The Pembrokian, Issue 39, Mar 2014

Page 1

thePembrokian ISSUE 39, MARCH 2014

C', DR ADRIAN GREGORY AND PAXMAN CAROLINE HAWLEY ON REPORTING IN AWAR ZONE REGENERATION: ERIK MALSTROM ON REBUILDING ECONOMIES 7 PICTURES FROM THE FRONT


(i)

'0 Years On' 1962-1964, 2nd August 2013

Oxford Open Doors; welcoming visitors from the local community 14th September 2013

:)Gaudy 1992-1994, 6th September 2013

m m

C

Professor A Kacelnik delivers the keynote lecture; When Will Your Robot do What my Bird Does? Pembroke College Mahfouz Forum, 19th September 2013

C m

Alumni Weekend Dinner, 21st September 2013

Islamic Studies Colloquium, 28th September 2013

1958-1964 Gaudy 28" March 2014

m m

New York Reception 12" April 2014 Sheffield Reception 26"Apri12014 Pembroke College Garden Party 31"May 2014 1986-1991 Gaudy 27" June 2014 1983-1985 Gaudy 8" August 2014 London Reception, 20th November 2013

Annual Meeting, 25th January 2014

ci)


rn 4 Stuck Between the Lines by Dr Adrian Gregory

m

6 Rebuilding Economies by Erik Malmstrom

For different generations of Pembrokians this War, and those that followed, will have a different resonance: family members who fought, and those who lost their lives; those fighting now, or who have children on active duty; those whose main 'battle' with war is with the concept itself. I think it is generally acknowledged that whatever opinion an individual holds — whatever their personal feeling on WWI, or any war since — the sacrifice many soldiers make is rarely questioned. Hence, our cover. Deciding how to acknowledge the Centenary, and to try and make it relevant for our varied readership has been a challenge which I have not taken lightly. I hope that the balance of articles and features will prove interesting for all. We can all admire the delicate beauty and poignancy of George Weekes' paintings and sketches, reproduced with the kind permission of his grandson, Len, whom many of you will know from his years managing the Bar. Erik Malmstrom (2001) gives fascinating insight into 'what comes next' and his efforts to regenerate local economies in areas devastated by conflict. Caroline Hawley (1985) shares the more immediate and present experience of reporting from areas of conflict, as she discusses her career with the BBC. Pembroke's Fellow in History, Dr Adrian Gregory, describes the triumphs and pitfalls of attempting to advise Jeremy Paxman on his recent BBC television series, The Great War, and an extraordinarily Tembrokian' family history is shared by Sarah Wynter Bee.

0

Pictures from the Front Images from World War One

11 A Pembrokian Family Story A Century-Old Connection

12

m m

Reporting from Areas of Conflict Caroline Hawley, BBC Special Affairs Correspondent

14 News, Views, Schmooze plus 60 Seconds with Dame Lynne Brindley DBE

15

0

Highly Recommended: Music for Airports Tarik °Regan

MIL PILC•1•]

/

8

t cannot and it should not have escaped anyone's notice that 2014 marks the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War (1914-1919).

Our back page recommendation, this issue from composer Tarik O'Regan (1996), returns to peace and Brian Eno's Music for Aiports. Do get in touch, and let me know what you think, Sophie Alumni Communications Editor

Magazine edited and written by Sophie Elkan Magazine design by Helen Moss Cover: Poppy photo by Barry Skeates THE PEMBROKIAN

3


try to influence what was being said, rather than follow my usual procedure of watching it and screaming at the screen `that is just wrong...' Last year I was contacted by Jeremy Paxman's 'people' who soft-soaped me with how much they liked my book. They told me that it had influenced the early drafts of scripts, and then asked me if I would be willing to act as an advisor. I suggested a team with a couple of other names who were more expert on the military side but they just wanted one person to read through the scripts. n the evidence of recent media coverage it seems to me that everyone in the United Kingdom already has a strong and unshakeable opinion about the First World War. Either it was a justified struggle to uphold international law against German aggression or it was a barbaric act of wilful destruction perpetrated by a smug and senseless elite upon the common people. It seems to me that lines are already drawn and relatively few people seem interested in actually learning anything that might challenge their preconceptions. So I was already bracing myself for the condemnation that would be bound to follow when I was outed as the Historical Advisor for Jeremy Paxman's recent series on Britain's Great War at the start of this year. I envisaged being simultaneously condemned as an 'unpatriotic left wing academic' in the Daily Mail and but also as a 'revisionist lackey of the war mongering state apparatus' in The Guardian. So why bother sticking my head above the parapet at all? (Yes, I am going to work my metaphors...) Because, my reasoning was that if there were to be a major BBC 1 series on the subject then I could

The scripts were already well under way — and being developed by Paxman and his researchers. I discovered fairly early on that the subjects had already largely been determined, despite my attempts to suggest certain stories — for example, the extraordinary actions of the Admiralty in August 1914 when they incarcerated the entire staff of the Lerwick Post Office in the Shetland Isles for six days, believing them to be passing on secret correspondence. Unfortunately, these suggestions were politely brushed off, although I did manage to direct attention towards the use of the Brighton Pavilion as a war hospital for Indian troops. My principal role was to try to spot and remove 'bad history'. So, for example, a rather snide comment that the British Admiralty had been too stupid and conservative to use submarines was excised when I pointed out that: a. The British didn't use submarines to the same extent as the Germans because they had already captured most of the German merchant fleet or forced it into neutral harbours by the end of August 1914

b. To the limited extent they could, the British did use submarines in the Baltic — and quite effectively. This was the easy bit. What was more difficult was dealing with more stubborn commonplaces which are often repeated but not really justified. Three in particular caused difficulties.

One of my pet hates is the constantly repeated statement that 'everyone expected the war to be over by Christmas'. There is almost no evidence for this — for example it is not an idea you find anywhere in the contemporary press. (Digitisation now allows us to search for "over by Christmas" and it just isn't there). Nonetheless, my pleas to exorcise it completely from the scripts were ignored — "it is known". Similarly, the now-famous Leete poster of Kitchener pointing (above) was actually very rarely seen in 1914 and was not one of the important recruiting posters. I downloaded and sent a very detailed study on this point — but it is still bound to appear. It is expected. Finally the


story about how a generation of women were unable to find husbands because of the war, comprehensively disproved by demographic historians in the 1980s (young women in the 1920s were actually more likely to marry than those in the Edwardian era) still made it into the scriptalthough at least with a qualification which the viewers are likely to ignore. Basically I was a hired hand. I suppose if I really wanted to I could have demanded my name removed from the credits, but that would have upset my mum and besides I wanted to stand by the improvements I did make. What then alternated between funny and deeply irritating were the constant follow up e-mails and phone calls. I was being utilized as a fact checker in a way that was largely irrelevant to my actual expertise: urgent requests to clarify whether Winston Churchill had mobilized the Navy at 9.45 am or 9.55 am as two different books had given different times. My response was `don't know, don't care, doesn't actually matter' and I had to make it very clear that I had no intention of dropping my teaching in order to travel three hours to Cambridge and check the archive (particularly as they weren't offering to pay me). In the process I discovered a clash of mentalities between journalists and historians. Journalists want to be 100% sure about the accuracy of even trivial insignificant facts but historians are much more concerned about whether the interpretation as a whole is consistent and judicious, and are much more alert to what you shouldn't say. I gleefully jumped on a throwaway line that had crept in regarding the attack on Hartlepool and Scarborough in December 1914, as the 'first attack on British soil for almost a thousand years'. Photo ofjeremy Paxman: BBC/Dave Williams

Spectacularly wrong in ignoring scores of raids and more than a couple of outright invasions since 1066! It is true that Jeremy Paxman and his team gave the whole a slant that I could not fully endorse. I personally think that in a narrow technical sense 1914 was a `just war', but I am still troubled by issues of proportionality. In some respects I am perhaps less critical of the High Command (although certainly not uncritical) and I would have liked a little more in the programme which acknowledged the fact that the British Army ended the war having won a series of battles which broke German (and elsewhere Turkish and Austrian) resistance and, in the process, entered Northern France and Belgium to be greeted as liberators — something almost completely ignored by the majority of commentators. Yet the series did try to capture the complexity of the war and its multiple significances. On BBC1 that is as much as could be hoped.

Britain's Great War, a four-part series, was first broadcast on BBC1 on 27th January 2014 and launched the BBC's season commemorating the WWI Centenary.

GREAT WAR British Society and the First World War

' ADRIAN GREGORY

Dr Adrian Gregory, Fellow in History, is the author of "The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War" (Cambridge University Press, 2008). THE PEMBROKIAN 5


REBUILDING ECONOMIES by Erik Malmstrom (2001)

T

he bomb attacks on September 11th occurred two weeks before I arrived at Oxford. The US-led military coalition invaded Afghanistan during my first term: 2001 shaped the arc of my life.

Pennsylvania, I commissioned as an Infantry Officer in the US Army's 10th Mountain Division. For 16 months in 2006-2007, I led a platoon of 40 soldiers on a combat tour in eastern Afghanistan. My experience was trying: I lost three of my men in a mountainside ambush and my commander to a roadside bomb. My unit struggled to bring security and stability to a volatile insurgent sanctuary on a major transit route between the tribal areas of Pakistan and central Afghanistan. Our failures and the broader failures of the international community to achieve lasting peace left me disillusioned, but also committed to improving life in war-torn countries.

Along the way, I witnessed that economic development was a critical, but often Shortly after my year at Pembroke neglected and mismanaged part of the and graduation from the University of conflict resolution equation. In my

THE PEMBROKIAN 6

experience, it also had the most immediate and meaningful impact for local people affected by war. I departed the Army and won a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to study and work in post-conflict development in East Africa. Subsequently, I earned a dual degree at Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School, continuing to pursue my passion for postconflict development. I worked in Egypt and Haiti, as well as returning to Afghanistan three times as a civilian, on several research and consulting projects, focused on private sector development and entrepreneurship. With two classmates, I started a frontier market investment advisory firm called CrossBoundary LLC with the mission of spurring investment and transactions in the most difficult business environments in the world. Currently, we are working


Above:

This picture is at a

memorial for fallen soldiers from my unit at a forward operating base in Jalalabad. I am lost in my thoughts staring at the photos of my fallen commander and two of my soldiers. You can also see the photo of the planes going into the World Trade Center on 9/II. Left: Here, I was interviewing the owner of a marble mining operation (he's on the left). The guy in the middle was my interpreter, who worked for me when I was in the Army. He was wounded on an ambush after I departed. When I was doing research in 2010 I hired him to work for me again. Incredible guy who has become a close friend. Below left: I was introducing my replacement to the village elders and discussing the status of some development projects in the village of Aranas. He was killed in an ambush five months later. In that ambush, all 27 US Army and Afghan National Army soldiers were either killed or wounded.

with public and private investors on an investment fund focused on high growthpotential local businesses in Afghanistan. We are also working to facilitate investment and build the capacity of the investment authority in the newest country in the world, South Sudan. Both countries have great potential but face tremendous challenges. They have been important testing grounds for CrossBoundary's unique investment facilitation model, in

which we act as a neutral non-government facilitator to identify attractive investment opportunities, link them to capital, and facilitate transactions. We have quickly gained traction and are pursuing promising opportunities in other transitional and fragile states in Africa and Asia.

how to think and argue, and the people made a deeply lasting impression on me. They opened up my mind to new ways of looking at the world, and imagining the future, all of which inspired me in the years ahead. more information, visit: www.crossboundary.com

For

My time at Pembroke was formative in two main respects: the tutorial system stretched me to my intellectual limits, teaching me

THE PEMBROKIAN

7


PICTURES FROM THE FRONT Images from World War One

In 1914 his grandfather, George Weekes (known as Harry) signed up for the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Regiment, and would spend the next four years on the Front, until being transferred to Italy, where he was taken prisoner by the Austrian-Hungarian Army.

Len Weekes worked at Pembroke for almost fifteen years. He was a relief Porter during the vacations, but for many of our alumni, he will be forever known as Len, Manager of the Bar. His place is firmly established in Pembroke's history.

THE PEMBROKIAN 8

Throughout the war, he depicted his experience through these beautiful and vivid sketches and watercolours. There is humour and pathos in equal measure, giving us insight not only into the conditions of war, but into the man who created them.


,.-;-' a-1 %3*,-" 1.4.4.•41-:-.%te---11 %11 --,. -":77 " 0.76 el'.. ".":"^-1

-.71%; of ,,psf p V .11a trb

'... ...- - 'Yew y . . iet_

slit 11; o' ...,

r ,,fin-

• •

,

,

.o

rt --P ....,

•.. . . -

9p ••

P.A

'or :iii,

-.i - - , i .

--•..... 4go•

. r: ..i..:.

c ... ---

1

....t..

..:

4,,i „,..L4',..1:::

)13... 1.1;T•--

f

••ill

%

-

..

"•••••". - 1'4

THE PEMBROKIAN 9


After the War, Harry returned to Oxford and his family. An electrician by trade, he soon joined Oxford's first jazz band and worked as jobbing musician and artist throughout his life. He spent many years in Oxford, running a small tackle shop just under Donnington Bridge. He eventually moved to the coast in Torbay where he sadly died in 1954. What he has left is one man's documentary of the First World War.

7 ,1Coe

di

13.1 XJOIST. • WEST

Vt.,DOPIESSOTWO LAME.

Chtro.o.

THE PEMBROKIAN 10


A PEMBROKIAN FAMILY STORY A Century-Old Connection

Sarah Wynter Bee — granddaughter, daughter and mother of three of our alumni - has had her family history interlinked with that of the College for almost a century after her grandfather, Canon R Leatherdale, came to Pembroke on completing his Military Service. My grandfather was the son of a horse and cart driver in Norfolk and somehow got himself to teacher training college in Winchester (where he met my grandmother). He then applied to come to Pembroke and was accepted by the University but could not afford to take up the place. With the outbreak of WW1 Grandpa was drafted into the Army. Grandpa had terrible eyesight so he was not sent to the Front but served as a Sergeant in one of the hospitals in Dover receiving the wounded. His Commanding Officer heard of money available for soldiers whose education had been interrupted by war service, and knew that Grandpa had a university place waiting for him if he could find the money. He arranged for him to be released from the army in time to take up a place at Pembroke, where he read Theology and was eventually ordained. I have often wondered how what he must have seen during the War influenced him, as I believe he was planning a career in teaching before it took place. However, he was clearly a success as a clergyman.

Sarah's baptism at the Chapel, with her parents and grandfather I Jessica Wynter-Bee He started his career as parish priest in Farlington, Hampshire, and ended up as a Canon of Ripon Cathedral. The family connection with the College continued when my father, Tony, (Dr RAL Leatherdale, 1941), read medicine at Pembroke during the Second World War. After Military Service, he returned to Oxford as Senior House Officer at the John Radcliffe. He worked closely with Professor Macintosh, then Chair of Anaesthetics at Pembroke, and our family lived on a top floor flat in Pembroke Street, with the Macintoshes below. I was baptised in the Chapel at Pembroke by my Grandfather, and effectively lived for the first three years of my life in College. I have memories of the

steep wooden staircase up which my mother carried first me, and then my younger brother — it kept her very fit. When the College needed the flat we rented a cottage from the College until around 1960. The link was cemented further when my daughter came up in 2005. Jessica initially applied to another College for a deferred place to read Medicine but, by a complete coincidence, Pembroke made her an offer which she was delighted to accept. This was a great joy to my father and showing her round his old College was one of the last things he did before he died. She thoroughly enjoyed her time at Pembroke and what her grandfather would have made of her Double Blue for rugby we shall never know! WWI brought Grandpa to the Church, and to Pembroke, and the future generations of his family followed in his path. THE PEMBROKIAN 11


REPORTING FROM AREAS OF CONFLICT Caroline Hawley, BBC Special Affairs Correspondent

unedited results of a bomb on television. No-one needs to see that.

aroline Hawley (1985) started her career with the BBC in 1994 when she joined the World Service, having previously been working for Newsweek as their Jerusalem correspondent. Since then she hos been BBC World Affairs Correspondent and more latterly Special Affairs Correspondent, reporting from the Middle East and also, memorably, from the San Jose Mine which collapsed in Chile in 2010. In 2013, Caroline led the investigation into the sale of 'fake bomb detectors' leading to the imprisonment of two British businessmen, charged with fraud.

C

When I first spoke with Caroline to ask if she would be willing to be interviewed for the Pembrokian in an edition with war as its central theme, she was quick to clarify that her focus has not been 'war' but world affairs. As her area of expertise has been the Middle East, she has often, however, found herself reporting on some of the most significant areas of conflict in recent history.

I don't personally consider myself a "war reporter", because I have not particularly sought out work in conflict zones. Since I studied Arabic, and have spent a significant period of my career in the Middle East, it's been hard to avoid. The first time that I witnessed clashes between Israeli soldiers and stone-throwing Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, it was — I must admit — a gripping, exhilarating experience. No-one was killed or seriously injured but I suppose the risk was there — and that, perhaps, sharpened the senses. But after witnessing up close the effects of violence, as I did later in my career — far too often, in Iraq — I developed an aversion to conflict. Although I would happily never see another bullet fired in my life, I'm still drawn to reporting the consequences of war on the people caught up in it. One of the last reports I did before going on maternity leave was about a young Syrian girl shot in the spine, Israa, who was struggling to learn to walk again. THE PEMBROKIAN 12

THERE HAVE BEEN MANY, NOTABLE, FEMALE CORRESPONDENTS. WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF YOUR GENDER?

Journalism is a license to be nosy — to meet extraordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. That's the best of it. The worst of it is getting a call from the desk at the least convenient time possible and realising that you have to drop everything and get to work. CAN YOU CHOOSE WHAT YOU REPORT ON? Events often dictate what you report on. But the choice of stories that you decide to seek out in quieter times is yours. Then you hope that they make it to air! The challenge of the reporter is to make the viewer care. You may try to desensitise yourself to get on with the job but, in my experience, the personal tragedies you witness lodge themselves somewhere in your consciousness. When I left Iraq, I felt deeply and desperately sad about all the horrors for which I'd failed to grieve. WHAT CAN TELEVISION AS A MEDIUM NEVER CONVEY? We sanitise violence and don't convey its true horror. But you can't show the

For the most part, I feel it's an advantage to be a foreign woman working in the Middle East. You get to meet the women but — as an outsider — you are also often treated as an honorary man. Sometimes you're not taken seriously — which can be an advantage too. I was once allowed to visit a prison in Iraq where inmates had been seriously and visibly beaten up. I'm convinced that the man in charge didn't take me seriously enough to think that the abuse was worth hiding from me. HOW EASY IS IT TO RELATE TO PEOPLE IN THE AREAS YOU REPORT FROM? Knowing Arabic has certainly helped. A 12-year old Iraqi girl — who'd had her leg blown off by a cluster bomb — said to me: "My leg can't have been buried properly or it wouldn't hurt like this." Our translator reported that she had said that "her leg hurts a lot." He wasn't wrong but it didn't convey the eloquence with which she described the pain that she was suffering. I'm always amazed by the generosity with which people share their stories, however painful. [People] get on with their lives as best as they can — what other choice do they have? — but living in fear wears people down. In countries where politics means life or death, people — even young children — are deeply politicised. They live and breathe it, and there's often no escape from it.


Too often [women are] the victims of conflict. It's rare that they're active participants. I haven't personally met Arab women bearing arms, though I've seen reports of gunwomen in Syria. I've witnessed the aftermath of an attack in which a female suicide bomber took part. It's the exception not the rule though. But women do play their own role for the causes in which they believe. Just after the Libyan revolution, I met a woman doctor in Tripoli who'd smuggled medicines to the frontlines and I once watched a Palestinian grandmother throw a stone at an Israeli soldier.

OF WHAT ARE YOU MOST PROUD, AND HAVE YOU ACHIEVED YOUR AMBITIONS?

I'm not sure that proud is the word, but it was satisfying to see through an investigation into a British man selling fake bomb detectors to Iraq and later see him convicted in court, given the carnage caused by bombs in Iraq. And I was certainly most moved by the work of a hospital in Jordan — run by Medecins Sans Frontieres — where they carry out advanced reconstructive surgery on the victims of conflict. I would be proud if I had been a doctor there. And I was pleased to have the chance to cover the incredible work they do.

My ambition is to tell the stories that I feel need to be told — and that's a goal that will never be achieved. I haven't yet figured out how to juggle doing the work I love with the responsibilities I now have for a new baby. FINALLY, WHAT'S THE BIGGEST MISCONCEPTION ABOUT YOUR WORK? That the BBC pays "danger money."

People often assume you earn more for working in conflict zones. You don't.

Five things you always have to hand? I have a bag which I use for work that has been nicknamed by a colleague "the vortex." It is, I confess, a big mess but I can usually unearth an emergency snack from it and (depending on the climate) an emergency layer of clothes. A BBC reporter should always have a microphone to hand and a phone capable of capturing video. I almost always carry a bottle of water. But the best thing about the job is working in a team. I'm not very technical and I'd be lost without the colleagues I work with.

THE PEMBROKIAN 13


In January of this year The Telegraph featured the story of Henry Webber (1870), who - they suggested - was WWI's oldest casualty of War. It confirmed that he had attended Pembroke College, matriculating in 1870, and was 67 when he died on the Western Front.

m

m

Patience Agbabi (1983) has been receiving acclaim for her 21st century re-working of the Canterbury Tales, 'Telling Tales' from Helen Cooper, Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Magdalene College (The `Other Place'). The work will be published in April 2014.

PATIENCE AGBABI (1983)

Terry Hughes (1953) brings us news of the Expeditionary Trust (featured in March 2012): The first stage of the WWI Heritage Centre at the site of the British Expeditionary Force's GHQ is being opened on 8th March. The Centre is being developed to reveal the operations of the BEF's "back room" in directing the five British armies on the Western Front. The GHQ's significance at Montreuil-sur-Mer will be covered in Michael Portillo's forthcoming BBC series on Great War Railways.

TERRY HUGHES (1953)

Drs Evan and Jamie LaBuzetta are delighted to introduce Ian Spenser LaBuzetta, born on 12th December last year. Evan and Jamie met as visiting students in 2002 and both returned to College in 2004 to row for Pembroke whilst completing their Masters degrees. Eagle-eyed readers will note with approval Ian's choice of covering.

cn

n

Geoffrey Hoffman (1958) has now had nine books of poetry published as Kindle Ebooks, and two books of prose fiction: A Ripe and Ready Mix: mainly comic short stories and The Final Enactment: science fiction that (4 should in particular appeal to those interested in the law and religion!

0 0

HENRY WEBBER (1870)

DRS EVAN AND JAMIE LABUZETTA (2002)

GEOFFREY HOFFMAN (1958)

Ancestry.co.uk have contacted the College, asking us to invite alumni to join them in their Frontline Walk supporting ABF The Soldiers' Charity on 15-19th October 2014. The Walk will cover 75 miles of the Frontline giving an opportunity to see what life was like between 1914 -1918. Contact Steve Grogan: 0207 811 3201 or sgrogan@soldierscharity.org

N

Kindle r japarberek? a hardback book \- great for travelling, but really give me anytime

Che Golden lotebook

Gown o frock?

• Yorksh.j -Mors or

If you aren't yet following us on Twitter: (Ga PembrokeOxford) then please do! Plus who knows who you may find following Pembroke?

ive without the sea

Devil in-the detail o focus on the bi icture?

Trailblazer or consolidator? Both - it all depends on the circumstances

Desert Island read? Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook 1962 THE PEMBROKIAN 14

60 SECONDS WITH... DAME LYNNE BRINDLEY DBE


For years I assumed the LP was a theoretical statement of some kind about airports becoming the secular cathedrals of our time, or that it was a clever quote from some obscure source. That is until last April, when I was waiting to board a flight from La Guardia airport in New York City, and that first track 1/1 started playing on my iPod.

s a composer, I've often been asked about how I choose titles for various pieces. Although people frequently think there might be hidden meanings, the answer is usually quite mundane. A few years ago I wrote a series of songs called Three Motion Settings. The assumption by many was that these compositions formed a cunning commentary on the world of physics. The simpler truth is that the songs are — literally — settings of three poems by the Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion. This titular complexity brings me to the 1978 LP Music for Airports by Brian Eno. I first encountered this album in 1999 during my final year as an undergraduate at Pembroke. I found it to be extremely restful music by which to revise for Finals. The gentle first track, which lasts about 17 minutes, was especially conducive to my attempting to understand things I ought to have mastered several terms prior.

With its slowly revolving tape loops of half-speed pianos and synthesizers, that first track (titled 1/1) never required too much attention. Yet, at the same time it wasn't `muzak'; it created a perfectly calm ambience. Thinking about it now, this is probably why Eno prefixed the album title with the word "ambient." This utterly obvious fact passed me by at the time. The music degree for which I was cramming not having a dedicated paper in Brian Eno Studies meant that I only knew him as the flamboyantly costumed member of Roxy Music and as being U2's producer. I had no idea that he'd played a huge part in popularising the whole idea of ambient music. Of course I could have just read his liner notes, in which I would have found this description of the very phenomenon I was experiencing: "[ambient music] must be as ignorable as it is interesting."

Photos: Tarik O'Regan © Luca Sage /Above: Jason Hickey

At the age of 35, having been born in the same year that the album was released, I had the sudden realization that Brian Eno had written the music — literally — to be listened to in airports. A brief spot of Googling yielded the composition's inspiration: he had conceived the album as a response to the uninspiring sound atmosphere of Cologne/Bonn Airport, where he'd been delayed for several hours in the mid-1970s. Eno's realisation was made complete in the 1980s, when the music was piped into the public areas of La Guardia Airport. For me it was a magical, and yes mundane, moment. The intertwining, barely moving, very closely recorded instruments created an extremely peaceful soundtrack to the busy imagery of a modern airport terminal scene. It was as if Brian Eno had composed the piece specifically for this film playing out in front my eyes.

THE PEMBROKIAN 15


Celebrating our Annual Fund Donors

Pembroke College Oxford OXI 1 DW www.pmb.ox.ac.uk 01865 276 405 Registered Charity No. 1137498

This June we are excited to be launching our Annual Fund Series, which is designed to celebrate the impact our regular donors make on life at Pembroke.

by alumnus Jeremy Sutton (1979) who will be joining us from San Francisco, as well as a special cream tea in our new Farthings cafĂŠ.

Annual Fund contributions touch every part of College life: from providing student financial support, to funding new societies and extra activities. We want to say thank you to those whose generosity makes all this possible.

We are so grateful to our many loyal supporters who have been regular donors over the years, and look forward to welcoming our more recent donors, including those who have demonstrated their support for College during our telethon just this month. All are warmly invited to join us for this exclusive event, and will find an invitation enclosed with this magazine.

The afternoon will feature engaging performances by current students and an interactive digital art demonstration

TORPIDS CANCELLED

NNUAL

Due to our extraordinarily wet winter, Torpids has been cancelled for 2014. retain the Men's HeadThis means we ship. PCBC look forward to seeing

8th May and alumni at their Dinner on taking to the river again for Eights.

__Ar a A 't 11.11.6 1 ImilLut

FUND

F enhancing Rte.

Pembroke today

If you are not currently a donor to the Annual Fund please consider joining with those who are supporting us in this way — your partnership is vital for the College to continue to provide an exceptional environment for our students and academics.


Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.