Issue 5 • Autumn 2011
Keeping in touch with OPs wherever they may be
Inside Stained Glass Virtuoso
The OP giving new lustre to some of our most revered buildings Raise a Glass! Bidding a fond farewell to the Class of 2011
Smashing the Glass Ceiling The Unstoppable Rise of Two OP Career Girls
The Magazine for former pupils, former parents and friends of The Portsmouth Grammar School
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OPUS • Issue 5 • Autumn 2011
Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
Contents In Brief
Old Portmuthians on LinkedIn
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With over 100 million users representing more than 200 countries around the world, LinkedIn is a fast-growing professional networking site that allows members to create business contacts, search for jobs and find potential clients. Individuals have the ability to create their own professional profile which can be viewed by others in their network and also view the profiles of their own contacts. It is also possible to join a diverse range of ‘Groups’.
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There is now a group entitled Portsmouth Grammar School: Old Portmuthians, which has been set-up for pupils past and present by Deborah Cooper (OP 1992-1994).
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To the Universe & Beyond Street Artist: OP Deane’s Pictorial Record of Pompey Inside Track
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Bach, Vaughan-Williams and Davison Tribute to a music master
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After leaving PGS Deborah gained a degree in European Studies with German at Brunel University and then spent eleven years in the automotive industry working for car manufacturers such as Renault UK, Volkswagen Group and BMW UK in Regional Sales and Project Manager roles. She has recently been appointed a Director for a company called ECR Training which develops and delivers retail and Business-to-Business sales training and e-learning solutions and has found LinkedIn useful in her career.
Ask the Archivist
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A PGS Neighbourhood
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Paralympic Sailor shows Tom the Ropes
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Currently the Old Portmuthians LinkedIn group has over 75 members but Deborah hopes that the membership can be increased to the benefit of all.
Stokes Bay Sailing Club 50 year reunion
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Please join - see www.linkedin.com and select ‘Groups’.
Ash days: Simon Gray at PGS, 1945-47
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Class of 2011
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The amazing fly past of a remarkable PGS mum!
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Rank outsider
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Hugh Woodcock – Master (very much) in charge of PGS Lower School, 1953-1962
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The World at their Feet....
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OP Cricket Reunion & OP Summer Matches 28-29 The Leading Light in Leadlighting
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Passing of a Great Schoolmaster
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In the footsteps of W.L. Wyllie R.A.
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Bookshelf
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Some Corner of a Foreign Field that OP Sam will never forget 36-37 Barbara’s Recipe for Success
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In Brief
A round-up of OP news and events
The Greatest Show on Earth! As we countdown to London 2012, Opus would love to hear from any OP who has memories of being a spectator, volunteer or even competitor at previous Olympic Games or, who perhaps is participating in some capacity with next year’s London Games. Whatever your story, we’d love to share it in a special Olympic article in Opus next year. Please get in touch at development@pgs.org.uk
OP Industry Leaders sweeter than Sugar Opus designed by Simon Udal OP (1977-1987) Simon Udal Design - www.simonudaldesign.co.uk
Treble Chance
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PGS Wildlife Photographer of the Year
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A Packed Presidential Year
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Aspiring OP actress sallies forth
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Forthcoming events
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Old Portmuthian Club Annual Dinner 2011
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News of Old Portmuthians
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In memoriam
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Announcements
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Is there anybody out there?
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From Rags to Riches
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Front Cover: Part of a stained glass window commission “Trincomalee to Transylvania” by David Palmer OP (1956-1966). The piece was commissioned by fellow OP David Jones (1957–1966) and depicts Henri de Blois entering Portsmouth Harbour; Jesus College, Oxford; a Gosport Ferry from the 1960s and the old Floating Bridge in Portsmouth Harbour. Read how David Palmer’s lifelong love of stained glass was born out the sketches in the margins of his school notebooks on pages 30-31.
Alasdair Akass
Liz Preece
Sue Merton
John Sadden
Development Director
Development Officer
Development Office Administrator
School Archivist 023 9268 1391 j.sadden@pgs.org.uk
The views expressed in Opus articles do not necessarily reflect those of the Editorial Team.
The PGS Development Team is always keen to hear from Old Portmuthians, former parents and friends of the school. Do please stay in touch and share your stories and reminiscences with us, submit content for future editions of Opus or nominate someone to receive a copy, by contacting us at development@pgs.org.uk High Street, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO1 2LN Tel: 023 9236 4248
At the end of the school academic year in July, PGS staged ‘The Social Apprentice’, its first ever activities day based around the challenges of the 2020 workplace when Year 12 pupils may well be on the cusp of some form of leadership in various fields. This was a new project designed to give Sixth Form pupils a competitive edge in life beyond PGS. Nick Gallop, Head of Sixth Form, enlisted an array of OPs from all walks of life to take on a Lord Alan Sugar role of listening to pupil ideas and assessing pitches. They played a pivotal role facilitating the day and acting as mentors, encouraging small groups of pupils to work together effectively, manage their time and develop highimpact presentations, which would hopefully stand them in good stead for life beyond the school’s historic arch. Among those who volunteered their time and helped to make the day a great success were Alwyn Welch (1968-1976), John Bartle (1947-1957), Tim Titheridge (1958 -1968), Andy Law (1968-1975), John Tootell (1990-1997), Nabil Lodey (1981 -1990) and Tim Thomas (1960 -1968). Between them these OPs had amassed a tremendous amount in life from climbing Mount Everest and founding a thriving hotel and restaurant chain to sharing a podium with Clinton and Gorbachev and managing a workforce of 8,000 people. The expertise and experience of the OP mentors really enriched the day, which it is hoped will be repeated in 2012. Nick would love to hear from any OPs who are prepared to act as mentors at next year’s event. Please contact him at n.gallop@pgs.org.uk
Roger Black MBE OP (1977-1984) has a haul of medals from the Olympic Games in Barcelona (1992) and Atlanta (1996). For London 2012 Roger has joined forces with some 26 of other Great Britain’s most inspirational and accomplished Olympians from previous Games as Team GB 2012 Ambassadors. Between them, the Team GB 2012 Ambassadors can draw upon experience of winning 51 Olympic medals, including 27 gold medals.
Construction Experts declare futuristic Science Building ‘Out of this World!’ The Bristow-Clavell Science Centre, the latest and most striking addition to the PGS skyline, has finished its first full year of service by receiving national recognition from a distinguished panel of construction industry experts. The flagship science building, already a firm favourite with pupils, staff and OP visitors to the school, has played host to a packed 2011 calendar of science-themed public lectures and events alongside normal lessons and attracted luminaries of the scientific world from Simon Singh to Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell to present them. Now the building is a star in its own right, having been highly commended in the category of ‘Projects under £10 million’ at the annual Construction News Awards, held in London last month, just as pupils finished their last science lessons of the academic year. Over 800 people gathered for a Gala Dinner at the Grosvenor House Hotel to hear the deliberations of the judges, who had previously made site visits to all the shortlisted project entries. The Bristow-Clavell Science Centre was the only school building in the country to receive a commendation, an indication of the tremendous impact that this state of the art facility with 120 seat lecture theatre and open Atrium has already had on science teaching at PGS. The scale of the project – unprecedented in PGS history – meant that it could never have been contemplated without external support and the school is tremendously grateful not only to principal donors Mrs Heather Bristow and Mrs April Clavell, but to all the Old Portmuthians, parents and supporters who contributed to its construction and to securing the school’s future as a leading light for science education. continued...
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In Brief
continued
Climb every mountain For an OP who embraced semi-retirement two years ago, John Bannell (1955-60) shows no sign of taking it easy. Last year John passed his Grade 1 piano exam, learning from scratch in nine months (see Opus 3), and this year he has conquered two new and very different peaks. On 21 May, John climbed Ben Nevis in a blizzard, in aid of the The Rowans Hospice, and ten days later he published his first children’s books. The adventures of Clever Freddie the Mischievous Fox are told in a boxed set of six beautifully illustrated pocket-sized volumes. The stories are based on true events that took place on the Cosham allotments where John practises his passion for gardening, and are available from Waterstone’s and other booksellers. Clever Freddie the Mischievous Fox (Tricorn Books boxed set £25 or £5.99 individually)
Happy Memories Rooted in School Quad An area of the school site has been developed into a special place for quiet reflection. The Neil Blewett Memorial Garden is a permanent tribute to the much loved and missed Surmaster, who sadly died last year. The geometric courtyard design which includes benches, raised flower beds and a central compass was put forward by Samantha Gingell OP (1997-2011) and a group of pupils. OP visitors to the school will find the Memorial Garden in the corner of the Quad outside Mr Blewett’s old office in Cambridge House.
To the Universe & Beyond! Forget flags on the moon – in decades to come we may well see a PGS pennant on the Red Planet! Old Portmuthian and Cardiff University Biosciences student Kyle Grant OP (2004-2009) will spend the next year exploring deep space – or, at least, exploring the possibilities, thanks in part to a grant from the school to fund an extraordinary sabbatical year. Kyle is a microbiology undergraduate who also studies astrophysics. He found out about a unique research opportunity after spotting an advert on the NASA astrobiology website. He has been selected from thousands of applicants and leaves shortly for a year’s internship with the Space Life Science Laboratory at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, where his primary tasks will be to research the practicalities of deep space flight, study water recycling and oxygen regeneration and survival on Mars.
He will undergo preliminary astronaut training himself, including experiencing simulated zero-gravity.
The Development Office received a special commendation in this year’s ‘PGS in Bloom’ Competition. The school-wide initiative, now in its fourth year, has staff, pupils and contractors throughout the school vying to produce the best hanging basket or planted container. The Development team answered the challenge of this year’s theme – “Good Enough to Eat” – by planting a container full of edible salad leaves, recalling the heady ‘Salad Days’ of former pupils of the school which was proudly sited in the school quad. All offers of help from green-fingered OPs when battle lines are drawn for next year’s Competition will be gratefully received!
The placement will also entail work at the Johnson Space Centre in Texas and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Kyle said: “I decided that some people do the lottery, so why shouldn’t I give this a shot? It’s incredibly competitive. A lot of American students apply for NASA internships, so I feel very fortunate that they looked favourably on a submission from across the Pond!” NASA’s deep space programme aims to send people to Mars and the asteroids by the 2020s and 2030s. Kyle will be working with Professor Jamie Foster on life support systems on the deep space craft, in particular the use of microorganisms and their effect on the human body in microgravity. This includes waste recycling and food re-growth for space journeys of around 500 days.
His ultimate ambition is to be accepted into the astronaut corps and be selected as a crew member in the first manned mission to Mars, scheduled for 2030.
Nanu, Nanu: Kyle Grant is getting ready to find out if there really is life on Mars.
He had the chance to quiz husband and wife NASA astronauts Dr Andrew Thomas and Dr Shannon Walker in June this year when they gave an evening lecture on their lives in space as part of this year’s Portsmouth Festivities. Kyle has just completed his second year at the Cardiff University School of Biosciences and will return after his year with NASA to complete his degree. “I am extremely grateful not only for the support and funding the school has given to me towards my year’s internship, but also for the inspiration that the science department gave to me whilst a student at PGS. This is a fantastic opportunity, and I hope to visit PGS on my return to share my experiences with pupils and teachers alike.”
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Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
Street Artist: OP Deane’s Pictorial Record of Pompey For a lad who failed his Art ‘O‘ Level – twice – Deane Clark has come a long way artistically, if not geographically. His lack of success, perhaps, says more about an examination system that failed to recognise the budding talent in a boy who had been sketching and photographing Portsmouth since he was an eleven year-old at Portsmouth Grammar School. Deane attributes his passion for drawing to an inspirational artist Violet Pearse, who taught at the school for two years, 1945-46, and who published a volume of local studies, a copy of which is held in the school archives. His interest in photography was encouraged by his father who was secretary of Portsmouth Camera Club, and by art teacher Wally Bartle. Deane joined the school in the final months of the Second World War. “It was freezing because there was no heating and it was very cold and bleak,” he recalled, “but the one thing that made it all worthwhile was Mrs Pearse. A marvellous teacher…I owe her much.” Deane’s talent was recognised at the school, if not by the examination board. “Art and woodwork good,” observed Mr MacGregor in a 1948 school report. “Good photographic work”, added Mr Nowell in 1951. Thumb through any copy of The Portmuthian from the early 1950s and it isn’t long before you come across a photographic study captured by “DFC”. Steam trains figure prominently, reflecting Deane’s enduring passion for the railway, an interest shared and encouraged
Portsmouth Grammar School shortly after the war, drawn by art teacher Violet Pearse
by Wally Barton. But there also more reflective studies, like that of an empty, tranquil, interior view of Christchurch Priory. Deane left PGS in 1953 for the Portsmouth College of Art, School of Architecture, where his training included sketching al fresco in the summer, as well as measured drawing of buildings and carving in stone. His first job took him to London where he helped design housing estates, shopping centres and railway stations. But, in 1970, Deane’s passion for Portsmouth’s architectural heritage and traditional training provided solid foundations for his work as a historic buildings architect for Portsmouth City Council. His first job was to restore a neglected Southsea Castle, and he was architect for the conversion of the school’s close neighbours, the Clarence Barracks and the NAAFI building, which were successfully turned into the City Museum, Art Gallery and Record Office.
Now, a selection of Deane’s sketches from the past fifty years have appeared in a handsomely produced book, available from Waterstone’s, Deane Clark’s Portsmouth. There are painstakingly detailed townscapes, streetscenes, portraits of buildings and maritime views, providing a tour of the ever-changing city seen through Deane’s distinctive eye and pen. “Over the years my style has loosened,” says Deane, whose preferred medium is pen and ink.
All around the city there are examples of Deane’s skill, imagination and passion for historic buildings and ancient monuments and dedication to public service.
Deane cuts a distinctive figure in Portsmouth and Southsea, black beret and pen in hand, cheerily chatting with bystanders, a top drawer Old Portmuthian and proud Portsmuthian. His new volume will be a welcome addition to the school’s archive collection, alongside the book published by his inspirational teacher all those years ago, Violet Pearse. Deane Clark’s Portsmouth is available from Tricorn Books, 131 High Street, Old Portsmouth (opposite the Senior School), (023) 9273 6271, Waterstone’s and Amazon, at £18.95.
His talents were put to wider use, across the county, when he joined the Historic Buildings Bureau of Hampshire County Council and subsequently became its head until 1996. A member of the Portsmouth Society, Deane continues to take an active interest in local heritage and conservation.
ideMASTTERrack InsHEAD The latest OP to be in the spotlight for Inside Track is Andrew Jarman (1968-1974). He left PGS with a report card which described him as “a young man of high intelligence, pleasant personality and vigorous energy”. With an ancestry rooted in education, Andrew says that he tried desperately to escape the family curse but failed, and after reading Mathematics at Hertford College Oxford, embarked on a career in teaching which took him all around the country. He has been Headmaster of Lancaster Royal Grammar School (LRGS) for ten years. In existence for over six hundred years, LRGS is a selective, state voluntary-aided school for boys, both day and boarding with over 1,000 pupils aged 11 to 18. The school’s most recent OFSTED report was the best in the country, recognising LRGS as being ‘outstanding’ in all categories.
The greatest misconception about Headmasters is...? that we have a sense of humour - we don’t. If I hadn’t gone into teaching, I would have loved to have been...? married to a beautiful, rich South American heiress. The best piece of career advice I have ever been given is...? not to be too picky about the “South American” bit The most rewarding part of the job is...? being able to provide a life-changing educational experience to pupils of modest means or deprived backgrounds. I am passionate about social mobility and the grammar school ideal. My abiding memory of PGS is...? being slippered by Ray “Duffy” Clayton for playing classroom football in the middle of his Geography lesson, when he had nipped out the back for a fag. How times have changed!
The Camber 2006
Above: St George’s Square 1963 Below: Inner Camber fishing boats at high tide 2006
What single piece of advice would you give to anyone new to the teaching profession? To steal ideas shamelessly from the best classroom practitioners. Visit their lessons, team-teach with them, relish their feedback, soak up their experience. But never mimic them - you have to develop your own style. How would you like to be remembered at Lancaster Royal Grammar School? Prehumously - I’m not sure there is such a word, but it has got to be better than posthumously. I’m looking forward to a long and happy retirement (when the time comes). What has been your proudest achievement? At the moment LRGS is the only state school in the country with a clean sweep of “1 - Outstanding” grades in OFSTED inspections for both our day and boarding provision. It is a great tribute to a great team. What are the essential characteristics of an Andrew Jarman school assembly? “Good morning, gentlemen, please sit down”, reading specs, getting messages across through storytelling, fumbled sheafs of sports results, lots of good news stories and congratulations, a stern word when necessary, “Have a nice day”(or similar).
Christchurch Priory from Portmuthian, July 1953
Individual who influenced your career choice the most? The boy who said “Oh - I see” when I eventually got him to understand addition of fractions whilst on my teaching practice. These are the three words of blessing for all Maths teachers.
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Bach, Vaughan-Williams and Davison - Tribute to a music master
The official reason for his firing was failure to carry out his cathedral duties. It had become his habit to take a break during the Sunday sermon at The Dolphin, the pub across the road. But one Sunday, the sermon was unexpectedly short, and when the next hymn was announced the organ remained embarrassingly silent.
In the last issue of Opus John Owens OP (1953-63) penned an affectionate portrait of David ‘Egg’ Lenton and urged readers to submit their own recollections of PGS teaching staff who have left an indelible impression on them. Here, writing from his home in Canada, Professor Mike Craddock OP (1945-1954) takes up the baton and recalls a truly inspirational teacher.... It was a curious coincidence that this year’s choice of works for my choir here in Vancouver should be Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Vaughan Williams’s Sea Symphony - the very bookends of my experience as a PGS chorister around 60 years ago. Of course, there’d been some singing at elementary school, but that was confined to hymns and folk songs: All Things Bright and Beautiful, The Ash Grove, and (Pompey being a naval town) Hearts of Oak spring to mind. And there were endless repetitions of Ten Green Bottles and One man Went to Mow as we sat in an airraid shelter waiting for the all-clear siren. But at the Grammar School it was a serious business, with the whole school, some 700 boys, taking part, under our dynamic director of music, John A. Davison.
Even the tone-deaf (or groaners as he called them) were not excused, but urged to at least move their lips, even if they made no sound. From the vantage point of my struggles with just the first half of the Christmas Oratorio last autumn, after a lifetime’s experience, it seems extraordinary that I could have coped with the treble part as a 12-year-old - and we performed all six cantatas, with only a few cuts! Although
the bass soloist was a master, all the other solos were taken by pupils – probably ones who had acquired a bit more experience as choristers at the cathedral, where John had a joint appointment as organist and choirmaster. The orchestra was that of the local amateur Philharmonic Society, of which he was also Director. There were no crib-tapes or midi files in those days, of course - just one lesson in class and a choir rehearsal each week. One of the final rehearsals was conducted by Sir Adrian Boult (one of Britain’s Big Four conductors at that time, along with Barbirolli, Beecham and Sargent), on a tour to encourage local choirs - though I fancy we felt we were being examined more than helped. John’s own technique is well described in this excerpt from the Washington and Marsh school history:
“What can one say of the confidence, the technique, the magnetism of a man who browbeats and cajoles 700 initially reluctant teenagers so that they give an inspired rendering of Bach’s Mass in B minor, the Brahms Requiem and Handel’s Messiah? A Davison rehearsal was a positive tour de force. The maestro would play the piano standing up, conduct with his hair, and suddenly stop to give a mammoth imposition - never collected - to a boy in the middle of the tenth row who was not singing.” Some years after me, John Owens OP remembers “ John Davison’s long-suffering English Sheepdog snoozing beneath the grand piano as his master banged away on the keyboard, shouting his head off at the whole school as we rehearsed in the old Hall.”
John Davison – looking uncharacteristically sedate
Sir Adrian Boult helps with the Christmas Oratorio rehearsals in 1949. Boult congratulated the school on “its attitude to the music displayed by all, as well as the singing of it”.
John was a larger than life character. The cathedral choir sometimes rehearsed in his house nearby, and one member recollected:
Davison in 1950, taken from a staff group portrait
For the Mass and Messiah my voice had sunk to alto, and for the Requiem, a repeat Mass, and Mendelssohn’s Elijah, to bass - but whatever our voices, John’s enthusiasm infected us all. Few of us had ever attended a classical concert before singing in one, but for the majority, it opened our ears to a new and wonderful world.
“......turning up and tripping over bottles scattered around in the front room where we rehearsed, and on one occasion...... some scuttling and a young lady being shown out.”
At that time John was not married, but he certainly enjoyed female company. In those days, the navy’s ships often went on 6-month or year-long tours to distant parts of the Empire. This resulted in a number of lonely wives being left behind in port, and John had a reputation for being ready to provide solace. This weakness eventually led to his downfall (some years after my time).
“What about the Vaughan Williams bookend?”, you may be asking. Well, in my final year, we had performed Elijah at Christmas, so to keep us awake in class during the next term, John introduced us to the Sea Symphony, for which he was then preparing the city Choral Society. Nothing from Bach to Brahms had prepared us for this - the frequent changes in key and tempo, the ubiquitous accidentals,....... We were impressed but nonplussed - and grateful that we didn’t have to perform it. As a footnote, I had the good fortune to see Vaughan Williams on one occasion. It was at the first Oxford performance of his 8th Symphony, by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Boult. This was in February 1957, the year before he died, and though somewhat ravaged by age, at 84 he still cut an impressive figure - and was to produce yet another symphony.
My final encounters with John - and perhaps his greatest moments - were after I’d left for university. These were in two successive Decembers at the Albert Hall in London, whither he had spirited over a thousand choristers from the school and twenty other choral societies for a performance of Messiah under his baton - with no less than the London Symphony Orchestra! Ex-pupils like myself had been cajoled into attending to add numbers and perhaps experience - though not much of that in my case, as I was by then a bass, but knew only the alto part. (Our choir’s accompanist, organizer of a local sing-along Messiah, will confirm that I still haven’t learnt the bass part properly!) Nevertheless, these were memorable experiences. Ralph Vaughan-Williams (1872-1958)
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Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
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Ask the archivist
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What is the most unusual item in the archive? Any choice of what might be thought of as unusual will seem commonplace when compared with some of the artefacts held in the School Museum in Victorian times. In early editions of The Portmuthian the curator would regularly thank OPs for their diverse and often eccentric donations. Many old boys served in the armed services during Britain’s imperial heyday, and their offerings often reflected the colonial interests of the time. In June1884, for example, the curator acknowledged receipt of an assegai, a Pondo head rest (formerly belonging to Damas, King of Pondo), a piece of shot broken in penetrating armour plate, a kaffir pipe and two bone spear heads. The same entry includes “a curious nut from Demerara, a pair of wooden soled Yorkshire clogs, a preserved snake in spirits, a Patagonian necklace of birds’ bones, a piece of Arctic coal, a pair of stag’s horns and a petrified cat’s skull. Putting aside sympathy for the petrified cat, and all the other wildlife that must have died for the school over the years, the Museum’s haphazard collection of curiosities were a great educational resource. Alongside the more freakish items were fossils, coins and preserved flowers and ferns. Though there appears to be no evidence that masters incorporated them in their teaching, the School Museum offered the bored Victorian schoolboy the opportunity to glimpse an exotic world outside the classroom, far beyond Portsea Island. Such artefacts fired imaginations and made the exciting adventures of Henty, Haggard and Westerman (OP), more real. The current School archive cannot, alas, compete with this; it does not attempt to bring the world to the pupil. In some ways the internet delivers from all over the world that which the School Museum did in the past. The idiosyncratic, the bizarre and the educational are brought to our attention, often in a random way, possibly giving young minds an impression of the real world that is false and dangerous. Certainly, the contents of the School Museum suggest an obsession with hunting, killing and Empire. Though largely made up of paper records and photographs, the archive does hold some items related to school life, including caps, blazers, furniture and science apparatus. If pushed, the items I would identify as the most unusual are these four delicate pieces of glass - Geissler tubes – which were used in dim and distant physics lessons to demonstrate the principles of electrical glow discharge. Each shape would present different lighting effects and one is very tempted to see if they work today! Geissler tubes from the PGS archive
A PGS Neighbourhood Issue no 3 of Opus contained interesting articles on John Coghlan and James Clavell, bringing back memories of the 1920s and 1930s. What they did not disclose is that both lived in Worthing Road, Southsea, the hub of an area of homes of a number of PGS scholars. John Sa
dden
Who is the oldest living Old Portmuthian?
John Braun, photographed when Henry VIII closed Southwick Priory in 1538 (in a re-enactment involving PGS at the Portchester Pageant in 1932).
I recently had the pleasure of meeting John Cromer Braun, who was born a few days after the Battle of Jutland in 1916. John joined PGS at the age of eight and scored his first literary success in his first year with a story about a penny coin, from its minting to its slipping from the fingers of a schoolboy, rolling along a gutter and then down a drain. His first published poems, “Light” and “Portchester Castle” appeared in The Portmuthian in December 1933. John’s fondness and gratitude to the school for “instilling the will to learn” is clear, laying the foundations for varied and successful careers in both law and literature.
While serving his country as an intelligence officer in Cairo in the 1940s, John co-founded the Salamander Society, the name alluding to cultural regeneration following the war, and co-edited and contributed to its first publication Salamander: A Miscellany of Poetry. Under the name John Cromer, he also co-wrote Under Egypt’s Spell (1991) about the influence of the country on English writers, and One Side of Gemini (1996), a collection of poetry spanning six decades. John became an international lawyer and has held posts in trade associations and the Commission of the European Communities and was instrumental in setting up an advertising standards authority. Following retirement he became a consultant in European consumer affairs and fair trading. He was appointed O.B.E. in 1973. John is still writing, having penned Ebbing Tide in June this year and also contributed the article A PGS Neighbourhood which appears on the facing page. He possibly has the distinction of being our most senior living OP at the age of 95, though Opus would be very interested to hear from anyone who knows of other nonagenarian or centenarian OPs. Ebbing Tide
Flotsam I am a piece of driftwood Swirling in the sea of time, Weeds of the past surround me As I float upon an ever ebbing tide
Jetsam The ebb is almost at an end, Leaving me cast on a barren shore On which the sands of life are spread As from a broken hour-glass.
I was born at no 51 on 7 June 1916 and joined the School in 1924. Four doors to the south, at no 43, lived Jimmy Hughes, who was a friend of Wally Hammond and was killed in World War One. His sister, Marjorie (who married OP Roy Kenroy) lived with us for a while after her mother died and was like an aunt to me. No 43 was then occupied by the Easton family. R.C. (Bob) Easton was a little older than me but we went to school together every day until we left and our families had holidays together at Bembridge IOW. Bob was killed in World War Two.
Wotton family, the daughter, Winifred, being a pupil of Byculla School, which was also attended by my first girlfriend Doreen Whitaker (who married Ian Mead, another OP killed in World War Two). The Clavell family lived a few doors down in Worthing Road. The daughter Peggy, another Bycullian, studied art and painted my portrait when I was seventeen. James, or Jimmy as he was known to us, her younger brother, was junior to me at school and I saw more of him at their home than I did at school.
John Coghlan lived diagonally opposite me in the corner house, the entrance to which was in Junction (now Wimbledon Park) Road and before we went to PGS he would call at our house and politely ask: “John Braun’s Mother, can John come out to play?” His family moved in the late 1920s and the house was taken by the
Back on our side of the road, on the corner of Hamilton Road, lived the MacDonald brothers, both of whom went to PGS. Going further south, on the other side of the road was the opening of Taswell Road, home of H.B. (Harry) Bishop, still a stalwart OP. The road took a turn towards the north and half way up lived the Berney brothers, Geoffrey, who was another World War Two
John Coghlan OP (1923-27)
Bob Easton OP (1923-33)
John Cromer Braun OP (1924-34)
victim, and Harry. The road went on to join Junction Road where Julian Linington (like me, in his nineties) lived at no 29. We did not realise it at the time but after his family had moved from that address, one of his sisters became my first wife. Is there any other part of the city that can claim so many PGS scholars in such close proximity to each other? John Braun OP (1924-1934)
Jimmy Clavell OP (1935-40)
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OPUS • Issue 5 • Autumn 2011
Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
Paralympic Sailor shows Tom the Ropes Although Tom Cleary OP (2004-2011) left school at the end of last term to join his family at Christ’s Hospital where his father Andrew took on the role of Director of Music in September, PGS had one last treat in store for him to send him on his way over the summer holidays. Tom had, you see, submitted the correct answer to the ‘What happened next?’ audience round in the PGS Question of Sport event held last year to raise money for the Bursary Fund set up in memory of Mr Blewett and the Sports Department’s ‘56@45’ campaign to build a school in Cambodia. His prize was the chance to experience a day on the water with Skandia Team GBR sailor Helena Lucas, one of the sporting celebrities to take part in the event. Helena is one of only a handful of sailors in the world who knows what it is like to campaign for both the Paralympic and Olympic Games and has previously been nominated for the ISAF Rolex World Sailor of the Year for her achievements in the sport. With Helena’s punishing training schedule and participation in regattas all over the world, Tom has had to be patient in claiming his prize. But the chance to receive individual coaching from one of the best exponents in the world was most definitely worth the wait. “I had a fantastic day today visiting the Weymouth and Portland Sailing Academy, the venue for the sailing at the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics,” said Tom, “Helena was my host for the day – she was such a brilliant teacher and we had great fun.”
When Tom arrived at the Academy, whose Chairman, Edward Leask OP (1955-1965), was himself a pupil at PGS, the weather didn’t look at all good - there was no wind and it started to rain heavily. Then having selected a Laser Bahia, just as Helena and her young protégé had finished rigging up and set out, the rain stopped and there was a gentle wind. “We had about an hour of great sailing and it was a wonderful experience to sail with a Paralympic medal winner! At lunch I had a chance to meet other members of Team GB who were all really friendly and welcoming. After lunch again the weather improved and we had several hours out on the water where Helena gave me some brilliant tuition and we had lots of laughs too.” “It was a really great day. I was so pleased to have had such a unique opportunity to visit the Olympic site at Weymouth and to spend the day sailing with such a brilliant and inspirational sportswoman. It will be a day I shall not forget and I look forward with great enthusiasm to following the sailing classes in the Olympics and Paralympics where I will be rooting all the way for Helena and the teammates I met during the day. Thank you to the Development Office and Sports Department for organising a Question of Sport at PGS at which I was fortunate enough to win this unique prize!”
Stokes Bay Sailing Club 50 year reunion This event was organised by Garth Chapman OP (1953-1961) to reunite those who were cadet members of the club in the early sixties. OPs attending were Roger Wilkins, John Parr, Chris Durant, John Bannister, Peter Moore, John Donnelly, Paul Blackwell and Garth Chapman. It was a good opportunity to catch up with old friends from St John’s and Portsmouth High School and of course, many others.
Ash days:
Simon Gray at PGS, 1945-47 Before Portsmouth was bombed by the Luftwaffe, a four year old Simon Gray and his brother, Nigel, aged five, were sent out of harm’s way to Montreal to be looked after by their grandmother, a sherry addict who failed to disguise her addiction with peppermints. The boys were sent to a local girls’ school, the Priory, in the hope that it would be a civilising influence, but it appeared to compound the boys’ sense of disorientation. They were enrolled at Portsmouth Grammar School in September 1945 when they were still, according to Gray, “Canadian louts” but had acquired “girlish manners”.
It proved to be very successful and another is planned for next year any qualifiers who would like to go on the mailing list should contact popschapman@gmail.com
Simon Gray at Hilsea playing fields in 1946
The boys believed they were going for a holiday, but then their mother said she was going to fetch some milk and disappeared. It was left to Grandma to explain that the milk, so to speak, was in England. The outwardly resilient young evacuees adapted to North American ways, playing street baseball, reading unsuitable comics (Batman and The Green Hornet), fighting in street gangs, pilfering and smoking. Three eventful years later, after the smoke over Portsmouth had cleared, the boys were despatched back home to Hayling Island.
Their shocked mother, “who had sent off a pair of Christopher Robins and got back a pair of Bowery boys”, began a programme of rehabilitation. The crew cuts were grown out, the jug ears tamed and their native English language gradually restored, with particular emphasis on “water”, “tomatoes”, “laugh” and “brown cow”.
Their father had been a GP before the war, but was now a pathologist, a profession which did not deter him from smoking both cigarettes and a pipe. Their mother had been a world class gymnast but smoked heavily, even on the tennis court. While umpiring hockey matches she would alternate between sucking a cigarette and blowing her whistle. It was well known that nicotine aided concentration, an essential quality of the successful sportsman, or, indeed, any other profession. Sporting heroes on cigarette cards, avidly collected by small boys, reinforced the message. That was not the only draw of the cigarette. In local cinemas, Bogart and Bacall and every star of film noir made smoking deeply, moodily and breathlessly sexy.
PGS pupils help make their classrooms habitable, 1945
The Portsmouth cityscape was a patchwork quilt of bomb sites. The Guildhall was a shell, familiar landmarks and streets had disappeared, one in five homes were uninhabitable, domestic interiors were rudely exposed and shrapnel and decomposing body parts lay under the rubble. The Gray household, “Mallows”, in Ferry Road, Hayling, survived, despite the rural Island having been used as a decoy site. Fires had been lit on mudflats and farms to simulate a city ablaze, luring the Luftwaffe to attack the quiet and inoffensive neighbour of Britain’s premier naval port. Portsmouth Grammar Lower School had been badly hit by some of the estimated 40,000 incendiary bombs that rained down on the city. Though the Senior School in the High Street – the former Cambridge Barracks - escaped with minor roof damage, its interior resembled a bombsite after its occupation by the military during the pupils’ evacuation to Bournemouth. Returning pupils rolled up their sleeves, helped clear up the mess and make the classrooms shipshape once again. The school was, according to its magazine, The Portmuthian, “rising phoenix-like from its own ashes”. continued...
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OPUS • Issue 5 • Autumn 2011
Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
Ash days: Simon Gray at PGS, 1945-47 The Gray brothers arrived at the school in September 1945, Simon, at least, as a boarder. He stayed at the school’s newly opened boarding house at 28 South Parade, three miles, as the seagull flies across Langstone Harbour, from the smoky Gray household. Burgoyne House was better known as “The Shack” and, as the name suggests, life there was Spartan. There was, however, ample space for games in and out of doors, and, in pre-television days, a rare luxury, a film projector, which provided popular evening entertainment. The Housemaster in charge of the 47 boarders was Mr Bruce Poole who, Gray remembers, ran a tight and ruthless regime. “Dressings down” in front of other boys were a regular and humiliating occurrence. A smoky room could be aired, but a wet bed remained wet. With the Lower School fire-damaged, Gray and his schoolmates attended classes on the main High Street site which had, a century before, been occupied by the Portsmouth Theatre, known latterly as the Theatre Royal. Famously immortalised by Dickens in Nicholas Nickleby where Vincent Crummles and his troupe trod the boards, it attracted most of the great actors and actresses of the late 18th and early 19th century. A theatrical production, part of the school’s Christmas Concert of 1946, looked forward, as the country did, to a bright new tomorrow. War-time shortages and rationing continued, but a brave new optimistic world was being forged out of the ashes and hopes of wreckage
and victory. The long-term promise of Socialism and the instant gratification of smoking were irresistible, hanging in the air, floating wreaths of dreamy smoke. But this Christmas Concert looked beyond those intoxicating post-war dreams and into the far and distant future, that of the new millennium. A little goblin “looks at the world in 2000”, The Portmuthian, reported. The future-struck little fellow encounters robots in this “delightful fantasy”. In a supporting role, presumably sans fag, was the young Gray. Come 2000, and in his sixties, Gray the leading playwright was never without his Silk Cut as he grappled with his writing on a new personal computer. Sports Day brought the boy winning ribbons in four races, solid manly medals having presumably been melted down to make Spitfires. He was a boy, according to The Portmuthian, “who did well and shows promise as a future school athlete”. Gray the promising athlete was clearly not held back, at least not yet, by Gray the habitual smoker. A year later he came second in the long jump and triumphed in the onelength race at Pitt Street Baths, in a time of 24.2 seconds.
Was this sporting success driven by an urge to impress? After all, Simon Gray was in love. Miss Foster was “a pretty young woman, soft and round”. She reminded him of his Grandmother, but without the sherry and peppermint breath. He adored her and she went out of her way to help him adapt to the
“The Shack”, c 1946 – Burgoyne House, South Parade, where Simon Gray boarded. The site is now occupied by a block of flats, Fastnet House. Courtesy of Peter Henderson.
yard of intestines removed. His ruthlessly honest Smoking Diaries achieved “a vigour, humour and humanity” in the face of the pain and humiliation of terminal illness. He died at the age of 71 in 2008.
Mr Watson, a captivating Magwitch, in 1949
Miss June Foster on Lower School Sports Day, 1949
school. “She helped me to catch up to where I would have been if I’d started my education there,” he later recalled. Miss June Foster was a pioneer, one of the first women teachers at PGS, taken on in 1943 because of a shortage of males and as a concession to the maternal needs of young boys. Despite being put in charge of stationery, she stayed for nine years. Gray’s other favourite teacher was an elderly cockney, a man well over fighting age, who nevertheless possessed “a foul temper”. Mr A G Watson was the Master of the Lower School, a stalwart who taught at the school for a third of a century. A gifted amateur musician, he organised and inspired an orchestra and Glee Club, but was remembered by Gray for his enthusiastic readings of classic novels. Mr Watson read Great Expectations “with gestures, growls and a great range of facial expressions”. As Magwitch he “turned the whole class upside down in the graveyard and dangled us by our ankles, every one of us, by the sheer power of his reading personality.” But he was also a convincing Miss Havisham, Estella, Joe and Jaggers. Despite his temper, which was sharply expressed by a cuff across the head, or a hurled blackboard rubber, Gray was extremely fond of him. “He was a great teacher,” he recalled, “of the sort now jailable”.
In the two years that the boys were at the grammar school, they were successfully rehabilitated into “basic English males” and they added “Sir” and “Miss” to their vocabulary. Simon’s smoking habit, however, remained.
In 1947, London beckoned Dr Gray’s pathological skills, and the cloud of Grays skitted away to the Big Smoke, where the eleven year old Simon attended a preparatory school. Here he was, he recalled in his memoirs, sexually and physically abused by staff. From there to Westminster, to Trinity College Oxford, and then on to lecture in English at Queen Mary’s College, inspired, perhaps, in some small way, by Watson. The inspiration for the novels and plays that followed was less speculatively drawn from Simon Gray’s self-acknowledged neuroses. Many of his characters were haunted by the happiness - or horror - of childhood and school. Much of his work is filled with disgust for the betrayals of contemporary middle-class life; a lot of it is doused in alcohol, cloaked in smoke, the twin obsessions and cravings that dominated his life. The drinking stopped one evening in 1997 when, at dinner with his friend Alan Bates, he started vomiting black blood and had to have a
Sources: The Portmuthian 1945-47 The Year of the Jouncer by Simon Gray Early Diaries by Simon Gray
In The Late Middle Classes, which was revived at the Donmar last year, a Hayling Island schoolboy is being hectored by his mother, a tennis-playing snob, about her wish that he win a scholarship to Westminster. She sees it as a way of escaping the pettiness and insularity of life on Hayling. The boy objects. “What’s wrong with Portsmouth Grammar School? A lot of boys from around here go there – all my friends – and they say it’s jolly good.” It is clear that Gray’s two years at the school, from 1945 to 1947, were a stable and happy time. “I sometimes think that the most important days of my life were spent at Portsmouth Grammar School”, Gray wrote in a letter to the school shortly before he died, “I remember it with affection and gratitude...” Happily, the school has recently made contact with Victoria Gray (née Rothschild), Simon Gray’s widow. Mrs Gray has now visited the school on two occasions, including attending a special evening event earlier in the year to celebrate her late husband’s accomplishement as a playwright, diarist and novelist given by BAFTA Award winning Producer-Director Margy Kinworth and the acclaimed actor Toby Stephens. Mrs Gray has also kindly donated a complete folio of her husband’s works to the school library.
Above: Mrs Victoria Gray (second right), widow of Simon Gray, with (from left) BAFTA winning producer Margy Kinworth, Headmaster James Priory and stage, film and television actor Toby Stephens. The photograph was taken at PGS in June when the school hosted an evening celebrating the life and work of Simon Gray.
Left: Montage of a selection of Simon Gray’s work, including a poster for the 2011 revival of Butley, starring Dominic West at the Duchess Theatre. Also featured is a poster for Cell Mates, which famously, but briefly, starred Stephen Fry.
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OPUS • Issue 5 • Autumn 2011
Class of 2011 This summer, the school bade a fond farewell to another batch of Year 13 leavers, some of whom had begun their PGS journey in the Pre-Prep. The Leavers’ Service in the Cathedral of St Thomas and lunch on Governors Green is a chance for the school to herald the achievements of each passing generation of leavers. This year, our newest Old Portmuthians staged a ‘March through the Arch’, processing down the High Street, which had been especially closed for the event, to the Cathedral for the Leavers’ Service. Many of them were sporting the Leavers’ Tie which they had been presented with on their final day in school. The tie incorporates the school colours prior to 1903, based on the contrasting shades of blue of the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge. A small black stripe has been added as an elegiac note for the passing of school days.
Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk Here we reproduce the address given by Senior Prefect Daniel Frampton (below) to the Class of 2011 at the Leavers’ Service...
tions upon leaving Concerning the hopes and aspira The Portsmouth Grammar School Daniel Frampton
’ and today marks e, except from a vending machine It is said that ‘change is inevitabl far. For all, it is the end so of us have yet faced in our lives perhaps the biggest change any of your time at the only end y is even more significant; the of school entirely, for some, toda school you have ever known. got used to moving you would think by now that I had PGS has been my fifth school and least because I know has become harder than ever, not on. I haven’t. In fact, accepting it are ourselves for what front of my mind; how do we prep the question that sits at the fore opportunities we us well; the support, guidance and is next? PGS has no doubt served tanding, thriving and here have developed us into outs have encountered during our time futures take us? No our will re it is time to move on. Whe successful individuals. But sadly . here from ge g is for certain, it’s all chan matter what we hope for, one thin the most uncertain. exciting part of our lives, but also We are entering the freest, most felt constant are y or a gap year the things we had Whether we are choosing Universit It is a scary thought but they may not seem so anymore. beginning to enter phases where us at 1025, and for lunch, no longer be lovingly served for warm cookies and bacon rolls will once again. rn to being an odd combination pasta cheese and beans will retu ever before. It is ing in our times faster than it has Yet joking aside, change is happen computational abilities r will be created that exceeds the predicted that ‘by 2013 a compute computational abilities of a £500 computer will exceed the of the human brain, and by 2049, pace did not exist, but s ago Facebook, YouTube and MyS the entire human species’. 10 year for better of for worse, the a month and have transformed, they now receive 250 million hits ia manufactures 13 new t of the mobile phone? Today Nok way that we communicate. Wha 2000 text messages the average teenager sending over mobile phones every second, with rs, that are the primary ile devices, not laptops or compute a month . By 2020 it will be mob building now fits into your So what used to fit into an entire connection tool to the Internet . ething the size of a pocket in 25 years will ‘fit into som pocket, and what now fits into your red blood cell’ . led by changes big or my parting words are not to be dazz Yet as we prepare to leave PGS, ys remember to ask r walk of life that we choose to alwa small, good or bad, but in whateve e the best out of it?” oneself “what am I doing to mak replace the Internet? kly, the future it is you. What will What is the future? Well quite fran problems of climate diseases? How will we tackle the Will we find a treatment for genetic change? You decide. le, release that album, te that invention, cross that jung • So be courageous. Dare to crea future because about doing. In short, create the that as of yet you only dreamed oyster. somebody has to; the world is your technologies not created, jobs that do not exist yet, using • Innovate. We are preparing for to stay one step ahead. . The only way to stay on top, is to solve problems not thought of e are 1,300 people just are one in a million, in China ther • Never be complacent. ‘If you English-speaking that is soon to be the number one like you’, all living in the country destination in the world . s science fiction. for granted today, was last century’ • Read. So much of what we take turn of the 20th the ; all imagined in novels before Scuba diving, the Internet, the iPod century . by the end of your third information is being created that • Be open-minded. So much new . Simply having a learnt in the first will be out of date year at university, half of what you ess. degree is not the only key to succ what is around the ge comes--when we do not know And remember, it is only when chan ‘the only way to make ce to shine. Because in the end, corner--that we really have the chan dance’ . into it, move with it, and join the sense out of change is to plunge I wish you all the best of luck and
happiness.
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OPUS • Issue 5 • Autumn 2011
Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
The amazing fly past
of a remarkable PGS mum! When Mrs Joy Lofthouse was a PGS mum with two boys Peter and Michael Hartman at the school back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, no one would have guessed at her astonishing past. Long before she married and had a family, she and her older sister Yvonne were among an elite band of women pilots flying military aircraft during World War II.
They were two of just 164 young female fliers among more than 1,100 men in the Auxiliary Transport Army, ferrying 300,000-plus aircraft of 130 different types from factories to front line airfields and later, badly damaged craft back again for repairs. ATA moved an average of 141 planes a day to and from RAF and Fleet Air Arm squadrons throughout the war and more planes daily during mid-1942 at the peak of national aircraft production than British Airways did on a typical day five years ago! Back then, ATA pilots’ training was brief and basic – there was a manual with a page on each type of aircraft, from single seat Hurricanes to massive Lancaster bombers, and often, very little time to read it. But that didn’t faze Joy who says you only need a few simple facts to know how to fly anything – just how to take off, take off speed, landing speed and stalling speed!
Joy flew almost 20 different types of plane but her favourite was the Spitfire.
‘You felt part of the aeroplane. I would never pass up the opportunity to fly one. It was the perfect lady’s aeroplane. As many of us said, you just felt as though you were wearing it as it fitted so snugly.
Although Joy acknowledges she and her fellow ATA ladies were trailblazers for women pilots, especially in the Armed Forces, she believes there are still relatively few at the controls because it is a particularly arduous lifestyle rather than through discrimination.
‘I remarked to Spitfire inventor Reginald Mitchell’s son recently that his father must have designed it specifically for ladies – he said, to the contrary, his father would never have envisaged women becoming pilots and taking on such an important role as we did in the ATA.’
High-flier: Mrs Lofthouse (standing next to the front wheel) at an airfield in Sherburn-in-Elmet, near Leeds, in 1945
Flying without navigational aids, ground contact or weapons, an ATA pilot’s job was an extremely dangerous one but Joy says their biggest enemy was the weather.
‘We were the first women allowed anywhere near a military aircraft yet alone to fly one,’ said Joy, who hadn’t even driven a car at the time.
She says she often feared she had lost another of her nine lives, particularly on one very foggy flight to Scotland when she was relieved to touch down safely. Barely out of their teens, she and her sister Yvonne, already a war widow, joined ATA in 1943 after reading an appeal in the aviation magazine Aeroplane for civilians to come forward to train as pilots because of the shortage of qualified fliers. (Joy candidly confesses she only read Aeroplane to keep up with the RAF chaps from the neighbouring Cotswolds airbases who talked of nothing but flying!)
ATA’s female fliers were affectionately known as airborne beauties and were the unsung heroines of the Battle of Britain, but Joy (88) has always maintained they were simply doing their duty. She feels very strongly that thousands of other women remain unrecognised for their role in the war effort. ‘They were equally important and they, like us, were doing their bit, perhaps working in factories but without any of the kudos we enjoyed. And there we were doing something very exciting,’ said Joy, who was based at Thame, near Oxford, and more locally at Hamble-le-Rice.
Although there was some initial hostility towards the women pilots, Joy says she never experienced any prejudice and that ATA was, in fact, a fine example of sexual and racial tolerance with men and women from five continents all working wonderfully together and earning themselves the nickname of the ‘Foreign Legion of the Air’. ‘I am sure sexual discrimination is a modern invention. When war broke out, women did everything and men gladly accepted it because we were all doing whatever we could to help our country and we were all in it together. ‘It was different when the war was over and lots of men were demobbed. I would have loved to have carried on flying – but it was not to be. Dan Air didn’t even accept a woman onto a flight deck until the 1950s,’ she says.
After the war, Joy left her high flying life behind and married Czechoslovakian Spitfire pilot George Hartman. They moved to Portsmouth and brought up their family, OPs Peter and Michael and Lyn, who went to Portsmouth High School. After divorcing, Joy wed former bomber pilot Charles Lofthouse and both became teachers. They moved to Birmingham and Rye before returning to the Cotswolds, Joy’s childhood home.
Daughter Lyn said: ‘My father was a fighter pilot and my stepfather was a bomber pilot and I suppose my mother didn’t think that what she did was that important.’ In 2008 the Government acknowledged the valuable contribution ATA made to the war effort by awarding members an honorary commemorative badge of courage.
A BBC Television series Spitfire Women featuring their remarkable role in World War Two brought a lot of publicity for the few surviving female pilots in the service. ‘I don’t think any of my children even knew I flew in the war until relatively recently and I have only started to re-live those years since retiring,’ said widowed Joy, who is often a very special guest of honour at air shows and aviation industry events.
Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton enjoying the City of London Salute reception in the company of Joy Lofthouse
continued...
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OPUS • Issue 5 • Autumn 2011
Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
Rank outsider
The amazing fly past
of a remarkable PGS mum!
MICHAEL HARTMAN (1951-2004) BETTER TO FAIL THAN REGRET NOT TRYING Mrs Lofthouse has donated a generous bursary to be used ‘where most needed’ in memory of her younger son Michael Hartman OP (1959-1968) who died seven years ago, aged 53, after a long battle against a rare form of cancer. Here, with the help of older brother OP Peter (1959-1965) and sister Lyn, who was a pupil at Portsmouth High when PGS was boys only, is a tribute to him. Michael joined the school in 1959 and shone from the start, quickly establishing himself as top of his form. When he left, almost ten years later, then Headmaster C MacDonald wrote in support of a university scholarship application, that Michael had enjoyed ‘a successful career academically, socially and athletically’ – and that very much summed up the rest of his life as a gifted man who worked hard, played hard and was a true and loyal friend, generous with his time and money. He was the Lower School’s Head Boy in 1961-62 and also Head of Privett. He gained sports colours at virtually everything, excelling at athletics, boxing, cricket, cross country, football, tennis, rugby and swimming. He was the captain of several teams, including the 1st XI rugby side, where he was a talented fly-half. Later, Michael took up and shone at skiing and golf but squash was to become his favourite sport and he was an exceptional player. Despite his illness, he was runner up in the over 50 men’s competition in the California State Squash Championships the year before he died. He was also very good tennis player and qualified as a coach. After PGS, he went to Reading University to study maths but switched to computer science, a decision which opened doors work-wise around the world, starting at IBM in Havant, stopping briefly in Europe and Scandinavia and ending in America, his second home. He had, and will be remembered for, his great sense of humour – Lyn says Michael would make everyone laugh with a suitably funny quip whether you were basking on a yacht in sunny San Francisco Bay or shivering in a cable car in Zermatt. He loved travel, adventure and a challenge – whether he was skiing at Lake Tahoe, on a squash holiday in the Caribbean or cycling through Death Valley in the middle of August. Although he had lost a kidney and undergone two operations to combat liposarcoma, a slow growing soft tissue cancer, Michael was very fit and decided to test himself by sailing around the world with Robin Knox-Johnston’s Clipper Venture. He loved training for the race and his family waved him off from Liverpool Docks on the Glasgow as she set off on a trans-Atlantic trip which he hoped would be a world tour with a difference. Lyn says: ‘I know Mike found the voyage tough but a great experience. One of his responsibilities was to shop for 12 hungry people on each leg of the journey. His years of computer programming meant Glasgow had the most efficient shopping spreadsheet of the entire fleet and the crew never went hungry!’ Glasgow passed through the Panama Canal and onto Hawaii where a routine check up revealed Michael’s cancer had grown. He was forced to abandon the adventure and returned to Britain, living with Lyn and her family while undergoing treatment at the Royal Marsden Hospital, London where he passed away.
Female Air Cadets inspired by Mrs Lofthouse Girls from the school’s RAF section of the Combined Cadet Force were inspired by Mrs Lofthouse after meeting her earlier in the year at the premiere of a play marking the 75th anniversary of the first Spitfire flight from Eastleigh. Mitchell’s Wings was a commemorative play by the Maskers Theatre Company at the Army Museum of Flying at Middle Wallop, near Stockbridge. Corporal Helen Dorricott said: ‘She is amazing and so nonchalant about what she did. She doesn’t think she was brave or heroic – everyone had their duty to help the war effort so she just read a paragraph or two about how to handle a particular plane - and then flew it!’ Helen went to meet Mrs Lofthouse with fellow air cadets Charlotte Walford, Alice Blois, Amy Crellin and Head of the RAF Julian Gillies.
The anonymous critic did not mince his words in his review of a school production of scenes from Corneille’s Horace in October, 1884. “The great defect was that the actors scarcely seemed to appreciate the spirit of the play, the accompanying gesture was weak and often inappropriate”. The fact that the script was in French, the actors were fifteen-year-old boys, and that some were in drag clearly cut no ice. “Most of the performers seemed to lack the true dramatic fire.” Roy Horniman, c 1908
The critic, probably a teacher at the end of a long day, searched for something positive to say. The make-up of the female characters was “particularly effective”. And, not least, and without any more hints of barrel-scraping, “the best piece of acting by far was R. Horniman’s representation of the Roman warrior Valère; his long speech of thirty lines was delivered unhesitatingly and with unfaltering accent”. Roy Horniman was a restless spirit. Born in 1868, he ran away from home and roamed the Continent with an Italian circus, before being recovered by his parents and enrolled at the Portsmouth Grammar School in 1883. His father was William Horniman, Paymaster in Chief for the Royal Navy, whose career had brought him to Britain’s premier naval port from Hastings. Sarah, Roy’s mother, was said to be a member of the Greek aristocracy, though this did not prevent the family settling down in Cottage Grove, Southsea.
Michael lived his life to the full and even in the final stages of his illness, kept true to his own personal motto: ‘Better to fail than regret not trying.’ ‘Peter and I are very happy that our mother Joy has established this bursary, that Michael’s name will live on and his legacy will benefit others who most need help,’ said Lyn. Always a person who enjoyed a challenge, Michael Hartman sets off from Liverpool on the Clipper Glasgow for a round-the-world adventure.
Michael Hartman in 1962
The School magazine in the 1880s, which Horniman was keen to edit.
The household bustled with six children, one mother-in-law and one overworked domestic servant. Roy’s younger brothers, Benjamin and Charles, were to follow him into the school. For the son of a paymaster, Roy’s mathematical abilities were poor but it was clear from an early age that he was not going to follow in his father’s wake. The boy’s strengths were theatrical, linguistic and literary, and he put himself forward as an editor of The Portsmuthian (the Port was plural in those days). There were four applicants for the post and Horniman secured 52 pupil votes, coming second.
The outcome must have been a disappointment, but the number of votes Horniman received appears to contradict a description of him given by a fellow pupil, who remembered him as “self-absorbed and lacking in the kind of communal geniality which endears a boy to his schoolfellows”. Certainly, at the time, great status was attached to the team sports of rugger and cricket, and there is no evidence to suggest that the young Horniman, “a largish, rather red-faced chap”, was remotely interested in such activities. Rather, he chose the challenge and stimulation of the School Debating Society.
Horniman’s approval of the motion that “capital punishment is unworthy of a civilised country” saw him in a minority, a situation he was to become accustomed to throughout his life. In the debate he was up against unyielding Bible-quoters and boys who were, perhaps, a little less cultured, thoughtful and sensitive. Horniman left the school after sitting his final exams in July 1885. He is reported to have travelled to Bruges to complete his education before taking to the stage at the age of 19, playing a number of Shakespearian and other parts at various London theatres and in the provinces. He was evidently successful, going on to appear alongside some of the greatest actors of the age, notably Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson. continued...
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Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
Rank outsider companies prompted him to research and write How to Make the Railways Pay for the War which ran to three editions.
The novel A Gentleman of Paris (1927) was Horniman’s adaptation of his successful stage play “Bellamy the Magnificent”. The filmed version starred Adolphe Menjou.
But Horniman appears not to have been satisfied with an actor’s life and his dramatic interests were finding another outlet in theatrical management and authorship. He was attracted to the personality and work of the playwright Oscar Wilde at a time when Wilde’s name was taboo outside of theatrical circles, but the Wildean influence was to emerge regularly in Horniman’s work. He took up the tenancy and management of the Criterion Theatre, and, in 1899, his first play, Judy, was a success at the Prince of Wales’s Theatre. This was followed by equally popular original comedy productions such as Bellamy the Magnificent, and several successful adaptations of English novels. His own novels and plays were the basis for several films in the 1920s. A contemporary described Horniman as “a well-to-do bachelor who knew what did and what did not suit him, marriage being in the latter category, the social round in the former”. But it was not only in theatrical circles that he moved. During the First World War, he did his bit by becoming chairman of a charity which sent tobacco to soldiers and sailors on active service. Anger at the flagrant wartime profiteering of the private railway
A vegetarian, Horniman was also a pioneering campaigner for what we now describe as animal rights. He was treasurer, and then chairman, of the Blue Cross Fund, a “society for the encouragement of kindness to animals”, and was particularly concerned about the suffering of army horses at the front. He also served on the committee for the Suppression of Cruelties to Performing Animals and was an active campaigner for the British Union of Anti-Vivisectionists. Following his death in 1930, the latter’s magazine, The Abolitionist, described Horniman as “the most eloquent speaker on our platforms… the grace of his diction, and his forceful personality, sent his message straight home to any audience…although a very busy man, he never refused to travel any distance to speak for us…”. The sense that Horniman’s work had not been fully appreciated in his lifetime was clear in the diary entry made by his nephew, serving in the army in what is now West Pakistan. Having learned of his death in a newspaper, he wrote, “Perhaps he’ll be recognised at his true value now he’s dead.”
Three years after Horniman’s death the film A Bedtime Story, starring Maurice Chevalier, was adapted from one of his novels and met with some success. But it was Horniman’s novel Israel Rank, published in 1907, that was to prove his lasting legacy, albeit bastardised, but in a good way, by a talented and equally underrated film director called Robert Hamer. Israel Rank was written by Horniman when he was in his late thirties. It told the story of the murder of six people who stood between the eponymous half-Jewish anti-hero and a dukedom. The Wildean influence is clear in both the wit and the story, which critic Hugh Kingsmill compared favourably to Dorian Gray. It was suggested that its theme is essentially the same, that of “the apotheosis if the complete egotist”. Early in the book the teenage Rank hides in a hedge at his school’s sports ground with a trip-wire to fell his rival in love, an obnoxious anti-Semite who is in training for a mile handicap. The rival is downed and is off school for two weeks with concussion, much to Rank’s satisfaction. His story, told in the first person, tells of a gradual progression to serial-killing the witty and charming and shocking confession of a psychopath.
In the late Victorian period, attitudes to Jews were gradually changing. By 1890, full emancipation was achieved but anti-Semitism was still rife. Portsmouth Grammar School, however, appears to have been liberal, progressive and cosmopolitan. During Horniman’s time at the school, close links were forged with Aria College in Portsea, where up to a dozen boys were trained for the Jewish ministry. And, in 1884, a wealthy resident of Portland Terrace bequeathed the sum of £2,000 for a scholarship, a substantial sum in those days but one which the School Governors declined because of the proviso that “no son of a Jew or Freemason, other than an officer of the Navy or Army, should be eligible”. The eight members of the D’Ascoyne family, possibly representing aspects of British social order - the church, the legal system, the class system, the City and middle-class values - are portrayed with remarkable skill and authenticity by Alec Guinness, who gamely dies eight times, neatly and with style.
Few people have heard of this novel today, but many have seen the loose screen adaptation which is recognised as one of Ealing Studios’ finest films.
Poster for Bedtime Story (1933)
In Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), the director Robert Hamer replaced Horniman’s Israel Rank with Louis Mazzini, of Italian descent, who was played with suave campery by Dennis Price. Recasting the murderer as originating from the birthplace of fascism clearly made sense after the war, when the horrors of the Holocaust were fresh in people’s minds. Horniman’s depiction of a bitter and ambitious murderer as Jewish has been criticised, as has his sympathetic portrayal of the character, but a more informed interpretation, perhaps, is that the novel is a daring parody of the anti-Semitism of Edwardian England.
Poster for King Hearts and Coronets (1949)
Horniman’s book is far darker than the film. The psychopath Israel Rank lives to enjoy his hard-earned dukedom in the final pages. But the Ealing film, for all its wit and wonderful performances, cannot commit to this in the final reel. It is implied that Mazzini gets his come-uppance at the end of a rope (which was made explicit in the American version to meet the censors’ demands).
Main sources:
Perhaps it was just as well that Horniman, who debated against capital punishment as a lad at Portsmouth Grammar School, and campaigned against censorship as an adult, was not around to see it, though any disappointment at what had been done to his novel might well have been offset by an appreciation of what Simon Heffer has described as “the most perfect and the most subversive of all British films”.
With thanks to Verity Andrews of the University of Reading for the extract from Roy Horniman’s nephew’s diary, and obituary from The Abolitionist.
Dennis Price and Alec Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets
The Portsmuthian The Times Illustrated London News, 11 Oct 1908 Simon Heffer, Book Review of Israel Rank, www.bookhugger.co.uk Hugh Kingsmill, introduction to Israel Rank (1948 edition).
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Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
Hugh Woodcock – Master (very much) in charge of PGS Lower School, 1953-1962 John Owens OP (1953-1963) pays tribute to a fondly-remembered school master who he kept in touch with long after he’d left PGS. An obituary to Hugh Woodcock also appears on page 56 of this edition of Opus. Hugh Elborough Parry Woodcock, onetime Master in Charge of the Lower School, was born on February 9th 1925 and died suddenly at home in Cornwall on April 2nd 2011. He came to Portsmouth in September 1953 at what today would be called a time of regime change – boys interviewed in the Spring of 1953 by Upper School Head Donald Lindsay and Lower School MiC Mr A.G.Watson took up their places in September alongside fellow ‘new boys’, Dennis Hibbert and Hugh Woodcock.
At 28 years old, Hugh was comfortably the youngest of the predominantly male staff, most of whom had distinguished wartime service behind them. Leaving St Edward’s School, Oxford in 1943, he joined the Royal Navy and was serving in Ceylon when the Japanese surrendered. He read History at Trinity College, Oxford after the War and began his teaching career at the Dragon School where he had been a pupil – Oxford educated from start to finish.
Hugh had already made his mark by 1952/3 when Donald Lindsay was looking for a younger man to run the little redbrick Lower School at Cambridge Junction, then a nine-form, all-boys, 8-11 affair of 200 pupils and ten staff.
The son of the Rector of Longparish, near Andover, where his cricket correspondent brother John still lives, Hugh adopted the sound precept of starting off with firmness – you can always loosen up but it’s much harder to switch the other way. Some took his initial strictness as the hallmark of the man, but there was a humanity about him which became more and more evident as he got into his stride, taking the measure of school, staff and pupils. The school gained in confidence during his nine-year tenure and Dennis Hibbert was able to fill his place in 1962 with a strong and talented successor, Michael Keale. Both men retained the loyalty of their older colleagues, one of whom, Tony Stokes, later succeeded Keale. Following their marriage in the early 1950s, Hugh and Bridget Woodcock lived on Jubilee Terrace in a house the Governors had bought for the young Master in Charge’s use. As their young family grew and Hugh was appointed to the Headship of Dulwich College Preparatory School in South London, Bridget played a major supporting role in the school community there, pioneering an in- house advertising periodical, The Prep Advertiser, more familiarly known as ‘The Prep Paralyser’, which survives to this day as a much glossier and wider-ranging medium for the sale of goods and services across South London. Meanwhile, her husband – only 37 when he took over in April 1962 – embarked on close to 30 years at the helm of one of the top prep schools in the country. Surprisingly for one who loved Latin, cricket and traditional values in education, he transformed DCPS with essential innovations: science and language laboratories, specialist PE, cricket and rugby coaching staff, a new music school (later to carry his name) and highly acclaimed drama productions.
By now renowned for a style of headship which said, ‘school is everything’ and ‘parents should think twice before interfering’, Hugh had the rare distinction of serving twice as Chairman of the Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools.
occasionally take the trophy). Hugh and John Woodcock stood as umpires right up to 2010 which was to be Hugh’s last ‘Longparish’, and the 2011 fixtures went ahead as he would have wished, though diminished by his absence. On April 2nd, 2011, Hugh watched the Cricket World Cup Final and died shortly afterwards. In Bridget’s words, ‘Fortunately he did not suffer – he watched the World Cup Final, collapsed and died. A great way to go!’ Perhaps the last word should go to Rupert Cox OP (1952-62) who recalls the softer side of a strong man: Hugh Woodcock at the peak of his career at DCPS
He was an impressive figure who didn’t suffer fools gladly, as occasionally parents who overstepped the mark found to their cost. When one such complained of an unflattering report on her son’s work, Woodcock turned and said very quietly to the boy, ‘Take your mother home, Edward, before I say something I might regret.’ Following retirement in 1991, Hugh returned, as deus ex machina, to the Dragon School as Acting Head until a new Head could take up his appointment. A career had turned full-circle and Hugh and Bridget decided to retire to their beloved Oxford, punctuating their time there with visits to Cornwall where they had a house. Longparish remained dear to their hearts, not least for its cricketing connections. Not only were Longparish C.C. to be crowned National Village Cricket Champions at the Home of Cricket, but the lovely ground beside the River Test was – through brother John Woodcock’s contacts – to see the finest test and county players of the late 20th century appearing regularly, to relax from their endeavours and to play in matches of rare distinction. A Whitsun tradition, begun in the 1950s, of school-related Woodcock sides competing with teams from neighbouring villages, Longparish and Hurstbourne Priors, continues into its seventh decade. Hugh and Bridget’s elder son, Christopher, has managed the event for some years and the format has changed. The Spring Bank Holiday fixture against Longparish has given way to a six-a-side knock-out tournament at which OP families Fawkner Corbett and Owens field teams (and
‘I well remember his offer (through his cricket correspondent brother) to obtain autographs of the England test team. Much to his chagrin the autograph book was mislaid, but he came up trumps with a new one complete with not only the England and South African teams, but also some real notables including Sir Jack Hobbs. I still remember the broad smile as he gave me the book, with a modest and apologetic comment.’ Hugh is survived by Bridget, two sons and two daughters.
Hugh, with Chris Owens, OP (1952-62) clutching an issue of Opus.
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Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
The World at their Feet.... Enjoying the panoramic views of London from the top of the Selfridges department store on Oxford Street is not a bad way to start the working week. My taste for variety at work no doubt stems from studying at PGS. The range of subjects and extra-curricular activities were vast and I took up as many as I could. The Sixth Form was the highlight of my time at the school.
I had a huge amount of fun, taking part in the talent shows and theatre productions with my friends; but I also turned a corner academically and received phenomenal support from staff in my A Level subjects. I left PGS in 2004 to read Geography at Oxford University. Following this I completed a Masters in Spatial Planning and a Postgraduate Diploma in Urban Design at Oxford Brookes University and have now qualified as a chartered planning consultant. My spatial planning work for the multinational real estate company Jones Lang LaSalle in Mayfair exposes me to some of the most exciting development projects in the capital. Regeneration is a frequent feature of my work but, in the case of Selfridges, the focus is on protecting the heritage of the world-famous department store. I am currently part of the master-planning team for the development of a new university campus for Imperial College London. The project involves securing planning permission for a postgraduate-led scheme on a former BBC site.
Tutoring from Miss Tabtab in Economics and Mrs Giles in Geography proved particularly important in getting me through the Oxford University interview process. For me, it was the field trips abroad that formed some of my most memorable, entertaining (and character building) moments at the school and my first trip with the school remains one of my most challenging travelling experiences. On a history trip to the First World War battlefields, I arrived with the group at our new accommodation in France to find that my bag had been left at the previous accommodation in Belgium.
At the time of writing about my first main job in publishing since graduating, I am about to embark on a change of career direction, but working for one of the world’s leading publishing houses for the last two and half years has been a fantastic experience. Penguin is home to renowned literary brands including Ladybird, Puffin, Warne (Beatrix Potter), Roald Dahl, Dorling Kindersley and Rough Guides, as well as an unrivalled portfolio of celebrities.
History trip to the First World War battlefields
Without any spare clothes, a mobile phone, or a cash card (I was 13 at the time) I had only what I was wearing. I need not have worried though; I was flooded with offers of clothing from friends. Having thoroughly enjoyed the trip, I took part in every subsequent opportunity to travel with the school and I am really grateful to Mr Lemieux in particular, for accepting the enormous challenge of escorting 50+ pupils across Europe each year (and getting them back again).
Sixth Form Talent Show, 2004
Surveying the celebrated skyline from the dizzy heights of their respective Central London offices, OPs Alexandra Jezeph and Sophie Robinson talk to Opus about their burgeoning careers and life in the Big Smoke….
Far from putting me off travelling, I have travelled internationally every year since. I have only just returned from a 4,500 km trip across India, journeying south from New Delhi to Kerala via Mumbai. When at home in London I spend my free time running two political discussion organisations. This political work, alongside my planning and design qualifications, raised my profile to the extent that I was invited to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts earlier this year. Shortly after I returned from India, Jones Lang LaSalle took over another property company, in the largest merger in UK property history. This is an exciting opportunity for me because my team of colleagues grew from 16 to more than 60 overnight and we now have the scale to take on even greater challenges. Alex Jezeph OP (1997-2004)
My love of English literature, which was nurtured and developed at PGS, particularly by Mr Priory, Mr Elphick-Smith and Dr. Hands, led me to read English at Cardiff University. Having taken a gap year, during which I undertook a six month placement with a youth charity sponsored by the Rank Foundation followed by an expedition to Kenya which was made possible by generous PGS bursaries, I was poised to embrace university life. On graduating, publishing seemed an attractive route to take but in July 2008, at the start of the recession, the job market was particularly tough. In order to widen my chances of finding my first publishing role, I registered with a specialist PR and Publishing recruitment agency based in London, but in an unexpected twist of events, they offered me a job as a graduate consultant on their publishing recruitment team. This enabled me to move to London, gave me a great insight in to the book industry and eventually led to a job offer with Penguin as assistant to both the managing and editorial directors. The head office is based on the Strand, and my desk is on the 7th floor with views overlooking the London Eye and Big Ben. Penguin is a global business with offices in fifteen countries employing in excess of 4,000 people. It is part of the Pearson Plc group and is sister-company to the Financial Times with an annual turnover of £786m.
Knowing that at any moment bestselling authors such as Jamie Oliver, Jeremy Paxman, Zadie Smith Nick Hornby or Stephen Fry might walk past my desk to meet their editor is one of the many aspects that makes Penguin an exciting and dynamic place to work. My role in the Editorial department means that I am involved with the formation of the book from the very beginning. We read manuscripts that have been submitted by literary agents printed out in a word document, and after various meetings with the Sales and Publicity departments to determine the market, we will make an offer to the agent. We brief Design and Production on the book jacket and page layout, work with Marketing on creating an advertising campaign and one year later, the finished book will appear in bookshops.
With the advent of the Kindle, apps and enhanced ebooks, publishing has entered a new digital era and Penguin are at the forefront of this technology. It has been very exciting to work alongside these new developments. Penguin played a major part in the launch of World Book Night in Spring 2011, where 20,000 book-lovers gave away 1 million specially printed books around the UK. This was a successful new venture in the world of publishing and is another of the innovative elements across the industry in which I was involved during my time at Penguin. In 1935, founder Allen Lane wanted a ‘dignified but flippant’ symbol for his new business and so the Penguin logo was inspired, and it has been a great opportunity to work for one of the most recognisable brands in the world. I have had a varied and interesting career at Penguin and will be taking the experience and skills I developed there, as well as the work ethic and solid grounding instilled at PGS, to help me embrace the challenges that will present themselves in my new job as graduate recruitment advisor with Clifford Chance, who are a leading global law firm based in Canary Wharf. Sophie Robinson OP (2002-04)
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Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
OP Cricket Reunion and OP Summer Matches 2011 Annual OP Tennis and Cricket Matches
Martin Pickford, suffering from a ‘curried’ shoulder and Chris Ayling a PGS star of the mid 1950s and father of Hampshire’s Jon, stood as umpires.
The annual OP Tennis and Cricket Matches took place at Hilsea on the afternoon of 24 June 2011.
The Owens were there in force and spectators included ‘Hoppy’, Peter Barclay, Ray Clayton and Roger Wilkins alongside Hampshire’s Richard McIlwaine and Hampshire Colts’ Robin Fawkner-Corbett. The match was played with appropriate respect for the conventions of tea and supper including a presentation of the “Thorp Bat Award” from David Thorp to Chris Stone, one of today’s PGS First XI stars.
OP Cricket Reunion 24 June 2011 There’s a beautiful, elegiac song by Roy Harper “When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease” reflecting the bitter truth that for those of us with sporting interests anno domini encroaches all too soon. Nonetheless cricket can offer some prospect of longevity to its practitioners and so it was that on Friday 24 June a group of OPs from fifty and more years ago assembled for an old boys’ (and I stress, boys) lunch at the Royal Beach Hotel, Southsea, after which we repaired to Hilsea to don whites and old caps and revisit past glories.
On the main pitch the current First XI challenged their immediate predecessors with prowess and skill, reminding us of the passing years. We were somewhat slower in the running, creaking in the field and gentle with the ball but we could reflect that once we had matched those performances beyond that other boundary. The match was the grand idea of John Bartle, current OP President and he led his side against the Owens and others, each team supplemented by two Year 11 boys (translated as Upper Fifth!), including a couple of speedy bowlers and a splendid wicketkeeper.
The PGS 1st XI cricket team were triumphant in their Twenty 20 cricket match against the OPs. In the final score PGS were 148 for 6 from their 20 overs with Chris Stone scoring 49 and Robert Gibson scoring 25. The Old Portmuthians in reply scored 98. Special thanks must go to William Bond who organised and captained the Old Portmuthians team. His efforts were greatly appreciated.
We concluded in light drizzle with almost 300 runs scored in 40 overs and a narrow victory for the ‘Owens’ XI. The old cricketers left the crease once more but don’t bet against them returning
During the afternoon David Thorp presented the Thorp Bat Award to PGS team member, Chris Stone. The award is made in the memory of John Thorp, who was Second Master until 1976 and a keen cricketer who played for the MCC for many years.
Dave Allen OP (1958-1967)
Cricket Reunion Attendees Dave Allen OP (1958-1967) Alan Arnold OP (1957-1964) Chris Ayling (1950-1956) Mary Ayling John Bartle OP (1947-1957) Mike Barnard OP (1945-1951) Chris Evans OP (1956-1965) John Farnhill OP (1963-1971) Robin Fawkner-Corbett OP (1956-1966) John Grant OP (1956-1965) Mike Harris OP (1945-1955) Gerry Houldsworth OP (1947-1952) Christopher Owens OP (1952-1962) David Owens OP (1954-1965) Jeremy Owens OP (1953-1962) Jeremy Owens OP (1958-1968) John Owens OP (1953-1963) Martin Pickford OP (1960-1970) Bob Richards OP (1950-1957) Tony Saunders OP (1960-1970) Bruce Strugnell OP (1957-1967) David Thorp OP (1953-1963) Richard Wilkinson OP (1958-1968)
The OP Club Salver for Cricket was presented to Cameron Prentice, Captain of the PGS 1st. X1 and the OP Club Salver for Tennis was presented to Tim Clark, Captain of the Old Portmuthians.
Tim Clark (OP 1984-1991) reports on a well-fought and enjoyable tennis match. “The Old Portmuthian tennis team took on the current school first team on the afternoon of Friday 24th June in blustery conditions at Hilsea. The OP team was made up of nine players, a number of whom went through an extended warm up routine, having not played previously this year. The large number of OP players meant that we had to lend the school a player, with Doug Yelland very kindly pairing up with Adam Furness of the school for the duration of the match, to give each team four pairs and four matches of a set to play each. In the first round the OPs took a commanding 3-1 lead, with heavy wins for OP pairs Simon Udal & Nick Gauntlett and Nick Bevington & Jim Hayward. However, the second round saw a complete reverse with the school winning three of the four rubbers to make the scores 4-4 at half time. A half time team talk ensued and I encouraged the OP team to pick themselves up and this obviously had the desired effect as the OPs took the third round 4-0. The third round saw the match of the day with OP pair Stefan Filip & Andy Furness narrowly beating school pair Doug Yelland (OP loanee to the school) & Adam Furness 7-6, in a hard fought match with the two Furness brothers slogging it out against each other. The OPs were on top and the final round was convincingly won by the OPs three rubbers to one, giving a final score of OPs 11 v School 5. I should thank my partner for the day John Stones who gave us a competitive edge throughout the match.”
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Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
The Leading Light in Leadlighting I vividly remember the late, great Wally Bartle, PGS art master from 1936-1970, chastising me during an art class with the immortal line. “Trees are not **** brown and pea green, laddie!” His colourful advice still resounds in my ears more than half a century after it was offered. I never once imagined that a ‘soft’ subject like Art would become both my profession and obsession. - exchanging ideas and learning skills from each other, and although the English inevitably did things a little differently from the French, stained glass craftsmen world wide were, and are still, basically singing from the same plainsong sheet. Third, I learned that in France a Master Glazier has the right to enter church on horseback. That clinched it.
Now when I look through my old sixth form notebooks at the lurid doodles featuring “Stiffy” Ladds (Mr H Ladds, Physics 1928-66) being spectacularly squashed, cigarette smoke and all, by a Corporation bus, or being jet propelled into the stratosphere, in defiance of those very laws of gravity which he had taught us, I suspect those scribbles were seminal. But germination took place only when, after some thirty years employed in “international education”, I was suddenly forced to make a now-or-never decision about what to do.
Some years previously, a therapeutic weekend course at West Dean College had already made plain to me where my passion lay - stained glass, a medium combining traditional medieval craftsmanship with technical challenge, graphic and decorative art skills with architectural creation and conservation.
Brilliant ! And now it could provide the opportunity to run my own business. To check this was a realistic aspiration I got myself a period of work experience in Salisbury Cathedral’s stained glass workshop. It was unforgettable. I was convinced.
The initial impact of my career change was both amusing and humbling. The little world of international education - with all its gurus and their preoccupations became substituted with another little world, unknown to the first, with its own burning issues, equally peopled with its masters and their disciples. I quickly became absorbed in this new microcosm and involved in its controversies, both historical and current.
“Some People”, a painting in the style of stained glass depicting a number of friends and class mates including Stephen Weeks OP (1956-1966) on the far right and a cross between Ian Murray OP (1959 -1969) and Goldfinger.
It is worth digressing to explore these subsidiary “concerns”. For example the rivalry, particularly in the larger studios prevalent in the last century, that divided the craftsmen-glass cutters and leading workers downstairs from the artist-painters upstairs from, with further distinctions between the lowly border painters on the one hand and the revered hand painters on the other. (Sorry Maxi! (Mr A S Snelling, English 1946-1980)), not to mention the exalted painters of heads the head painters indeed. Most modern studios are very small and have by necessity to embrace the multiskilled craftsman model bequeathed by the Arts & Crafts movement. So nowadays “stained glaziers” get heated about the “lamentable lack of technical skill and rigour” etc. exhibited by the stained glass art school graduates compared with those who have followed apprenticeships. Clearly these issues - good for a tea break grumble, are not central. Ask me or any professional colleague what is the allure of our job and we would probably answer that it was working with glass, this amazingly versatile liquid - yes liquid - with its seemingly endless uses from decorative art through to ultra hightech industrial applications.
However, the journey from dilettante to craftsman implies substantial training and years of experience. To make a start on both I set off to France to the Musée du Vitrail near Poitiers, to attend a one year professional conversion course including placements in both a busy French studio and at Canterbury Cathedral. Why France? Not just to vindicate the valiant efforts of CBC (CB Charlesworth, French 1923-64) in Remove B. I must surely have already achieved that by adopting French nationality? Ask rather, “Why not France?” Firstly it boasts more hectares of stained glass than any other country. Second, Medieval glaziers used to travel all over Europe working on various projects
And why stained specifically? Again such a huge range of realisations, forms and uses - traditional, contemporary; religious, secular; domestic, public; painted, unpainted; geometric, free; abstract, figurative; functional, decorative; architectural, artistic. In my own business I find myself designing new pieces on commission, restoring damaged pieces, conserving ancient pieces. Customers, in UK or overseas, may be secular or religious, and “pieces” include windows, doors, screens, domes, lanterns, lampshades... This takes me to places of worship of different faiths and sects as well as to a variety of homes and studios. It’s the constraints of the medium that I enjoy. The black lead lines are necessary for structural reasons, but they must be reckoned with and used to effect in the overall graphic design of the work. Likewise glass cannot be cut - except with great difficulty - into acute internal angles, nor may a polygon be cut cleanly out of the middle of a sheet of glass leaving the remainder of the sheet intact - despite what the vendors of self adhesive “stained glass” film would have us believe. Then there is the serene pleasure of glass painting or “painting with light”. A wash of paint is laid over an outlined image making the glass almost opaque, and then gradually, by dint of gently brushing, and scratching, areas of this matt are removed, letting through the light to reveal the forms and modelling of the design, the faces, the limbs, the drapes...That is truly satisfying, but I continue to marvel at the technical achievements of the Victorian glass painters who carried the art to its apotheosis applying layer upon layer of vitreous paint, each mixed with a different medium, to produce images of exquisite precision and subtlety.
I value also the rigours of craftsmanship, repeating an operation again and again if necessary until it is just right, constantly raising the bar in search of perfection.
I relish too the palpable delight of the client, who thinking their window to have been damaged irreparably, now sees it restored to its pristine beauty. Then there’s that sense of collaborative achievement with a client when bringing a bespoke project to fruition. I actually found a tiny drawing of a stained glass window amongst those black outlined doodlings that adorn every page of my Ernie Wells’s (R V Wells, Biology 1947-1977) notebook.
Doodlings during Ernie Wells’ lesson
“Advances in techniques eg. Vaulting, material, slate & stained glass, chimney pots & fireplaces” says the terse legend. But despite huge advances in glass technology the craft of stained glass has barely changed in over six centuries. So there is still the delightful calm and concentration of the workshop, the absence of power tools, and the contrast between this and the often cold, tough, dirty, dizzy work on site. Some improvements can be unwelcome like the almost irresistible hard selling of UPVC windows that has done so much to aesthetically impoverish our built environment, but, also perversely, I must bless those silver-lined clouds, the vandals who bring me so much business. However, perhaps the biggest thanks should go to Stiffy, Ernie, Wally, Maxi, CBC and others for not only instilling me with the background knowledge required to realise my passion, but in being such excellent models for drawing practice. David Palmer OP (1956-1966)
‘Palm Tree’ Commissioned by a customer in France.
“Spirit of Place” a plated panel which alludes to the link between spiritualist writer Conan Doyle and Portsmouth. This panel is now in the Conan Doyle Museum (Portsmouth City Museum)
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Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
Passing of a Great Schoolmaster
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g inspecting Major Wally Bartle accompanyin 7 195 c on ecti Insp ual officer, Ann
In July this year, former PGS art master Wally Bartle who taught at the school from 1936 to 1970, sadly passed away at the grand old age of 101. Born in a small mining community in Derbyshire in 1910, Wally was a master storyteller with a photographic memory, who could entertain a crowd with marvellous memories of monarchs and military men. He proclaimed to be one of the last people King Edward VIII spoke to the day he left England after his abdication, served with distinction in the Territorial Army and was subsequently a founder of the Nanaimo Military Museum on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Wally founded the OTC (CCF) at PGS and served in the Corps longer than any other officer. When he first took over the Signals Platoon he re-organised it into wireless and telephone exchange from flags and Aldis lamps and introduced the practice of taking a party of cadets to visit regiments of the British Army on the Rhine. He maintained an abiding connection to his past pupils and was frequently visited in his nursing home in the latter part of his life by former pupils, including Alastair B Stevens OP (19281937) who, like Wally, had set up home in Canada. On his 100th birthday in 2010 Wally received a coveted birthday card from the Queen, certificates from the Prime Minister and Governor General of Canada, the Premier of British Columbia as well as other important figures. His cake symbolised the many facets of his life: the schoolmaster; the soldier and the artist. An obituary to Major Wally Bartle TD, CFM, ARCA, ATD appears on page 54, but here we reproduce several extracts from Wally’s memoirs, painstakingly recorded by his friend Jim Dickinson, Vice-President of Auric Film Productions, who was planning to make a documentary of this quite extraordinary artist, musician, sportsman, raconteur and legendary teacher.
Early years
remember the cot I laid in, a remarkable memory. I can still with hire bys Der in ge villa ing s on the walls, and the “I was bor n in a min colour of the walls, the picture the , ges frin ble bob the with m the cur tains in the roo from before I was a year old. details of my mother’s dresses ional father was a member of the Nat ld War broke out. At that time my Wor t Firs the n The whe 0’s. old 197 rs ly yea ear I was four until his death in the land from the day it was founded Laity, the Assembly of the Church of Eng into three houses; the House of ded divi ed the Synod) was call now it’s eve . My father, beli ster (I ly tmin Wes emb in Ass National sat together ops who on all important matters Bish of se n Hou whe s the day and the gy In Cler e. House of y powerful voic manner of speaking and in a ver ct dire y could s ver a hop had hbis er Arc ath two ndf like my gra the seats of the rophone on the podium and on mic the d use time be the to at an rge beg cha es in microphon speak the Archbishop er. When my father went up to be used separately or all togeth switch off the microphones. would quietly reach down and mine who lived in s a year to stay with an Aunt of time four him with don Lon to Ear l of Selborne, Viscount Dad used to take me up as the Marquis of Salisbury, the ple peo h suc with stay to d our ver y wor king-class Stratford. Later on he use called him “Syd”. Some visited ays alw who ple peo lted exa of which had no bathroom but a Woolmer and all sor ts re their whole lives in a house the d live had they if as ctly home and behaved exa privy out in the yard. . I also by Ger man Taubas and Gothas first daylight air raid on London y ver the d holiday che on wat I was t I tha lst ed whi It so happen t down at Cuffley, and saw the first Zeppelin sho don Lon to on den raid t gar the nigh t to n firs witnessed the bed and car ried dow of Hitchin. I was fetched out of th sou an just be rth, to out bwo ed Kne in turn t with an Aun ther droning noise which -lights. Eventually we heard ano watch it. It was lit up by search tracer bullets being fired into the in. n and then back aga We saw peli Zep the e. of top the r ove g airplane flyin an melting the aluminium structur ediately in the middle and beg imm fire ght the cau of ch dle whi mid n peli the il top of the Zep dually the fire spread unt ding were filled with hydrogen and gra s of the Zeppelin were descen The gas bags of the Zeppelin il per and steeper unt the two end stee w gre The ch e. whi wer V a we re into d whe side Zeppelin sub miles away from exploded at Cuffley about three lly fina and a d fell It rea ily er. eth eas e tog hav lly ld almost ver tica intense you cou n all that distance away were so dow t wen it as n peli Zep the flames from newspaper with fine print.”
Teaching staff at PGS
rs among the boys He produced some ver y fine acto s. play of er duc pro at gre a left us and went “Headmaster Donald Lindsey, fect was Hamlet. Donald Lindsey Pre d Hea The . iece terp mas e and his Hamlet was an absolut . to be principal of Malver n College rable experience in the jovial gentlemen who had conside and nd rotu a t, ber Hib nis Den d a CBE for that. He was He was followed by an and had already been awarde Sud the in isor Adv l ona cati Edu ber of the staff. He was Colonial Ser vice as e available and open to any mem wer y stud and e hom his ter; ia for the Polynesian Islands a splendid Head Mas on system on behalf of Austral cati edu an e aniz org to left He Forest. He made a fine star t by extremely popular. k to live in England in the New bac e cam he re the from ent and after his retirem inst first eleven! scoring a century for staff aga
tely nicknamed Boggy), and Ron staff: one was Mar sh (affectiona ntly they came back We also had two member s of the When they had recovered sufficie ma. Bur in n bee had ter, Mas ame Head of History. Vearncombe, a Maths ns at first but Boggy Mar sh bec leto ske king wal like ed look m ent pen and watercolour to school. Both of the adorned with ver y, ver y compet he ch whi s, ure lect his of es He used to issue not able men. artist. They were quite remark sketches. He was a ver y good ally took over as Librarian and was a Scout Master. He eventu who le Poo During ce Bru ed tion men I have not pletely re-organised the library. two after his retirement. He com or r yea a d il goo unt y k ver wor a t tha was in continued pidated condition. He books which had got into a dila of d ber goo num a ably d ark oun rem reb a he e that time ause he mad ks he bound still exist today bec boo the of e som ect exp I and craftsman job of it. when we were at is William Bar row who joined us tion men uld sho I m who f staf . One day after we had Another member of the own for the annual school play his of play a ed duc pro and our s who kept Bournemouth. He wrote who lived in the house behind man the ut abo him ng telli was I es as far away as returned to Por tsmouth d to fly the pigeons in from plac use man The did. they gs thin lanes to car ry messages pigeons and the kinds of ing Wor ld War One aboard airp dur d use e wer they how ut e of flimsy paper Spain. I also told him abo message was written on a piec the how and ble, trou was re the of writing a series of back to the base when of their leg. It gave him the idea side the on r iste can m iniu and attached to an alum highly successful. diamonds by pigeon, which was television plays about smuggling ed at the King’s Theatre. comedic actor which was produc ire ksh Yor ous fam a for play a He also wrote company that produced d soon after the war to form a igne res he but p cha ular pop y He was a ver sible materials. They were sold sible way with the simplest pos pos t ples sim the in s ent rum scientific inst couldn’t afford to buy scientific poorer par ts of the wor ld who the r ove all ools sch to ly sful ver y succes pupils. He was quite a bloke.” instruments for teaching their
The OTC at PGS
me Instructor of the CCF for sending to Bob Smith, the school Staff nks tha y ently rec man e nd vinc exte Pro to the like of ld “I wou ant Governor bined Cadet Force. The Lieuten Com PGS the She of e. ges onc bad for d and sse et the ber able to be fully dre to our Military Museum and I was ver y came to open a new extension en of a museum curator. She was cim spe g I was the oldest livin t tha told “these and as me ed to crib ced des odu she was intr t of all in what als, especially the TD, but mos med my said and She . ges PGS bad at my ded in ted man interes ch I once com were the badges of the OTC whi they ir her the told I ing So hav ”. e ges wer ple bad l peo beautifu were over and that later. After the ceremonies ut ly abo e eme mor extr r was hea to She . like ld eum she wou at the entrance to the mus k noo my in me ide bes sat the coffee and cake she came and k long before the beginnings of Cor ps which of course goes bac the of ory with hist ally the equ r t hea par k to too ted interes as cadets and joined the Hampshire Regiment ool Sch ’s. ar OTC mm er Gra oth n the tha r from s olde h Boy OTC. makes them muc drills, and mock battles, which es, of rcis ools exe ir sch the er on oth e ers thre nte with the volu tence, along ver y first day they came into exis the on OTC an as ed form e .” We wer be the oldest OTC d. So PGS can claim ver y well to which two have now disappeare
Wally Bartle original artwork produced for the PGS Christmas card, 1948
Wally Bartle, CCF 1950
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OPUS • Issue 5 • Autumn 2011
Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
In the footsteps of W.L. Wyllie R.A.
Bookshelf Opus highlights other recently published titles by Old Portmuthians and those connected with the school that would make great stocking fillers this Christmas:
Many people have heard of the Marine Artist W.L. Wyllie R.A. (1851-1931), though few know anything of his life and work. Tower House, his spacious home and studio stands adjacent to the Round Tower at the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour and is one of the most photographed buildings in the city. The Wyllies and their 7 children moved there in 1906 to occupy what was then a boat store and wharf. Over the years Wyllie converted the building and added a spire over a gable so he could see across the Round Tower to Spithead. Nigel Grundy, a pupil at PGS from 1959-64, and a friend of the Wyllie family, has produced three documentary DVDs and written a ‘Portsmouth Paper’ for the City Museum about the artist’s life and work. He has also given many illustrated talks, been interviewed by the BBC and is presently engaged in writing a comprehensive biography of Wyllie.
Nigel Grundy today and circled as part of Peter Jameson’s recorder group in 1959.
In March he published, ‘In the footsteps of W.L. Wyllie R.A., The Old Portsmouth Trail, 1906-1931.’ Through the reminiscences of the Wyllie family, a trail map, 335 photographs, including Wyllie’s etchings and paintings, pictures from the Wyllie family albums and views of Old Portsmouth at the turn of the century, Nigel takes the reader through the historic streets of Old Portsmouth visiting places and properties linked to Wyllie and his family and traces some of the local and world events they were involved with from 1906 until Wyllie’s death in 1931. The book is a good introduction to the Wyllie family’s life and work in Old Portsmouth and would make an excellent companion for those wishing to visit the area and spend time familiarising themselves with a part of the old town that Wyllie would have known. For those wishing to walk the route it is flat paved with some cobbled streets and climbing steps to view from the fortifications is optional. Along the trail there are nine public houses, a shop and cafes for refreshment. Towards the end of the walk there is public seating at Point from where a panoramic view of the Spinnaker Tower at Gunwharf, Portsmouth Harbour and the busy comings and goings of shipping can while away the hours.
William Lionel Wyllie was the son of the genre painter William Morrison Wyllie and singer Katherine Benham; he was born at Albany Street, London, on 5 July 1851. As a child he suffered from a bronchial condition brought on by London smog so spent summers with his parents, brother Charles and step-brother Lionel at Wimereux, a coastal village near Boulogne, where they lived in an old Napoleonic guard house on the wide sandy beach. From 1870 to 1890 Wyllie worked as a marine illustrator for the Graphic, the principal rival to the Illustrated London News, succeeding W.E. Atkins as their Portsmouth Marine Artist and Shipping Correspondent. He met Marian Carew in Boulogne in 1876, and they married in Switzerland in 1879 and sailed from Wimereux to England in Marion, their 14 foot sailing dinghy, and set up home in London at 70 Carlton Hill. They later moved to Hoo Lodge in Rochester and Wyllie achieved fame with his etchings, oils and watercolours of the River Thames and the River Medway showing Thames barges and the commercial shipping that once thronged the water.
By the time Wyllie moved to Old Portsmouth he was the leading marine artist of his period, and in 1907 was elected a Royal Academician. Though very busy he made time to start the First Portsmouth Sea Scouts and obtained a barge for them to sail. During the years leading up to 1914 he painted and etched naval scenes and travelled extensively producing pictures for the White Star, Union Castle and Orient Lines. In 1922 he was invited to join the Save the Victory Committee and became deeply involved with the old ships dry-docking and restoration.
Painting of W.L Wyllie RA by his daughter Aileen
In 1930, at the age of 80, he spent a year painting the 42’ x 12,’ Panorama of the Battle of Trafalgar, for the Victory Museum, Portsmouth, to raise funds to help maintain Victory. It was his bequest to the nation. Wyllie spent his time sailing, painting and exhibiting his work until his death in London in April 1931. He was buried in St. Mary’s churchyard within the grounds of Portchester Castle. Nigel has initiated a group of ‘Friends of W.L. Wyllie’ who, in the future, are hoping to commission a bronze statue of the artist to stand at Point; Nigel thinks that a statue of Wyllie looking towards the harbour, the ships and the Dockyard that were so much part of his life, would be a fitting memorial to one of Portsmouth most eminent men whom he feels has been sadly neglected by the city that was Wyllie’s home for 25 years. Nigel’s book can be bought from his website at www.imagesafloat.com, (the site also has many of his own drawings and paintings of Old Portsmouth), W.H. Smith in Palmerston Road or online from Amazon and Waterstone’s.
Tower House, Old Portsmouth
Working term-time only gives school archivist John Sadden the opportunity to research and write, and last summer was spent digging deep into the city’s past for his latest published work, The Portsmouth Book of Days, (History Press, £9.99), which takes the reader through the year, day by day, with quirky, eccentric, amusing or important events or facts from different periods of history, many of which had a major impact on or reflect the social and political history of England as a whole. Ideal for dipping into, this addictive little book will keep you entertained and informed.
Pompey Pop Pix by Dave Allen OP (1958-1967) and Mick Cooper is a wonderful celebration of the Portsmouth music scene in the 1950s and 60s. There are few words but 444 pphotos – it is emphatically a picture book and includes OPs Paul Jones, Phil Shulman, Nigel Baker, John Clark, Pete Gurd, Geoff Gunson, Sam Eddings, Keith Shilcock, John Lytle and Dave Allen himself! Portsmouth & Southsea is Britain’s only island city, situated on its central southern coast. It is known as the home of the British Navy but this picture book tells the story of its recovery from the ravages and disruptions of the Second World War through the re-creation of a local entertainment industry that catered for locals, servicemen and holidaymakers in the heyday of the British seaside, the birth of rock & roll and the‘ Swinging’ Sixties. Portsmouth has no central place in the history of popular music but almost all the big names of the 1950s and 1960s visited, while there were many opportunities for local musicians from dance bands and variety shows through skiffle, the rock & roll revolution to the folk boom, jazz, r&b and rock bands. There were mods and rockers, teddy boys and hippies as well as generations who were having fun, falling in love and dancing their dreams. They are all here, alongside unusual shots of stars including Rod Stewart, Elton John, Dickie Valentine, Bill Haley and Sandie Shaw. The book, priced at £14.99 is out in mid-November and available from most book retailers.
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d l e Fi n ig e r Fo a f o r e n r o C Some that OP Sam will never forget It’s an astounding tale of courage against overwhelming odds - 4,000 British soldiers holding out against masses more Chinese soldiers with bayonets and bare fists. Little wonder that those who saw it have never regarded St George’s Day in the same way since. Here, veteran of the Korean War Sam Mercer MBE OP (1946-48) recalls the Battle of the Imjin River, widely acknowledged to be the bloodiest battle to be fought by British troops since World War Two. This year, exactly 60 years after the fighting, he made a highly emotional journey back to the scarred landscape to read the roll of honour of every soldier of the Gloucestershire Regiment who died either in the battle or later in the prisoner of war camps. Sam Mercer MBE OP was 17 when he cycled from Cheltenham to Gloucester to join up. It was 1947 and the teenager was hungry for adventure. Told to list three regiments in order of preference, he put the Gloucestershire Regiment – the Glosters – first, followed by the Worcesters and the Warwicks.
Mercer got his first choice thus ensuring his rendezvous with fate on a hill in Korea four years later. “Adventure? Oh I got that all right,” he says, a twinkle in his one remaining eye. “I got that in spades”.
This year, Sam aged 81, made an extraordinary and poignant pilgrimage and stood at the foot of that hill remembering those who fought and died there exactly 60 years ago. In 1951, at the height of the Korean War, it was Hill 235, a vantage point overlooking crossings on the Imjin River. That piece of high ground would soon earn a new name, Gloster Hill, as the scene of the most desperate action fought by the British Army since the Second World War. He was joined by representatives of South Korea’s tiny British community and other visiting veterans at the site, an hour’s drive north of Seoul, and a kilometre south of the Imjin River. It
lies among artillery emplacements, dug-in armoured vehicles and military bases, for just beyond the river, is the so-called “Demilitarised Zone” – actually, one of the world’s most heavily armed strips of real estate – which divides capitalist South Korea from the communist North. This border, the 38th Parallel, is the Cold War’s last front line.
The stand made by 1st Batallion The Gloucestershire Regiment – the “Glorious Glosters” as headline writers called them – in the face of massed human-wave attacks by Chinese communist troops ranks alongside Rorke’s Drift as an example of steadfastness in the face of overwhelming odds. For three days, between April 22 to 25, 750 men of the battalion repulsed successive assaults by a force seven times bigger.
Surrounded, with no hope of rescue, running short on water and ammunition, the men from the West Country fought literally to the last bullet and grenade. Some 620 failed to make it back to friendly lines. A third of the battalion were killed or wounded, the survivors spending the next two years in Chinese or North Korean prison camps. The destruction of the Glosters was the most dramatic episode during the Battle of the Imjin River, in which the 4,000-strong British 29th Brigade held off 27,000 Chinese attackers at a cost of 1,000 casualties over three days. Yet little attention was paid to the 100 or so elderly men gathered in South Korea over the weekend of St Georges Day back in April this year to commemorate the 60th anniversary.
Sam remains unconcerned by the lack of public recognition. “This was a personal duty, probably my last chance to visit the battlefield,” he says. “I was never interested in who turned up but I’m going to take the full roll of honour and read out all the names of those who never returned.” Part of the Japanese Empire, Korea was divided into the communist North and Western-backed South in 1945, an uneasy peace enduring until June 1950 when the Soviet-equipped army of Kim Il-sung flooded across the 38th Parallel. South Korean and American forces fighting under the UN flag were forced into a small pocket before an amphibious landing at Inchon wrong-footed the North Koreans, sending them back to the Chinese border. Victory was within grasp when Mao Tsetung’s masses intervened at the end of the year, driving UN forces south once more. By the time of the Battle of the Imjin, the front had stabilised roughly along the line of the old border. The UN armies were severely undermanned and 29th Brigade, operating
under American command, was strung out in the hills north-west of Seoul, holding a front so wide that it required an entire division. Separated from the rest of the brigade by a gaping hole in the line, the Glosters were vulnerable to encirclement. Nemesis duly arrived in the form of the Chinese 63rd Shock Army, tasked with punching its way through the UN lines towards the battered South Korean capital. In preparation for their spring offensive, the Chinese had sent observers deep into the heart of the isolated British positions – so close that they were reportedly able to enjoy a Doris Day film being shown to troops. “We were holding positions that the Chinese were determined to take, and they didn’t care how many men they lost to get them,” says Mr Mercer. “Mao Tse-tung was not one for public opinion.” The viciousness of the fighting matched anything seen at Imphal or Kohima. Two Victoria Crosses, one awarded to Lt-Col James Carne, commanding officer of the Glosters, testify to its intensity.
“The British Army lost more men in Korea than in the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts combined,” says Andrew Salmon, author of a book on the battle, To the Last Round. “Imjin River was the bloodiest British battle of the Korean War – an entire battalion was wiped out – yet it is dead to modern memory. The British public learn history from popular culture, and Imjin never featured in a film or best-seller.” continued...
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Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
Some Corner of a Foreign Field that OP Sam will never forget
Barbara Crick gave up a successful Project Management career in order to set up her own business from scratch using the raw ingredients of drive and determination. Here the one-time firefighter tells Opus how she set about turning her passion into her profession…
Many military historians attest that the fighting in Korea was the most nightmarish British soldiers have experienced in recent history with intense, close-quarter skirmishes at night, against the Chinese human wave.
In addition to these two aspects of my working life I have been enjoying refining my skills in the kitchen. This has been informally for friends and family, as well as taking formal courses at night schools and completing the Cordon Vert Diploma - the vegetarian equivalent of the Cordon Bleu. It has long been a dream to work in catering and I am very excited to now be making it a reality.
Six decades on and many veterans have described how they still sleep with the lights on. Sam however does not suffer nightmares. “I was enjoying it. I know that is a strange thing to say but it was what I had joined up to do. We had a good battalion. Carne didn’t say a lot; he didn’t use three words when two would do – a rare quality – but it was all going on upstairs in his head. He was coolness itself under fire. We had our orders and, as one of the men said: ‘Don’t worry sir, we’ll be like the Rock of Gibraltar’.” Sleepless for three days, the young Private Mercer witnessed numerous acts of heroism as the battle raged around the shrinking British perimeter, but one incident stands out. On the first night of the battle, Lt Philip Curtis, 24, was confronted with a Chinese-held bunker which threatened his unit’s retreat to safer ground. Severely wounded during his single-handed attempt to storm the strongpoint, he was dragged to safety by his men. But he struggled free, advanced again and managed to lob a grenade into the mouth of the bunker – just as the machine gun cut him down. His gallantry earned him a posthumous VC. “The feeling in the platoon was that the first time we hit serious trouble we’d lose Mr Curtis,” says Mr Mercer. “He preferred to lead from the front with rifle and bayonet rather than from the back with a revolver. He had lost his wife during childbirth and there may have been some other source of sadness. He was a good man.”
Barbara’s Recipe for Success
The opportunity to start a new career came when I decided to move back to Emsworth with my husband, Shaun, and our two boys.
The battle ended for Mr Mercer on the third night when he was severely wounded in the eye and leg by a mortar round. Falling into a deep sleep at the dressing station, he awoke to daylight and silence. The battle had ended after Carne, his position untenable, ordered his men to escape through the Chinese lines. Few succeeded.
“I would not want to go through it again but I’m glad that I did. You learn a lot about human beings.” But to be maimed at such an age? “All part of life’s rich tapestry. I lost and eye and a leg but gained a wife.”
After completing my time at the Grammar School, I went on to undertake a Bachelors degree at Reading followed by a Masters at Cranfield. I then moved to Cambridgeshire where I lived for almost 9 years working in project management for Caterpillar. During this time I led teams delivering projects as varied as designing a logistics hub and creating new Human Resource processes. Alongside my career I also found time to be a firefighter for the Peterborough Volunteer Fire Brigade - the last volunteer station in the country. This involved training once or twice a week and being on call throughout the nights and weekends to respond to incidents including house fires, traffic accidents and other emergencies across the city. Needless to say my time in the CCF at the Grammar School stood me in good stead for the teamwork that this involved.
The young British soldier was discovered by two Chinese soldiers. After surrendering and indicating to one of them that he could not walk, the soldier shot him through his left leg. Blind in one eye, he received little treatment during his captivity. Following his release, he was admitted to hospital in London, where doctors amputated his leg below the knee. The nurse who cared for him became his wife.
A Service of Commemoration for the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Imjin took place at Gloucester Cathedral this year. The small stone cross, carried by Sam Mercer to the altar, was carved by Colonel Carne of the Glosters while he was a prisoner of war after the Battle of the Imjin.
I was the first female firefighter in the brigade - but this was not a problem after being one of the first girls to go through the Upper School!
Initially I had thought of opening a café or restaurant but had a ‘lightbulb’ moment when I started to think about the things that I most enjoyed from work and from home - teaching and cooking respectively. It is from this idea that the Emsworth Cookery School was born. Based in our new home in Emsworth and designed to provide a home-from-home cooking environment, we offer a wide variety of courses for all ages. Current course titles include Autumnal Afternoon Tea, Sunday Brunch, Evening Desserts Club, Christmas Celebrations, Pre-school Cookery and Halfterm Young chefs. Lots more are planned and details are on our website (www.emsworthcookeryschool.co.uk).
Skills and confidence gained at the Grammar School continue to serve me well as I set out on this new enterprise. In particular I have realised how important good communication is – both in communicating to new customers and also in listening to the customers and advice from other local businesses. I have been overwhelmed by how many people want me to succeed and with their help my project has developed into a very real business venture. My advice to any OPs out there wondering if they should take the plunge and start on a new venture, whether personal or in their career, is to do it now. You may currently feel like you don’t know where to begin, but you will work it out and hopefully end up fulfilling your dream. Please see my website for more details: www.emsworthcookeryschool.co.uk or contact me on barbara@emsworthcookeryschool.co.uk 07733 262126 or 01243 371407. Barbara Crick (née Wakeford) OP (1994-98)
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Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
Treble Chance
It was triple bonanza time on 20 May at Cambridge Junction: Richard Simonsen OP (1953–1964) was giving a talk on Dentistry to Sixth Form careers hopefuls; after close to fifty years a gang of his exact contemporaries gathered for dinner at the Still & West; and a plan was hatched for a three-line-whipped reunion in September 2012 of the entire PGS 1st XV of 1962, exactly fifty years on from the formation of that fine team! was asked by a US Navy Captain if, by any chance, he could introduce him to a fine athlete capable of benefiting from attendance at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis. Mr Hibbert had just the man in Richard, already shaping up as Norway’s star sprinter, and taking his A Levels in the Summer. The introduction duly took place, Simonsen had just the right credentials and a place to read Dentistry was offered and accepted, with no insistence on trivial formalities like passing the Summer A Levels.
As a bonus, Alasdair Akass and his colleagues in the Development Office had arranged for Ray Clayton, John Hopkinson and Peter Barclay to join the party for tea in the Common Room, reflecting the key sporting, academic and pastoral roles played by these fine schoolmasters of yesteryear! Current Head, the youthful James Priory, also came in for tea, perhaps drawn by the hilarity and indiscipline in this normally august chamber.
The Dentistry session was one of a series intended to whet the appetite of students nearing decision time on academic subject and course selection, often given by OPs who have become illustrious practitioners in the profession or calling in question.
Judy Williams, Sixth Form and Careers Secretary, had given Richard a broad brief whereby subsidiary aspects of dentistry stretched to include wildlife photography and life skills, especially for those disposed to seek their fortunes around the World. The pupils attending thus got rather more than they bargained for, especially when the story was told of how, at a 1964 dinner at Haslar, Headmaster Dennis Hibbert
As his ‘minder’, charged with getting him to the Still & West in time for dinner, I glossed Richard’s story: boys then being boys, Richard took foot off academic throttle, failed everything, ran like stink for ten years for the University and/or Norway, bucked up academically, to be now a leading authority on preventive and minimally invasive dentistry. In 2012 he takes on the Presidency of the American Academy of Aesthetic Dentistry. If there’s a moral to this tale, it is that there’s more to be had from schooling than a fistful of academic grades!
John Fifield, John Owens, Richard Simonsen, Peter Cunningham, Ken Bailey, Chris Clark, Barry Squire and David Thorp.
When it became known that Richard was to revisit Portsmouth in May 2011, a last-minute whip-round was made of contemporaries he’d not seen for decades and would like to see again. The resulting party of ten turned out to include eight of the school’s 1st Rugby XV of 1962/3, augmented by a member of the 1956/7 ‘Bullpups’ XV (Jeremy Owens) and a stalwart of the 1962-4 2nd XV, Mike Connor, who had the further honour of partnering Simonsen, Cunningham and, yours truly, Owens (J.T.) in the victorious Smith House 4 x 110 yards relay team of 1963. Mike produced his medal to prove the point beyond all reasonable doubt. In relay running, as with Rugby, all we had to do was to get the baton or the ball into the hands of Simonsen for victory to ensue as a matter of course!
Mssrs Simonsen, Owens, Connor and Cunningham.
As an example of Richard’s outstanding wildlife photography skills, the photomontage above shows the Rugby players as they were in 1962 (absurdly young and colourless) and as they are now (fully chromatic and with colourful histories behind them). Just how colourful will be revealed when the full team reunion takes place in September 2012. At the time of writing, fourteen of the seventeen players are alive and fully notified of what is expected of them (over and above living at least until September 2012). Feelers are out for the other three who may read these pages and are therefore named as Phil White, known
to be a medical doctor in British Columbia who went on to captain the 1st XV of 1963/4; Dick Churm, known to have been an RAF officer after doing time at Cranwell and a very good goalkeeper for the Exiles A.F.C.; and John Hopkins who had a fine turn of speed and did a great defensive job on the left wing, with very little ball in hand, as we’d been conditioned all the way up the school to get the ball to Simonsen on the right! Plans for this reunion are staggeringly ambitious and we hope the Opus editorial powers-that-be will grant space for an appropriate announcement and report in later issues. John Owens OP (1953-63)
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OPUS • Issue 5 • Autumn 2011
Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
Talented OP wildlife photographer wins his way to finals
Black Sh ouldered by James Kite Lavery O P ( 19 7 6 – 1982) and curr ent PGS parent
Following on from a highly successful competition back in 2009 which attracted some superb entries from OPs and former parents, the PGS Biology Department are once again inviting entries from former pupils for the PGS Wildlife Photographer of the Year. The previous competition attracted over 400 entries and was judged by the television naturalist Nick Baker with signed prizes donated by Sir David Attenborough. Back then staff organiser and mother of three OPs Moira Bates, launched the Competition to raise the profile and muchneeded funds for a Galapagos Conservation Trust project to restore giant tortoises to Pinto Island in the famous archipelago off the coast of South America. This year the theme of the Competition is “An Eye on Nature” with funds being raised for the Vision Research Unit at Southampton University, an internationally-renowned centre of research in helping to alleviate blindness and macular degeneration. The team at the Vision Research Unit are currently developing therapies that could eventually restore sight in age related macular degeneration patients, giving new hope to the one in three elderly people in the western world over 75 who are afflicted by it. Moira is very keen that OPs, staff and parents support the Competition again this year: “With the likes of John Aitchison, Nick Cockcroft, Alex Hibbert and Richard Simonsen in the ranks of former pupils, I always had a hunch that there would be no shortage of talented photographers in the OP community”, she said, “but nothing quite prepared me for the astounding variety and quality of the entries we received from OPs throughout the world last time.” Some of the OP entries from the previous Competition are shown here. A small entry fee donation to the Vision Research Unit is requested for all submissions which can be received electronically or by post (10” x 8” images) by the closing date of Monday 20 February 2012. An exhibition of all the entries will be staged in the New Year in the Bristow-Clavell Science Centre and, it is hoped, a souvenir book of the Competition entries will also be produced. Please contact Alasdair Akass, Development Director, at a.akass@pgs.org.uk or on 023 9236 4248 for further details.
Tuan the Orangutan (1985 – 1995) – by Steve Buckley OP Category winner: s Staff, parents and OP
Brood of Young Barn Owls by Graham Roberts OP (1971 – 1981) and current PGS parent
p Pit Sto Nectar OP t Allen t a M y b 2011) (2003 –
Elephant in Tanzania by Jane Hancock, former PGS parent
amibia ing in N t h g fi ok OP Springb a Wride d in c u ) by L – 2008 (2007
Jaded Jay by Max Lank ester OP (1960 - 1967)
Matt Allen OP (2003-2011) was shortlisted in the Veolia Environment Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year in the 2011 Competition, one of the most prestigious competitions of its kind which attracts tens of thousands of entries from young photographers from around the world. He submitted a portfolio of his work in his final year at PGS as part of an extended essay project and impressed former PGS pupil and BAFTA award-winning wildlife documentary maker John Aitchison OP, who has promised to help Matt achieve his ambition to be a wildlife photographer or film-maker if he can. On a visit to the school in Matt’s last term at PGS from his home in Arizona, OP Richard Simonsen, another accomplished wildlife photographer, also offered to take Matt out to take photographs of Harris Hawks were he ever to visit Richard in the USA.
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OPUS • Issue 5 • Autumn 2011
Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
A Packed Presidential Year In the last issue of Opus, the new President of the Old Portmuthian Club John Bartle OP (1947-1957) was profiled. Here he provides a snapshot of the range of school and OP Club activities he has been involved in over recent months.
17 March Unveiling of the Bristow-Clavell Science Centre sculpture - The Celestial Microscope - a most striking and stimulating work. It wouldn’t have stood the test of time in my day – within 24 hours it would have disappeared in pieces in several hundred satchels! It certainly complements what is an imaginative building.
10 May
3 June
Annual CCF inspection at Hilsea. Whilst it was a very different experience to those that I remember from my own days, I found it an invigorating experience, particularly bearing in mind the voluntary nature of the current CCF and the inclusion of so many young ladies in the force. The spectacle was enhanced by the presence of a band composed completely of pupils, something which could not have been contemplated in my day. I engaged with many pupils, parents and staff, all of whom demonstrated considerable spirit of interest and goodwill towards the Club.
PGS Golf Society day took place at Southwick Park.. The players consisted of current staff, parents and pupils as well as former pupils. Since the event, both Alasdair and I have received highly appreciative messages and promises of continued support for this and other proposed OP Club/PGS Association events.
16 June
Senior Sports Dinner at the Royal Naval and Royal Albert Yacht Club, an opportunity to honour pupils who, for varied reasons, have made their mark in the many sports which the school offers. The event was noteworthy for the remarkable maturity, good humour and behaviour, and sheer vivacity of the attendees – around a hundred in number.
Opening of the Portsmouth Festivities at the Guildhall. The Lord Mayor held a reception, followed by a truly aweinspiring concert by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. James Priory is, of course, the Chairman of the Festivities, to which he brings the same enthusiasm that he demonstrates at the school.
Meeting at the school with the Development Office and staff to organise arrangements for the Golf Day on 3 June and the subsequent Cricket Reunion. Once again, I was gratified by the positive engagement with current School staff, which is blossoming in all kinds of ways.
17 May Senior School Assembly in The Cathedral, where I gave a short address outlining the nature of the Club, and announced details of travel grants which the Club had awarded to two pupils – Olivia Law and Chloe Choppen. The way in which the school honoured it’s achievers, and the deportment of all present was inspiring.
Annual OP cricket matches at Hilsea. This year the event was preceded by a lunch at The Royal Beach Hotel, which was wellattended, including by former staff John Hopkinson, Ray Clayton and Peter Barclay. I am confident that all present enjoyed themselves enormously.
25 June Leavers’ Service and Lunch on Governors Green which Bruce Strugnell, OP Club Treasurer, attended on my behalf. This was another wonderful occasion for which the High Street was temporarily closed in order for the leaving pupils and their families to proudly march through the PGS arch for the final time to the special service at the Cathedral of St Thomas.
30 June
26 March
16 May
24 June
One person who was absent from the Concert mentioned above was Andrew Cleary, the school’s Director of Music who, typically was organsing two other musical events that evening. I had previously written to Andrew on behalf of the Club, thanking him for all that he has done for us and the school in his time with us, and reminding him that he is a true OP, and that we will be expecting to see him on as many future occasions as possible!
Annual tree-planting ceremony at Hilsea. This event is intended to mark particularly noteworthy sporting performances by school pupils. I was honoured to be able to address attendant pupils, parents and staff, and felt that the OP Club had made yet another small step in engaging with the school and other members of the PGS Association.
Aspiring OP actress sallies forth It would be somewhat of an understatement to say that Sally Paffett’s feet haven’t touched the ground since leaving PGS in the summer of 2010. The 19 year old, who gave an amazing rendition of the Snow Patrol hit Run with classmates Pamela Kamel and Ellie Williams as part of last year’s Leavers Service in Portsmouth Cathedral, has had a pretty eventful year. Fresh from the 2010 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she was invited to perform her own show Like Little Girls in a Sweetshop to much acclaim, Sally was offered a place at East 15 drama school in Essex and chosen by the National Youth Film Academy to appear in a film short that premiered at the British Film Institute in August. It is, however, her selection from thousands of entries by the Finnish telecommunications giant Nokia to be the face of their current television advertising campaign which has literally catapulted Sally into millions of living rooms. Not that she is any way a stranger to the limelight – she grew up in Singapore and appeared in a number of amateur productions there, before joining the West End chorus of Lionel Bart’s Oliver! when she was just eleven years old under the direction of American Beauty director Sam Mendes.
5 July Annual Summer Art Show at the Square Tower. This was a most stimulating experience and a far cry from art presentations of my era. I was greatly taken by the professionalism of the organisation of the event and the level of skill demonstrated by the exhibits.
7 July PGS & Beyond: The Social Apprentice. This day for Year 12 pupils was designed with a view to giving them some idea of the requirements of the new world into which they were entering. Once again I was extremely impressed by the dedication and commitment which so many people of widely-differing backgrounds put into the event. I also felt that the involvement by so many OP mentors demonstrated an increased engagement by the Club with the school and the PGS Association.
Picture courtesy of The News, Portsmouth.
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OPUS • Issue 5 • Autumn 2011
Forthcoming Events Sunday 6 November 2011 Family Fireworks Extravaganza, Hilsea Playing Fields from 5pm Wrap up warm and join in the fun as PGS lights the touch paper on its very first firework fiesta! Following on from the Portsmouth Festivities ‘Space City’ theme of earlier in the year, come and watch the night sky light up with a myriad of spectacular fireworks. Assorted hot refreshments, sideshows and entertainment. Please note that no parking is available at Hilsea Playing Fields (park at the Lido Car Park or in Military Road). Tickets cost £4 (adults only – children free) and are available from the Development Office . If you would like to attend please send Sue Merton (at the address below) details of the number of tickets required and enclose a cheque for the appropriate value made payable to the ‘The Portsmouth Grammar School’. Address: Development Office, The Portsmouth Grammar School, High Street, Portsmouth, PO1 2LN E-mail: s.merton@pgs.org.uk Telephone: 023 9268 1385
Friday 11 November 2011 Remembrance Concert, St John’s, Smith Square, London SW1P 3HA Portsmouth Grammar School Remembrance Day Concert with the London Mozart Players and Voce Chamber Choir The PGS Chamber Choir, Voce Chamber Choir - Suzi Digby conductor London Mozart Players Gerard Korsten conductor Maxwell Davies - The Five Acts of Harry Patch Britten - Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge Stephen Montague - Requiem The Trumpets Sounded Calling Them to the Other Side All OPs, parents and friends of the school are warmly encouraged to join us at this masterpiece of the English Baroque and one of London’s finest concert venues as we hold an annual Remembrance Concert. Booking opens 3 October, Tickets £10 (+ £2 Booking fee) St John’s Smith Square Box Office 020 7222 1061
Thursday 24 November 2011 PGS Guest Speaker: An Evening with John Aitchison OP, David Bawtree Building at 7.30pm
Saturday 17 December 2011 Annual OP vs. PGS Rugby, Hockey and Netball Matches, Hilsea
This event is being held jointly by PGS and Hampshire & IOW Wildlife Trust (as part of their 50th birthday celebrations). Internationally acclaimed wildlife cameraman John Aitchison will give a talk entitled “Frozen Planet: Filming for the BBC’s New Wildlife Series”. Tickets cost £8 (no conc.) and booking is essential. If you would like to attend please send Liz Preece (at the address below) details of the number of tickets required and enclose a cheque for the appropriate value made payable to the ‘The Portsmouth Grammar School’.
Women’s Hockey at 11.30am, Netball at 1pm, Men’s Hockey at 1pm, Rugby at 2.30pm
Address: Development Office, The Portsmouth Grammar School, High Street, Portsmouth, PO1 2LN E-mail: l.preece@pgs.org.uk Telephone: 023 9268 1392
Thursday 24, Friday 25, Saturday 26 November 2011 “The Wizard of Oz”, King’s Theatre at 7.30pm Click your heels together and join Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion, Dorothy and her little dog Toto, as they journey through the magical land of Oz to meet the Wizard and obtain their heart’s desires. Watch out for the Wicked Witch of the West and her winged monkeys as you rediscover the real story of Oz in this fantastic musical treat for all the family, with much-loved songs from the Oscar-winning music score. Come and show your support for the most ambitious school production of the year. Tickets from the King’s Theatre Box Office Telephone: 023 9282 8282.
Saturday 10 December 2011 OP Club Annual Dinner, David Bawtree Building at 6.45pm for 7.30pm Tickets cost £25. Further details can be found on the page opposite. If you would like to attend please complete the enclosed booking form.
Come and support or participate in the annual winter clash of teams vs. OPs at Hilsea. If you would like to represent the OPs or need further details please contact Liz Preece (e-mail: l.preece@pgs.org.uk or tel: 023 9268 1392).
Thursday 12 January 2012 Annual OP Lunch at the Royal Beach Hotel, Southsea at 12.30pm The annual lunch for OPs who live in or are visiting the Portsmouth area has become a popular event on the OP Calendar. Our lunchtime speaker will be Steve Harris OP (1968-1978), PGS Surmaster and son of the late Roger Harris. If you would like to attend please complete and return the enclosed booking form by Wednesday 4 January 2012. For further details please contact Sue Merton: E-mail: s.merton@pgs.org.uk Telephone: 023 9268 1385
Friday 24 February 2012 OP Club Annual General Meeting, Willis Room at 7.30pm
Old Portmuthian Club Annual Dinner 2011 Saturday 10 December 2011 18.45 for 19.30 David Bawtree Building PGS Dress: Lounge Suit or Dinner Jacket Tickets: £25 Why not end in the year in the company of old friends and new at the annual OP Club Dinner? This is the flagship event of the year for the Old Portmuthian Club. Many OPs use it as an opportunity to meet up with old friends and indeed some members make this the occasion to meet each other annually on what is generally agreed to be a convivial and memorable occasion in the school calendar. If you have never attended an OP Club dinner before, why not make this the year that you give it a try? Better still, why not put together a table of 8 or 10 friends from your Year Group, House or sports team? – The Development Office can put you in touch with your former classmates and help to find old friends. The OP Cricket Club is also planning a major gathering at the event to reunite its players from former years. The OP Club Committee would love to see a spread of former pupils from the 1930’s to the 2000’s. Come and dine in style at this annual party for old acquaintances and friends. The format of the evening, together with menu and entertainment have been refined this year to provide a more informal atmosphere and plenty of opportunity to chat and reminisce. Please come along and show your support for the Club and the School by completing the Booking Form insert in this issue of Opus.
All OPs are welcome to attend this meeting and social gathering. The meeting is preceded by a Drinks Reception at 7.30pm and a Finger Buffet is available at the close of the meeting (no charge). Further details can be found on the PGS website (www. pgs.org.uk under tab ‘PGS Association’ in section ‘OP Club’, item ‘Events’).
PLEASE NOTE that details of all forthcoming events can be found on the school website – www.pgs.org.uk under tab ‘PGS Association’ in section ‘Development Office’.
New Forma for 2011! t
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OPUS • Issue 5 • Autumn 2011
Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
News of Old Portmuthians
News of Old Portmuthians Rob BURGESS (1988-1995)
Nick COCKCROFT (1988-2001)
Sabri Walid AL-SAFI (1993-2006)
Samantha BOSSHARDT (1997-2009)
Sabri read Mathematics at Clare College, Cambridge and recently graduated with a 1st. Class degree in Mathematics. He is now continuing his study at Clare by embarking on a doctorate at the Department of Applied Maths and Theoretical Physics. His primary areas of research are Quantum Information & Foundations. Sabri has also completed Parts I-III of the Maths Tripos at Cambridge.
Samantha has achieved a 1st in her Foundation Degree at the London Studio Centre, coming one step closer to fulfilling her ambition to be a professional ballerina. Her recent end of year performance at the New Wimbledon Theatre, witnessed by her proud parents, was the culmination of a great deal of determination and hard work, with many 10 hour training days. Samantha beat competition from hundreds of other dancers two years ago to be awarded a scholarship to the school, an internationally recognised centre of excellence in dance education. Her passion for performance started at Southsea School of Dancing when she was just four. Back in 2006 she had the unique and unforgettable experience of dancing with the Bolshoi at the Royal Opera House. She had been training as a mid-associate at the Royal Ballet as part of its outreach programme. From there she was recruited by the famous Russian company to perform an Egyptian dance with eight other girls in The Pharaoh’s Daughter.
Rob joined James Grant, one of the UK’s foremost music, media and sports management companies in August 2010 bringing with him an exceptional network of rugby club and industry contacts. He advises, supports and manages many of the leading lights in the game, including Andy Hazell, Nick Robinson and Phil Vickery MBE.
Nick has just been offered a contract as Creative Development Researcher for Tigress Productions, after impressing bosses with his involvement on Red Sea Jaws, a documentary charting the Great White Shark attacks on holiday makers in Sharm elSheikh earlier this year. Tigress has a worldwide reputation for outstanding wildlife, science and adventure documentaries, from the extraordinary series following climbers on Everest for the Discovery channel, to the curious anthropology series Return of the Tribe for Channel Five. Nick has received training in all aspects of television production, including 3D filming, and has just returned from a three week trip to Namibia, as part of his latest project with the company.
Guy BARNARD (1964-1974) Guy has been a director of a number of small businesses over the last 20 years, mainly in the creative and marketing support industries. Prior to this he spent 12 years in the Royal Navy. Since November 2001 he has been Director of ‘JIGAJIG Marketing & Promotions’, a company specialising in promotional merchandise and business gifts. His brother, Nick, and cousins, Simon and Myron Barnard, are OPs. His father, Sam Barnard, and uncles, David and Mike Barnard (ex-PFC and Hampshire CCC fame), also attended PGS. Kieran BATES (2003-2010) Kieran spent the summer of 2011 carrying out research at the American Museum of Natural History’s Southwestern Research Station in Portal, Arizona. This was his second internship since leaving PGS in summer 2010. Kieran arrived in Arizona in late June where, for the first few weeks, he had to contend with the desert heat reaching day time Kieran with a Sonoran Whipsnake temperatures averaging around 36°C. However once the rains came the heat became far more bearable. At the station he was attached to several research projects. The first involved surveying the local hummingbird population; trapping, measuring and attaching leg rings to the birds. The research team was also taking samples of feathers in order to carry out genetic analysis to see if a particular species was genetically distinct from what was thought to be the same species in Guatemala. The second project focused on hybridisation in Spadefoot Toads where, interestingly, two different species of Spadefoots can mate under certain conditions to produce fertile offspring. Carrying out this particular project meant staying up all night in the desert waiting for toads to mate, wading into breeding pools, collecting the mating pairs and then taking them back to the station where their eggs were collected and further genetic studies could be done. Other projects included looking at levels of stress hormones in lizards collected from fire-damaged sites, sonar jamming in bats, and the effect of tail loss in lizards. Particularly memorable for Kieran was catching rattlesnakes using a snake hook and tongs. This internship resulted in the offer of two further paid internships for summer 2012.
Robin Lander-BRINKLEY (1983-1997) Opus congratulates Robin on being the first person ever to be named as ‘Best Freelance Practitioner’ at the 2011 Chartered Institute of Public Relations Excellence Awards. He was the only shortlisted contender outside of London and impressed the judging panel with his passion for being a freelancer, his creativity and his real focus on results and return on investment for his clients. Robin became a self-employed PR practitioner in 2005 at the age of 26 years, setting up his company Maxwell Communications. He has a Masters Degree in Marketing and Associate Membership to the CIPR. Over the past six years Robin has established an impressive client list in the city of Portsmouth and surrounding area of Hampshire and is a frequent visitor to the school, where he volunteers as a compere for a number of Junior School events and puts Sixth Formers through their paces as a seasoned practice interviewer. James BROOKS (1994-2007) James is Sales Manager for Clifton Custom which designs and produces bespoke branded clothing and accessories-including this year’s coveted PGS ‘Class of 2011’ Leavers’ tartan-lined hoodie! James also played for the PGS Old Boys Rugby team at the 2010 Annual Cronk Cunis Under 21s Festival. The PGS team lost in the final of the Bowl Competition, which is the second tier competition, seeing off Norwich School, Bedford School, Lord Wandsworth, before losing in the final to Oratory School. James will be stepping down from this role now (saying that he is too old to participate) and handing over his gumshield to brother, Tom OP (1995-2009) who will take over and hopefully build on past successes.
Rob graduated from Bristol University in 1999 and worked in a number of jobs in the sports industry, including the successful London 2012 Olympic bid team. His first job in rugby was in 2005 when he was appointed Rugby Manager at Gloucester Rugby Club. Rob was responsible for all off-field team management, and during his time at Gloucester the club won the European Challenge Cup (2006) as well as reaching the Premiership final in 2007, the Premiership semi-finals in 2008 and the Heineken Cup quarter-final in 2008. In 2008, Rob joined the RFU when he was appointed England Team Operations Manager by Martin Johnson. Rob oversaw the logistics for the England team through the 2008 Autumn series, the 2009 Six Nations Championship and the summer Tour to Argentina. Rob was also responsible for maintaining and developing the relationship between the RFU and English clubs over player release and the Elite Player Squad agreement. In August 2009, Rob returned to Gloucester in the newly-created role of Head of Rugby Operations. Rob managed all off-field aspects of Gloucester’s playing department, including specific responsibility for player recruitment, agent liaison and salary cap management. He supported the school’s fundraising efforts to build a climbing wall by providing a signed England Rugby shirt for the CCF Auction, which proved to be one of the most hotly-contested lots of the evening, raising an impressive sum towards the cost of construction. Christopher CARTER (1951-1961) Chris was sworn in as the new Mayor of Gosport on 18 May 2011. Born in Gosport in 1944, Chris spent his early childhood in the Marine Police Quarters in Frater before the family The new Mayor of Gosport Cllr. Chris Carter takes up his new office at the Thorngate Halls with his wife and mayoress June. moved to Lee then Alverstoke in 1947. (Picture courtesy of The News, Portsmouth.) After completing his education Chris pursued a career in banking for several years. In 1968 he enrolled as a Royal Navy Reservist where he served for 25 years , retiring as Lieutenant Commander. In 1978 he married Julia and after a period living in Fleet, they moved back to Gosport in 1985 where their son, Dominic, was born in 1989. Chris was elected as a Councillor for Lee West in 2002. He has been involved the Gosport Federated Music Festival for over 25 years and is currently its Chairman.
Christopher COOK (1993-2003) Chris is currently living with his long term girlfriend in London, having studied medicine and a second degree in physiology at the University of London. He qualified with a distinction in Medicine and 1st Class Honours degree in Physiology. He has worked at various central London hospitals and, in a step closer to fulfilling his ambition of becoming a cardiologist, has secured a job working with the heart transplant team based at the specialist Harefield Hospital for 2012. Chris has also maintained his interest in Art, fostered at PGS by former Art Teacher Christine Derry. After enrolling on a course at the Slade School of Art looking at fine art and medicine, he joined a small group which performed ‘ward rounds’ at London galleries and applied medical knowledge to The Ugly Duchess by Quinten Massys provide a diagnosis to the subjects of portrait paintings. Chris and his professor, Michael Baum, made international news when they changed how art historians viewed the subject of a Flemish masterpiece popularly known as ‘The Ugly Duchess’ which had long been one of the most talked-about paintings in the National Gallery. The sitter for the portrait by Quinten Massys, which inspired illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was proven by Baum and Cook’s research to be much more than simply grotesque. It emerged that she was a victim of an advanced form of Paget’s Disease, which enlarges and deforms the bones. In her case it had appeared to have enlarged her jaw bones, extended the upper lip and pushed up her nose. The disease also appears to have affected her hands, eye sockets, forehead and chin. Interviewed in The Telegraph, Baum, emeritus professor of surgery at University College London, was quick to give Chris credit for the radical rethink on a painting which art critics had previously thought merely a study in grotesquery. “I handed Christopher the task of proving the Paget’s Disease theory”, he said, “and give him top marks for his research. It is a beautiful piece of work and utterly compelling”.
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OPUS • Issue 5 • Autumn 2011
Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
News of Old Portmuthians
News of Old Portmuthians
Captain Quentin COX (1972 -1979)
Jonathan HUNT (1962-1968)
Major Matthew JONES (1983-1993)
Jonathan is an experienced literary translator and has worked as a university lecturer in Munich, Cambridge and Turin. He currently holds a research post at Turin University. His acclaimed translations from the Italian include Niccolo Ammaniti’s I’m Not Scared, The Crossroads and Steal You Away (described by The Times Literary Supplement, as a ‘fluent, forceful and flawless’ translation) and Carlo Petrini’s Slow Food Nation.
Matthew has been awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Valuable Service for his military intelligence work in Afghanistan. He commanded intelligence staff in Afghanistan from late 2010 until early this year and is credited with translating complex, raw intelligence into simple and useful material extremely quickly. He has written two handbooks which are regarded as seminal works in the intelligence community. His citation read: “Major Jones is, in his own field, a genius.” Matthew currently works for the MOD in London. He joined the army in 1997 after studying at Cambridge University.
Quentin is pictured with his partner Alma donating a copy of the Manual of Oil Tanker Operations which he has just co-authored to the school Library’s OP Collection. Quentin is Senior Lecturer at Warsash Maritime Academy.
Charles’ work is largely influenced by the time he spent living in London and has progressed from vivid city scenes to more intangible concepts such as identity and conformism. More recently he has been using projections and cellophane to create paintings with double images. His current work is also focused around an old chair. The first of this series was the winner of The Open Art Competition. Charles’ mother Sally Gordon has served on the Development Board as an advisor to PGS since 2004.
Callum DONNELLY (2004-2009))
Mike HALES (1956-1963)
Callum is a member of a newly formed theatre company, ‘Beyond The Pale Collaborative’ based in Canterbury. There are 5 members who make up the main body of the company and who met when they were at the University of Kent.
Mike has had two books published in 2011. The Story of C is an adult novel dealing with the trials and tribulations of a hedonistic woman, while the autobiographical Fifty Years of Why Not? recounts Mike’s days as a cub reporter working on the Portsmouth Evening News in the 1960s. He later went on to be Marketing Director for Diabetes UK, Head of Sport for BBC Publicity and was Director of Communications at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, widely regarded as the most successful Commonwealth Games in history.
Jamie FARMER (1999-2006) Back in the summer of 2009, Jamie was busy training in Bromley, Kent for the Championship Football League team which had just signed him and so had to send his mother to PGS to collect his GCSE results. His resulting clean sweep of 10 A* grades together with his two year apprenticeship at Millwall FC made front page headlines in The Daily Telegraph. Now, after completing his two year contract as goalkeeper for the Lions U18 team, Jamie is hanging up his football boots to concentrate on the A Levels he needs to study law at University. Head of Youth Scott Fitzgerald commented: “Jamie has been a credit to the club and will be much missed. No one would be more pleased than me if one day he returned to the professional game.” Charles GORDON (2003-2006) Charles has been described as one of the most exciting young artists in the UK today. Working mainly in oils, his work deals with themes such as identity, poverty and urban life. Having completed a Foundation Diploma at Central St Martin’s School of Art in the summer of 2010, Charles went on to win the Young Artist prize (under 25) at the age of just 20 years in the prestigious National Open Art Competition in October of the same year. He is now a practising artist living in Hampshire and has done a number of private and commercial commissions.
Jim HAYWARD (1974-1981) Jim is a veteran of many PGS adventurous training activities in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, including the Ten Tors, Challenge Fell and Bottle Society and sailing camps at Newtown on the Isle of Wight. He can still recite all three verses of ‘Men of Harris’, routinely sung en masse around campfires to the tune of Men of Harlec in tribute to the now, sadly deceased, former Head of Outdoor Pursuits, Roger Harris. Small wonder then he went on to found his own Outdoor Pursuits and Training Company, Mendip Outdoor Pursuits, in 1987. As well as being an N.V.Q assessor and internal verifier, Jim holds coaching qualifications in orienteering, canoeing, kayaking, caving, hillwalking and archery. He is also a seasoned endurance racer and has competed in some of the most inhospitable conditions and terrain in the UK. Jim has been a great supporter of his old school, helping to raise money for the construction of the Roger Harris Climbing Wall by providing a CCF Auction Prize of day’s guided caving in Cheddar Gorge and, more recently, supporting the PGS ‘Solent Swim’ where five Year 13 pupils swam 3 and a half miles across the Solent to raise more than £4,000 for Help The Heroes. Jim headed up the Kayak team providing safety back-up to the swimmers, though fortunately their services were not needed!
Oliver B JONES (1996-2010) When Oliver was just eighteen years old, a chance encounter with a local politician led to a high-profile internship with the Conservative Party. This was in the midst of the 2005 general election, and Oliver spent most of the campaign jetting around the country with the party’s prime ministerial candidate, Michael Howard. His responsibilities included advance work and connecting with the press at each stopover. A high point was a trip Oliver organised to his hometown of Portsmouth, where Howard visited the naval harbour and historic dockyard. “Bringing my campaign to my hometown and seeing it from above in a helicopter was an amazing experience,” Oliver recalls. In 2010, after graduating from Cambridge University, Oliver re-entered Tory politics as campaign manager for parliamentary candidate Brandon Lewis. The race was a tough one, for a seat that was a prime target for the national party, but low on its list of likely pickups. Nonetheless, Oliver’s team helped send Lewis to parliament by swinging the vote almost 9 points toward the Conservatives compared with the previous election. After the election, Oliver joined the CBI, Britain’s main business lobby, as a senior campaign advisor working with the new Conservative government on increasing the role of private business in public services. In April this year, he became a property communications manager with ASDA Walmart, where he helps the company secure government approval for new projects. Despite his recent work in the private sector, Oliver hasn’t left political campaigns behind. “We only have general elections every four or five years,” he says, “and there aren’t other elections at which you can earn money, so it’s really a case of filling my time between elections.” He also found time earlier in the year to return to school as part of the Careers Department’s ‘Working Lunch’ programme and captivated his Sixth Form audience with his energy and determination to succeed. Little wonder then that Campaigns and Elections magazine have singled wannabe Tory MP Oliver out as a 2011 International Rising Star.
Charles P KELLY (2000-2005) Charles now lives in Taiwan where he runs ‘Mandarin Masters’, a new Chinese Language School (www.mandarinmasters.com). Peter KENNARD (1942-1947) Peter joined PGS in 1942, shortly before his 12th birthday. Due to the War, this was one of a dozen schools he attended, spanning five counties ranging from Lancashire to Kent. Initially Peter stayed at Colvin boarding house in Bournemouth before becoming a day-boy when his parents moved to Bournemouth. At the end of the War the school returned to Portsmouth and was established as a boarding school at 28 South Parade, Southsea, where Peter stayed until he left in 1947. After leaving school Peter went to sea as an Apprentice. He joined P&O in 1952 with a Second Mate’s Certificate. He went on to obtain a Master’s Certificate and achieved the rank of Acting Captain before coming ashore for domestic reasons. Peter worked with Roll-On, Roll-Off ferries in Southampton and subsequently with container shipping. He was Manager of the Dutch company , Van Ommeren (Port Managers of the Japanese Container Shipping Company N.Y.K.) and later was the Adviser for the Jeddah Port Authorities Container Operations with a British and Philippino team. His career culminated with a position as Administration Manager with Berkeley Handling, an independent stevedoring company specialising in car-carrying vessels. He was simultaneously Director of an employment agency, Walker Port Services. Retirement in 1994 gave Peter and his wife the chance to settle in Los Cristianos, Tenerife, where their apartment overlooks the working harbour with its fishing vessels, ferries and occasional cruise liners. When living in the UK, Peter was often able to attend the monthly meetings of the London Society of Old Portmuthians. Robin LANGHORN (1996-2005) Robin arrived in New York in late August aboard the Queen Mary 2 on his maiden voyage as a cadet engineer officer for Cunard. His first voyage will see him on board for six months with Christmas spent in the Caribbean. continued...
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OPUS • Issue 5 • Autumn 2011
Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
News of Old Portmuthians
News of Old Portmuthians
Jonathan LOW (1997-2007)
John C SHEPHERD (1955-1965)
Crispin SMITH (1974-1981)
Jonathan graduated in July with a 2:1 BA Honours Degree in History and French at the University of Reading after a very enjoyable course which included a year as an English Language assistant in two French secondary schools. He is currently teaching English as a Foreign Language at a summer school in Bournemouth, and is actively looking to go into a career in sports journalism.
John has been Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at Carleton University in Ottawa, a university of 23,000 students, since January 2007.
Crispin, son of former PGS Archivist Catherine Smith, has scooped a coveted Gibbs Prize at the end of his first year at New College, Oxford, where he is reading Egyptology and Near-Eastern Studies.
Katie LOW (2002-2004) Jonathan’s sister Katie has been at Magdalen College, Oxford since 2004, where she obtained a BA in Classics (congratulatory first) in 2008 and an MSt (Distinction) in 2009. While she was an undergraduate, she acted in the Oxford Greek Play and was a contestant on University Challenge. She is now working on a doctorate on the Roman historian Tacitus (concentrating on the Tiberian books of the Annals), and has just returned from a year in Paris as a visiting student at the Ecole normale supérieure. David NELSON (1963-1973) After twenty-seven years in TV news production with Thames TV, ITN, Sky News, Reuters, CBNC and two stints setting- up TV home shopping company QVC both in the UK and Germany, David has now joined the marketing team at Ernst & Young LLP (UK). He writes and produces literature for the UK firm, although currently he is solely focused on producing webcasts for global clients. David also became a father for the first time on 10 March 2011 when his daughter, Catherine Eleanora was born. Martin PATCHETT (1970-1976) Martin was educated at The Portsmouth Grammar School and The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. He worked in Manchester and London for 20 years before moving to an Oxfordshire Lettings and Commercial Property Agency. He was in charge of the Commercial Agency business for eight years before transferring this business to Stimpsons Eves Chartered Surveyors in January 2010. Martin is a member of the Cowes Corinthian Yacht Club and has taken part in many well known regattas over the years, including Cowes, Cork Week and 15 Round The Island Races, always trying to adhere to his own adage of “Start at Cowes and keep the Island to the port, try not to hit the forts”.
Although he describes himself as a musician, John has a degree in Modern Languages from Carleton and a DPhil in Music from York, UK. He obtained a full-time post at Carleton at about the age of 40 and has risen steadily ever since. In 1991, he was appointed Director of the School of Art History, Film Studies and Music for seven years. He was then successively Chairman of the Department of Sociology, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research and finally Dean. In addition to his duties as Dean , he has recently been appointed Associate Provost (Quality Assurance). As such he is responsible for the appraisal of all Carleton University’s graduate and undergraduate courses, old and new. This new post is as a result of a changing quality assurance scheme in the Province of Ontario.
Andrew (Andy) STABLES (1967-1973) Andy has been in the Education Department of Bath University since 1994, where he is now Professor of Education and Philosophy. His publications include ‘Childhood and the Philosophy of Education: an anti-Aristotelian perspective’, which is published by Continuum and has just come out in paperback. Marie-Aubaine STUBBS (Former Staff ) Former PGS teacher of French, Marie-Aubaine, was married to Dr Graham Kennedy on 16 July 2011. Will SWIFT (2000-2010)
Richard SIMONSEN (1953-1964) When five Old Portmuthians whose friendship has endured for more than half a century heard that last year’s visiting NASA astronauts presented the school with a flag that had been into space, they were determined not to be outdone. Richard Simonsen, Steve Limburn, Tony Knowles-Ley, John Fifield and Dave Nuttall, were reunited at the Miramar Air Show in San Diego, the largest air show in the USA, where Richard’s son Christian (fourth from left), is a pilot in the world famous Blue Angels US Navy flight demonstration squadron. The group handed over a PGS teddy bear, school crest and pennant to the Blue Angels pilots which Christian says, who flies in the Opposing Solo position of the formation, will be used as cockpit mascots in the in their F/A-18 Hornets which perform death-defying aerobatics at speeds in excess of 1,200 miles per hour.
Jonathan was selected from many hundreds of applicants from all around the world as a team member on the Inspiring the Next Generation programme, run by the international conservation charity Earthwatch. The research trip he was selected for took him to Pilanesberg National Park and Mankwe Wildlife Reserve over the summer to monitor South Africa’s scavenger species and gave him a truly unique opportunity to volunteer alongside professional scientists and help develop greater human understanding of these animals and the threats they face, and to aid future conservation strategies. The trip was only made possible through travel grants from the Old Portmuthian Club and Portsmouth and Southsea Rotary Club. Jonathan starts his medical degree at University College, London in September.
Will is currently studying War Studies at the University of London and has joined the University of London Officer Training Corps. Jennifer TILBURY (2003-2010) Jennifer has been awarded an engineering scholarship under the ‘Power Academy’ scheme which is run by the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET). The scheme is designed to encourage young engineers into the power electronics industry and to head hunt young engineers still in their undergraduate years. The scholarship involves funding and sponsorship throughout Jennifer’s time at University, an annual placement at Rolls Royce and the possibility of joining the Rolls Royce graduate scheme on leaving university. Jonathan WAN (2004-2011)
The next leg of the reunion trip, organised by Tony and Dave, took the party along the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco where once again got to see the Blue Angels in action. The main attraction at San Francisco Fleet Week, attended by over a million people, the Angels performed their signature diamond formation high above San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.
Vincent WEBB (2001-2008) Vince has spent time studying in a number of prestigious institutions as part of his degree including Kings College London, SOAS, the Royal Academy of Music and most recently a sabbatical spent at the University of North Carolina, attributing his versatility as a composer to the amazing and diverse tuition he has received through these colleges having received master-classes from the likes of Hugh Masekela and Chick Corea. He enjoyed his first success at the age of 14 at PGS when his composition Galopade de Glace (Stampede of Ice) was performed by members of the London Mozart Player, the school’s Associate Musicians. The piece later achieved a number 7 spot on www. sibeliusmusic.com ‘s Most Popular Music chart for several weeks. It was around this time that Vince became interested in composing using music software such as Cubase and Reason. During the run up to his A Levels, much of his spare time was dedicated to mastering the software and hardware at his disposal and building up a portfolio. Encouraged by the level of professionalism he was able to achieve through his new producing and composing skills, Vince tried his hand at everything from orchestral soundtracks to ringtones and remixes (his video Pacman v.s Justin Timberlake is approaching 3,800 hits on Youtube). In 2009, aged just 19, he won a prestigious online video-game composing competition which enabled his work to be featured in his first published video game Konstrukt Invasion by Kalydo software. Vince spends his free time playing jazz with the University of London Big Band, recording and writing songs with his band Kinzli and the Killowatts (Polkadot Records) as well as, of course, composing. He currently focuses on small-scale projects such as student films and iPhone games. His most recent work includes ‘Across Age HD’ by the Munich-based phone-game veterans, FDG entertainment (Beyond Ynth, Bobby Carrot series).
Jonathan Wan receives his Old Portmuthian Travel Grant Award from OP Treasurer Bruce Strugnell OP (1958-1967) far right) in the company of Headmaster James Priory and members of his family.
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OPUS • Issue 5 • Autumn 2011
Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
In memoriam
Gerry BUCK (1929-2011)
Opus is saddened to report the death of the following Old Portmuthians and colleagues Walter (Wally) H BARTLE TD, CFM, ARCA, ATD (1910-2011) (See ‘Passing of a Great Schoolmaster ‘ on page 32)
Fred BLANKS (1925-2011) Fred Blanks was almost an OP. He had a keen interest in PGS and was a valued member of the Sydney OP Luncheon Group. We are grateful to Stuart Gardner (OP 1950-56) for this appreciation of Fred’s life. The highly respected music critic of the Sydney Morning Herald for 35 years, Fred Blanks - best described for these pages as almost an Old Portmuthian - has died in Sydney at the age of 86.
Our thanks to Mike Craddock (OP 1945-1954) for the following obituary which appeared in the ‘Nanaimo Daily News’. Walter Bartle (Wally) died peacefully on July 18, 2011, aged 101, in Nanaimo, British Columbia. Wally was born February 27, 1910 in a small mining community in Derbyshire, England. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in London before becoming a teacher, and spent most of his career at Portsmouth Grammar School, where he taught from 1936 until his retirement in 1970. During his time at PGS Wally served with the Officer Training Corps, spending weekends and holidays leading training exercises in the UK and in Germany and rising to the rank of major. A life-long lover of music and art, Wally was an accomplished painter and singer, singing in church choirs well into his seventies. He learned to drive after retirement, and travelled extensively throughout Europe, before emigrating to Canada with his second wife Win, when he was 78. In Nanaimo, Wally put his prodigious memory and love of storytelling to work at the Nanaimo Military Museum, where he volunteered as a docent and entertained visitors for nearly 30 years. Wally will be missed by his children, grandchildren and great grand children, by his many friends and former students, and by his colleagues at the Military Museum. He was preceded in death by Enid White, his first wife, and his second wife, Winifred Scott Parker.
Fred’s family – Jewish – fled Germany in the 1930s. He later described, in a magazine article, growing up reviled and ostracised in Germany during the Nazi era. It was in stark contrast to much happier days after his family escaped to England. At Carberry boarding school (later a PGS boarding house run by Lou Asher) in Bournemouth he learned English, developed a love of cricket and began his deep attachment to English music on which he later became an authority, especially that of Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. The family moved to Sydney in 1938 and a decade later Fred graduated with a science degree from Sydney University. In the early1950s he returned to England to help ICI prepare for the launch of a new product based upon eucalyptus oil. He made a pilgrimage to Carberry to find it closed, but containing plenty of evidence of its former PGS residents. (Incidentally, I understand that the former headmaster of Carberry, Napier Weir, later joined the staff of PGS.)
Morning Herald in 1963 and stood down some 35 years later. In 1988 his services to music were recognised with the award of the order of Australia (AM). His passing was recognised with a half-page tribute in the Sydney Morning Herald by the man who originally employed him, former chief music critic Roger Covell. Fred attended our luncheon group regularly until around a year ago. He was delightful company and we shall miss him. Why – he was almost one of us!
Mervyn Thomas Courtney FRANCIS (1922-2011)
Graham BROADHEAD (1927-2010) Graham attended PGS from 1938-1942. He died peacefully aged 83 years on 16th December 2010, after battling an illness with great dignity. He was the much loved husband of Rosemarie, father of Helen, Ruth and Peter and proud grandfather of nine. Graham had been a member of London Society of Old Portmuthians for many years and was its President in 1993.
This fleeting association sparked an interest in PGS. Learning of our luncheon club in Sydney he made contact and we invited him along as our one and only honorary OP. Not only was Fred better versed in PGS history and lore than – dare I say it – most of us, he was excellent company and a fount of knowledge on matters music. Fred worked all his life as a chemical engineer but his passion was music sparked by his days at Carberry. In London in the 1950s he persuaded the editor of The Musical Times to appoint him as its Australian correspondent, a position he held for 37 years. He joined the Sydney
Former PGS Head Porter, Gerry Buck, passed away on Friday 3 March, aged 82 years. Gerry first brought his wife, Joan, and the family into school accommodation to take up his post in 1982. Prior to this he had enjoyed a distinguished career in the Royal Navy, which he joined as a boy in 1945 and concluded as a Fleet Chief Petty Officer. In 1970 he was awarded the British Empire Medal for services to sport. His sporting record would make anyone envious: Gerry played soccer for the Navy, for Hong Kong against the Korean Olympic Team in 1948, won the RN Veterans’ doubles title at Wimbledon and was for four years the Royal Navy 100 and 200 yard sprint champion. He met Joan, herself an athlete with Portsmouth Atlanta Athletics Club, at Alexandra Park. Gerry’s starting pistol and AAA cap were much recognised features of PGS Sports Days for many years. Gerry is survived by wife Joan, sons and daughters Glenn and Geraldine (who both work at PGS), Ian, Linda and Jeff and grandchildren.
Mervyn attended PGS from1937-1940 and was a classmate of Alan Bristow and James Clavell. We are grateful to Mervyn’s son, Patrick Francis, for this appreciation of Mervyn’s life.
Graham Broadhead (far left) at the Reunion for PGS Leavers 1935-1945, held at the school on 2008
Mervyn Francis, who was a prominent figure in the world of advertising in its ‘Madmen’ heyday, has died just short of his 89th birthday. Working for most of his career with the leading American agency, Foote, Cone and Belding, he was appointed Managing Director of the London office in 1968 and was subsequently International Vice-President in charge of 10 FCB offices in Europe.
FCB’s impressive list of clients included BOAC (as British Airways was known in those days), Frigidaire, Gordon’s gin, Batchelor’s soups and Murray mints. As Managing Director, Francis oversaw a diversification programme into such related fields as public relations and direct response advertising. He served for a number of years on the council of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and was chairman of the Regent Advertising Club of London in 1960-61. Born in Secunderabad, India, in 1922, Mervyn Francis was the only child of a schoolmistress and an army musician who rose to become Bandmaster of the Green Howards and, later, Director of Music of the Royal Marines. In his younger years, Mervyn attended several army schools before spending 5 years at Portsmouth Grammar School where he began his lifelong support of Portsmouth football and Hampshire county cricket clubs. Leaving school early in 1941, Francis volunteered for the RAF and was sent to Canada for air crew training. He served as a navigator and bomb aimer with Coastal Command, flying in Whitleys from St Eval in Cornwall on anti-U boat patrols in the Bay of Biscay. In September 1942 he sustained spinal injuries when his plane was hit by enemy fire and crash-landed 3 miles from the home aerodrome. After 6 months in hospital in Newquay, he became a bombing instructor with Training Command. He left the RAF in 1946 as a Flight Lieutenant but continued to fly with the RAFVR for several years after the war. In 1965 Francis was asked by the Football Association to write promotional plans for the forthcoming World Cup and he served as an honorary personal assistant to the Secretary of the FA, Sir Denis Followes, for the duration of the tournament. It was at the match between the USSR and North Korea that Francis was iintroduced to Alexander Borisenko, the First Secretary for Cultural Relations at the Soviet Embassy. Subsequently, Francis and his wife were invited to a number of cultural events in London, including a performance by the Red Army Choir. In turn, Borisenko and his wife made some visits to the Francis’ home in Kingswood, 20 miles south of London. However, it was not long before Borisenko was unmasked as a KGB agent and deported. It transpired that his visits to Kingswod had enabled him to do ‘dead drops’ en route.
After his retirement from advertising, Francis was much involved in local community affairs. He founded the ‘Village Voice’ magazine and edited it for 15 years. He also contributed weekly features about life in Kingswood for the ‘Surrey Mirror’ until shortly before his death. The bedrock of Mervyn Francis’ life for over 60 years was his wife, Pat, whom he married in 1950. She died exactly a week after her husband. They are survived by a son and a daughter and 4 grandchildren.
Alan Frank PEARSON (1936-2011) Alan was a PGS parent (son Martin attended PGS) and a great supporter of the school. On one occasion Alan and his wife, Sandra, hosted an evening at their home for everyone involved with a school cricket tour to Sri Lanka. He was an accountant and subsequently became the ‘Bookeeper’ for the Old Portmuthian Club. Alan suffered from Alzheimer’s disease in his later years and died on 21 February, 2011 aged 75 years. He is sadly missed by Sandra, son Martin, daughter Nicola and grandchildren.
James Edward SMITH (1920-2011) Edward, or Ted as he was known to his friends, attended PGS from 1931-1936 and maintained a keen in interest in the school over the years. He was a member of the OP Club and was involved in a Year 9 school history project where he helped pupils research OPs who had died during the Second World War. He died peacefully at home on May 22, 2011, aged 91 years. He was the much loved father of Jennifer and Stephen (OP 1966-1970), grandfather to Matthew, Caroline, Edward and Olivia.
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OPUS • Issue 5 • Autumn 2011
Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
In memoriam Hugh WOODCOCK (1925-2011)
Hugh Elborough Parry Woodcock was born in Longparish, Hampshire, on February 9 1925, the son of a rector. He was educated at the Dragon School and St Edward’s, Oxford and, after wartime service in the Royal Navy as a flight direction officer, went to Trinity College, Oxford to read History.
He first taught at the Dragon School where he was noted as a schoolmaster of flair and potential. He was appointed Headmaster of the PGS Lower School in 1954 while still in his twenties. After eight years at PGS he was appointed Headmaster of Dulwich College Preparatory School where he remained until his retirement. Hugh served on the Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools (IAPS) committees almost continuously from 1970 until he retired and was elected Chairman of IAPS twice, a considerable accolade.
The following Old Portmuthians sadly passed away at the time of going to press: Dennis J (‘Paddy’) SMITH (1924-2011), Duncan Hugh SPENCER (1920-2011), Alan Albert TROUT (1918-2011) and Bruce WRIGHT (1921-2011). Tributes to all four will appear in the next edition of Opus.
Is there anybody out there? That was the question posed in the last issue of Opus when the Development Office launched its very first electronic survey of Old Portmuthians. We were overwhelmed by the responses received from all around the world from OPs spanning leaving decades from the 1920s through to the 2000s. The diversity of career paths taken by former pupils and the sheer breadth of their achievements was simply staggering. On a more practical note, we have also made careful note of how you would like to hear school news in the future and the sorts of events you are interested in attending and will be tailoring our activities accordingly. The Development Office team is busy working through all the many kind offers of volunteering – from career mentoring to playing for an OP sports team – but in the meantime we wanted to give you a flavour of some of the responses we have received and have reproduced a small sample of the answers we received in response to just two of the questions on the survey:
What is your abiding memory of PGS?
In retirement Hugh enjoyed golf and kept abreast of developments in cricket. He died of a sudden heart attack on 2 April at 86 years old. He is survived by his wife Bridget, and two sons and two daughters.
The extraordinary atmosphere of the place, both in the Lower and then Middle/Upper schools. The buildings resonated with a sense of camaraderie, learning, welcome and friendliness, the like of which I have never experienced anywhere else. It was almost physical and subsequent visits have only served to reinforce this atmosphere
(See John Owens’ tribute to Hugh Woodcock on page 24).
Announcements
The lifelong friends I made and immense pride in my old school and what it has helped me to achieve in life
OP Engagements / Marriages / Births
Some truly fantastic teachers! Mr Hampshire, Mr Nials, Mr Ives, Mr Taylor
Teaching me how to work long and hard and to have regard for the feelings and aspirations of other people
Jemma WOODBRIDGE (1993-2000) and Gareth Colwell (1987-2000) married in July this year (see picture left). Gareth has just graduated from the University of Portsmouth as a mature student with First Class Honours in Politics this year.
Emily Knight (1997-2004 ) started at PGS aged 5 and left after A Levels in 2004. Her fiancé Dr Tom Morgan, whom she met at Bristol University. proposed to her whilst on holiday in Canada in June and they are hoping for a June 2013 wedding. Her father Paul, who was formerly Head of Economics at PGS and Development Campaign Committee Chairman, continues to serve on the school’s Development Board.
The Quad in the morning Two towering, inspiring, formative characters in my young life: Mrs Spofforth and Mr Blewett The smell Literary discussion and much hilarity in Sixth Form English lessons with Mr Elphick-Smith The all-round experience which I think has set me up well for future life. The staff, facilities and even fellow pupils and the opportunities around me all helped create that experience that has shaped who I am now The friends that I made and still meet 48 years later
What has been your proudest achievement since leaving PGS? Serving Queen and Country for 36 years Ensuring the reliable operation of a solar-photovoltaic power supply system for the inhabitants of a remote island in the Torres Strait Developing the first ever medical treatment for age-related macular degeneration (blindness) Playing at Twickenham for the Cambridge U21s in December 2010 vs Oxford U21s and winning 20 -5 Saving the lives of newborn babies when they weren’t breathing after delivery I think managing to cover the Royal Navy on the front line around the world in a really exciting era was special – I was there in the Barents Sea to see the end of the Cold War; was in Minehunters off Kuwait as it burned; took a convoy ride into Bosnia; saw the eyeball to eyeball confrontation with Iran in the Northern Gulf. More recently to have immortalised in print some of the memories of ordinary sailors doing extraordinary things during WW2 before they are all gone from among us has been an honour. Introducing a Passenger Communication Safety Alarm system on the Toronto commuter rail network Teaching my son to read Increasing UK exports by £500 million when UK Trade and Industry Export Promoter Winning Sportswoman of the Year at LSE
All the respondents’ details were placed into a draw to win a bottle of champagne. The lucky winner was Stephanie Davies OP (1994-2005 ) who called into school recently to claim her priz e. Steph is currently at the University of Liverpool studying veterinary science where she has just start ed her final year. She spent the summer undertaking a num ber of placements seeing animals ranging from exot ic axolotls to cows on the farm. She says, “I’m hoping to spec ialise in exotic species when I qualify and therefore spen d as much time as I can around weird and wonderful anim als. I even managed to spend an extra year in the middle of my course concentrating on veterinary conservation medicine which entailed me travelling around Sout h East Asia.” Thank you to all those OPs who completed the survey!
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OPUS • Issue 5 • Autumn 2011
From Rags to Riches Daisy Harris-Burland OP (2002-2009) found herself on the middle of the dance floor under the glitter ball at her Year 11 PGS Prom literally trying to clutch onto her bustier and her self respect as her homemade cardboard dress disintegrated around her.
Far from putting her off fashion, it was at this precise moment that Daisy, whose brother Henry is also an OP, knew that dress designing was to be her destiny.
Based in Manchester, where she has taken out a year out from her studies at Manchester School of Art to launch her own bespoke clothing line, Daisy’s signature dresses are daring, unique and turn everyday objects into eyecatching red carpet creations. Daisy will be taking her dresses on the road and returning to Portsmouth in November to showcase her two separate collections Dumpster Couture and Dumpster Apparel at a special fashion show in Gunwharf Quays and is coming back to PGS this term to recruit some catwalk volunteers to model her creations. She says of her craft: “Everything I do is carried out with a twist, taking inspiration
and materials from anything I can get my hands on!” She is convinced that her two collections will attract customers at both ends of the spectrum: “Dumpster Couture offers a bespoke client service, with all the distinctive and quirky pieces made from promotional fliers, newspapers and magazines, being tailored to the individual. Dumpster Apparel , by contrast, is a ready to wear line, created out of my own personal pattern designs, digitally printed onto fabric.” Both lines are created for confident women with an interest in statement clothes which double up as conversation pieces. “I would absolutely love for OPs out there to get involved by sending me any unwanted knick knacks that they can’t quite bring themselves to throw away. Any rubbish that they think I could give a new lease of life to rather than consigning it to the dustbin would be gratefully received.
I can work with anything from train tickets and bottle caps to till receipts and egg boxes. Best of all, I’ll then extend an invitation to people answering the call so that they get to come down to Gunwharf and see my models strutting their stuff down the runway with their donated bits and bobs! Hopefully they will have a far more glamorous time than your average trip to the recycling centre! “Anyone wishing to help Daisy put together one of her unique creations by donating unwanted paraphernalia can contact her at daisyharrisburland@hotmail.co.uk
Examples of Daisy Burland Harris’s fabulous couture dresses modeled by her friend and fellow OP Ellie Williams (1996-2010), a second year student at the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
And Finally.. Pick of the Postbag It is always heartening to receive your reaction and feedback to Opus. Here we reproduce the letter sent by John Morrison OP to the Development Office following publication of the last edition.
Dear Editors
Congratulations on another high qual ity issue which refreshed a number of personal memories for me. 1. I parted company with science at PGS after O-levels. I do wish I had paid more attention, as I have always felt my poor understanding was a handicap in my journalistic career. My only recollection of first year Chemistry is of the formidable Bill Tweed. His party piece was to turn on a bunsen burner, then disappear down the corri dor, leaving a lab full of boys terrified by the hiss of escaping gas. After what seemed like an age, but was probably only half a minute, he returned with a flourish, lit a match and set off the kind of Big Bang which today would attract Health and Safety inspectors from across Hampshire. 2. Latin with the Egg (FD Lenton) was always entertaining. ‘Down-in-a-de ep-dark-valesat-an-old-cow-chewing-a-beanstalk’ was the line he taught us to remembe r the correct rhythm of an iambic pentameter. This piece of classical knowledge always stood me in good stead. I loved Latin and was sorry to have to give it up after O-levels, but it helped me learn other languages like Russ ian. 3. I remember the famous 1965 trip to Moscow evoked by Keir Strugnell. The incident when Chris Blowers got hauled off our bus by a traffic policeman for jayw alking near the Bolshoi sounds familiar. But som e of my recollections are more colo urful. This was the school trip of a lifetime and the moment when I first tasted vodka! On the outward journey overland, I remember our belo ved head of modern languages Norm an Paxton and his colleagues swaying a little as they entered Ostend station after a long channel crossing fuelled by many bottles of Stella (in the 1960s an exotic Belgian beer with which PGS schoolteachers, more used to Brick woods watery bitter, were unfamilia r). Luckily we (the pupils) were on hand to guid e them on to the train and rifle their pockets to dig out our tickets for the inspector. Som ewhere near Cologne a major rail dive rsion made us miss our connections, and we were forced to hop from train to train durin g the night until we reached East Berlin. Here Norm an led us along Unter Den Linden look ing for something to eat, all his linguistic skills frustrated by the inadequacies of com munist catering. Our arrival had not been prog rammed into the five-year plan. Like Lenin, we were placed in a sealed train heading east to Poland, where we squeezed into a crowded train corridor for the next leg of our epic journey interrupted by a stop in Poznan for sausage and sauerkraut. We finally pulled in to Brest-Litovsk, the Soviet border station, sixteen hours late.
John Morrison’s jacket photo from his book Anthony Blair: Captain of School, a lovingly recreated pastiche of an Edwardian six-shilling novel, with a strangely familiar cast of characters, which moves deftly between the comedy of Adrian Mole and the biting satire of Animal Farm. Matthew Parris has described the book as “Charles Dickens’s Steerforth meets Enid Blyton’s Julian half way - about 1910 - and the product bears an uncanny resemblance to someone we all know. Columnists may rage and psychobiographers babble, but in one neat, beguiling and funny little satire, John Morrison has said it all.’
In my case the spell of Russia lasted a lifetime. I went on to study Russian at Oxford, become the Reuters bureau chief in Moscow in the early 1980s, and wrot e a biography of Boris Yeltsin a decade later. More recently, my play A Morning with Guy Burgess, set in Moscow in 1963, had a three-week run at a small London theatre. The play draws on new information that has emerged from KGB archives in the last 20 years, as well as my own conversations with people who knew Burgess, including the Soviet spy who controlled him in London in the late 1940s and helped arrange his spectacular defe ction in 1951. Best regards John Morrison OP (1957-1967)
Back copies of Opus are available free of charge. Simply complete the detachable booking form to request the required issue. And please be sure to keep sending us your feedback and suggestions! ISSUE 1 Autumn 2009
ISSUE 2 Spring 2010
ISSUE 3 Autumn 2010
ISSUE 4 Spring 2011
2011 is the 350th anniversary of the birth of the founder of Portsmouth Grammar School, Dr William Smith, who served as Physician to the Town and Garrison of Portsmouth. His coat of arms was incorporated in the Boer War Memorial Window in the South Aisle of the Parish Church of St Thomas of Canterbury (now the Cathedral), and was unveiled on 9 May 1905. The window was the outcome of an appeal to pupils, masters and Old Portmuthians to commemorate those who died on active service during the Second Boer War (1899-1902). This year’s school Christmas card is a die-cut reproduction of the window and is available to buy as a pack of ten cards with envelopes for £3.50. (PGS04/11) Please complete the detachable form to order your cards.
Portsmouth Grammar School www.pgs.org.uk