Research Fellow at University College before holding permanent teaching positions at successively the New University of Ulster, Trinity College, Dublin, the University of Warwick and latterly Cambridge University, from which he retired – as the inaugural A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture – in 2014. He currently holds an A.G. Leventis Senior Research Fellowship at Clare College, Cambridge. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of some 30 books, most recently Democracy: A Life and Thebes: the Forgotten City of Ancient Greece. He is an honorary citizen of (modern) Sparta, a Commander of the Order of Honour (Greece), and President of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies (UK). But above all else he is a Vice-President of the Old Pauline Club.

Rory Johnston (1962-63) came to St Paul’s from St Paul’s in the USA, aiming to go to Cambridge. That did not happen, and his university career in the USA was abortive.

Back in Britain, having been a failure as a student he turned to teaching, lastly as head of the Maths Department at The Hall School, Hampstead. Several of his pupils are now QCs and MPs. He then worked in the computer industry, notably for the Xerox Corporation while it was inventing the Macintosh, and in 02

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journalism, print and radio, with two books published. For a time he wrote a column on technology for Vogue. Since 1996 he has been living in California, pursuing the family trade as a member of the Screen Actors Guild.

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.

Rupert Birtles (1963-66) read Law at St Peter’s College Oxford and served articles with Fieldfisher in London. He had a long career in the RAF worldwide followed by a third career in local government in the UK. He has spent the last 6 years in historical research alongside restoring a listed 18th century farmhouse in Norfolk. He apologises for having lost a number of past contacts.

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.

Leon Lecash (1965-67) is a photographer and television producer. After leaving St Paul’s at 16, he became a fashion photographer in London, Paris and Milan.

On moving to Los Angeles he specialised in photographing album covers. His Pat Benatar album cover for Crimes of Passion has recently been named one of the top 100 album covers of all time. One current project is John Lennon Made Me Toast about a chance encounter with The Beatles when he was at St Paul’s.

Bruce Balden (1969-73) went to University College Oxford. He worked in insurance for a couple of years and then went into teaching: 18 years in Tower Hamlets and then 17 years at St Albans School. He has written GCSE and A Level papers as well as contributing to a series of textbooks. Having retired in 2016 he has been called back to help out seven times.

He is now looking forward to retiring for the 8th and final time. He may be familiar as a participant in the 7UP documentary series.

Mark Schofield (1973-77) after graduating from Keble College, Oxford with a degree in history, joined BP in London and then moved with the media company Petroleum Argus and helped establish their presence in the US. After meeting his wife in Houston he moved to New York and spent 14 years brokering and trading energy derivatives. He then switched careers and joined Fine Woodworking magazine and spent 12 happy years touring the US photographing some of the finest cabinet makers and editing their articles.

Now retired, he rises at 5.30am most mornings to row on the Housatonic in Connecticut with Saman Majd (1969-73).

Matthew Conrad (1979-84) after studying Economics at Cambridge, Matthew practised as an Intellectual Property lawyer and then spent the next 25 years changing careers to the soundtrack of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. In 2015 he finally found it when he joined the pioneering West London Free School. He trained and taught Mathematics at the school until 2020 when he escaped London for rural West Sussex with his wife Claire and his son Nathaniel.

Matthew now teaches at the Weald Community School in Billingshurst. When not in the classroom, you will find him with Claire and Nathaniel wandering the footpaths around their home with their year old border terrier Mabel.

Jonny Dymond (1983-87) went to the University of Durham back when St Paul’s barely recognised such a place existed, and then to the London School of Economics.

He joined the BBC where he worked as a producer and reporter at Westminster, then as a correspondent in Istanbul, Brussels, Washington and a fair few places in between.

He currently presents Radio 4’s The World This Weekend and is also Royal Correspondent for BBC News.

Theo Hobson (1985-90) studied English Literature at York, then Theology at Cambridge. He has written some 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.

Lorie Church (1992-97) 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.

Mark Lobel (1992-97) is BBC World News Reporter and Presenter and former BBC Political Correspondent.

Kareem Tayara (2003-08) went to Van Mildert College, Durham. After leaving university, he moved to Dubai to become the fifth employee at a strategy consulting company. He later joined an emerging and frontier market asset management company – to help with marketing and investor relations and investing in start-ups in the developing world. He volunteers at CodeBrave, a charity that provides tech education to children from disadvantaged backgrounds in Lebanon. After 10 years living in Dubai, he has now become a digital nomad, splitting his time between London, Dubai and Lebanon.

Letters

Dear Jeremy,

Why hasn’t my husband bonded with Rory Kinnear?

I very much enjoyed the recent edition of Atrium which my husband John Matlin (1956-61) lent me, an ostensibly altruistic gesture, most likely prompted by its including the précis of his latest novel, Smoking Gun. Imagine my delight discovering a wealth of articles and interviews I wished to read, primarily about the arts and theatrical world (sport for me is a slog). Though why oh why did John not bond with Pauline creative Rory Kinnear (1991-96)?

What is 30 years difference at school, between intended soulmates?

Normally when I think of St Paul’s it is with some bemusement, because when I came to this country I had never encountered a single-sex school. I was educated in an American Midwest high school and co-ed was rife. No boarding, either, which I assumed meant conditions of Colditz captivity, based on the movies. American schools were not interested in imposing school uniforms either – all that much vaunted love of liberty – so John is envious, as he still hates wearing a tie. Time passed and our daughters went to, yup, a single-sex school. As for uniforms, he had to teach them how to wear a tie, as I was hopeless at it, and too busy laughing.

So thank you for the new vistas and retrospectives of Atrium. Next edition I shall grab it first, for myself.

Kind regards, Linda Matlin

Arts Funding – an Alternative View

Dear Jeremy, There are many points in Ed Vaizey’s (1981-85) article to take issue with – starting with the creation of the Lottery, not discounted by those in the arts for being invented by a Tory but because it was promised as a supplementary means of funding (for otherwise unaffordable projects over and above an organisation’s main work) but soon revealed as a key part of core funding, subject to competitive bids pitching one arts company against another for diminishing sums, and primarily a way for governments to reduce and minimise their existing commitments to the arts.

More crucially, for Lord Vaizey to gloss the slashing of local councils’ budgets since 2010 as “cuts in local government funding” is to blithely ignore the deliberate policy of shrinking the state driven by Tory Chancellor (and, shamefully, an OP) George Osborne (1984-89) in the guise of “austerity” during the coalition government of which Lord Vaizey was a member. As he must know, the impact on arts provision across the UK – alongside cuts to libraries, youth services, social care and so much else – has been devastating.

In light of this, Lord Vaizey’s apparent surprise at the government’s arts “culture war” is hard to take seriously, while he seems unaware of the true impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the 70% of arts practitioners who are self-employed. Proportionately, the arts sector has been harder-hit than any other major business area: actors, musicians, singers, dancers, designers and directors, as well as thousands of technicians, wig, prop and costume makers, stage management and other freelancers, have been deemed ineligible for government furlough schemes or self-employed benefits. It is only thanks to emergency schemes such as the Theatre Artists Fund, founded last year by director Sam Mendes, that many have avoided destitution since their livelihoods and income were abruptly cut off in March 2020.

It is to be hoped that the arts will somehow bounce back from the financial and personal losses of the pandemic, but much of the groundwork for weakening public support for the sector was laid by Lord Vaizey and his colleagues in the Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition government.

Yours sincerely, Don Keller (1965-70) (Arts consultant and former Head of Marketing, National Theatre)

03

LETTERS

Good luck

Dear Jeremy,

Dear Jeremy,

Reading Atrium’s Spring/Summer issue, I readily identified with Paul Velluet’s (1962-67) remarks about Tom Howarth (High Master 1962-73) and the ‘Last Word’ of Ralph Varcoe (1984-89); and while not sharing the lack of enjoyment of my creative contemporaries, some of whom I knew well in “In Conversation – It did not break us”, I can understand that St Paul’s, then, probably did not greatly nurture the creative spirit.

Regarding Paul Velluet’s remarks about Tom Howarth, I, too, found him to be a “remote figure, primarily interested in high flyers...with only limited interest in the average Pauline”. Indeed, while interviewing my parents, before I was admitted to the School, and in a scene reminiscent of the film “if....”, he said, “We make no apology for being an elitist institution”.

TEBH’s values were brought home to me when I went to say my farewells to him. After the “long walk” to his desk, he looked up and asked which “College” (as in Oxbridge) I was going to. I replied, “I’m not going to University, sir; I’m going to be a journalist”. That was it. The conversation went no further, and he simply wished me “Good Luck”.

I would also criticise his decision, in conjunction with the Governors, to abolish the CCF. The reason he gave at ‘Prayers’ for its abolition was that “there was no longer a place in a modern school for a military institution like the CCF”. It is ironic that many CCFs are now flourishing, particularly in state schools.

Mr Howarth was very defensive of the school’s reputation. When smoking cannabis was commonplace (this was the ‘Summer of Love’), I wrote a short story for Folio entitled ‘Through the Haze’ about drug taking. It was set in an unspecified school. Before the piece could be published, the High Master required the word “school” to be replaced by “college” so the school’s reputation was saved.

Despite only being an “average Pauline”, I enjoyed my time at St Paul’s, and realise now that, despite its limitations, the liberal education that the school gave me has stood me in good stead in later life, including during my time on the Acton Gazette.

Yours aye, Mike Ricketts (1963-68)

Dear Jeremy,

Don Pirkis – dedicated to his craft

Tim Venner’s letter about Don Pirkis (Geography Department 1955-86) in the Spring/Summer issue of Atrium took me back to around 1970.

Don was nothing if not dedicated to his craft. I recall him showing us some slides of a glacier he had taken on his honeymoon. “My wife is there for scale,” he said.

Best wishes, Jeremy Gaunt (1966-1971)

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Crowthorne and other memories

I was at Meadhurst at Crowthorne with your father Tim (1942-49), who I was not very close to as he was a prefect but knew him well and admired him – cigarette out of the corner of his mouth (after hours of course). These were the days of my great friend Seamus Flannery (1942-47), the Carless brothers (1941-47), Peter Cook (1945-48) (Editor: dad’s best man and my brother Stephen’s (1973-78) godfather) and my special music buddies Stanley Sadie (194148) and Richard Huggett (1941-47).

I was an outsider being heavily into music especially jazz, which was greatly disapproved of by our housemaster Chris Heath (Maths Department 1927-56), especially when I practised my saxophone or tuned the common room radio to the Glenn Miller Band.

I joined the School just after Dennis Brain (1934-36) left so I missed meeting one of my music heroes.

Another hero was Paul Nash (1903-06). I was turned on to modern art by an original painting of his, which I used to stare at during art lessons at Easthampstead Park.

After Crowthorne I remember arguing endlessly with Chris Barber (1946-47) the merits of trad jazz and my crusade for the new sounds of modern jazz (bebop), which I am still playing!

Best regards, Derek Coleman (1942-48)

Dear Editor,

Not fitting the mould

In one issue you have confounded my memories and expectations of St Paul’s.

Like Ralph Varcoe, whose touching and impressive piece so mirrored my own sense of the School as a pupil, I cordially detested the place, especially for its deadly insistence on the two solitary arguments for success – academia and sport. And I even sent my children to Westminster to ensure no further family contamination, BUT… Of course how wrong and immature I was not to have felt the values of that struggle for a sense of self-worth, the bloody mindedness to stick things and succeed.

Wrong also because the heroes who would have given me courage were there, and I did not look for them: the Duncan Grants (1899-1902), Chris Barbers (1946-47), Paul Nashes (1903-06), Martin Bradleys (1946-47).

Congratulations on an issue that genuinely captures what else St Paul’s did for those of us who did not immediately fit the mould.

Warm regards, Adam Munthe (1959-64)

 Michael Manning (with thanks to Rory Johnston (1962-63) for the photographs)

Michael Manning

Dear Jeremy,

I have just seen Rupert Birtle’s appeal for recollections about Michael Manning, published in Atrium. I knew him very well at School and his death was a huge shock. I remember meeting my friend Stephen Mayer (1962-67) in the bottom corridor of the West Kensington building in my last year there. He was looking agitated and waving a publication (I forget what it was). “What a tragedy”, he said.

If I remember rightly, Michael caught cramp while swimming in the Thames and the current took him away.

Michael Manning was lively, gifted, provocative and successful. He had won a Demyship to Magdalen Oxford.

I imagine he would have been awarded it on his interview performance alone, though that is a guess.

John Smith (Classics Department 1962-98) loved Greece and proposed an Easter school trip. Only three pupils made the journey, Ashley Badcock (1961-66), Michael and myself.

We motored all the way across Germany, Switzerland and Italy, by the way never at more than 40 mph. John slept in his mini-van; the three boys were under canvas, especially tough when fighting Italian mosquitoes. 1965 Greece was very special – Michael, Ashley and I ran at Delphi, danced round (or on) café tables at the foot of the Acropolis, watched disappointed Greek fishermen pull in their empty nets, ate fresh squid and yoghurt at Igoumenitsa.

We knew each other so much better at the end of the trip. Michael had a huge personality and was evidently destined for great things – “What a tragedy” indeed.

Best wishes, Chris Atkinson (1962–67)

Dear Jeremy,

Dear Jeremy,

Michael Manning is remembered

I refer to a letter from Rupert Birtles (1963-66) in the last edition about Michael Manning (1962-66). I have a poor memory for people but remember Michael well as he was in the History Eighth with me. He was a cheeky, happy, active chap with a wicked sense of humour and absolutely brilliant academically. We all expected him to have a sparkling career when we said our goodbyes.

My mother and father had a pub at Goring at the time and I remember someone coming to the bar for a drink and saying a youngster had drowned in the river a short distance from the pub whilst preparing for Henley.

Learning his name was a shock. Rupert says he seems to be forgotten forever but I never forgot him and have often thought about that tragic waste of a shining talent.

I would have been playing with him in that 4th XV if not AWOL with the Ealing Wasps football team (which had a large number of renegade soccer-loving Paulines) alongside your legendary former editor Simon Bishop (1962-65)!

Probably the finest man I ever met

I read the article in the latest Atrium about Tony Jones (1936-41). It brought back many happy memories of the man.

In 1980, I applied for the job as IT Manager (then known as Data Processing Manager) at Saga Holidays.

For no special reason, at the interview I wore my Old Pauline tie. The man across the desk from me immediately recognized the tie and we started talking about our respective days at St Paul’s. He mentioned that he had been a Major-General but never then or in the next three years during which time I got to know him very well did he ever talk about his days in the Army and indeed never mentioned that he had won a MC. He was, without doubt, the most modest man I have ever met and I can understand why people would follow him into battle.

Tony was probably the finest man I ever met.

Best regards, John Frankel (1962-66)

With best wishes, Jon Sandham (1962-66)

05

PAULINE LETTER

Kareem Tayara (2003-08) writes from Lebanon I was born and raised in London to Lebanese parents; I am British, but I am also Lebanese. I have been visiting Lebanon for as long as I can remember, but until recently, I have always been just that – a visitor.

Without first-hand experience, our opinions of a place are shaped by what we see, hear and read. And for Lebanon, that is shawarma, the odd explosion, falafel, Hezbollah, halloumi, and ‘best off the beaten path’ travel listicles. Even with first-hand experience, it is difficult to get the true flavour of a place. I have been to Lebanon probably over a hundred times, but only now feel like I am starting to ‘get’ it. For most of my life, my relationship with Lebanon has been largely one-way; to butcher a JFK quotation, I had only ever asked what my country could do for me, never what I could do for it. I would come to Lebanon, see my family, have fun, and leave. I like it here, but, until recently, I never really thought about it as ‘my’ country. That changed after a couple of events in summer 2020.

On August 4th last year, a massive ammonium nitrate explosion – among the biggest non-nuclear explosions of all time – devastated the Lebanese capital Beirut. My family and I were in our house in the mountains, 25km away from the blast site, and it felt like an earthquake. Had we been in our apartment in Beirut, 1.5km from the blast site, we would have almost certainly ended up in the hospital, or being treated in the street because the hospitals were overflowing.

The blast caused 218 deaths, 7,500 injuries, $15 billion in property damage, and left an estimated 300,000 people (5% of the population) homeless.

A couple of weeks later, my friend Clem came up to visit.

Clem is the founder of CodeBrave (www.codebrave.org), a charity that provides tech education to children from disadvantaged backgrounds in Lebanon. Having fallen in love with Lebanon during her year abroad studying Arabic, she moved here from the UK after university. At dinner, when my parents asked her why she decided to stay in Lebanon, she answered that the country “has a soul”. While volunteering at a shelter for the homeless, one of the boys asked to learn coding and she realised that tech education could give these young people the skills, confidence, and opportunities to access jobs of the future, so she decided to start CodeBrave.

The confluence of the explosion and Clem’s visit made me feel…something. For three days afterwards, I was practically

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mute; I could not understand why I felt so troubled.

Eventually, I realised it was a feeling of dissatisfaction and guilt at my apathy towards Lebanon. The explosion was one more kick in the teeth to a country already on its knees.

But its needlessness, its severity and its tangibility brought to light for me how much this country has suffered. Clem’s perspective – that of someone not even Lebanese – made me understand that my attitude to my country was not a reflection of who I wanted to be. As a well-educated, well-connected diaspora member, I am in a position to help.

To butcher another Kennedy quotation: if not me, who and if not now, when? I am not quite arrogant enough to believe that I alone can be Lebanon’s saviour, but collective action cannot happen without individual action. For the first time in my life, I am starting to put real thought into what I can do for Lebanon.

During all my visits I found it easy to identify Lebanon’s faults, but I am finally appreciating why it is I care about this country – my country. There are the usual things you might hear about Lebanon; the food; the sights; that you can go to the beach and go skiing on the same day; the nightlife. They are rightfully praised, but there is so much more. There is a thriving creative scene. The nature here is genuinely breathtaking and, in a country half the size of Wales, there is a seemingly endless list of places to discover, each more beautiful than the next. Most of all, there is a resiliency and a sense of community that is truly remarkable. The people here know they cannot rely on their government so instead rely on their neighbours. My father and I hike for one to two hours most mornings. People say hello. They invite us into their houses. Some we know, some we do not, but that is how people are here. After the

2020 explosion, many drove to Beirut from all over Lebanon to help clean the sea of glass that showered the city. Builders repaired homes for free. Whatever they could do to get people back on their feet. That is how we are here.

I believe that it is Lebanon’s unique context that forged its spirit – that resiliency and sense of community that I am only now truly starting to appreciate. The 2020 explosion was a horrifying accident, but it was also the product of the same issues that have plagued Lebanon for decades – corruption, mismanagement, sectarianism and geopolitics that are much bigger than Lebanon. Since the brutal 15-year civil war ended in 1990, the same band of politicians and their relatives has ruled Lebanon. It is a cartel of shifting alliances that fight among themselves until any outsiders try to gain power, at which point they close ranks.

Politics and religion are inextricably linked in Lebanon’s constitution, so voters typically stay loyal to their sect, because they think that is who will look after them. These sectarian flames have been fanned by wider geopolitics; Lebanon is a microcosm and proxy battleground for the fight to control the Middle East, with Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the US variously involved. Add in a refugee population that makes up over a quarter of the total population and a major political party (Hezbollah) that has more military power than the army and you get the powder keg that is Lebanon.

And yet the people have endured, survived and built something special here.

Spurred by my belated sense of belonging, I have started to take some action to try to help. I have been volunteering with CodeBrave since March 2020. After that meeting with Clem in August last year, I asked to increase my role. There are many (many) problems to fix in Lebanon, but I believe providing digital literacy to children from disadvantaged backgrounds, teaching them key cognitive development skills, including the ability to self-educate, and training them to get remote work from outside Lebanon is an effective way to break the cycle of poverty and provide Lebanese children with a realistic chance of a better future. I am lucky enough to have a job that I can do from anywhere, and I now spend a third of the year in Lebanon. I have donated to CodeBrave and other initiatives that I believe are helping Lebanon – both short-term relief and long-term change.

I am trying to “buy Lebanese” whenever I can. I have registered to vote. I am looking into how best to support the protest movement. It is nowhere near enough, but it is a start. Sometimes I want to stick my head back in the sand, it was far easier. But I cannot – I now care for my country. 

“The blast caused 218 deaths, 7,500 injuries, $15 billion in property damage, and left an estimated 300,000 people (5% of the population) homeless.”

But that powder keg has now exploded. Even by Lebanese standards, the suffering over the past 18 months has been truly extraordinary, with years of political corruption finally coming home to roost. And I am worried that the people, despite all they have been through before, are finally starting to break. Lebanon is in the midst of a financial crisis and hyperinflation, where the currency is now worth 15 times less what it was previously worth against the dollar.

That means the average salary, already meagre at $1,000 per month, is now an untenable $65 per month, and people’s savings have been decimated by the hyperinflation. Fuel shortages have crippled the country: there is no longer any electricity or Internet for most of the day; schools and hospitals are being forced to close; people are queuing for 5 hours to fill up their cars. Other essentials such as medicine and bread are now rare commodities. Combined with the psychological trauma of COVID and the August 4th explosion, I am seriously worried that Lebanon is starting to lose its soul.

07

Briefings Masters Remembered Frank Parker (Modern Languages Department 1928-65) and Philip Whitting (History Department 1929-63).

Keith Pratt (1951-56) remembers two very different and inspirational Masters.

It was September 1954 when I entered the History Eighth to take A Levels in History, French and Latin, and first stood in awe at the reputation of two remarkable men. They were Philip Whitting (PDW) and Frank Parker (FGSP), great friends who shared tutorial premises in shoebox rooms under the Dining Hall and Lecture Theatre stairs and a mutual disregard for Dr James’s (High Master 1946-53) recent successor.

In days before élitism came to be frowned on as an attribute of the country’s great schools, they made no secret of what they thought about Mr Gilkes (High Master 1952-63) handing out wine gums to boys watching 1st XV matches on Big Side.

Both had their eyes single-mindedly on top academic goals, the winning of Oxbridge awards, in the pursuit of which A Levels were viewed as just a necessary hurdle.

In character and teaching methods the two were quite different. Mr Parker revealed little about his personal life.

He walked with a limp, but whether it was the result of a childhood illness

or a war wound we never knew.

He was an affable, quietly spoken and sensitive man: I recall the calm but empathetic way he told his Lower History 8th form at the start of the 1954 Spring Term that one of our number had died of a long-standing illness during the Christmas holiday.

I enjoyed going to lessons with FGSP. He had a great fund of interesting facts and stories, and though he could be side-tracked he never seemed to mind, and was quite happy to hold our interest by interspersing our reading of Molière or Racine with anything from an example of a Wagnerian leitmotif to the correct way to use an ivory toothpick.

 Drawing of Philip Whitting by Edward Halliday, 1941

The low door behind Mr Parker’s seat in his classroom opened into the cubby hole under the stairs where Mr Whitting gave us individual tutorials, our first taste of the Oxbridge system of reading essays aloud for critical thought and discussion and a valuable preparation for what was expected to lie in wait for us at university. His whole-class teaching took place in ‘the Whitting Room’, a book-lined H8 room at the top of the left-hand flight of the main stairs where he trained many unsuspecting generations of future OPs for their careers by delivering his own scholarly ‘notes’. First, however, mutual respect had to be established, his likes and dislikes made known. His classroom routine was generally predictable.

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After allowing a few minutes for us to settle behind our desks he would enter through the door at the front of the room and walk, head down, straight to his desk and sit facing the door before beginning to talk. One day a prankster (Martin Forde (1951-56) put up a Daily Express poster on the wall behind Mr Whitting’s desk. In came PDW exactly as usual, sat straight down and the lesson began. The joke had evidently failed. But wait: after ten minutes or so he stopped in midsentence and without turning his head, said icily, “Is that an advertisement from the gutter press that I see behind me? I shall not teach you any more until that notice is removed”. And with that he got up and stomped out. We now knew where we stood with him.

But how much and how little did we really know about him: Had he really been banned from using the cane because he had once gone too far with it? Did he actually believe in his argument-stopping claim to reincarnation that gave him the last word on debatable points of Tudor history: “I was Henry VIII so I know”?

And we knew that he had been awarded the George Medal, but was it really for catching a bomb as it fell to earth on a parachute? He had been an RAF pilot, but had he flown Churchill secretly across occupied Europe to Yalta for the Conference in 1945? This was one of his exciting claims, but my attempts to prove or disprove it have been inconclusive. He had been on secret service as an RAF pilot in southern Italy and Churchill’s plane was recorded as arriving in Yalta from Malta.

Did Whitting help to ferry the British leader across southern Europe on either the penultimate or the final stage of his hazardous journey to the Crimea?

I suppose we began to appreciate more about Philip Whitting the man when he relaxed and took some of us Upper 8th formers to Ingatestone Hall

Pauline Gallantry to share with us his fascination with palaeography and historical records.

We knew too of his interest in numismatics, Byzantine history, and local history, but we had little inkling of his high national reputation in those fields. I guess most of us were unaware even that he had a PhD, for at St Paul’s he was always simply ‘Mr Whitting’ or ‘PDW’.

Mr Whitting was adept at getting the best out of his students. Among the members of H8 who left in 1955/6 I remember Mark Elvin (1952-55), Brian Fall (1951-55), Martin Forde, Simon Gillett (1951-56), Roger Hadaway (1951-56), John Hope (1951-56), G N Kenyon (1951-55), David Maunder (1951-56), Nick Phillips (1952-56) and Robin Renwick (1951-56). In later life two would hold top diplomatic posts as ambassadors to the USA (RR) and the USSR (BF), two would hold university chairs in Chinese at Oxford (ME) and Durham (KP), and others would go on to equally fulfilling careers in their chosen fields. Oxbridge beckoned immediately to several of these, but I was a late developer though PDW did his best and treated me with undeserved patience.

I left school in December 1956 without a university place and faced the unwelcome prospect of National Service, feeling perhaps that my connection with the academic path and even St Paul’s were probably both over. Instead, and against all expectation, it was the RAF that provided me with my Damascene path. Having applied for linguistic training I was selected to learn Chinese, and after such an intensive year’s tuition as FGSP would never have contemplated, but which paradoxically it was his own languagelearning methods that helped me to survive, I received a posting to Hong Kong. Against all my expectations it was my door into academia.

In those days Chinese was taught only at Oxford, Cambridge, London and Durham, and when I subsequently obtained a lectureship I was greatly encouraged by the way Philip Whitting stayed in touch and took a personal interest in my early career at Durham.

Perhaps he was mindful of the Byzantine twists and turns in his own academic trail. From time to time we met for lunch when I was in London, but though I always regretted being unable to accept his invitations to Rivercourt Road, I have never ceased to be grateful for the part he played in shaping my future. 

I suppose we began to appreciate more about Philip Whitting the man when he relaxed and took some of us Upper 8th formers to Ingatestone Hall to share with us his fascination with palaeography and historical records.

John Dunkin (1964-69) has again contacted Atrium. This time regarding Lieutenant (later Major) Johnny Wiseman (192934) who was part of the Special Raiding Squadron (formed after temporary disbandment of 1 SAS) leading section of No.1 Troop, tasked to assault three coastal batteries at Capo Murro di Porco, south of Syracuse.

In the early hours of 10th July 1943 an action took place for which he was awarded an immediate Military Cross.

An incident he found amusing after the event was that his fierce CO, Paddy Mayne, upbraided him about mumbling over the net because he had lost during the action his false teeth, worn since a cricket injury at Cambridge.

Johnny Wiseman first served in the North Somerset Yeomanry, which was amazingly still ‘horsed’ until 1942 and took part in the Syrian Campaign against the Vichy French. He was then commissioned into another ancient corps, The Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, but he had heard that ‘L’ Detachment Special Air Service was being formed into a full regiment and visited Colonel David Stirling in Cairo who took him on into his unit.

After Sicily the SAS were sent back to England for the Normandy landings and dropped behind enemy lines where Wiseman commanded 1 Troop of A Squadron in Operation Houndsworth tasked to disrupt German reinforcements going to Normandy, in particular 2nd SS ’Das Reich’ Division between June and September 1944, for which Wiseman was awarded the Croix de Guerre with Silver Star.   OP Rugby Programme featuring Johnny Wiseman

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Father of the House

Pauline Awards

Dennis Frank (1930-33) – celebrated his 104th birthday on 25 July.

Professor Paul Cartledge (1960-64) has received the Commander of the Order of Honour, one of the highest honours the Greek state can give for his “contribution to enhancing Greece’s stature abroad.” The Greek Ambassador to London, Ioannis Raptakis delivered the honour.

One of over a hundred entries in the St Paul’s Registers for Autumn Term 1930 reads, “Frank, Dennis Raymond born 25 July 1917, son of H. Frank, Manufacturer, of Hampstead; from Peterborough Lodge; left M6b, July 1933.” Eighty-eight years after leaving school, Dennis is the oldest living Pauline. Atrium believes he has a lead of around eight years.

How many others can have been an OP for approaching nine decades?

Dennis was born during the Great War and served for five years in the Royal Signals in World War 2.

When he was demobbed, he was an acting captain.

His time at St Paul’s was limited to three years because his father was dying and his mother decided that he was needed in the family business, Resline Neckwear. Dennis thought he should inform the High Master, John Bell (1927-38). When he nervously knocked, the High Master opened the door on his way to a class. Dennis told Bell why he had to leave School. The reply was short and sweet, “I’m very sorry to hear that; I wish you well”.

Paul is the author of Sparta: An Epic History, The Spartans: An Epic History, Alexander the Great, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World and Thebes: The Forgotten City.

The former A G Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge is also a holder of the ‘Gold Cross’ of the Order of Honour (Greece) and has also been recognised as a Son of Sparta and as a “panhellenic δημότης of the Spartans”. 

After 2 years learning the tie trade, Dennis entered the family firm in 1935 – there were seventy tie manufacturers in the UK at the time (there are now eight) and the factory was then in Clerkenwell. It later was transferred to close to Epping Forest. He retired aged 75 in 1992, having served as President of the Tie Manufacturers’ Trade Association.

Until 10 years ago he lived at home in St John’s Wood and now lives in a care home in Golders Green. Although he is looking forward to lunch at The Bull & Bush (COVID permitting), he will not be making it to the OPC Earliest Vintage Lunch in Spring 2022 – he last attended a decade or so ago.

For a time, he was a member of the OP Golf Society and remains an honorary life social member of Sudbury Golf Club.

Dennis remained a life long friend of Dennis Orlik (1930-34), who also left School to join his family’s pipe (the smoking variety) business. He died in 2007 at a mere 91. Dennis Frank remains in touch with the other Dennis’s son, Michael Orlik (1957-62), one of Philip Whitting’s history boys and the first of his family to go university.   Issue of The Graphic, 1932

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Toc H Altar Found

An article in The Times from 11 May reminds us of Tubby Clayton’s (1897-1905) legacy.

A Second World War memorial altar has been returned to its rightful home after it was discovered by chance in a former brewery.

The altar was found – 50 years after going missing – in the Belgian town of Alveringem. It was lost after being put into storage in 1965 at Talbot House in nearby Poperinge, which was preparing at the time for a visit from the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.

Talbot House had been founded in 1915 by the chaplains Philip “Tubby” Clayton and Neville Talbot as an everyman’s club and home-from-home for soldiers resting behind the lines during the First World War. It was very popular and after the war Toc H branches – Toc being wartime signals code for T – were founded for former servicemen in Britain and overseas.

The altar had arrived at Talbot House in 1945. Soldiers from Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) had salvaged it from the ruins of a bombed out church in Normandy and taken it across northern France as the Germans retreated. The soldiers presented it to Talbot House when they liberated Poperinge as a memorial to their comrades who had died. It was after a reorganisation of the chapel by Clayton to restore its First World War appearance for the royal visit that the altar disappeared.

Paulines and Philip, Duke of Edinburgh During the German occupation of the Second World War, Talbot House was requisitioned for military use. A neighbour claimed that it was “often nothing less than a brothel” and described “blind drunk” soldiers and women singing along to accordion music at night.

The broadcaster Frank Gillard, the first Briton to enter Poperinge after its liberation on September 6, 1944, told BBC radio listeners: “I’m glad to bring the news that Talbot House in Poperinge, which was a home from home to our troops in the last war, and which was the birthplace of Toc H, Talbot House stands intact, with scarcely a range of glass broken. The Germans who were living in the house left in such speed that a half –eaten meal was still on the table this morning.” 

Tim Cunis (1955-60) has shared with Atrium a Philip, Duke of Edinburgh story.

In 1959 when visiting St Paul’s for the School’s 450th Anniversary, Her Majesty The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh took tea and cucumber sandwiches at separate small tables with the prefects. Jim Gobbett (1953-9) who stroked the winning VIII in the 1957 Princess Elizabeth Cup at Henley told Tim in the High House dormitory that night that the Duke remarked: “I never understood rowing: you get blisters on your hands and backside and sit on your arse and go backwards”. Tim comments that, “he forgot to mention that a small loud mouth shouts instructions at you while you do all the work”. 

S tatue of Philip ‘Tubby’ Clayton

 Duke of Edinburgh visit, 1959

Simon Louagie the manager of Talbot House said: “Talbot House is a house of people and of stories. The Second World War history of Talbot House never got the attention it deserved and we have now done research on that and this discovery is the icing on the cake. It will provide us with the opportunity to tell the story of the Second World War because that is part of the house and our heritage.”

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Pauline Humanist

When Jon Blair CBE (1967-69) sent in his gobbet for the Spring Atrium’s contributors’ page, he played down his Oscar, Emmy (twice), Grammy and Bafta. He also made no mention of his efforts in training to be a non-religious humanist funeral celebrant.

Jon now writes, “I only set my mind to becoming a funeral celebrant a few years ago after I was asked out of the blue by the widow of a friend and colleague who had recently died of cancer whether I would be willing to conduct his funeral.

The request surprised me, but since I had also contributed to writing the funeral scripts for my parents and my mother in law, all three of whom died in old age, as well as my much loved sister, who died tragically in a riding accident, and since I had always been told that I was an accomplished public speaker, I thought I would give it a go. Fortunately, several of those present in the packed crematorium said afterwards that I had made an excellent job of it – thank goodness.

Since then I have been formally trained and accredited by Humanists UK and am very happy and privileged to be enabled to do my best to create a non religious ceremony to meet the wishes of many different people from all walks of life.

My desire, at what can be an enormously difficult time, is to allow whoever is responsible for organising the funeral to at least be able to relax in the knowledge that the ceremony, when it comes, will be in safe hands.”

Humanist Ceremonies is a network of humanist celebrants trained and accredited by Humanists UK. The organisation offers humanist naming, wedding or partnership, and funeral and memorial ceremonies for nonreligious people. 

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Pauline Photographer

Paulines Do Not Always Go To University Leon Lecash (1965-67) – “leaving school at 16 is not recommended but need not be the end of the world”.

Leon Lecash did not just leave St Paul’s in 1967; he left school. It was 2 months after his sixteenth birthday. His mother had died the year before and his father’s business had failed. So, having been at a country boarding prep school and then St Paul’s since he was six, the world of 1960s London became his oyster. Armed with his camera, chutzpah and some darkroom skills learnt at the St Paul’s photography club, he took a job as a photographer’s assistant. By the end of the decade he had his own studio off Grosvenor Square and with Harry Evans as his patron he was the youngest photographer ever to ‘shoot fashion’ for The Sunday Times.

By 1973 he was in Paris and then from 1974-76 he was working in Milan. Where there was fashion, there was Leon. In 1979, a contact from advertising (I promise not Don Draper) offered him a commission in Los Angeles. Leon arrived with a tourist visa, set himself up on Wonderland Avenue in Laurel Canyon, met one of the loves of his life and within a year had a wife and his first daughter. He needed work.

LA was not a fashion city but it was the world’s entertainment capital. Leon shot movie posters for Warner Brothers, Columbia Pictures and 20th Century Fox but really found his niche as an album cover photographer – his Pat Benatar album cover for Crimes of Passion has recently been named one of the top 100 album covers of all time. Other covers were for David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Jefferson Starship, Melissa Manchester, Ray Parker JR and Barry Manilow.

Leon moved back to London in 1992 and a second daughter was born in 2014. He has now diversified into TV and film production. His company whats it all about? productions produced Michael Jackson and The Doctor: A Fatal Friendship. It had 20 million viewers worldwide. One current project is John Lennon Made Me Toast about a chance encounter with The Beatles when he was at St Paul’s. And, yes – Leon took the first professional photograph of Johnny Depp.

As Leon says, “leaving school at 16 is not recommended but need not be the end of the world”. 

 Crimes of Passion album cover (shown with the permission of Leon Lecash)

B enjamin Jowett (left) and statue of Simon Milton (right)

Pauline Statues

A statue for Benjamin Jowett (1829-36)

Simon not John

Adrian Wooldridge writing in The Spectator (17 July 2021) surprises with his reasons why there should be a statue of Benjamin Jowett.

When advised that a Pauline Milton has three statues in London, Atrium immediately thought of John Milton. However, the much-memorialised Milton is Sir Simon Milton (1975-79), a politician who served as Deputy Mayor for Policy and Planning as well as Chief of Staff to Mayor Boris Johnson. Milton died in 2011 aged 49.

“A good person to start with as a candidate for statuary would be Benjamin Jowett – the great 19thcentury Master of Balliol and the subject of one of the most Oxonian of Oxonian bits of doggerel (‘Here come I, my name is Jowett / All there is to know I know it / I am the Master of this College / What I don’t know isn’t knowledge’). True, Balliol has a marble bust of the great man hidden away on its premises. But what is needed is an edgy new statue right in the heart of the public realm: ideally, on the pavement outside Balliol that he trod for so many decades.

Geoffrey Faber’s standard biography of Jowett is full of striking snippets. As a boy, Jowett looked so much like a girl – pretty, gentle and delicate – that his fellow pupils at St Paul’s nicknamed him ‘Miss Jowett’ and protected him from bullying in much the same way that they would protect a sister. His voice never broke and hairs refused to sprout on his chin. As an old man, he looked and spoke like a eunuch. His skin was unusually soft – like the skin of a baby rather than that of an aged scholar. At the height of the age of athleticism he never learned to handle a cricket bat, kick a football or man an oar.

Jowett has perfect establishment credentials for a public memorial. He transformed Balliol from one college among many into the university’s premier powerhouse of intellectual excellence and public service. He did this by using two revolutionary tools: open competition and high moral seriousness. College places were awarded on the basis of academic merit as revealed by open examinations

rather than given away on the basis of family connections. Tutors were expected to devote themselves to their pupils rather than to the bottle. And Balliol men were expected to work hard for their privileges: Jowett’s pupils included a future prime minister, Herbert Asquith; a future archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang; and a future viceroy of India, Lord Curzon.

Nor was Jowett just a valet to the offspring of the elite: he was also keen on recruiting bright children from obscure backgrounds, even taking the 11-year-old Frank Fletcher under his wing, paying for his education and acting as his mentor at Balliol.

Jowett’s principles eventually spread to the rest of the university, taking an institution that could easily have degenerated into a nest of sinecures and transforming it into a progenitor of Nobel prize winners and social reformers.

Yet there is also another side to Jowett that clinches his case for a new public statue: the preponderance of evidence suggesting that he was Oxford’s first (and at the moment probably only) intersex college head. I was first alerted to this possibility when I was a young Fellow of All Souls in the 1980s by an ancient college fixture called E B ‘Henry’ Ford, a distinguished geneticist who had an odd habit (among many odd habits) of talking about figures from the Victorian and Edwardian era as if they were contemporaries. His favourite subject was Benjamin Jowett on the grounds that ‘everybody knew’ that the celebrated Master of Balliol was a ‘hermaphrodite’, as he called it. He even claimed to know for a fact that Jowett’s relationship with Florence Nightingale had proceeded to a point where the Master of Balliol’s ‘anatomical configuration’ led them to call off plans for marriage.” 

Since his death, numerous memorials have appeared across London. The most prominent is in Paddington Basin, where Simon sits on a bench, inviting conversation. A second can be found on Piccadilly, on the corner with Eagle Place. The third, and most recent, acts as a gatekeeper to some new apartments between Tower Bridge and City Hall.

Simon’s father was one of the Kindertransport children brought to England in 1939. After Cambridge where he was president of the Union, Simon started work at the family chain of patisserie shops and bakers (later sold to Ponti’s). But his interest lay in politics particularly London’s and after time as a Westminster councillor, for which he was knighted in 2006, Simon was appointed to the position of Senior Adviser, Planning, in the administration of London Mayor Boris Johnson. From September 2008 he was Deputy Mayor for Policy and Planning. In June 2009, Milton was also appointed Chief of Staff to the Mayor, with responsibility for managing the mayoral advisers, as well as the Greater London Authority budgets and administration.

Following his death, the Sir Simon Milton Foundation was established.

It supports young and older people of the City of Westminster. 

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Pauline War Memorials

Graham Seel (History Department 2012-21) was granted a sabbatical in the Summer Term of 2020 to research OPs who fell in the First World War. He hopes to publish his research in 2022 and would welcome contact from any OP or friend of the school who has an OP relative who fell in that conflict.

Graham can be contacted by email at: 123thenorth@btinternet.com He will be giving a series of Master classes at School on ‘How to research the story of an ancestor who fell in the First World War’ on November 1st, 8th and 15th.

Over the course of the last centuryor-so the Pauline community has sponsored the erection of three war memorials: the South African War Memorial (1906), the Memorial Chapel (1926) and the War Memorial (2011).

Only the last of these exists on the current site.

roof had been taken and it was beginning to look shabby and derelict’.

No school funds were available for its restoration and it faced the prospect of demolition. The OPC thus resolved to endeavour ‘to preserve it at the school or, if necessary, elsewhere.’ It was purchased by an OP who erected it in the grounds of his home in Sussex.

After the First World War there existed a powerful sentiment to commemorate and memorialise OPs who fell in that conflict. The architect not having incorporated a chapel into the design of the school in Hammersmith, OPs and friends of the school set about raising sufficient funds to convert the

In the aftermath of the South African War a committee of the Old Pauline Club was instituted and charged with the ambition to raise subscriptions for a proposed war memorial to the 11 OPs who had lost their lives in that conflict.

The resultant eye-catching edifice was unveiled with no little pomp in 1906, adorned with a large Union Jack and with Lord Roberts as the VIP guest.

Designed by F. S. Chesterton (188993), who was killed in action on the Somme on 11 November 1916, the memorial was successfully relocated to the Barnes site in 1968, the removal costs of which were met by Leslie Sydney Marler (1913-17). The memorial was duly re-erected at the western extent of the school grounds, where it was anticipated that its ‘classical lines will stand out in isolated delicacy’.

Unfortunately, this position, somewhat removed from the main buildings and located close to the river, was vulnerable to those with malign intent.

Sadly, it was vandalised and in 1974 was described as in ‘an unhappy state …. the cross and part of the copper  Opening of South African War Memorial, 1906

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Old Library into a Memorial Chapel, the names of the fallen to be inscribed on twelve fumed oak panels to be hung on the walls. Leslie (‘Max’) MacDonald Gill was commissioned to produce the panels and to carry out the fitting and decoration of the new Chapel. The panels were completed in 1923 at a cost of £685 (about £30,000 today) and temporarily hung in the Great Hall from Easter of that year ahead of the completion of the new chapel in 1926. When the school moved to Barnes in 1968 the panels were carried to the new site. In their new home they were not hung in the chapel, and perhaps even disappeared into storage for a period of time. Not later than the 1980s they were hung in the centre of the school, on the wall outside the High Master’s office in the old General Teaching Block. When that building was demolished in 2017 – 2018 they were temporarily hung in the Sports Hall Corridor, awaiting translation to their new home on the

wall outside the Montgomery Room in 2020, in which place the overall effect of a spectator pausing at their foot is nothing other than to stand before a great waterfall of names.

 Design drawing of the Memorial Chapel

In recent years St Paul’s Remembrance Day commemorations have taken place in front of the War Memorial located at the north east corner of the Milton Building. The installation in 2011 of this memorial commemorating all Paulines who have fallen in conflict was substantially the achievement of Joshua Greenberg (2008-13), assisted by support from Eugene de Toit (5th Form Undermaster at the time). The Memorial was funded by OPs and private donations. Its design was in part based on some rough ideas put forward by Joshua which were then passed on to Boden and Ward, a stonemason firm with experience of building memorials who had been recommended to the School. The Old Pauline Club was involved in choosing the wording for the memorial. On Friday 11 November 2011, following an Act of Remembrance held in the Atrium, a Service of Dedication was held in front of the Memorial. 

 Memorial Chapel Hammersmith buildings

 Admiral Sir John Treacher (1938-42) after unveiling the 2011 Memorial

With thanks to the St Paul’s School and OPC archivist for the images  War memorial erected in 2011

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BRIEFINGS

Pauline Books

Eric Jensen (1945-50) Alien Aloft: Unravelling Identity in Pursuit of Peace Theo Hobson (1985-90) reviews Eric Jensen’s memoirs.

It is fitting that Eric Jensen enjoyed a long career at the United Nations: he was conscious from a young age of straddling national boundaries. He moved to London from Denmark when he was three: his father was a Lutheran minister. When the war started he was sent to a boarding school in rural Wales, which was grim and lonely but at least safe from the bombs.

He then won a scholarship to St Paul’s: he wore his silver fish on his watch-chain, which was part of the uniform, along with ‘stiff detachable collars and collar studs front and back’. He enjoyed drama, especially when he acted in a comic Revue, a fund-raiser for a boys’ club in the East End (an early version of Comic Relief). He performed alongside Jonathan Miller (1947-53), already a comedy star. He remembers Montgomery giving a talk, and giving the 1st XV some advice: ‘you win matches before going on the pitch, he said. As in battle, you won before going into action.’

The Christian Union was commonly known as ‘Pi-squash’ – squash being slang for society and pi short for pious.

Jensen attended some house parties, which felt refreshingly informal; ‘Dress was entirely optional’ – a recollection that should not be misinterpreted.

He continued to feel a bit of an outsider; he looked on at English class distinctions and other habits with an anthropologist’s interest. His international outlook was confirmed by stints in Denmark and then Harvard, before he went to Oxford. After further studies in Heidelberg, his life took a surprising turn: he joined an

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Anglican mission to Borneo. His motivation seems to have been more humanitarian, and anthropological, than religious – above all perhaps he wanted an exotic adventure in the last days of colonial rule. He lived in a longhouse with the Iban tribe of Sarawak, and helped them to negotiate with the new Malaysian state. His advocacy led him to work with the US Peace Corps and other NGOs (as they were not yet called), and soon he found himself drawn to the UN. Before long he was trouble-shooting in various parts of Africa and Asia, and negotiating internal UN politics as well as global politics. He worked closely with Kurt Waldheim, the UN Secretary-General in the 1970s, but was not a fan – ‘he was political to his fingertips’. When Waldheim was caught out for covering up his Nazi past, Jensen was not surprised by his arrogance. He met countless politicians: Margaret Thatcher, no great fan of the UN, struck him as ‘the headmistress of a well-disciplined girls’ school’.

He enjoyed living in New York and then Geneva, as well as travelling the globe, but in middle age he had a niggling sense of being a citizen of nowhere, and was glad to settle in London on his retirement. He concludes his memoir with some reflections on religion’s role in global conflicts, including those he witnessed in Nigeria, Bahrain and Bangladesh. This is a memoir that will interest students of international diplomacy, and perhaps also OPs of the same vintage.

John Chadwick (1935-39) The Cambridge Greek Lexicon

Jacky Colliss Harvey Walking Pepys’s London

John Chadwick was born in 1920 – the same year as another celebrated Pauline classicist Kenneth Dover (1932-38). After St Paul’s, Chadwick went to Corpus Christi, Cambridge.

In 1940 he left university to volunteer for the Royal Navy, where he served as an Ordinary and later an Able Seaman on HMS Coventry. In 1942 he was transferred to intelligence duties based in Alexandria, Egypt and in 1944, he moved to Bletchley Park, given a crash-course in Japanese, and set to work on reading the encoded messages sent by the Japanese naval representatives in Stockholm and Berlin.

In 1945, Chadwick resumed his studies at Corpus graduating with First Class Honours in Classics with a distinction in his special subject Linguistics starting a highly distinguished academic career including, along with Michael Ventris, deciphering Linear B. After more than twenty years in the making, The Cambridge Greek Lexicon is set to become instantly indispensable for Classics students as well as an important reference work for scholars. The tome is the result of 23 years of work by a team from the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge.

The project, which began in 1997, was the brainchild of John Chadwick. The dictionary provides fresh definitions and translations that are rendered into contemporary English – gleaned from the Herculean task of re-reading most of Ancient Greek literature from its foundations in Homer through to the early second century AD. Peter Jones the former senior lecturer in Classics at the University of Newcastle and co-founder of the Friends of Classics charity concluded his review in The Spectator, “this pioneering lexicon is a triumphant intellectual and educational achievement…L, S and J (Liddell, Scott and Jones) will surely be looking favourably on this CGL revolution from their everlasting places of honour in the asphodel fields”.

In November 1998, aged 78, Chadwick died of a heart attack at Royston station on his way to a meeting in London. 23 years later his idea has become reality.

Samuel Pepys walked round London for miles. The two and a half miles to Whitehall from his house near the Tower of London was accomplished on an almost daily basis, and so many of his professional conversations took place whilst walking that the streets became for him an alternative to his office. With Walking Pepys’s London, the reader will come to know life in London from the pavement up and see its streets from the perspective of this renowned diarist. The city was almost as much a character in Pepys’s life as his family or friends, and the book draws many parallels between his experience of 17thcentury London and the lives of Londoners today.

Colliss Harvey’s new book reconstructs the sensory and emotional experience of the past, bringing geography, biography and history into one. Full of fascinating details and written with extraordinary sensitivity, Walking Pepys’s London is an exploration into the places that made the greatest English diarist of all time.

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BRIEFINGS

Nick Bromley (1958-62) Stage Ghosts and Haunted Theatres Stage Ghosts and Haunted Theatres takes the reader on a selected tour of some of the British Isles’ phantom filled venues.

Our interconnection with ghosts is as old as mankind itself, for spirits of the dead have been believed, observed and recorded since the dawn of time. As a boy, a peculiar visit to the private apartments of the Palais de Versailles first encouraged Nick Bromley to seek out the possibility of their existence. Since then, personal experiences have convinced him of their presence, for his stage career has enabled him to bear witness to several fragments of the afterlife. The particular ability of theatres to retain memories and sightings of their past occupants is second to none.

This has helped him over the years to assemble a collection of spectral encounters from witnesses on both sides of the curtain, be they actors, backstage workers, managers or front of house staff.

Now, fittingly introduced by Richard O’Brien, the creator of the legendary The Rocky Horror Picture Show, this book presents a new collection of untold supernatural experiences together with historic stories intertwined with the details of the individual theatres where ghosts in many forms have been encountered.

Combining both personal memories of the supernatural and the background of over fifty widely different venues, this new illustrated book is an important celebration of the ghosts who haunt our theatres.

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Stephen Walker (1975-78) BEYOND Dan Snow (1992-97) has commented that ‘this book is a triumph’.

9.07 a.m., April 12, 1961. A top-secret rocket site in the USSR. A young Russian sits inside a tiny capsule on top of the Soviet Union’s most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile – originally designed to carry a nuclear warhead – and blasts into the skies. His name is Yuri Gagarin and he is about to make history.

Travelling at almost 18,000 miles per hour – ten times faster than a rifle bullet – Gagarin circles the globe in just 106 minutes. While his launch begins in total secrecy, within hours of his landing he has become a world celebrity – the first human to leave the planet.

BEYOND tells the thrilling story behind that epic flight on its sixtieth anniversary.

It happened at the height of the Cold War as the US and USSR confronted each other across an Iron Curtain. Both superpowers took enormous risks to get a man into space first – the Americans in the full glare of the media, the Soviets under deep cover. Both trained their teams of astronauts to the edges of the endurable. In the end the race between them would come down to the wire.

Drawing on extensive original research and the vivid testimonies of eyewitnesses, many of whom have never spoken before, Stephen Walker unpacks secrets that were hidden for decades and takes the reader into the drama – featuring the scientists, engineers and political leaders on both sides, and above all the American astronauts and their Soviet rivals battling for supremacy in the heavens.

William Mallinson (1965-70) Guiccardini, Geopolitics and Geohistory, Understanding Inter-State Relations Guiccardini, Geopolitics and Geohistory, Understanding Inter-State Relations demonstrates that geohistory is a more effective concept than geopolitics in understanding inter-state relations and that Francesco Guicciardini’s thoughts are an efficient medium to demonstrate not only the inadequacies of geopolitics, but that a geohistorical approach can be a more responsible way of understanding international affairs.

The book introduces a fresh approach, based on the individual, on which corporate characteristics and behaviour depend, often in the shape of state interests, which are unable on their own to predict actions driven by human behaviour. It shows how mainstream international relations theories are stuck in paradigms, inadequate in explaining why world politics is moving in a direction that nobody could predict even a decade ago and how ideology can blur clear understanding. In short, the book represents a new and intellectually refreshing approach and method in understanding, and tackling, the vagaries of relations between states.

John Simpson (1957-62) Our Friends in Beijing John Simpson has been reporting from China for more than 30 years and has had many extraordinary, hair-raising experiences. For fear of putting those involved in danger with the authorities, he’s never been able to include all the details in his reporting. Our Friends in Beijing allows him to finally describe them – with a light dusting of fiction.

Jon Swift is in trouble again. His journalism career is in freefall. He is too old to be part of the new world order and he has never learned to suck up to those in charge. But experience has taught him to trust his instincts.

When, for the first time in years, Jon runs into Lin Lifeng in a café in Oxford he wonders if the meeting is a coincidence. When Lin asks him to pass on a coded message, he knows it is not. Once a radical student who helped Jon broadcast the atrocities of Tiananmen Square, Lin is now a well-dressed party official with his own agenda.

Travelling to Beijing, Jon starts to follow a tangled web in which it is hard to know who are friends and who are enemies. As he ricochets across the country, Jon seeks to make sense of the ways in which China’s past and present are colliding – and what that means for the future of the country and the world. Under the watchful eyes of an international network of spies, double-agents and politicians, all with a ruthless desire for power, Jon is in a high-stakes race to expose the truth, before it is too late.

David Cohen (1960-63) Surviving Lockdown: Human Nature in Social Isolation The years 2020 and 2021 have been the years of the virus, and it will not be a mere footnote in history. This book reflects on the unprecedented changes to our lives and the impact on our behaviour as we lived through social isolation during the global COVID-19 pandemic. From sociable creatures of habit, we were forced into a period of uncertainty, restriction, and risk, physically separated from families and friends.

Packed with guidance and coping strategies for lockdown, this book explores the impact of this widespread quarantine on our relationships, our children, our mental health, and our daily lives. Benedictine monks, hermit popes, Dorothy Sayers, Daniel Defoe (who made the isolated Robinson Crusoe a hero), Sigmund Freud, and a rabbi’s angry dog are all among the cast of characters as we are taken on a whistle-stop tour through plagues in history and brain science, to the importance of introspection and how to make meaning from lockdown. In his trademark entertaining style, Cohen examines the psychology behind our behaviour during this unusual time to discover what we can learn about human nature, what lessons we can learn for the future – and whether we will apply them.

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THE INTERVIEW

Tom Tugendhat (1986-91)

Mark Lobel (1992-97), BBC World News Reporter and Presenter and former BBC Political Correspondent interviews the MP and Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

I

t was Tom Tugendhat’s first engagement with Pauline life for almost thirty years. “What on earth are you doing this for?” the military man barked at me in his parliamentary office. Wrong-footed: “Um, I thought it would be interesting to meet you,” was my somewhat meek reply, before I then recognised this shot across the bows as a pre-interview power game. I had seen senior politicians try a variant of it in the past, claiming not to know what they were going to be interviewed about.

“Oh. I’m here for my looks,” was Tom’s riposte, smiling slightly.

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It was an odd beginning. It also piqued my curiosity. I was due to explore his role as a budding statesman, with incisive knowledge of world affairs, as the influential Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. I was also interested in his bold Prime Ministerial ambitions.

Now, though, I was more interested in his school days. Did he actually dislike the school? Was he put off by the current political winds from associating with it?

If so, what on earth was he doing agreeing to be interviewed by me? It is for the St Paul’s alumni magazine after all.

It turns out he did appreciate the school’s “fantastic education”. He has high praise for school chaplains Stephen Young (Philosophy Department 19882002) and Hugh Mead (History Department 1966-97) who taught him while he was there and for the Christian Union. His first move after Barnes is testament to that: studying Theology at Bristol. Then came an Islamic Studies Masters at Cambridge. This took him to Yemen where he learnt Arabic. He used that Arabic and his French as a journalist in Lebanon. After that he worked in PR; as a management consultant; and an energy analyst, none of which he enjoyed nearly as much as his time as a reserve officer in the Territorial Army. His standing there soon shot up. He joined just before September 11th happened, which thrust him into war zones. In Iraq he says he was, at times, terrified working on operations. His greatest adventure was in Afghanistan where he helped set up the National Security Council and the government in Helmand Province before being involved in military operations from 2007 to 2009.

His fond recollection of his time in the Army is notable compared to his more ambivalent feelings about his schooldays.

I dug deeper into why he turns up to regimental reunions and not school ones.

It appears his old school somehow represents injustices he is now trying to address. He explains: “Much of your life is spent in very small bubbles. St Paul’s is a tiny bubble of a particular rarefied section of the community with a certain wealth distribution, geographic distribution, economic… The wonderful thing about

His mission is clear – he wants to challenge the divisions in society and see the different worlds integrate with one another.

Tugendhat has a warning for institutions like St Paul’s not to follow Cambridge University’s example and accept the Chinese yuan.

the Armed Forces is it’s not. It’s everybody. One person I worked with, his grandmother did quite well, and she ended up as Queen. And somebody else I worked with his grandfather didn’t do so well. He went to prison for trying to sell him as a four-year-old. That’s quite a range of people. One of them ended up as RSM (Regimental Sergeant Major).

The other one has some job doing podcasts in California. I’m not quite sure how successful that is?”

To be fair, Tugendhat concedes he is part of The Establishment, “but I seem to be in rebellion most of the time,” he adds.

He is careful not to blame anyone in any particular bubble, but his mission is clear – he wants to challenge the divisions in society and see the different worlds integrate with one another. He fears a “rarefied education” may not help that cause. He implies that the Army just about saved him by opening his eyes to the world, but he fears for the school’s future now with an increasingly split society. The other problem with St Paul’s, he says, is the cost. “Inflation in fees has outstripped wage inflation to an extraordinary degree.”

Once we do get onto world affairs, it is difficult to listen to such an articulate, well-informed, educated individual and not think that his schooling played a crucial part. But I will leave you to decide what is going on there. Let us turn to another of his bugbears: China.

Just before we met, the West Kent-based MP was taking the Chinese to task in the Commons for their human rights record.

He was urging the British government to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2024. He leads fellow Conservative MPs in the China Research Group calling for sanctions against China over the alleged mass rounding up of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. They have already influenced government policy and he has been blacklisted by Beijing which he says has had no effect on him at all.

The Spectator recently argued that ‘China bought Cambridge’ because of Chinese funding for a new Institute for Sustainability Leadership based in Cambridge. In addition, it said the University received millions of pounds from the Chinese government to set-up »

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THE INTERVIEW

a research centre based in Nanjing.

Tugendhat has a warning for institutions like St Paul’s not to follow Cambridge University’s example and accept the Chinese yuan. “It would be unwise because it is very hard to explain to somebody that you are guaranteeing the academic freedoms that Ofsted requires you to guarantee and that your charter left by John Colet instructs you to keep.”

His fear is “enabling students to be taught under a dictatorial system that refuses the civil liberties that are fundamental to education” and of getting into a financial relationship with China that, through satellite schools there, “starts to affect schools at home … causing a growing silence” on the issues of free speech, human rights or calling out the Chinese for stealing technology or intellectual property.

Perhaps Tugendhat’s greatest legacy so far by pushing an anti-Beijing message (alongside, whisper it, Donald Trump) has been to encourage the British cabinet to take a more hawkish position over its economic dealings with China.

But, it seems, our statesman’s influence only goes so far. His warnings not to cut Britain’s annual foreign aid budget by around four billion pounds a year went unheeded by his party. He thinks it will be a long and costly mistake: “You’ll see Brits winning fewer positions at UN bodies. You’ll see our voice not being heard so much in the African Union or being not as well received in the Commonwealth. You’ll see others filling that place.”

He says a simple lesson in diplomacy has been ignored. “If you think things are going badly with you at the table, trust me, walk away and they will get worse.”

That is also an apt description of what has happened in Afghanistan. The UK has withdrawn from a costly twenty-year war there. The 48-year old congratulates British troops for preventing another terrorist threat similar to 9/11 from taking place in the West during its operations there. But he bitterly regrets our exit. He compares it to the years following the end of the Second World War: “The fighting stopped in 1945 but the victory didn’t come until 1991.

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He says a simple lesson in diplomacy has been ignored.

“If you think things are going badly with you at the table, trust me, walk away and they will get worse.”

 Tom during his military career

Because we built up the civil institutions, the economic partnerships, all the infrastructures of a prosperous and successful Western Europe that gently exerted increasing pressure on The Wall until one day it collapsed. That was a phenomenal success. What we’ve just done in Afghanistan is pull out in 1955.”

He worked closely with many Afghans in Kabul and Helmand but “wouldn’t be surprised if many didn’t survive until Christmas.”

Our interview was hurriedly brought forward at the last minute to make way for an unannounced visit to London from a very senior member of the Indian Army.

It is testament to the rebel backbencher’s diplomatic skills that he was the one to explain to our key ally, in the kindest possible terms, why we have abruptly abandoned ship in Afghanistan by leaving so quickly despite Afghan forces being so unprepared, especially in the skies. That has arguably left a clear run for India’s arch enemies, namely China and Pakistan, to increase their foothold in the war-torn country, through a Taliban Trojan Horse.

But some in the party want to see far more of him than just his diplomatic skills. He ranked highest outside the Cabinet in a recent Conservative Home grassroots poll for Next Conservative Leader. The bookies have him second in line outside the Cabinet, his current odds the same as the Home Secretary and not far behind the Health Secretary.

He is in the highly intellectual wing of the party, once backing Michael Gove for leader and is great mates with the likes of former Conservative MP, Rory Stewart and many of the next generation Tories. He is an unabashed centrist, compromising, anti-populist. He is very refreshingly not a career politician. The son of a high court judge and husband of a judge on France’s Supreme Court has even got pleasant things to say about Keir Starmer, describing him as “a very decent guy,” other than being “too lawyerly”. He currently has a higher media profile than the leader of the opposition from what I can see, from comment pieces in the Daily Mail to appearances on Talk Radio and everything in between. Which goes

some way to answering my original question, namely why he is talking to me.

His star is clearly rising. He is wearing it all well. He is intent on boosting his profile at any opportunity. He thinks he could be Conservative leader one day.

“You don’t say when the moment comes that you don’t want to do it,” he tells me.

But he says his party is not heading in the direction he would choose. It is no secret that he does not approve of the current leader. So, I ask, chasing a cheap headline, how he would sum up Boris Johnson’s leadership using a military phrase.

“There’s no way I’m giving it to you,” he laughs. So instead he describes what leadership should be. “Accountability, authority and responsibility.” We are chatting days after an opposition MP is thrown out of the House for repeatedly calling the PM a liar. So, I ask, how important is truthfulness these days?

He begins with, “I think integrity matters and I think truthfulness matters in how we deal with each other.” He adds, “The ultimate protection in a democracy is not the law or judges or police. The ultimate protection is shame.”

Tom Tugendhat does not try to be someone he is not. He once told a podcast he does not have a favourite band and he is relaxed enough to say he does not really follow sport. The only cagey answer I elicited from the practising Roman Catholic was about religion. I asked him about a cross that is pinned to his noticeboard. He tried to bat it away, telling me affirmatively, “I’m not elected to represent the bishops.”

He says his best friend in politics is his wife. They have two children.

He famously changed a nappy silently enough not to disturb his interview on the Today Programme with John Humphries.

Though LBC’s Nick Ferrari did call a halt to their interview the following year when the breakfast presenter heard a baby cry in the background. Then there was a TV interview last year from his home during which his kids badgered him live on air to join them in some face painting before repeatedly jumping on the bed.

“Very kindly after that interview a number of people sent me a series of how

to guides. So now I’ve got a ten-page booklet on how to paint a tiger and how to do a butterfly. You know, white first, then a bit of sparkles, then some blue.

I’m very good at face painting now. I’ll do you in a minute,” he says, laughing, before rushing off to try and save face with that Indian General. 

He worked closely with many Afghans in Kabul and Helmand but “wouldn’t be surprised if many didn’t survive until Christmas.”

“The ultimate protection in a democracy is not the law or judges or police. The ultimate protection is shame.”

23

In Conversation

Paul Cartledge (1960-64) hosts a discussion with other Pauline Professors.

A

cademic’ can be used in more than one way, and I do not mean only both as a noun and as an adjective. If a choice or a decision is (merely) ‘academic’, then in everyday parlance it is nugatory. If on the other hand we say and believe that St Paul’s is an ‘academic’ school, then we presumably mean that positively. At all events, the School has produced over its five centuries a disproportionate number of academics, some of whom have been and are truly distinguished ‘Professors’. There are getting on for eighty of them still alive – and mostly kicking vigorously – as I write.

To explain: following Jon Blair’s (1967-69) enviably elegant and pointed ‘In Conversation’ piece in the Spring/Summer 2021 Atrium, showcasing his ten Unbroken Creative OPs, the Editor had the bright idea of commissioning a follow-up piece on ‘Professors’, no less unbroken if not necessarily as creative, and I rashly agreed to have a go at researching and writing it. Jon has been immensely helpful, as has the Editor, but responsibility for the (surely not merely academic) choice of eight is mine alone.

My qualifications? I graduated from Colet Court (1957-60) and attended the School from 1960 to 1964, at the end of which I departed for a nine-month furlough in the States (including a semester at the University of California Santa Barbara) before ‘going up’, following in the footsteps of (Lord) Bernard Rix (1957-62), to New College Oxford to read ‘Mods and Greats’ (1965-69). And I have myself been one, a ‘Prof’, at Cambridge since 1993, first of (ancient) Greek History, then as the inaugural A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, and since 2014 the emeritus version of the latter. Also since 2014 I have been and am a Senior Research Fellow of Clare College (Cambridge’s second oldest). I was a Governor of St Paul’s representing Cambridge University between 1990 and 2007.

I consider myself quite exceptionally fortunate to have caught the ‘Cotter-Cruickshank’ wave of 1946-1966, which yielded no fewer than 100 Classics ‘awards’ (entrance Scholarships or Exhibitions) at Oxbridge, a strike rate of 5 per annum. Our Greek teacher EPC ‘Pat’

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Eight Pauline Professors Mark Bower (1974-78) Oncologist Richard Gombrich (1950-55) Indologist Duncan Haldane (1965-69) Physics Gerd Kullak-Ublik (1979-83) Pharmacology & Toxicology Colin Mayer (1966-70) Management Studies Lord (Ian) McColl (1948-51) Surgeon Martin Price (1969-74) Geography Tim Rood (1982-86) Classics

Cotter (1917-23, and Classics Department 1928-65) and our Latin/Ancient History teacher WW ‘Wol’ Cruickshank (Classics Department 1947-73) deservedly have a memorial lecture at the School named jointly after them. Both were quite remarkable figures and mentors, in their very different ways. Dr Cruickshank also received a Festschrift entitled Apodosis, edited in-house, one of the contributors to which was the late Martin West (1951-55) OM. (Another is featured below.)

I consider myself quite exceptionally fortunate to have caught the ‘Cotter-Cruickshank’ wave of 1946-1966, which yielded no fewer than 100 Classics ‘awards’.

My own choices of Professorial interviewees aimed to cover the waterfront of academic specialisations: from management studies and mathematics, through a variety of medical professions (oncologist, surgeon, toxicologist), oriental philology and religion, geography and music, to my own discipline of Classics (it was very hard to select just one other OP Classics prof – there are so many of us, so well taught were we at School, and not only by Cotter and Cruickshank). In terms of their ages they span some 35 years, well over a human generation.

Not all those whom I would have wanted ideally to approach were available: political philosopher Isaiah Berlin (1922-28), OM (died, 1997), the above-mentioned Martin West (2015), and botanist David Goodall (1927– 32) (2018, aged 104) eluded me by dying. Not all those whom I did approach were either able or willing to join in the fun. One of those – a Pauline by birth as it were (being the son of a revered St Paul’s teacher and rugby coach) – has had a remarkable career in particle physics, via Harwell labs, Imperial College London, Oxford, Cambridge, Liverpool, CERN and Birmingham.

Another (a musician) generously wished me ‘Huge good luck with it all’, saying he hoped ‘to be free to help out the next time’ (erm…), and adding of himself ‘How lucky I was to have landed in St Paul’s and then Cambridge... Two extraordinary places of inspiration, opportunity, support and care’. This is worth remarking, since the latter two qualities are not ones that have been universally experienced by any means, to judge from some post-Cantabrigian

comments by other ex-students that I have read over the years since my own time here as teacher and researcher began in 1979. But I hope readers will agree that my magnificent eight are a rare and illuminating as well as illuminated sample.

I posed to them all by email the same set of ten or so questions, leaving it up to them how – or indeed whether – they answered them. How did you come to be a pupil at SPS? What did you perceive to be the School’s dominant ethos? What most determined your choice of specialist (A Level) subjects at School?

Was there one particular teacher/teachers who set the course/totally changed the destiny of your future professorial life? Were you taught what – or rather (more) – how to think? What do you now make – what are your most abiding/stirring impressions – of your days at SPS? Would you say that you use your SPS education every day to this day? What would you say are the most recurring benefits/disbenefits of your SPS education? What would your 18-year-old self say to your present self? And, finally, an open question – is there any other question you would have liked to have been asked or that you think you should have been asked? I hope my distillation of their answers has not been excessively reductive – I took the precaution of showing them a draft before submitting copy to the Editor.

Lord (Ian) McColl (1948-51) wins the prize for laconicity of response. I had the good fortune to meet him and get to know him when we were both serving as School Governors under the old regime of governance (representing our respective universities, when London was still a – unified, federal – university, and it together with Oxford and Cambridge supplied three academic governors respectively. My original – 1990 – colleagues as »

 Lord Ian McColl

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IN CONVERSATION

Governors included other OP luminaries such as historian Karl Leyser (1937-39) and mathematician Ioan James (1942-46), both of Oxford.) Ian was too modest to mention his ennoblement as Baron McColl of Dulwich – or to say why and by whom he had been so elevated. Nor did he mention the pro optimo work he has undertaken with the charity ‘Mercy Ships’ since his retirement in 1998 from his chair of surgery at Guy’s. What he did tell me was that medicine was in his sights from an early age, even though as a scholarship-holder he proceeded through the Classical VIII forms at School, singling out for special praise teachers Tony Richards (English Department 1927-68) and Pat Cotter.

The School had taught him not only to think but also to be tolerant, to fight injustice, and to stand up for what is right.

What struck me most about his replies was his firm view that the School had taught him not only to think but also to be tolerant, to fight injustice, and to stand up for what is right. His career was in medicine, but he still reads both some Latin and some Greek New Testament every day. I only wish I could say the same for myself.

Another of my fellow School governors is Colin Mayer (1966-70). Like most of my interviewees, he started out at Colet Court and, thanks to strong parental intervention and guidance, followed his older brother to St Paul’s.

The School’s perceived academic ethos appealed to him, and he majored entirely on the science side: first chemistry, maths and physics, then double maths and physics. He is currently the Peter Moores

 Colin Mayer

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Professor of Management Studies at Oxford’s Saïd Business School, having previously served as its Dean. For his academic distinction he has been awarded not only Fellowship of the British Academy (an elect body principally of non-scientific, humanistic scholars) but also a CBE. He is in general full of praise for what the School did for him as a pupil by way of its positive, supportive environment, encouraging both intellectual application and tolerance, its dedicated teachers, and its supply of wonderful friends – still his friends to this day. On the other hand, he thinks in retrospect it could have done a bit more to encourage greater reflection on how privileged he was to be a St Paul’s schoolboy.

It is not often that a mere Classicist gets to correspond with a Nobel laureate – Duncan Haldane (1965-69).

Like Colin Mayer, Duncan had parents who took a special interest in his academic attainments, and they too were very interested in science. He describes his current field of research as ‘condensed matter physics’,  Duncan Haldane tracing his choice of physics specialisation ultimately to a teacher whom he remembers as ‘Little Bill’ or ‘Will’ Williams (Physics Department 1950-70). After a stellar Cambridge undergraduate and graduate career he has progressed to his current eminence as Sherman Fairchild University Professor at Princeton. (The ‘University’ in his title is not merely descriptive but marks him out as a cut above the ordinary run of full Professors at this most distinguished of Ivy League colleges). From that eminence he was ‘Nobelized’ in 2016. Running through his career and what he told me is perhaps unpredictably a gratifyingly radical streak. Not many of us, I think, can say that they ‘hung out with the “radical antiestablishment” crowd’ while still at school.

Though largely too insulated from scientists, I probably get to interact and correspond all too often, thanks not least to the ubiquity of remote ‘media’, with my fellow Classicists. Invidiously I chose to interview one who many years ago had impressed me – favourably – by writing a review of a book of mine when he was a junior research fellow.

And not an altogether flattering review, either.

Another point of personal interest to me is that Tim Rood (1982-86) is a Fellow of the Oxford College at which my (Old Paulina) wife read Classics in the late 60s, when of course it was a women-only

establishment: St Hugh’s. He considers the environment of this now mixed college to be ‘more democratic’ than that of at least some of the more obfuscatorily traditional Oxonian institutions. Tim was not a Coletine nor was he following his two older brothers when his (South African immigrant) parents sent him to St Paul’s.

I suspect this unconventional educational path has something to do with his unconventionally original career. His first book was an explanation and exploration of the classic Athenian historian Thucydides using the newfangled tools of something called ‘narratology’. He praises his Classics teachers who are all Paulines – former High Master Stephen Baldock (1958-63 and Classics Department/High Master 1970-2004), Mike Seigel (1964-68 and Classics Department 1973-99), Peter King (1967-71 and Classics Department and Support Staff since 1976)(aka ‘Basil’, one of the three Latin crossword-setters for The Times), and Chris Jackson (1972-77 and Classics Department 1983-85). Stephen was in the year ahead of me at School, a fellow-member of the cricket 1st XI, and it was as a School Governor that I helped appoint him High Man, casting as chance would have it the decisive vote. Tim has since published on another ancient Greek historian, Xenophon, and his reception by among others James Joyce. Tim closed his replies to me by uttering the fervent – and not, I trust, idle – hope that ‘the first school to teach [ancient] Greek in England may continue to promote the study of the ancient Mediterranean and its languages’.

My next subject, Gerd Kullak-Ublick (1979-83), is the one who got away. I mean, at School he did the usual three Classics A Levels but then ended up like two of my other interviewees in the medical field.

I was distressed to learn that he as a German national had suffered what I would call at least ethnocentric prejudice both from his fellow pupils and, even less excusably, from teachers. He had moved on from Colet Court to St Paul’s and, ever prescient, debated whether banking or medicine would be the better career for him. At first it looked as though medicine would be a no-brainer, since he was embarked on three science A Levels, but then a fear of over-specialisation in science intervened and he switched – to humanities subjects: Greek, Latin, History and German! The School’s recommendation, based on his A– and S-level results, was that he read Classics at Cambridge. Instead – a rebel with a cause? – he read Medicine, not in the UK, but at the University of Bonn (then West Germany’s capital).

The rest is Cambridge Classics’ (and my) loss, but Zurich University’s Clinical Pharmacology &

Gerd Kullak-Ublick

Instead – a rebel with a cause? – he read Medicine, not in the UK, but at the University of Bonn (then West Germany’s capital).

The rest is Cambridge Classics’ (and my) loss.

Toxicology’s gain. Though he qualified initially in gastroenterology and hepatology (good Greekderived terms), he is today in practice essentially a liver specialist. Besides his university affliliation he serves as Global Head of Mechanistic Safety and Chair of the Hepatic Safety Team at the worldfamous Novartis company. Gerd was, like myself, a boarder in School House, and I hope that he is able, as I am, to keep up at least remotely with some of his contemporaries there. Unlike me, he has yet another string to his bow – or key to his piano keyboard: a pupil of Phyllis Sellick, he attended the Royal College of Music outside School. So, when he tells me that perhaps in his day the less talented pupils might have found their School experience less rewarding than his, I pricked up my ears.

As I did too when interviewing my next subject.

To quote MP (not Member of Parliament but Monty Python): And now for something – or rather, »

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IN CONVERSATION

someone – completely different, worth the price of admission all by himself: Martin Price (1969-74), geographer extraordinaire, emeritus Professor of the University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland.

He started life with one huge advantage: his mother had attended SPGS. At School, geology caught his fancy, but this was not available at A Level, so he studied geography and was well taught by Don Pirkis (Geography Department 1955-86) and Dave Howell (Geography Department 1967-2008). From St Paul’s he consciously avoided Oxbridge in order to study Geology, and then Environmental Science, at Sheffield. Like me, he was made Captain of B Club (‘for reasons I never understood’). Unlike me, he was an active member of the Mountaineering Club, though he adds that at St Paul’s he was more interested in climbing and walking than he was in what now consumes him, as a retired Professor of Mountain Studies, namely mountain people and the environments in which they live. Which of course involves him in one of the two most utterly fundamental issues of our own day, climate change (the other is viral disease and its prevention).

But still to this day he actively applies the main general lesson he learned: to be inquisitive and see the big picture.

Like all my interviewees, he does not merely look back upon his School intellectual pursuits with fond recollection but still to this day actively applies the main general lesson he learned: to be inquisitive and see the big picture. Like Gerd, Martin is also very musical, though with the voice as much as or more than with the fingers. One final endearing note: in his final term at the School he took the – to me quite extraordinary – decision to grow a beard.

(I’m with Alexander the Great on this one.) For that irretrievable transgression he was barred from School activities and so from taking part in the end of year events. Such, however, was his truly Pauline spirit of enterprise that he nevertheless managed to wangle himself into the cross-country team photos – with a beard.

Next, and last but one, comes a professor whose very last name is a signifier of academic excellence, Richard Gombrich (1950-55). Sadly, I have met him in person only once – when Apodosis was formally presented to Dr Cruickshank. Like Tim Rood the son of an immigrant father, and one with

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 Martin Price

a very strongly humanistic bent, Richard found Classics at Founder Dean Colet’s SPS under the Cotter-Cruickshank regime highly congenial for the most part (‘It was a bit of a treadmill’). From Pat Cotter he learned to be tireless in looking things up, from Dr Cruickshank the virtues of hard work and accuracy (Thucydides would have approved). The curriculum was perhaps a trifle narrow, and – this was no fault of the School as such – he counted being separated from girls as a ‘disbenefit’, but neither of those did anything to hinder let alone halt his superstar career as a student and teacher of Pali language for forty years at Oxford. Richard is not alone among my interviewees in espousing and/or seeking to practise a transcendental religious doctrine, but I am confident that he is alone in being a Buddhist. Readers are highly recommended to go online and consult buddhistbugs.blogspot.com under his name, where they will find a series of meditations on the thought ‘When I say I’m a Buddhist’ and on what that does – and often what it does not – mean.

From Pat Cotter he learned to be tireless in looking things up, from Dr Cruickshank the virtues of hard work and accuracy.

 Written by Richard Gombrich

Last but by no means least, may I introduce Professor Mark Bower (1974-78), who holds his chair at Imperial College London and who works within the National Centre for HIV malignancy at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital. At School he studied what he calls ‘the three sciences’ but singles out his teacher of Biology, Mr Rademacher (Biology Department 1967-93). And thereby hangs a most touching tale. As a teacher, Mr Rademacher was able to inspire Mark and others not only to explore but also to question the natural world. Inspiring and calm, he encouraged his pupils to broaden their interests beyond the prescribed curriculum.

Thereafter many years passed until Mark next encountered him – at Charing Cross Hospital where he was then working on-call as a registrar in oncology and Mr Rademacher was a critically ill inpatient. Mark is pleased that he was able to repay Mr Rademacher for his inspiration by relieving some of his symptoms, but still chides himself mercilessly for not having been able to show his mentor adequate gratitude for his sage guidance.

So much for the questions my eight interviewees did answer – but what of the open question I invited them to add? One trenchant respondent to that was Prof Gombrich: would I send any sons of mine to St Paul’s? A firm ‘no’ (same response as the late Jonathan Miller (1947-53) had given, I recall, to The Pauline in another epoch). He did not say why not exactly, and I did not press him, though I think perhaps I can guess. As I write this essay up, the annual round of A Level results has just appeared, and as usual there tends to be a bias – not a huge one, but a bias all the same – in favour of the small percentage of students who have been privately educated. Does this harmonise with any possible ‘levelling up’ political agenda, or even with the sort of justice, equality and fairness that Sir Isaiah (Berlin) would want to argue for? Almost certainly not, and that should, I think, at least give us pause – a pause for deep and critical and objective thought.

Which is pretty much what I, as an academic, believe that an academic professor should be professing, and what, happily, my interviewees and I were all originally taught at St Paul’s. 

As a teacher, Mr Rademacher was able to inspire Mark and others not only to explore but also to question the natural world.

 Mark Bower

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Some very hesitant reflections on teenage toxic masculinity Theo Hobson (1985-90) reflects on sexist attitudes and behaviour.

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his article was prompted by the news story earlier this year about toxic masculinity in certain schools. The ‘Everyone’s Invited’ website catalogued alleged sexual harassment by boys at various schools, mostly private ones in London, and St Paul’s featured highly. Some commentators argued that all-male private schools inevitably breed a culture of entitled misogyny, a ‘rape culture’. Others wondered whether this narrative was unfairly demonising all boys educated in this way, when only a small minority deserved censure.

My response was mixed. Of course all serious incidents of sexual harassment must be taken seriously, I felt, but I also felt that, in the context of teenage silliness, and awkwardness, it is amazingly difficult to say what counts as serious. The fragile bragging of teenage boys should surely be ignored rather than investigated. Surely it is a wilful misreading of teenage culture to suggest that young men are preying on young women, like apprentice Harvey Weinsteins, when the vast majority are just nervously trying to have their first snog.

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But I also wondered whether I knew what I was talking about. Maybe things had changed since my day, the late 1980s. Maybe today, for various reasons we will come to, the culture of sexist banter has become more harmful, and more likely to lead to abusive behaviour, especially at an all-boys school.

Any treatment of these issues is going to be utterly full of bias, so one might as well drop any pretence of objectivity and offer some personal reflections.

I was raised to assume that boys were…not better than girls exactly. But we were plainly the more serious, effective gender, the gender that got things done, things like winning wars and winning at sport and saving the world from super-villains. I had no sisters to tell me otherwise, and my mother was from the traditional mould. She is the same age as Germaine Greer but I am guessing they have different star-signs.

What inkling did I have, in the mid 1980s, of another perspective? On TV, I saw a bullish prime minister, but she was sui generis (thank goodness). And I saw lots of feisty pop-stars: Blondie, Madonna et cetera. But they were close

Maybe things had changed since my day, the late 1980s. Maybe today the culture of sexist banter has become more harmful, and more likely to lead to abusive behaviour.

enough to Bond girls. They strutted around very confidently, but unthreateningly: the implication was that men would easily rise to the pleasurable challenge of subduing them.

I became dimly aware of something called feminism.

One of my aunts sometimes spoke up for it with sincere passion, but the vague scepticism of my father, her older brother, seemed the more measured approach. It was hard to separate the word ‘feminism’ from the words ‘shrill’ and ‘strident’. It all seemed a bit of a joke: stern-faced women in dungarees, and younger ones concealing their prettiness in order to protest about the harmless fun of Page Three girls.

But I gave it almost no thought.

I did not pine for the company of girls. I was happily homo-social, and my involvement in the Christian Union underlined this. It was all very innocent, and spiritually enriching, but human frailty exists even among teenage Christian boys and a few crushes were known to occur.

In fact that gives the wrong impression: there was a general crushiness mixed in with a thirteen-year-old’s admiration for a seventeen-year-old rugby star and maybe vice-versa. Anything wrong with that? Hmm?

Luckily a friend had a sociable Paulina sister, and aged fifteen I started going to a few parties. It was all a bit stilted and timid, at least for me. I soon knew a large handful of teenage girls but only rather superficially. Was there a culture of ‘toxic masculinity’? Toxicity was outweighed by timidity. For example I loved the Rolling Stones, but my behaviour at parties did not greatly resemble Mick Jagger’s.

‘Under My Thumb’: that’s where I mentally placed the girls I did not dare speak to.

My studies did not greatly challenge my gender assumptions. English Literature felt like a male domain.

None of my A Level texts was written by a woman. I especially loved Hamlet. I nodded wisely at the prince’s dealings with a weak, enigmatic mother (“Frailty, thy name is woman!”), and a clingy or perhaps duplicitous girlfriend (“Get thee to a nunnery!”).

It seemed an ideal education, and a pretty ideal adolescence more generally. Yes, there was a gap in my all-round education, but it was a gap that perhaps enabled a sort of abstract intellectual intensity. I had a dreamy-romantic idea of women, but so what? So did generations of »

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artistically-inclined young men before me.

But university challenged. Those previous generations of artistically-inclined young men were not faced with the laddette culture of the early 1990s. Nor with the rise of academic feminism, and other forms of identity politics.

Poor little privileged Old Pauline, discovering that there was a downside to being an expensively-educated straight white male! I gradually acknowledged that my education had been a bit limited. Thanks mainly to my wife, my residual sexism was largely banished. Now it is eroded further by the presence of two teenage daughters (and a son). But on another level, I remain wary of the new orthodoxy espoused by large pockets of the media: that women are the true inheritors of the ideal of human virtue (the shadow of sin falling elsewhere).

Back to the issue, of Paulines today. The problem, of sexist attitudes and behaviour, ought to have lessened.

For surely the progress of feminism in wider culture, including their families, has led to more enlightened young teenagers turning up on day one. And yet, instead of smooth progress, certain cultural pressures seem to have created pockets of turbulence.

Maybe the progress of feminism in wider culture makes an all-boys school feel embattled, insecure. In the past, the school’s vague sexism was in tune with that of culture in general. Now it is counter-cultural, which makes it more self-conscious and more prone to prickly defiance (rather like a religious tradition in decline). Bright teenage boys can be semi-excused for seeing feminism as a bossy orthodoxy that should be challenged. They know they must pay lip-service to it, but they pride themselves on seeing through it, refusing to be cowed. This reflects a wider double-think: they know they must espouse equality, so as not to seem like ghastly snobs, but deep down they know they are the elite. Their mothers have told them not to be brutish sexists, but on some level they sense that this is an orthodoxy that does not really apply to people like them.

And maybe – you knew it was coming, didn’t you? – the Internet has changed things. Despite the influence of their feminist mothers and sisters, teenagers are imbibing misogyny on a more visceral level, with every visit to a naughty website. And maybe social media heightens peer-pressure – though it surely also makes teenagers nervous of leaving their bedrooms, for fear of doing something embarrassing that gets broadcast. I will not pretend any further to know what I am talking about in this regard.

And maybe the rise of identity politics plays a role. In my day, a teenager could try on different hats, wallow in ambivalence, and perhaps in extended semi-innocence (at fourteen I was learning magic tricks rather than posing on Instagram). Today there is more pressure for teenagers to define themselves. Especially in terms of sexuality. I suppose I felt some pressure to ‘get off’ with girls, to show I was one of the lads, but it was pretty mild. My hunch is that this pressure has intensified in recent years. Instead of simply seeking kudos as a jack-the-lad, the average teenage boy feels obliged to define himself as heterosexual.

And, because identity is at stake, this is more likely to mean

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 Theo Hobson with his children

The Internet has changed things. Despite the influence of their feminist mothers and sisters, teenagers are imbibing misogyny on a more visceral level, with every visit to a naughty website.

going all the way, which ‘getting off’ with someone did not used to mean, at least for innocent me.

As I say, I have a limited idea of what I am talking about.

Maybe my daughter, who is now at university, but was recently frequenting teenage parties in West London, can help. I emailed her. “Thanks for asking!” she cheerfully replied, perhaps with the implication that I ought to have kept a closer eye at the time (but would she have liked that?). She said that toxic masculinity is a pervasive problem, both within schools (if they are mixed, like hers was) and outside. There should be more teaching about consent, and the difference between flirting and harassing someone. Even boys she considered friends often got it wrong. Better teaching about boundaries would be particularly beneficial for boys, she said, as they were vulnerable to being vilified and shunned if they got it wrong. I wondered if she could be more specific. Were there pockets of aggressive frat-boy culture, especially in all-boys schools? It is more pervasive and blurry than that, she replied. The blame cannot be placed on particular gangs of bad boys. But yes, there are some individuals with a reputation for being ‘a bit rapey’, and they have friends who normalise it, tolerate it. “Obviously there are some boys who purposefully make girls feel unsafe but there are also boys who feel insecure at parties and do uncharacteristic things because they feel like they’ve got the right to, or get a bit drunk, or are egged on.”

I thanked her, and asked her to canvass a few friends for any Pauline-specific stories or reflections. But then I wondered if that was good journalistic practice: was I looking for negative stories? It is a bit unlikely that a friend would reply and say she went to a party full of Paulines and they were nice but dull, but she had a useful conversation about Ucas applications. My point is that the whole narrative is skewed towards the lurking of male violence.

Yes there is some truth to it, but who is to say how much that bit of truth should dominate the conversation, colour perceptions?

I decide to seek another view. James Park (1969-74) is a former psychotherapist who set up Antidote, a ‘campaign for emotional literacy’ in the late 1990s, with Susie Orbach (therapist to Princess Diana) and others. “I don’t remember being invited to question our assumptions about masculinity”, he tells me. “There was a taken-for-granted sexism among some teachers. Ricky Williamson (English Department 1965-70), for example, urged us to find wives who would stay at home, so that there could be full employment for men!” It was a protected male environment, no one gave much thought to girls or women.

There was an annual dance with Paulinas, which led to a lot of macho banter. “And among the more outgoing boys there was some competitive screwing.” He was not one of them, he hastens to add.

I wonder whether he thinks that an all-boys school will necessarily foster a sexist, even toxic, culture. “I don’t think so really. Much more significant is whether the school counters the tendency of a competitive culture to encourage the ‘othering’ of people who are different. Nothing we did at school – and I don’t have any reason to think this has changed – emphasised the importance of working together in teams, forming relationships, learning to value differences. It was all about autonomy, becoming a successful individual. So I think whether a school is singlesex or mixed is not the real issue. The issue is whether it teaches people to be open to others. And that involves getting people to describe their experiences and perspectives, to learn from each other. Including about sex and relationships. The curriculum provides plenty of opportunities for this wider learning. It bewilders me looking back that the people who taught us Catullus and Propertius were not also thinking about how we could learn to love well. That evasion was never ideal, and nowadays I think it’s even more problematic, because there are such warped views of sex in the wider culture, and they must be confronted.”

James Park

Hmmm. I know I am prudish, but I am not sure that more open discussion about sex is always so helpful. It is never all that ‘open’; some bossy know-it-all will dominate, some assumptions will be approved. Maybe Paulines should be given space to grapple with these issues for themselves, at their own pace. I feel a bit the same way about my daughter’s notion that there should be more teaching about consent. Yes, there should be some such guidance.

But if it is overdone, boys might feel hemmed in by a feminist orthodoxy that casts them as villains-in-waiting.

All such teaching is subtly politicised, however neutrally enlightened it supposes itself. On the other hand, maybe a proportion of boys are allowed to develop complacent sexist attitudes, and need challenging. But such challenging must be attempted with care. 

It bewilders me looking back that the people who taught us Catullus and Propertius were not also thinking about how we could learn to love well.  James Park at St Paul’s

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Mathematics at St Paul’s

Mathematics at St Paul’s in the 1960s

From Climbing Out: the beginning of a life by Bob Phillips (1964-68), Broomfield Press, 2015. Available at lulu.com

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here was an outgoing Head of Maths – a small, apparently elderly, balding, rather frail man by the name of AJ Moakes (Maths Department 1931-67).

I had very few lessons with him; it was Hugh Neill (Maths Department 1966-72), the man he brought in to become the new Head of Maths who had an impact on me.

It was apparent to me even at 13 that Neill was a very young man; that was, I guess, another indication of St Paul’s standing in the cosmos – confidence in the judgement of one outgoing Head of subject to nominate a successor, even early in his career.

A young professional, joining the regimen of St Paul’s teaching, and the regimen of disciplined St Paul’s learning, would get the best possible impetus to success.

One story about Moakes. There was a class that was to St Paul’s standard of discipline, rioting in the next room along the corridor. That is to say, the level of noise was high. Mr Moakes appeared in the doorway, all 5'4" of him, clad in the ubiquitous suit and tie and academic gown. “This noise is intolerable.” Not much response.

“If you boys do not maintain silence immediately, I shall be forced to stamp my foot!” Stunned silence. Exit AJ Moakes, triumphant disciplinarian

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(and famous among the science boys as an inspiring teacher).

I think my year was Hugh Neill’s first in the school. He was good at giving personal guidance in class: brilliant at showing the way through mathematical difficulty. This was a mixed blessing, though – when Neill leaned over your desk to help, one could not help being aware of the time since his jacket had last been fumigated.

Hugh Neill continued the lead of AJ Moakes in taking St Paul’s into the modern mathematics well ahead of the pack. With my very traditional grounding in maths in Africa, it appeared to me not really as maths at all, but a bit of a confidence trick.

Let me recount a very early class with Neill and see if I can explain this apprehension of a sleight of hand, in words. Neill drew a very simple problem on the board. Man at point X trying to get to destination at point Y by the shortest possible route. There is a river between man and destination, represented by two parallel lines a few inches apart. Constraint: when crossing the river, the man can only travel at right angles to the shores. Work out his shortest land path.

“Work out” is what I did – lots of geometry and algebra – good fun, but laborious. Neill at the board: “No, no, no – no hard work required! Suppose we

just, as a mental exercise, transposed one bank of the river so that it coincided with the other – it doesn’t make any difference to the man’s path, since he has to cross the two banks at the same point on the river”.

Groans from the class, and a few boys exclaiming, “Of course – it’s just a straight line.” Mr Neill beams. I am consumed with something like anger – that is cheating. You cannot just magic the river out of the way.

Transformation was just one magic trick. Neill taught us vectors and matrices and Venn diagrams as other magic to bring simplicity to situations for which traditional mathematics brought lots of hard work. Probability – a language of beautiful insight into the way in which a portion of the world works. He made of maths a language of illumination rather than a discipline of hard work and rules to be learned. (He was very apologetic later, when we came to the integral calculus, telling us that, sadly, there was no way around simply learning the patterns of different integrals.)

Hugh Neill, making a major innovation in advance of most schools, brought computing to St Paul’s in 1967. He and a couple of other schools – I believe Westminster and Eton – struck up a partnership with BP. They would give schools time on their

 Books by Hugh Neill

Hugh Neill continued the lead of AJ Moakes in taking St Paul’s into the modern mathematics well ahead of the pack.

mainframe computer at night, subject to some heavy constraints. These were the days of huge mainframes – huge in space terms, that is. BP had an ICT 1900. We could program in FORTRAN – the accepted computer language for scientific programming in those days.

In order to feed a programme into the computer it had to be embodied in 80 column punch cards.

That was an early hurdle. St. Paul’s invested in a couple of clunky manual Hollerith card punch machines: 16 buttons corresponding to the 16 hexadecimal characters, each of which punched the appropriate coded pattern of holes in the card for that character. We sat with a table that translated alpha-numeric characters into hex (the ASCII table) and pushed combinations of keys on the Hollerith machine. It was very laborious to punch in the codes for each FORTRAN instruction. And then we needed to check that we had coded the instruction correctly. One lucky school had a machine that read punched cards and printed along the top edge the backtranslation of what had been punched.

So, we wrote code on FORTRAN coding sheets. We punched each instruction of the programme onto a card. We mailed the deck of cards to this other school. They put it through their interpreting machine and mailed it back. We read the interpretation and re-punched any erroneous cards.

And round again – two mailings, forth and back, each time – until we had a card deck in which all the FORTRAN statements seemed to make sense.

This we could send to BP (by mail).

They would run the deck in the next available night shift, and send the results back (by mail) in the form of reams of fan-fold printed paper. Only then would we find out what bugs

there were in our programming logic.

Then – more instructions, more punching, more interpretation and more rounds of mailing.

I seem to remember that in the middle of all this there was a postal strike, which ground the whole process to a halt. None of this dimmed my excitement in understanding the process of turning thought into instructions that could be executed precisely. The word “algorithm” had a fascination: reducing a problem to the essential mechanism by which it would be worked out.

I realised that working my way steadily through the examples of elementary programming that Mr Neill had duplicated for us would require approximately a three week cycle for each exercise. I would have left school before I had got anywhere interesting.

So I turned to the back of the book for an interesting challenge – linear programming using the SIMPLEX method. Now that demanded a really interesting grasp of FORTRAN. So I spent weeks understanding the SIMPLEX algorithm and translating it into loops of sequential steps, and thus into FORTRAN code. That was the fun stuff, in hours snatched from A Level revision and swimming – working out the exact sequence of steps that was implied by the SIMPLEX method; making sure the steps would apply to all variations that I wanted to include; making sure that I had mechanisms to exclude unwanted variations; filling in the coding sheets.

Then there were hours and hours hunched over the Hollerith punch machine turning my programme into a card deck, also quite satisfying, in a masochistic way. It was a respectably fat deck of cards that I sent off to be interpreted, and I received it back to make corrections. One more round of interpretation, and the corrected deck was sent off to BP’s computing department.

The conclusion to all this effort was perfectly rewarding. I had got my code to the state in which I knew it would work – every programmer knows that conviction. I never found out to the contrary – the mail was slow; BP was slow; A Levels intervened; I never got the results of the first run back from the computer. »

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Bruce Balden (1969-73) provides his memories of Hugh Neill at and after their time at St Paul’s.

H

ugh Neill taught me for one term in the Upper Eighth Double Maths set. It was the ‘Pure’ side of the subject.

Whenever he set us work it was clear that he examined our mathematical thinking and he would hand it back to the class and show examples of good work which made the individual concerned grow in confidence. I showed the convergence to a limit of a function by reducing it to an obvious case rather than the strict ε method. He commented favourably on this approach.

Later on he played an important role in my professional life. I was by then teaching Mathematics in Division 5 (Tower Hamlets) of the ILEA and Hugh was the Chief Maths Inspector. I was part of a group developing a Maths education resource. We had many working weekends and Hugh would

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come along to advise and contribute.

On one occasion I was part of a small discussion group with Hugh looking at the contrast between mathematical process and content. I did not say a word for two hours but felt I had never worked as hard just by following the argument. The main conclusion was that process is more taken with making decisions on how to tackle the problem rather than applying techniques. This Maths education resource had its own examinations and Hugh oversaw this with rigour. He was always one (quite rightly) to make sure that there were plenty of multi-stage questions i.e. not just applying a formulaic technique such as solving a quadratic equation. He would always prefer a context where the quadratic equation had to be derived first. Again – the emphasis was on mathematical thinking rather than technique.

Hugh was an excellent bridge player who took a keen interest in the school team. At that time the school has a real star, Tim Cope (1967-72), who went on to become an international player for South Africa. Under Hugh’s guidance and Tim’s leadership we would qualify for the Daily Mail National Finals but we did not win it due to the rest of the team not being up to Tim’s standards.

Hugh Neill, making a major innovation in advance of most schools, brought computing to St Paul’s in 1967.

Mathematics at St Paul’s in the 1977 – 2019

Owen Toller (Maths Department 1977–88 and 2006–19) describes how Maths has evolved.

With thanks to Crispin Collier (Maths Department 1967-88) and Bob Phillips (1964-68).

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uch has changed; much remains the same. When I joined the staff in 1977 a majority of Paulines entered the School in the Fifth Form, took O Levels after two years, took three A Levels in what was then the Middle Eighth, and often stayed on into a seventh, or even a tenth, term to apply to Oxbridge.

In those days A Level failures were far from uncommon, but before league tables there was less pressure on results. In mathematics a crucial difference was that the extended A Level course comprised Pure Mathematics and Applied Mathematics – not the core ‘single’ Mathematics followed by Further Maths as today.

Even for single-subject mathematicians there was no AS Level until 2000, so you had to stick to your original choices for two years. Certainly the newer system allows a welcome flexibility and has encouraged many more pupils nationally to take not only Mathematics but also Further Maths at A Level.

However, a pupil of around 1980 visiting a St Paul’s maths class today would probably encounter much of the same material: algebra is largely unchanged (we are still to discover a vaccine against the widespread belief that, and Mathematics

A Level has always included coordinate geometry, differentiation, integration, exponentials and logarithms. In 2019 I handed out a sheet entitled Methods of Integration that was barely altered since its first appearance in 1979. The content of trigonometry is also largely unchanged, though the calculations have become much less tedious thanks to the availability of calculators.

In 1977 calculations were done using slide rules; I had to teach some clever tricks for using them efficiently. The rather splendid (and very heavy) metal calculating machines that occupied a lot of space in a room on the top corridor were rarely dusted down. To use them you had to turn a handle, just like an old-fashioned bus-conductor’s ticket machine, and sometimes they rang a bell. In about 1980 I bought my first electronic calculator, for £32; it would do only basic calculations.

It may surprise some readers to discover how little impact advances in technology have had on public examinations in mathematics; there is a Further Mathematics option (Discrete Mathematics) which focuses on algorithms, but apart from the ability to study and investigate sequences much more efficiently and enjoyably, there is little in exam syllabuses that involves numerical

In 1977 calculations were done using slide rules; I had to teach some clever tricks for using them efficiently. The rather splendid (and very heavy) metal calculating machines that occupied a lot of space in a room on the top corridor were rarely dusted down.

work. There are two main reasons for this. One is practical: programmable and online technologies pose major problems of security and authenticity in public examinations and may also be considered to benefit the betterendowed schools. But with universal intuitive user interfaces, computing is available to everyone, regardless of mathematical skills, programming has become a specialist area, and mathematics concentrates on the concepts and the techniques – on actually doing the subject – which is and will always be its centre. A few years ago an outstanding pupil, in his last term, was working in class on a problem and suddenly exclaimed aloud, in frustration, “You know what I hate about maths, it’s the numbers.”

Most of the changes affected all good schools, as also would the increase in numbers taking the subject – but probably few to the extent of St Paul’s. In 1977 there was a single specialist Mathematics class in the Middle Eighth (today’s Upper Eighth), known as Middle Maths. Once the restriction of A Level choices to a limited number of groupings of subjects was replaced by a smorgasbord, where you chose any three or (in due course) four subjects, the number taking mathematics grew. It is now some 85% of the year group, with nearly 40% taking Further Mathematics. The size of the mathematics department has grown from 7 in 1977 to 21 today, partly to reflect the greater uptake but also because (as I once complained jokingly to Professor Bailey) “you keep promoting my best teachers out of the classroom”. The idea seems to have taken root that “maths is a good subject to do”. This is fine if you enjoy it and are good at it; but each year I saw boys choosing it without these qualifications. Most would have had a more enjoyable and fulfilling Eighth Form course in other areas, and I tried to persuade them of this, but with mixed success.

I was regularly asked about why relatively few Paulines choose to »

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read mathematics at university. There are, I think, two reasons. One is that many Paulines are more concerned about getting to a top university than what they read, and I believe it is true that even a very strong pupil is more at the mercy of luck when applying to either Oxford or Cambridge to read Mathematics than to read Physics, Natural Sciences or Engineering.

Meeting the standard Cambridge maths offer, involving STEP 2 and STEP 3, is no joke. Secondly, star mathematicians probably stand out more than in most other subjects – usually everyone knows who the top mathematician in the year is, and many, realising that they are not quite in that class, choose something else. Years without a star often have more applying to read mathematics – though the class of 2016 was an exception, a whole constellation who were not eclipsed

by Joe Benton (2011-16).

One exercise involved rearranging a group of words into a well-known phrase.

One Pauline came up with “To hell with good intentions – the road is paved.”

I think there was a longer “tail” in the 1970s and 1980s than in recent years.

I recall introducing one fourth form class to the use of textbooks with answers in the back, stressing of course that they should never just copy out the answers. A few weeks later two boys handed in a prep that consisted only of answers copied out from the back of the book. They were copied from the wrong chapter.

Probably the biggest change in examination syllabuses has been in applied mathematics, which until the 1980s usually meant mechanics. The introduction of modular syllabuses encouraged more people to study

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statistics, and this was especially appropriate for the increased numbers taking mathematics who were not doing Physics. Since 2016 it has been compulsory for A Level students to study both mechanics and statistics.

Standards of teaching and learning in Statistics have increased mightily in the intervening years, although there is still a shortage of education in “statistical literacy”, mainly because it is hard to examine.

In 1977 “new maths” was on the way out, though junior classes still used the set of textbooks written by Jack Moakes (Maths Department 1931-67) and Hugh Neill (Maths Department 1966-72), Pattern and Power in Mathematics, which was informed by the concept. (One exercise involved rearranging a group of words into a well-known phrase. One Pauline came up with “To hell with good intentions – the road is paved.”) SMP and MEI projects brought some fresh air, and increasingly textbooks became not repositories of formal mathematics but books that pupils could actually read and learn from. But the one really significant change in the teaching and learning of mathematics over the last forty years was the coursework initiative. The Powers That Be decided that investigative work was The Answer, and from about 1987 all pupils had to submit coursework for assessment.

The idea was, I am certain, good, but the implementation doomed it.

Assessment schemes were forced to be far too rigid (at first each project had to be assessed on a form with 47 boxes to be ticked, half-ticked or left blank, and each pupil did 6 such projects – later reduced to 2), and the result was that teachers nationwide were pushed into doing stereotyped projects that met the criteria but stifled any initiative. Particularly destructive of enthusiasm were the statistical investigations; nobody foresaw that collection of personalised data by every pupil in the country was a task on a wholly impractical scale, so artificial data sets were produced, and

many pupils were completely put off statistics as a direct result. Few were really sorry when coursework in mathematics was abolished. However, the initiative had a positive legacy; it encouraged more informal investigation in the classroom, and naturally this suited the largely Socratic style of teaching at St Paul’s where the default mode is for teachers to ask “what if”?

Another change nationally is that high grades have become the norm.

Today exam boards publish detailed mark schemes and examiners’ reports, there is a busy cottage industry in tutoring for examinations, and teachers have become ever more expert at “teaching to the test”. But St Paul’s stands out perhaps even more today than was the case 40 years ago; the Department philosophy is “we teach mathematics, not exams – and exam success is a result”. Inevitably the increase of options and time taken to teach about society and so on make it harder to teach beyond the exam syllabus, but St Paul’s somehow still manages it.

There have always been strong mathematicians at St Paul’s. Perhaps the most famous was J E Littlewood (1900–1903), who went on to form a world-renowned collaboration with the great G H Hardy. In A Mathematical Miscellany, recently republished as Littlewood’s Miscellany, Littlewood describes the extraordinary mathematical education he received at that time; in most schools really outstanding pupils were often simply given advanced books and told to get on with it. The Head of Mathematics in Littlewood’s day was F S Macaulay (Maths Department 1885-1911), a leading mathematician who would later become an FRS (on Littlewood’s proposal) – a distinction not remotely approached by his successors. In the 70s and 80s pupils included Imre Leader (1976-80) and Oliver Riordan (1985-90), today Professors of Mathematics at Cambridge and Oxford Universities respectively. They were given encouragement, but like so much

Now some 85% of the year group take Mathematics at A Level, with nearly 40% taking Further Mathematics.

The size of the mathematics department has grown from 7 in 1977 to 21 today.

then the organisation and level of support were more informal than they are today. I did not exactly teach Oliver in the fifth form, but he attended my lessons, and each week I allowed him to do some work of his own choosing instead of the class prep. One week, having observed that if you differentiate the formulae for the area of a circle and the volume of a sphere you get the formulae for the circumference of a circle and surface area of a sphere respectively, he proved that if you differentiate the 4-dimensional volume of a hypersphere, you get its 3-dimensional surface volume. (I told him I did not understand his diagram.)

For most of the period about half of any sixth form cohort did an examined course beyond GCSE (or O Level).

This was appropriate enough at the time – better Paulines have never been stretched by GCSE mathematics – but the abolition of the Additional O Level and then of Additional Mathematics GCSE meant that there was no appropriate examination. For some years sixth form pupils took the first module of the A Level course, but this had disadvantages and the practice was discontinued from about 2014.

In fact it was increasingly realised that the best pupils were better served by greater depth (harder questions, stronger skills) than by learning more content and taking public examinations early. Putting able pupils in early for routine public examinations such as GCSE is not helpful to their mathematical education but rather the reverse; unfortunately not all parents want to hear this message. St Paul’s has developed its own course for the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Forms, including problem solving and other appropriate challenges. And today the UK Mathematics Trust runs a world-class series of stretch-andchallenge papers, involving little or no knowledge beyond public exams, from Junior, Intermediate and Senior Mathematics Challenges through to the British Mathematical Olympiad, rounds 1 and 2.

The Mathematics department has usually contained some outstanding mathematicians. Paul Woodruff (Maths Department 1978-82) and Gerry Leversha (Maths Department 1986-2011) were probably the brightest stars. Gradually a more formal programme for the highest fliers developed, and it is no coincidence that in recent years St Paul’s has a record of successes in the International Mathematical Olympiad – the world’s most prestigious mathematics competition – which is roughly as good as that of any other two schools combined. Dominic Yeo (2003-08), James Aaronson (2007-12), Sahl Khan (2008-13) and Joe Benton all won medals, Joe representing the UK four times (starting in the Fifth Form) and in his final year coming seventh in the world. Since then St Paul’s has been fortunate enough to appoint several outstanding mathematicians.

Outside school Gerry contributes to mathematics nationally by his editorship of The Mathematical Gazette, and no small number of its contributors have Pauline connections.

If you walk through the corridors of today’s St Paul’s when there are boys around, you hear them discussing and arguing about mathematics. If you go into the staff common room, or the mathematics area, you hear teachers talking about mathematics (and not just mark schemes). Teachers continue to investigate unfamiliar details of the subject and to write original papers.

In department meetings there is often discussion of mathematics – not admin, not exams, and not just how to teach it, but the subject itself. Staff and boys alike are passionate about the subject, and such huge intellectual curiosity is central to the uniqueness of St Paul’s. »

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PAULINE PERSPECTIVE

A roundabout way to teaching Mathematics after being taught by Owen Toller Matthew Conrad (1979-84)

I

f my school report from the Summer Term 1980 was to be believed I should never have progressed mathematically beyond O Level. That was the view of my maths teacher, Owen Toller…

I am now a Maths teacher at the Weald Community School in West Sussex.

I had never intended to teach, although there were early signs of how my career path might develop when, part way through my A Level studies, I decided that medicine was not my vocation but that I should study Economics at Cambridge to prepare me for success as an entrepreneur.

I was one of those pupils that Owen refers to as staying on for the 10th term to take Oxbridge entrance.

My meandering continued when I left Cambridge in the teeth of the late 1980s recession and decided to train as a lawyer – “it’s always good to have a backup plan” my sister told me as we sat waiting for a train at Cambridge station. After brief success as an intellectual property solicitor, I followed what I thought would be my destiny but my entrepreneurial success soon turned sour when my attempt to take on Prêt à Manger in the battle of the sandwich, failed. It was when I was managing the rights for the Japanese cartoon character Hello Kitty that my son (now aged 7) was born that I finally woke up and realised I needed to do something professionally that had some purpose beyond monetary success, that I might enjoy and that I could explain in a lift what I did for a living. I am not quite sure where the idea to teach came from but it just seemed right and I realised that the subject I had most enjoyed in school, in spite of Owen’s initial misgivings, was Maths.

In 2015 I joined the West London Free School, the pioneering Hammersmith state school just across the River from my Alma Mater. I taught there until last year when my family relocated to West Sussex. I then had a term at Durrington High School

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in Worthing (an Academy for 11-16 year olds with 1,600 pupils) before joining The Weald (another large comprehensive) just in time to go into Lockdown 3.

My experience of teaching at the West London Free School was, in some way, very similar to the teaching I experienced, and which Owen describes, at St. Paul’s in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The ethos of the school was to teach knowledge not for exams. In the maths department I was fortunate to work with an inspirational head of department, Norman Revie, whose philosophy was identical to that which Owen describes at St Paul’s (“we teach mathematics, not exams and exam success is a result”). At Durrington High there was a greater emphasis on tailoring teaching to secure exam success rather than instilling the joy of the subject for its own sake. While it is early days for me at The Weald and currently there are no exams to teach to, it is a school somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.

The fundamental difference between the schools I have experienced as a teacher and the school I experienced as a pupil is the pupils themselves, their level of mathematical attainment and their motivation to improve. There are talented and able mathematicians in these schools who would not be out of place in a maths classroom at St Paul’s.

However, I have taught pupils with the numeracy of primary school children, even as they reach the end of their secondary education and who have little or no motivation to improve. Why this is the case is the subject of much debate, and could occupy a whole article, but it is a mix of their personal circumstances and failure of the system.

I had two distinct experiences of teaching in Lockdown – in Lockdown 1 I taught the pupils I had been teaching in the classroom, some for 5 years; at the start of Lockdown 2 I joined a new school and I taught pupils I had never met.

His philosophy was identical to that which Owen describes at St Paul’s, “we teach mathematics, not exams – and exam success is a result”.

In spite of these differences, the teaching experience was very similar.

It was lonely, in spite of regular contact with colleagues via Zoom, WhatsApp and email. It was frustrating teaching to a blank screen – for safeguarding reasons, pupils’ videos are switched off; and it was extremely challenging to gauge pupils’ understanding during lessons. While you can replicate online some of the tools we use for immediate feedback in the classroom, I found there was no substitute for being able to look into the eyes of your pupils, to measure understanding from the atmosphere in the room (the level of fidgeting, chatting) and to walk around the room looking over the shoulders of pupils as they work.

While I enjoyed experimenting with the technology required to teach remotely, overall it was an unsatisfying experience. It lacked the camaraderie that is such an important feature of classroom teaching. Classroom teaching is a physical profession – you are on your feet and moving around much of the day – teaching remotely is a sedentary experience. Classroom teaching does not require hours glued to a computer screen– something I did not miss from my pre-teaching days.

With Lockdown teaching that returned, along with the lower back pain! 

 Matthew Conrad’s reports from 1979 and 1980

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PAULINE PERSPECTIVE

ALTERNATIVES TO OXBRIDGE Mark Schofield (1973-77) looks at changes in where Paulines go to university.

A Financial Times article this year suggested that the top English public schools were sending a declining percentage of their students to Oxford and Cambridge. I was curious where else Paulines were going and decided to investigate. What I found was that the choice of university has changed significantly over the last 35 years with Paulines going both further afield and staying closer to home.

Into the archives The first thing I discovered was that laying my hands on the information was not easy; no quick data download.

Instead it meant going through back copies of The Pauline and photocopying the leavers’ destination pages. The further back, the patchier the data became with earlier years covering degrees rather than admissions with many results likely missing and some years absent altogether.

Still, there was enough material to show how destinations have changed considerably and that Oxbridge’s loss has been other universities’ gains.

Oxbridge in decline As the chart shows, in the last two decades of the last century, around 45% of Paulines graduated from Oxford or Cambridge. Of the 2020 leavers, only 21% gained admission to Oxbridge. There is no single reason for this decline. The competition to get into both universities has increased dramatically with the number of applications to Cambridge increasing four fold between 1980 and 2020, far more than the number of places on offer.

A 2018 study by the Sutton Trust, a social mobility charity, revealed that eight schools (including St. Paul’s) got as many pupils into Oxford and Cambridge over a three year period as 2,894 other schools. This disparity added impetus to existing moves by the two universities to give more places to students from state schools whose pupils filled 60% of the places in 2020, up from 50% in 2000. Whether this is unfair social engineering or a belated attempt to level the playing field depends on your perspective, but with the reception growing chillier for elite schools at Britain’s two top universities, more Paulines have been looking for a warmer welcome elsewhere.

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Paulines University Destinations 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

1985

1996

2000

2010

2015

2020

2010

2015

2020

Paulines University Destinations (%) 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

1985

Oxbridge

1996

2000

North America

Other

London and Imperial

Go west young men Twenty-five years ago only the occasional Pauline would seek admission to a US or Canadian university, often because of a family connection. Since then a growing number have exchanged terms for semesters and donned varsity jackets. One of the attractions is the ability to study a wider range of subjects in the first two years before deciding what to specialise or “major” in. Let’s face it.

Unless you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, not many 18-year olds know what they want to do in life. Having had to focus on three, or at most four, subjects for A Level, many welcome the opportunity to study a new language or take a course in, for example, photography. I have heard that some British students found American courses too easy after A Levels, but Ben Ray (2014-19), now at Harvard, said that you could easily move up from an introductory course to an intermediate one; “An American degree is as hard as you want to make it” he commented. Even though James Hepburn (1998-2003) was leaning towards medicine, he did not feel ready to go straight to medical school in the UK, and instead went to Amherst College in Massachusetts where he was able to take anthropology as well as pre-med.

St. Paul’s has seen the growing interest in US universities and has wholeheartedly encouraged it. They appointed a head of US universities in 2013 and from the 6th form onwards hold frequent presentations on different aspects of the often complex US higher education system. The two graduates from US universities who spend a year teaching at St. Paul’s as Colet Fellows give an insiders perspective and help with the all important personal essay required for US college applications.

Another reason for the growing interest in the US maybe the narrowing price premium over studying in the UK. As the latter’s fees have increased, many Ivy League colleges have raised the household income level below which

financial aid is available. It still costs considerably more for most British students to study in the US but that hurdle is getting lower, and for many the better sports and lab facilities justify the premium.

The rise of London When I was applying to universities I shunned London with their requirement that local students live at home in their first year. Apparently I was not alone in my desire to leave home as an average of less than 5% of Pauline graduates in the three years I looked at stayed in London. Since 2007 the percentage going to university in London has averaged 18% and among the 2020 leavers 26% chose London, for the first time exceeding those going to both Oxford and Cambridge. This growing popularity may reflect the rise in the QS World University Ranking of both Imperial and the University College London to 7th and 8th respectively. It remains to be seen whether COVID and the need for virtual learning spurs more Paulines to stay close to home or lock down increases their desire to flee the nest. Also of note is the rise in popularity of Scottish universities led by Edinburgh. My sense is that this may be the lure of fouryear courses and delayed specialisation.

What of the future? Offers this year included 17 to universities overseas outside the US. Time will tell whether Paulines continue to widen their horizons when it comes to deciding where to go to university, but one thing it is safe to say is that most top universities will continue to welcome the recipients of a Pauline education, even if fewer head off on the M40 or the M11.

I would like to thank Alex Wilson (Classics Department and Support Staff since 1998) for his enormous help in collating the data for this article and arranging interviews with Old Paulines. Without his help this article could not have been written. 

Destinations have changed considerably and Oxbridge’s loss has been other universities’ gains.

43

ET CETERA Robin Hirsch (1956-61) founded The Cornelia Street Café in 1977. He describes the coffee bean’s odyssey from Ethiopia to Greenwich Village.

Manna of the Day

I

was the last of the original proprietors of a particular kind of establishment that once had many flourishing examples not only in New York but also all over the Western World. They grew up as shrines dedicated to the worship of a little berry. From this little berry a drink was made. And with the consumption of this drink all kinds of interesting things began to happen.

But let us begin with a little history.

The coffee tree is indigenous to Ethiopia. It may also be native to that part of the world that in a gentler time used to be called Arabia.

Certainly Arabs were cultivating the coffee plant as early as 600 AD. It was used initially in paste form as a food and in particular a medicine.

Indeed, the first mention of it in literature is by the Arab physician Rhazes in about 900 A.D. By the thirteenth century, however, Arabs had discovered that a delicious drink could be made from the roasted beans of this plant and in the wake of this discovery coffee became a lucrative article of trade. Over the next few centuries it began to infiltrate the West. It was introduced into Turkey in the mid-sixteenth century, into Italy at the beginning of the seventeenth, and from there it spread rapidly all over Europe.

Houses for the consumption of coffee opened in Vienna in the first half of the seventeenth century. In 1650 in England an enterprising Jew known

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to history only as Jacob (Cromwell had just let the Jews back into England) opened the first English coffeehouse, in Oxford. Two years later, another enterprising immigrant, Pasqua Rosée, opened the first coffeehouse in London, harking back to its medicinal properties, and claiming in a handbill that coffee “quickens the spirits, and makes the heart lightsome ... is good against sore eyes ... excellent to prevent and cure the dropsy, gout, and scurvy,” and that, by way of reassurance, it was “neither laxative nor restringent.”

By the beginning of the eighteenth century the London coffeehouse had become a full-blown institution and all hint of coffee’s medicinal origins had fallen by the wayside. It was the great leveller. For a penny, men (not, however, women) of all parties and stations could gain entrance, glean the latest news, and drown themselves in a brew far headier than alcohol: political discussion. As Matthew Green wrote in The Spleen in 1737: Or to some coffee-house I stay For news, the manna of a day, And from hipp’d discourses gather That politicks go by the weather Drawn by the dissemination of news and the discussion of politics, people (sorry, men) were dropping in to their favourite coffeehouse five or six times a day, using it as a kind of office. It quickly became clear that business of a more formal kind could be effectively carried out in this informal setting.

Trading companies and stockbrokers began to establish their headquarters in certain coffeehouses. Some developed long associations with a particular establishment. Few, however, can rival the shipping insurer, Lloyd’s of London, which began its life in (and took its name from) Edward Lloyd’s coffeehouse on Tower Street, moved with it (and retained its name) when it moved to Lombard Street, and continued to operate its ever-expanding worldwide business from Lloyd’s for almost a century. Even when it opened its own building in the nineteenth century, having become a synonym for rock-solid insurance of every kind, it continued to conduct its operations under the name of a long-dead coffeehouse proprietor.

Another enticing aroma emanating from these egalitarian watering holes was cultural, in particular literary.

At William Unwin’s (known as Will’s) on Russell Street, for example, the humblest carter, if he had a mind to, could hear the great John Dryden hold forth, almost single-handedly reshaping, by example and critique, the language of Donne and the Metaphysical poets into that elegant and measured tread which came to be called Augustan and which found its greatest flowering in the infant prodigy, Alexander Pope. And across the street, at Button’s, a generation later, if that carter were now literate, he could drop a manuscript into the mouth of the lion’s head which Joseph Addison, the great essayist,

In 1650 in England an enterprising Jew known to history only as Jacob (Cromwell had just let the Jews back into England) opened the first English coffeehouse, in Oxford.

had attached to the west wall to solicit submissions, and wait to hear (in person) whether it might be accepted for Addison’s burgeoning magazine, The Spectator.

Addison’s great rival and collaborator, Richard Steele, the other pre-eminent essayist and editor of the early eighteenth century, had correspondents in a multitude of coffeehouses and captured perfectly the marriage of the coffeehouse and culture in the first issue of his magazine, The Tatler (April 12, 1709), announcing in a preamble that he intended to include “Accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure, and Entertainment ... under the article of White’s ChocolateHouse; poetry, under that of Will’s Coffee-house ... foreign and domestic news ... from Saint James’s Coffeehouse,” and so on.

The purpose and character of the coffeehouse was now defined. The drinking of coffee was of course a mere pretext. The coffeehouse had become and was to remain for almost two hundred years a meeting house, club, office, trading centre, gossip central, with political and philosophical overtones and a distinctly literary air.

It was, at least in England, the great democratic institution, in contrast for example to taverns, alehouses, and so-called public houses. To this day some pubs retain a hierarchical class distinction between the public bar and the saloon bar (which is more salubrious, not to mention expensive).

No such distinction was ever drawn in

coffeehouses. Indeed a common code of behaviour contained in a set of Rules and Orders was posted in each coffeehouse. Of its thirty lines, the first six dealt with the equality of all customers, a startling and significant notion in a society which, ten years after Jacob opened his coffeehouse in Oxford, had seen the Restoration of the monarchy.

The democratic coffeehouse had its heyday, at least in England, in the eighteenth century. It began to fail, however, in the nineteenth, and not just for reasons of longevity. Its demise may have been inevitable (although pubs survived), but it was hastened by a conglomeration of social changes: the advent of home mail delivery, which reduced the need for a meeting-place; the appearance of daily newspapers, which reduced the need for direct reports of daily news; and the emergence of gentlemen’s clubs, which afforded men of a certain class a much more comfortable (and in some cases, permanent) home away from home.

The coffeehouse gave way by the end of the century to much grander incarnations called Cafés, where coffee and alcohol (and the sexes) mixed freely. One thinks of the Café Royal where Oscar Wilde hung out in fin-de-siècle London. One thinks of the great cafés of Berlin in the early twentieth century, like the Kranzler and the Kempinski, or the glorious cafés of Paris between the wars. But through war and peace, privation and

reconstruction, glut and depression, the café, whatever its size, never lost its intimate relationship with art, philosophy, and politics. At Café Central in Vienna, Lenin held forth on the eve of the Russian Revolution – actually, since he was in almost permanent peripatetic exile, almost every café in Europe claims him. In Prague, Franz Kafka, hardly the most sociable of men, confessed to Max Brod that he had always wanted to open a café – fortunately or unfortunately, he never did. And in Paris, at the cafés that re-emerged after the Second World War, like the Deux Magots and the Café Flore, Sartre and de Beauvoir and Camus and Aron could be found formulating and reformulating the postwar philosophical and artistic Zeitgeist over their vin ordinaire.

The coffeehouse proper, however, re-emerged in America, and nowhere more conspicuously and to greater historical and social effect than for a brief and intense period in Greenwich Village, whose character it virtually defined. But that and Cornelia’s story is for another time. 

45

A PAULINE ABOUT TOWN

BRISTOL

Simon Bishop (1962-65) shares where to eat, drink, visit and view in his hometown Bristol remains one of the most popular destinations for St Paul’s leavers, and for some the city’s attractions are enough for them to choose it as a permanent home. With London only an hour or so away by rail, and bordering Somerset to the south, the Bristol Channel and South Wales to the west, Gloucestershire to the north and Bath and Wiltshire to the east, Bristol combines a metropolitan life with access to unspoilt countryside nearby in which to explore and regenerate.

WHERE TO EAT

WHERE TO DRINK 3 60 Degree Café

The Lido Restaurant Set in a viewing gallery overlooking the 24-metre blue-tiled pool at Bristol’s regenerated Victorian lido in Clifton, this comfortable and magical space is one of the most exciting eateries in town – with the bonus of a spa, poolside bar and other treats on hand. The food ranges in influence from Spain to the Middle East. Why not book a swim and massage before supper?

Souk Kitchen For the best Moroccan/Arabic inspired mezze-type dishes, try this unpretentious café/restaurant in buzzing North Street, Southville, across the road from the Tobacco Factory Theatre in the midst of some of Bristol’s best UpFest wall graffiti.

Chai Shai I was pleased to see that Time Out Bristol had featured this intimate Indian restaurant at the bottom of Jacob Wells Road. A menu of no more than twenty options always guarantees you delicious freshly cooked food in this easily overlooked place.

360 Degree Café and Rooftop Terrace – Clifton Observatory Best view in town at this sensationally renovated snuff mill situated just above the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

Focaccia toasties and the best hot chocolate in town await you.

S ouk Kitchen

You cannot beat an ale by the water’s edge. Three pubs spring to mind, all offering hearty and delicious food: The Nova Scotia, originally a nineteenth century coaching inn, has fortunately avoided being themed or updated in any way since and enjoys a very down-to-earth atmosphere.

The clientele is often bolstered by 21st century sea dogs; The Cottage Inn, set attractively just above the water’s edge and boasting the best evening light as the sun goes down, offers fresh fish dishes as their speciality with meat and veggie options; The Ostrich, an original dockside inn has a large riverside beer garden and cosy interiors over two floors. Outside, the Portside BBQ serves up Americana-inspired street food with a mix of suntrap seating areas, shady spots, and covered and heated all-weather teepees.

Quick bites: Farrows on the Wells Road is an exceptional award-winning chippy; The Brunel Buttery on Museum Street, Bristol docks is the place to go for doorstep sarnies and a cuppa while you enjoy the view across the water to the city centre; Nadine’s Caribbean Café has been gaining a good reputation on Stapleton Road, Easton. T he Ostrich

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 Ashton Court

WHERE TO VIEW

WHERE TO VISIT

Easy ticks: The SS Great Britain in the docks, and Ashton Court, the 850-acre publicly owned park and mansion to the north west of the city are both too good to miss.

St Nick’s Market The largest collection of independent retailers under one roof in Bristol.

While most of the surrounding area was totally destroyed during the Second World War, the 18th-century Exchange building at the heart of St Nick’s Market was spared. While the Exchange itself is packed with independent traders selling all sorts of wares with a huge variety of food outlets. Why not pop in to Wanted Records run by John Stapleton (1973-77) for anything vinyl?

Music and Party venues Bristol is a city that likes to party hard when allowed! Try these venues: Thekla the ultimate party boat has been an integral part of Bristol’s nightlife since 1984; Motion is an award-winning party destination. Spaced out across a number of warehouses, the mega venue features state-of-the-art technology and has seen the likes of Just Jack and Fatboy Slim grace its decks; Cosies is a popular club among students. This raucous underground playground spins the best in reggae and dub, as well as hosting a regular roster of DJs.

The Seven Stars – follow in the illustrious steps of anti-slavery campaigner Thomas Clarkson (177580) who went undercover in this old 16th century dockside pub when researching facts about the realities of the trade directly from the sailors who visited here after their voyages back from the West Indies. To ‘square the circle’, go on to the M-Shed where you can now see the toppled statue of the slave trader Edward Colston, still covered with graffiti, freshly hoisted from the bottom of Bristol docks.

Bristol is blessed with several excellent theatres. Jewel in the crown is the Bristol Old Vic on King Street. Built in 1766, the Old Vic is the oldest continuously working theatre in the English-speaking world. The Tobacco Factory Theatre (now with its new studio theatre The Spielman) has built a loyal following for its Shakespeare seasons and independent touring company productions, while the Bristol Hippodrome hosts big West End musicals and opera. Over recent years the 100-seat Wardrobe Theatre has become very popular for its curated mix of theatre, comedy, live music, poetry/spoken word, cabaret, drag, improvisation, new writing and family shows, with an emphasis on emerging artists and Bristol-based work. There is also an excellent bar and restaurant to enjoy as part of the Old Market Assembly of which the Wardrobe is part.

T he Seven Stars

You can now see the toppled statue of the slave trader Edward Colston covered with graffiti, freshly hoisted from the bottom of Bristol docks. B ristol Old Vic

47

OLD PAULINE CLUB NEWS

The OPC’s AGM on 8 July marked the end of Brian Jones’s (1961-66) term as the Club’s President.

His comments on the modernisation of the Club’s governance in his President’s Report were: “The most significant Old Pauline Club (OPC) events in the last year undoubtedly took place ‘behind the scenes’ and related to the Club’s Strategy Review. I mentioned a year ago that the Strategy Review Group (SRG) would be putting forward options and recommendations to the Main Committee later that year and this was duly done in November 2020 with a report entitled “The Case for Change”.

The core assessment of the SRG, taking into account the responses from surveys of the membership and the views of stakeholders, was that the momentum of the OPC was swinging away from being a club whose principal activities revolve around sport at Thames Ditton, an Annual Dinner and the production of a well-regarded magazine to becoming an integral part of the wider Pauline Community living in much closer harmony with the School.

The SRG’s view was that maintaining the status quo was not an option and that it needed to change to focus on what should be its main purpose of being an integral and leading part of the Pauline Community. It did not need to change the long-established aims of the Club but needed to change the means by which it fulfilled those aims and objects.

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The Report was considered by the Main Committee at a Strategy Day in November with much debate on the topics of governance; the land at Thames Ditton; the relationship with the School; engaging with OPs; communications; and sport. The proposals included in the Report to take the Club forward were approved by the Main Committee.

This led to two streams of work.

Firstly, a Governance Working Party was set up to consider, inter alia, the roles of the Main and Executive Committees, how to make them more effective and more representative of the membership and generally how to bring our structure and oversight up to date. Secondly, a Joint OPC/SPS Committee is in the process of being set up. Its immediate role will be to explore and progress implementation of ways in which the OPC and St Paul’s School can work together better; to consider what the possibilities are for the Thames Ditton site and Colets: and generally, to build a consensus on the development of sports and other activities. The School is committed to co-operate, co-ordinate and collaborate to promote a vibrant OPC, which interfaces with the School at many points, which in turn promotes and supports the School. There are many issues for the Committee to consider and it will shortly be agreeing

actions and setting targets for the next three years.

The main proposed changes to the Club’s governance were: •T he Main Committee and the Executive Committee to be replaced by a reconstituted Executive Committee.

•M embership of the new Executive Committee to have an age limit of 75 years.

•V ice Presidents, who are currently automatically members of the Main Committee, would be able to join an Advisory Council.

•T he new Executive Committee would have representatives from each OP age group – those in their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s and 50’s.

•T he Executive Committee would include the SPS Director of Development and Engagement and a staff member nominated by the High Master; and a SPS governor.

•T here would be a number of sub-committees, including a Strategy Implementation Committee, a Nominations Committee and a Sports Committee.

Old Pauline Club Committee List Autumn 2021

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

R ichard Cassell, The High Master and Sir Brian Fall after the OPC AGM

Following discussion at the Main Committee meeting in June, 56 members (66%) voted on the proposals with 51 (91%) voting in favour and 5 (9%) voting against.

Further, it was considered that, as part of modernising the OPC and attracting the involvement of younger members, the word “Old” and “Club” had negative connotations in the context of an alumni association, so that a change of name would be helpful. The change of name would not be imposed on the OP sports clubs, the naming of which would be up to the sports clubs themselves.

Accordingly there was an additional proposal: The Old Pauline Club to change its name to the St Paul’s Alumni Association.

For this proposal, 46 (82%) voted in favour and 10 (18%) against.

The Main Committee therefore by substantial majorities approved both.

The next step will be to re-draft the Club’s Rules. That draft will be reviewed by the Executive and Main Committees in the autumn with a final version of the new Rules proposed for approval at a Special General Meeting.

Given the approval processes that need be completed, the changes in governance will not take place before 1st January 2022 at the earliest and the change of name not until 1st September 2022 at the end of the OPC’s 150th year.

I am confident that this review process and the implementation of the various proposals will ensure that the Club will be in a position to benefit not only Old Paulines, both young and old, both current and future, the School and everyone across the Pauline Community.

I would like to express my enormous gratitude to others on the Strategy Review Group who have spent many hours meeting, discussing, drafting and reviewing strategy matters – Nick Brooks (1965-70), Jon Morgan (1969-74), Rob Smith (1981-86), Sam Turner (2011-16) and Ed Vaizey (1981-85) have all made a significant contribution to taking the Club forward. More recently those also on the Governance Working Party – Nog Norgren (1981-86) and Brian Fall (1951-55) – have done a tremendous job in producing an excellent Governance Report.”

The full text of Brian’s report is shown on the OPC website. 

Vice Presidents Professor D S H Abulafia, Rt Revd R W B Atkinson OBE, P R A Baker, Professor M D Bailey, R S Baldock, J S Beastall CB, 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 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, B R Girvan, T J R Goode, D J Gordon-Smith, Lt Gen Sir Peter Graham KCB CBE, The Rt Hon the Lord Greenhalgh of Fulham, The Rt Hon the Lord Godson of Thorney Island, Professor F D M Haldane, S A Hyman, S R Harding, R J G Holman, J A Howard, S D Kerrigan, P J King, T G Knight, J W S Lyons, I C MacDougall, Professor C P Mayer CBE, R R G McIntosh, A R M McLean CLH, I C McNicol, J D Morgan, A K Nigam, The Rt Hon George Osborne, Sir Mene Pangalos, 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, A M Rind CVO, B M Roberts, J M Robertson, J E Rolfe, M K Seigel, J C F Simpson CBE, J Sherjan, D R Snow MBE, S 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 Honorary Secretary S B Turner Honorary Treasurer N St J Brooks FCA Main Committee Composed of all the above and N F Cardoza (Golfing Society), C S Harries (Association Football Club), J P King (Colet Boat Club), H J Michels (Rugby Football Club), N H Norgren (Elected), T B Peters (Cricket Club), A J B Riley (TDSCC Ltd Representative), D C Tristao (Tennis Club), J F Turner (OPC Sports Director) Executive Committee The Rt Hon the Lord Vaizey (President & Chairman of the Committee), B M Jones (Immediate Past President), S B Turner (Hon Secretary), N St J Brooks (Hon Treasurer), A J B Riley (TDSSC Ltd Representative), J H M East (Elected), P J King (Elected) J D Morgan (Elected), J F Turner (OPC Sports Director), J Withers Green (Editor, Atrium & Social Engagement Officer) Liaison Committee I M Benjamin, R J G Holman, T B Peters, A J B Riley Ground Committee J M Dennis (Chairman), R K Compton, G Godfrey (Groundsman), M P Kiernan, J Sherjan Accountants Kreston Reeves LLP Trustee OPC Trustee Company Limited

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OLD PAULINE CLUB NEWS

Club Appointments

Simon Bishop (1962-65) presentation in recognition of his contribution as OP Editor

At the Old Pauline Club’s AGM on 8 July 2021 the following appointments were made.

The Old Pauline Club commissioned a portrait of Professor Mark Bailey on his retirement as High Master in August 2020. In normal times this would have been unveiled at the OPC Annual Dinner at the end of his last term at St Paul’s in June 2020.

The pandemic of course saw to that being cancelled.

President: Lord Ed Vaizey (1981-85) until July 2023.

Vice Presidents: Professor David Abulafia (1963-67), Rt. Revd Richard Atkinson (1971-76), Lord Dean Godson (1975-79), Lord Stephen Greenhalgh (1980-84), Jon Morgan (1969-74), Sir Mene Pangalos (1979-84), Rob Rayner (1999-04), Alan Rind (1954-59), Jerhan Sherjan (1989-94), Jeremy Withers Green (1975-80).

With the continuing uncertainties as to when an unveiling ceremony might take place at an OPC event, there was a brief ceremony at School just before the 2021 Summer Term started.

To recognise the significant contribution made by Simon Bishop to Old Pauline communications as Editor of Old Pauline News and then Atrium from 2008 to 2019, it had been planned to make a presentation to him at the Annual Dinner in June 2020 and then in July 2021, but as both have had to be cancelled it was decided to make a presentation to him at an informal lunch held recently in Bath, near his hometown of Bristol.

The lunch was hosted by OPC President, Brian Jones, (1961-66) and was also attended by Past President John Dennis (1959-64) and the current Editor of Atrium. The framed presentation shows the covers of the first and last editions of the publications for which Simon was responsible.

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Professor Mark Bailey’s portrait

The portrait was presented by then OPC President, Brian Jones, to the High Master, Sally-Anne Huang, and was unveiled by Mark Bailey at a brief ceremony on 20 April in the Montgomery Room. Johnny Robertson (Chairman of Governors during Mark Bailey’s tenure), Ed Vaizey (then OPC Deputy President) and Joe Simpson, the portrait artist, attended.

Ed Vaizey’s (1981-85) message to Old Paulines as he started his term as Club President

“I’m thrilled to have become the new President of the Old Pauline Club.

It’s not a role I ever thought I would have. Like many of you reading this, I really enjoyed St Paul’s. I made some good friends and I liked keeping up to date with news of the School and my contemporaries via the Old Pauline magazines. But I didn’t anticipate becoming as closely involved as I am now.

This year is the 150th anniversary of the Club, and we hope not only to mark the occasion but also use it as a jumping off point to really make sure the Club is a modern, engaging institution.

Thanks to the work of many people, especially the outgoing President Brian Jones (1961-66), the Old Pauline Club is changing. We have modernised the governance structures (boring but essential), and we are getting much better at ensuring the OPC is something that benefits you – whether it’s networking and finding useful connections, or keeping up with the sports or hobbies and subjects you enjoyed at School.

This year is the 150th anniversary of the Club, and we hope not only to mark the occasion but also use it as a jumping off point to really make sure the Club is a modern, engaging institution.

I have been struck, since I got more closely involved, how many OPs appreciate being contacted directly, and having some engagement with the School, and we hope to do much more of that. The dinner on 14th October is a great opportunity to get together, and in keeping with the Club’s new approach, it will be aggressively informal and enjoyable.

We will also get to meet our new High Master, who is a fantastic leader and educator, as well as being a pioneer, being our first female head.

I really hope we can raise more money from Old Paulines who feel able to give. Fewer than 1 in 20 of us currently make any kind of donation. It’s incredibly important those of us who were lucky enough to benefit from the School’s excellent education have the opportunity to support pupils who would benefit from a St Paul’s education but whose families couldn’t afford to do so. So I hope that in my two years in the role, we really have an impact on the fund for bursaries.

I very much hope you will get in touch if you have thoughts and ideas, or want to get involved.”

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OBITUARIES

John E Bellamy (1951-56)

Timothy J Bonham-Carter (1954-58)

Nicholas R Gooud (1958-63)

Our father John Bellamy was a proud Old Pauline; he often reminisced fondly about his time at St Paul’s. He had won a scholarship from the junior school and was a prefect in his final year. He told hilarious stories of classroom antics – mainly to the detriment of the teacher in charge and was surprisingly proud that, due to being a Scholar, he had received the most minimal of science education.

We were reminded frequently that the only topics on which he had any scientific knowledge were water fleas and Magdeburg hemispheres!

As a sportsman he made his mark – as a wing forward in the 1st XV Rugby team (1954-55) he gained the reputation of being able to ‘turn on a sixpence’. He also played for the 1st XI Cricket team in 1956.

Having completed two years of National Service with the RAF, his academic and sporting prowess continued at The Queen’s College, Oxford where he read Greats, played lots of rugby and cricket and discovered his singing voice.

Cricket remained an important part of his life while we were growing up. Together with our mum, Jane, many happy Sunday afternoons were spent at Thames Ditton – our chance to wangle a pint of coca cola or, if we were lucky, a shandy. Fellow Old Paulines John Farrell (1941-46) and Godfrey Whittingham (1950-55) became very good family friends.

John made a career in IT and Management Consultancy but his real passion was for acting and singing – he sang in many London choirs and took part in numerous local musical and drama productions. His knowledge of history, ancient and modern, inspired frequent overseas travels – his other big passion. He took pride in being an ‘all-rounder’ who could hold his own in any social situation. We will remember him as a people person, a wicked observer of others and someone who refused to lose an argument.

Alexandra and Edward Bellamy

I am sad to announce the passing of my father Tim on 16th February who had battled with multiple myeloma for the last 8 years.

Tim helped create the BioIndustry Association (BIA) and was chair for two years. He influenced the change in stock market rules to allow unprofitable biotech companies to list – hard to imagine in today’s speculative world.

While often thought of as a leader, he was never comfortable giving speeches and preferred to be in the background.

He suffered from dyslexia that was not appreciated until he was nearly 50. It was tough enough that he once skipped school for 6 weeks and spent the time in London’s galleries.

In the late 1960s in Australia he was a computer consultant yet returned in time to become bankrupt in the 1970s stock market crash. He joined his mother, Lesley, at LH Engineering transforming it to a biotech instrumentation supplier. With Lonrho, research started on monoclonal antibodies, therapeutics that helped prolong his life over 40 years later. He was early, perhaps the first, to attach personal computers to fermenters, such as the Commodore Pet with a 4Kb memory.

He served on the boards or was a trustee of several charities including the Florence Nightingale museum. Tim was also involved in the politics of Richmond, Surrey, and with others, he was an early pioneer of recycling with profits donated to local charities.

He lived longer and more happily than we thought possible, in part due to the provision of drugs that France pays for that the UK NHS would not have. A smoker from 16, hitting 40 a day until he quit overnight when Maggie Thatcher raised duty, he had already survived bowel and prostate cancer.

His final “Good Years” were spent happily with his wife, many friends and family, in a Provencal Hameau enjoying the local produce. His joviality, kindness, welcoming attitude and smile will be greatly missed.

John Bonham-Carter (1985-90), son

Nicholas grew up and lived in Chiswick and attended Colet Court and then St Paul’s.

During his time at School, he found his passion for rugby and became captain of the school team. Once leaving school he carried on playing for The Old Paulines.

He also represented the School in rowing.

He was a member of the Christian Union and attended many House Parties.

After leaving school he trained at Marks and Spencer and became assistant manager at the Putney branch. In 1967 he had a change of career and went to work at the Bank of England. One of the joys of his job was that he was able to play rugby for The Bank. Against his own better judgment, he continued to play into his forties. His Bank career meant moving around all departments and in 1982 he was working in Exchange Control, when the United Kingdom went to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. This was intense work from April to June, but he felt he was part of the war effort.

In 1985 he took the opportunity to go on secondment to help set up the Securities and Investment Board (SIB), which was to become known as the City of London watchdog. In 2001 it became The Financial Services Authority (FSA), where he remained until he retired in 2005 at the age of 60.

Nicholas spent his retirement with his family enjoying his love of cars and films.

His family loved him immensely. He married his wife Katharine in 1972, and they set up home in Worcester Park in Surrey. His first son Alexander was born in 1982. His second son Richard was born in 1986. Both boys have inherited his love of cars, films and technology.

The family will never forget Nicholas as a wonderful, dedicated father and an extremely caring husband.

The Gooud Family

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Gilbert W Green (1938-42)

John L R Melotte (1971–75)

Charles H Merriman (1954-58)

Gilbert attended St Paul’s before war broke out and was evacuated with the school in 1939. In 1940 the family home in Middlesex was bombed and the school became his only home. He remembers camping out in a scout hut with his father acting as a fire-watcher in the holidays.

He was exempted from immediate military service and went to St John’s College, Cambridge in 1942, specialising in geology. After the war he joined the Geological Survey of Great Britain, which became his career for nearly 40 years.

In 1950 Gilbert married Julian Quick, daughter of the theologian Canon Oliver Chase Quick. Their four sons all attended the School: Robert (1965-70), Christopher (Hilary) (1967-72), Matthew (1971-75) and Richard (1973-1977). The family moved to Ealing in 1958 and stayed there until the Survey relocated to Nottingham in 1979.

Gilbert loved his career in geology, which included a secondment to the Geological Survey of Jamaica in 1968-71.

He was never happier than when in the field mapping, mainly in Somerset and South Wales. His children joined him in the summer holidays, living in a caravan.

Gilbert was a deeply committed Anglican, frequently acting as churchwarden, and came back to the School to speak at the Christian Union.

In the 1980s he surprised many by developing a passion for forestry and retiring early from the Survey. He bought Biss Wood, outside Trowbridge in Wiltshire, and he and Julian eventually settled in the village of Edington nearby. He applied himself with a will to developing the wood, which is now a nature reserve.

Gilbert lost Julian in 2009, and his last years saw a gradual decline in eyesight, hearing and mobility. He managed to stay in his home until his death, largely thanks to his son Richard, who was his companion in his final years.

The Green Family

John and I first met at prep school – a quiet thoughtful boy with an improbably early moustache and an unusual gait when he ran. It was immediately clear that he was academically and musically gifted, top of the class and regaling us with Acker Bilk and The Beatles on the clarinet.

He won a scholarship to St Paul’s and continued to thrive academically. He became a prefect, and it was in Barnes that began his lifelong love of rowing, joining the crew in the 1st VIII – “I’m better sitting down than running”.

With another scholarship, John read Mathematics at Exeter College, Oxford, where he rowed in the College First Eight becoming Captain of Boats. Typically, he later confided that he derived most satisfaction from persuading us to try rowing and then in coaching us to our own modest success and great enjoyment.

John’s working life started in IT, initially as a software engineer, but he soon moved into management, and then into the world of mergers and acquisitions with spells living in the United States.

He continued to help young companies seek support as a consultant but returned latterly as a director of a burgeoning systems company.

Meanwhile John had continued to row at Molesey and founded the Exeter College Boat Club Association, keeping alumni in contact with each other and the College.

He supported Teddington Swimming Club and later became Chairman of Swim England London Regional Management Board.

John had a quick and incisive mind and remarkable organisational skills that he used to great effect at work, but also to help others. He was always quietly guided by compassion and by what was just, and was extraordinarily generous with his time and means, and with his friendship.

John is survived by his wife Julie and three daughters Alice, Sarah and Katherine, and two grandchildren.

Francis Lovell and Richard Powell

Charles was born in Surrey in 1941 and attended St Paul’s in 1954, a time he spoke of fondly. Whilst academic, Charles enjoyed representing the School, participating in the Combined Cadet Force, Rugby, Swimming and Boxing teams. He continued to play rugby with the Old Paulines.

Charles’ career started with Price Waterhouse. Accountancy underpinned his further careers in Outdoor Advertising and Computer Software, but mainly a long career in Travel and Tourism, working with Lord Brothers, Laker and Ellermans, latterly running his own business. As a founder member of the Institute of Travel and Tourism, Charles was honoured with a “Fellowship” for his work in the travel industry and as a Fellow of the Institute of Directors. Charles was highly respected in the travel industry. This interest continued into his retirement.

For “relaxation” Charles participated in motor racing, car rallying, and Porsche Beaujolais Runs, racing with his team in the UK and abroad. As a member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists he became an “Observer” teaching others.

Charles had a positive outlook on life, a twinkle in his eye and an impish sense of humour that was very infectious. Charles always had time to help others, both by arranging and engaging in charity and church events and through teaching and supporting people. Reverend Canon Les Wells described Charles as “a man of God”.

St Paul’s ethos is to ensure its education is spiritual and holistic, as well as academic.

Charles’ life was entirely underpinned by this principle. He worked hard at a successful career whilst also ensuring those whom he met felt at ease, supported and educated.

He took a genuine interest in others.

Charles is survived by his wife Sue, daughters Katherine and Elizabeth and four grandchildren. He died peacefully at home with his family by his side. He is sorely missed by them, his church and friendship group, who are blessed with many beautiful memories.

Merriman family

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OBITUARIES

Peter Needham (1947-52) Peter escaped from Czechoslovakia in January 1939 with the help of the Barbican Mission to the Jews. Aged 4 ½ he was one of the first refugee Jewish children to be flown out of Prague to Croydon Airport.

With good fortune and hard work he won a scholarship to St Paul’s in 1947 where he was taught by the dream team of Cotter and Cruickshank and made lifelong friendships.

From St Paul’s he won an open scholarship to study Classics at Oriel College Oxford. After Oriel he spent 2 years completing National Service, which he loathed. His duties were restricted as he was considered a security risk as his father was in Government Service in East Germany.

With his love of Classics, Peter became a school teacher firstly at Bromsgrove School and then at Magdalen College School where he spent 4 happy years before moving to Eton in 1964. Here he found contentment and worked happily for over 30 years.

We married in 1971 and Peter became a devoted family man with two wonderful children and, over the years, 3 badly behaved border collies, the last one joining us in retirement in Datchet in 1998.

Although he rowed at Oriel, Peter was not a natural sportsman, however he was a devoted Arsenal fan from an early age until his sudden death in March this year.

While still teaching he translated two books from German into English. “Caesar”

by Matthias Gelzer and “Latin Can Be Fun”

by Georg Capellanus. Shortly before retirement Peter translated “A Bear Called Paddington” by Michael Bond into Latin (“Ursus nomine Paddington”).

In early retirement Peter translated the first two “Harry Potter” books into Latin, “Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis” and “Harrius Potter et Camera Secretorum”.

This occupied and helped him adjust to a slower pace of life.

Reflecting on Peter’s life a friend wrote of his “… escape from Czechoslovakia to Oxford and Eton and finally Paddington and Datchet followed by Hogwarts. What a life”.

Nicky Needham

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Dietrich W F (Wennemar) Von Bodelschwingh (1968-73) Wennemar von Bodelschwingh, born on January 22nd 1955, died on August 25th 2020 due to a brain cancer.

Wennemar grew up in Munich with his twin sister and three older sisters. Regular walks and excursions with the family into the countryside and mountains awakened his passion for nature at an early age.

In 1966, the family moved to London, where Wennemar’s father, Dr. Heinz von Bodelschwingh, worked for Siemens.

Wennemar went to Sussex House Preparatory School in London until 1968 and then to St Paul’s until 1973. During his school years, Wennemar often cheered on his favourite football team, Chelsea.

In the 1970s, he enjoyed his zoology studies at Queen’s College, Oxford, to the full. His professional career began with a Traineeship in Banking at J. Henry Schroder Wagg & Co. Ltd. in London and took him to Bayerische Vereinsbank in Munich then to Insead in Fontainebleau (MBA) and to Deutsche Bank in Melbourne and Frankfurt where he worked in Corporate Finance.

In October 1994, he married Annette Scheiff with whom he was happily married for 25 years and had two sons. He spent many summer holidays with his sisters in Sweden. He worked at Eurohypo AG where he worked for Investor Relations from 2003 until 2015. His passion for ornithology lured him to many distant countries in recent years. There, observing the birds made him very happy.

Wennemar was a modest, humorous and loving family man.

Wennemar’s family

Henry J Winson (1940-46) Henry James Winson was born on December 21st 1927 and was brought up in Wembley Park with his younger brother, Julian (1944-48). After finishing school, he went to University (City of London) where he achieved a Degree in Mechanical Engineering. Commissioned in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers he rose to the rank of Captain.

While serving, Henry tumbled out of an army lorry and broke his arm. This led to him meeting his future wife, Brenda, a nurse in London. They married in April 1957.

On leaving the Army, he initially worked for ICI. In 1960, Henry set up his own business, Winson Heating. He was always keen to expand and develop the business and so Applied Energy Systems evolved. He imported engines from America and packaged them for industrial uses such as powering oil rigs, heating large communal swimming pools and hospitals. The business grew, with his main office in Watford and others in Aberdeen, Runcorn and Falmouth.

Henry and Brenda had four children, David, Angela, Nigel and Sandra. They spent many years in Pinner and had a house in Falmouth. When the grandchildren arrived – 8 in 6 years, he bought a house in Littlehampton for the families to enjoy.

Henry was an incredibly generous husband, father and grandfather. The advice he offered was invaluable and his practical approach to life admirable. He loved his time at St Paul’s and continued to go to school reunions well into his 80s and attributed his success to the fine education he received. He enjoyed not only the academic opportunities but also the practical skills offered. He made a working model of a field gun in June 1942, a car jack and a letter opener from ammunition brass; these and other objects remain prized possessions of his family. He lived a long and happy life and passed away after a silent and courageous battle with cancer in February 2021.

The Winson Family

OLD PAULINE SPORT In Memoriam John E Bellamy (1951-56) Robert H E Brown (1941-46) Alexander M (Martin) Gostwick (1959-63) David A Griffin (1950-53) Paul L Hope (1950-54) Rev Prof Michael J Langford (1944-50) Sebastian H Lazareno (1963-67) David R (Robin) Lee (1971-76) Peter Needham (1947-52) W G G (Galen) Weston (1954-59)

 Paulines Cycling during the evacuation to Crowthorne

LAUNCH OF PAULINE CONTINUUM CYCLING 30th October 2021 at 2pm at Founder’s Court, St Paul’s School

After a successful pilot event two years ago we are proud to launch Pauline Continuum Cycling (PCC). This is a manifestation of the overarching desire to develop a wider, more inclusive Pauline community.

PCC has the full support of the School, Hugh Roberts (1969-74) – founder and organiser of The Tour of Britain, and the Old Pauline Club, represented by Jon Morgan (1969-74).

Join us at 2pm on the 30 October for group park laps – 2 or 3 depending on experience, see professional cycling team cars, bikes and riders followed by refreshments, introductions and a guest speaker.

Future ride details and sign-ups will be advertised across the Pauline Community’s communications’ platforms.

This is primarily a social cycling club featuring great routes, club benefits from our affiliation with Sweetspot and the Tour of Britain and the opportunity to expand horizons meeting and riding with members of the Pauline Community.

PCC welcomes alumni, parents and friends/family of the Pauline Community to join our rides and, by next summer, it hopes to have grown enough to formalise membership with associated unique benefits and expand into sportives and trips. Regrettably the PCC is not open to current Paulines. 

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PAST TIMES

Rupert Birtles (1963-66) during lockdown wrote of his memories of St Paul’s for his grandchildren.

A

t the end of May 1963 we spent three days sitting the scholarship examination; the announcement of the results was anticipated with little hope and much anxiety, but I was, as they now say, ‘over the moon’ at being awarded a scholarship, plus the little silver fish designating such, to be worn on my blazer lapel. The final highlight of my three years at Colet Court was winning the annual public speaking competition, with the prize awarded by the judge Sir Colin Pearson (1911-18) in his Kensington flat. This success was largely due to my foresight at choosing an easy and popular topic: Sir Winston Churchill.

1963 was a transition year for me: academic expectations and political awareness increased sharply. In January, Gaitskell died unexpectedly; in June the Profumo scandal broke; August saw the Great Train Robbery; in October MacMillan resigned, in November Kennedy was assassinated (the news reaching me in the circle of the Hammersmith Odeon during a school choir outing to see ‘West Side Story’); and The Beatles became a force of nature. The winds of change had arrived, affecting all my later life.

The tutorial system did not work for me; my tutor was Pat Cotter (1917-23, Classics Department 1928-65), revered in the worlds of

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A good aspect of St Paul’s was that it treated exams as an irritating interruption to the syllabus – exam success, although important, was not the primary and only focus. There were no league tables and pupils of varied ability were allowed to find their own level.

classics, bridge and croquet but insouciant to the needs of those who did not wish to plough a classical furrow. The portrayals in ‘Mr Olim’ and ‘Sinister Street’ of the school around the turn of the century were equally recognisable in the 1960s – nothing much seemed to have changed for half a century. My first year, in the Remove, led by ‘Jack’ Train (Classics Master 1957-67) (who later became Head of the Prison Service), was focussed almost exclusively on Latin and Greek. I was briefly a member of the choir, the highlight of which was recording “6 Christmas Songs for the Young” composed in 1963 by Malcolm

Williamson (later Master of the Queen’s Music) and performing them in St Paul’s Cathedral. The choir was compulsory for trebles and we were all much relieved when nature removed our eligibility. In July 1964 I sat “O Levels” and then had a choice to continue with classics or move to the History Eighth. Without any advice or encouragement from anyone, I chose the latter, where for two years I would study History, French, and a subject known as History with Foreign Texts – mediaeval and renaissance historiography in original Latin, German, and French. This was one of my better decisions. I was fortunate that the teachers of these subjects were scholarly and committed to their pupils.

In January 1965 Sir Winston Churchill died. His body lay in state in Westminster Hall, and for three days thousands of people filed past the catafalque, having queued for hours along Millbank, across Lambeth Bridge, and along the South Bank.

Some friends and I joined this queue after school one wintry evening to pay our last respects to the man who was regarded then as the greatest living Englishman.

Beyond academe my principal involvements were debating (The Chesterton Society and The Union), the CCF and the Christian Union.

After summer camp and having obtained my marksman badge and Army Proficiency Certificate, I opted to join the ‘Cadre’ leading to eventual higher rank; however, shortly after gaining my lance corporal’s stripe the CCF was peremptorily abolished – perhaps the first obvious nod to the mood of the times that Tom Howarth (High Master 1962-73) made. A great attraction of the Christian Union was the Easter and summer house parties held at various boarding schools in the Home Counties, led by Eric Hayward (1913-15), who founded the movement and Basil Moss (1948-53) who was held in awe for his frequent appearances in TV dramas and soaps. Religious affiliation or lack of

was no obstacle – the house parties were popular because of their relaxed social atmosphere and the opportunity to make and enjoy friendships away from home. Still no girls, though.

A good aspect of St Paul’s was that it treated exams as an irritating interruption to the syllabus – exam success, although important, was not the primary and only focus. There were no league tables and pupils of varied ability were allowed to find their own level. I sat ‘A Levels’ in July 1966. The grading system then was completely different from now. I was pleased to be awarded a “B” in each of my three subjects, and enjoyed mild schadenfreude that some of my academically more brilliant colleagues, whilst obtaining “A”s in some subjects, were awarded “C”s in others. Full marks for consistency, my history teacher told me. Thus ended the Summer Term 1966. I was just 17.

We in the History Eighth organised annual dinners, this year at the ‘Quo Vadis’ in Soho, which required the purchase of a dinner suit. Then England won the World Cup. I was not much interested in football but everyone watched the final.

Autumn Term was entirely devoted to seeking places at Oxbridge – it was automatically assumed and expected that we would all try for one or the other. I applied to Oxford. There were exams and interviews just before Christmas, and I was offered a place.

I could not wait to leave St Paul’s and promptly did so. It was only later that I considered that my good fortune owed much to what St Paul’s had done for me, despite my not having taken full advantage of all the opportunities available.

My shortsightedness, revealed when I began driving lessons, was not just physical. 

With thanks to Rory Johnston (1962-63) for the photographs

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PAULINE RELATIVES

They talked about studying for ‘Panic Masters’, film-making, and that other seismic shift that can happen in a lifetime – having a teacher with the power of epiphany.

The Rachmans

T

here is a vicarious pleasure in being dropped into the midst of a very clever family breaking bread. It may have been just half of the philosophy and history-steeped Rachman family, but as the full tribe comes with a clutch of firsts, listening to Gideon (1976-80) and his youngest sons Nathaniel and Adam (2012-17) provides you with the family’s cocktail of Yesterday in Parliament and University Challenge in a summer pub garden.

Fatherly satisfaction and a good slab of pollock kept Gideon (Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator for the Financial Times) quieter than his professional persona might normally allow as Nathaniel and Adam outlined their coming-of-age film about peer rivalry, currently in busy development, and funded by their pandemic earnings from tutoring.

“Hopefully comedic,” they chimed, with an echo of the Coen Brothers – awfully clever, off-beam funny, and with the potential to subvert and parody.

While Gideon has informed countless audiences over the past six years of the vast shift east after 500 years of

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Western global economic domination, Nathaniel and Adam took over the conversation as they talked about studying for ‘Panic Masters’, filmmaking, and that other seismic shift that can happen in a lifetime – having a teacher with the power of epiphany.

Gideon and his twin sons all feel that they were blessed with these figures.

For Gideon, it was the inspiring powerhouse 1970s History department.

For Adam it is the much admired, Dr Rufus Duits (Philosophy Department since 2009), opening out the worlds of philosophy and theology with a cast, ranging from mountains to Heidegger.

In Andrew Broughton (English Department since 2003) and Judith McLaren’s (English Department since 1992) teaching, Nathaniel found the guidance that gives true definition to education, the process of drawing forth.

Gideon talks fondly of his years at St Paul’s and suggests, “As you get older you track your life through the institutions you were at.”

However, he was ambivalent about the choice of school for his children.

It was Olivia, wife and mother who was the driving force behind the twins

going to St Paul’s. Their elder siblings, Natasha and Joe, went to Latymer and onto Oxbridge. Olivia was right, St Paul’s suited Nathaniel and Adam and they suited it. They excelled in both classroom and debating chamber but describe themselves as “physically feeble”. They were glad that a ‘multisport’ half was on offer where they could hone their ultimate frisbee and ping pong skills.

Nathaniel and Adam are swapping universities for their Masters with Adam moving to Oxford and Nathaniel to Cambridge. They have not been attracted to US postgraduate courses, viewing them as being too long while US undergraduate degrees were too expensive. As they weigh up future careers, the list includes academia, the law, public service, and even journalism.

Gideon may of course be able to counsel for and against the last of those. Perhaps as they look out over the sanctum of Craven Cottage, pondering infinite possibilities and Fulham’s return to the Premiership. 

CROSSWORD

To a degree by istenem

by Lorie Church (1992-97)

Don’t worry about colours until the end. In seven clues, ‘1’ is the answer to 1 across.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8 9

10

11

12

15

16

13 14 17 19

23

25

18

20

21

22

24

26

Across 1 Two universities steer one between Barnes and Hammersmith (8) 5 This boy is not bright (4) 9 Sacramental wafer is two in 1 (6,7) 10 Luigi’s brother missing mother city (3) 11 They are prickly about first part of play (5) 13 You and I changing key on board Henry for megabucks (6) 14 Behold office of bishop... (3) 16 ... Cathedral city really missing odds (3) 17 Elizabeth and Mary maybe two in 1 (6) 19 Two for 1 missing element from Father and Holy Ghost (5) 21 Short relative can usually zip tops (3) 23 Clergyman at Cathedral without responsibility broke carry on nan ooh (8,5) 25 Cardinal points to being stitched up (4) 26 Two for 1 in Welsh town (8)

Down 1 O for recognition in Hollywood (5) 2 Turn over pirate crew to those in debt (9) 3 Tropical lizards bemused us again (7) 4 Kid-powered jalopy beat it, 80% of course in reverse (2-4) 6 Commercials at the end Eggheads (3) 7 Three in one or two in 1 (7) 8 Equivalent to ’gator shoe for kids (4) 12 Quirky Screen Doc getting progressively louder (9) 14 Two for 1 plums’ Sinjun (2,5) 15 Grizzly infant maybe put up with apprentice (4-3) 18 Insincere; not on the level (6) 20 Browse idly and catch waves (4) 22 Partizan technique secures Greek Island (5) 24 It may follow spanking original two for 1 (3)

At the end, Golds, Blues and Purples can be individually arranged into three thematic words, all of which refer to all of the green entries.

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LAST WORD

Jonny Dymond (1983-87)

Are You Sure?

W

hen I was 18 I realised that I knew everything and my parents knew nothing”, Mark Twain reportedly said, “but by the time I was 21 I was surprised by how much my parents had learned.”

This quip is offered up as more than simply reassurance to Old Paulines that their offspring will one day realise that they do not hold a monopoly on wisdom, and that their parents may have something of some value to add to their vast store of understanding.

It is also about doubt. More precisely, it is in praise of doubt. And as such it runs, rather alarmingly, counter to our times. Those who troubled themselves with the political drama of the Boris Johnson – Dominic Cummings relationship may remember the pearl-clutching that went on in some quarters when the former senior advisor took time off from criticising everything and everyone to acknowledge that he might be wrong about Brexit.

The wounds from the 2016-2019 Brexit campaign are not only raw but still open. So it’s not exactly surprising that any admission of doubt from the man who rather brilliantly ran an extraordinarily divisive campaign should elicit some anger.

I hesitate to quote the great man in full for fear of ruining some readers’ day but here goes. “Questions like ‘is Brexit a good idea’ – no one on earth

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knows what the answer to that is,” he told the BBC “I think anyone who says they’re sure about questions like that has got a screw loose.”

“I think it’s perfectly reasonable to say Brexit was a mistake and that history will prove that – of course it’s reasonable for some people to think that,” he went on, “I honestly don’t know what sort of person you’d be if you didn’t have a view like that.”

Cummings was stating what is known epistemologically as the bleedin’ obvious. Cries of ‘hypocrisy’ were misplaced; he believed on balance that leaving was the right course of action and then campaigned for it with every ounce of fibre in his being (and with every trick in the book). No one overturns the status quo with the slogan ‘Probably For the Best’ or ‘On Balance, Likely To Turn Out Better’.

But the campaign, alongside two other political earthquakes, put many on one side or other of an enormous chasm; two sides utterly convinced of the other’s wrongness. The Iraq war left a considerable number convinced that many politicians and people in authority were liars; the financial crisis, that they were fools; Brexit, that they were traitors. Each piled certainty onto the other; buried at the bottom of this particular Pandora’s Box, poor old doubt rather struggled to get out.

Which is rather odd. Because like the terrible consensualist (still a crime in some southern US states) that I am, I always had a vision of Britain as bit more sensible than all of that. Some of it is that inverted intellectual snobbery of cartoon-Edmund Burke; you can take yer fancy French revolutionary ideas and dunk them in a barrel of good British beer. Some of it is the muddling-through of George Orwell, whose nation of “solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar boxes” rejected absolute ideas in the same way as it had a long time beforehand rejected absolute monarchs. “Why,” asks Orwell, as the bombs tumble down around him “is the goose-step not used in England?

There are heaven knows plenty of army officers who would be only too glad to introduce some such thing. It is not used because the people in the street would laugh.”

That sense of the ridiculous, that shiny boots and shiny ideas might not be all they are cracked up to be, was a good chunk of what we were. And victory in war, hot and cold, helped.

What better to boost the cause of doubt than the resounding defeat of totalitarian certainty?

Maybe as those battles, real and intellectual, recede into the past we are losing the taste for doubt. The technology that surrounds us seems to help but doesn’t. Beautifully produced high-definition TV news portrays the world not as it is – chipped at the edges and washed out, with little bits of fluff in the corners – but as it might be, precise and clear, hard bright colours replacing shades of grey. The instant availability of information settles arguments about football scores and GDP in seconds, leaving little room for just leaving-it-be or making a bet and forgetting to claim the winnings. And the dreary siloes of social media send users spiralling down echo-chambers of certainty. If you’ve ever been tempted to have a sensible conversation on a controversial topic on Twitter, don’t. You won’t.

I have some skin in this particular game. Quite a lot of news broadcasting and debate is the promotion of doubt, the questioning of ideas, the eyebrow raised at the declaration of intent. This used to be a pretty accepted part of national life. For some – and it is difficult to know how many, because it is a lot easier now for a few to make a lot of noise – it no longer is. So deep is doubt buried under certainty, that to query an idea is often taken as opposition to it; to air an argument akin to agreeing with it.

Tempting as it is to declare this ‘profoundly dangerous’, that is only to commit the same crime-of-certainty as all the other felons around us. It is, however, often depressing. Doubt runs through this fine nation, through our politics and literature, through our understanding of who we are.

“I have never met a simple man,” Father Rivas says in Graham Greene’s The Honorary Consul, “Not even in the confessional, though I used to sit there for hours on end. Man was not created simple…No one was simple enough for me to understand. In the end I would just say “Three Our Fathers, Three Hail Marys. Go in peace”. Bravo. 

A H EA LTH C LUB L IKE NO OTH E R

2 YE RUN ARS NIN G

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CELEBRATING 150 YEARS OF ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT October

Annual Dinner at School – speaker John Simpson

Launch of the 150th Appeal by OPC President, Ed Vaizey, to take Bursary Places to 153 November The Future of Politics – George Osborne The first in a series of seminars at the School featuring eminent Paulines January

The Future of Britain in the World – Simon Fraser and Tom Tugendhat

February

The Feast Service at St Paul’s Cathedral and Mercers’ Hall

The Future of Health – Matthew Gould and Robert Winston

March

The Future of The Arts – Simon Fox and Patrick Spence

Earliest Vintage Lunch at School

May

The Future of Education – Ken Baker and the High Master

June

Pauline Festival and Reunions at School

150th Dinner at The Tabernacle, Notting Hill

opclub.stpaulsschool.org.uk