The Cantuarian 2019

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ANTUARIAN 2019

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Cover art: Nia Zhangaskina 2

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CONTENTS The Captain’s Speech Mabel Pickering 6 For Whom the Bell Tolls Elias Boehmer 10 A Rocky Past Josie Sawyer 12 Curtain Up! Bill Baxendale 16 Staging the Scene Hannah Dickson 26 Great Escape Ned Richards 30 Well Played Dr. Karen Palmer 34 Listen Up Geoff Nelson 30 Dizzy Heights Max Rahman 38 See and Be Scene Charlie Griffin 40 Plucky Charm Joe Denley & Alicia Fielding 44 Beyond Infinity Ellen Berry 48 Learning to Fly Francesca Maini 52 All Mapped Out Serena Brunswig 54 Our Heroes The History Department 58 Power Hungry Florence Walton 60 Say What? Daisy Ledger 62 Novel Characters The English Department 64 Long Story William Flint 68 Booking Ahead Philippa Rose 70 Beyond Words Charlotte Panton 74 You Do You Lucy Gaffney 78 Healing Powers Gary Heskins 80 Behind the Scenes Tommy Károlyi 82 I Want to Be Lexie Whitmore 86 Found in Translation Elena McCaffrey 89 Potent Chemicals The Chemistry Department 90 King’s in Pictures Matt Mcardle 94 Home from Home Joshua Platt 96 A Word in Your Shell-Like Purples 100 Water Babies Harry Cordeaux 104 Loyn Lives Tom, Chris & Jamie Loyn 108 Science Kunal Checker 112 In Two Minds Jonathan Pope 114 In Pictures: King’s Week 2019 Matt Mcardle 118

CONTRIBUTORS Editor Anthony Lyons Photographer Matt Mcardle Designer Cobweb Creative Archivist Peter Henderson Two Wise Men Ian MacEwan & Peter Roberts Cobweb Creative yvonne@cobwebcreative.org www.cobwebcreative.org Matt Mcardle Photography mattmcardle13@mac.com The Cantuarian info@cantuarian.co.uk

King’s Week Drama CANTUARIAN | 2019

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editorial Beyond words (Page 74)

One of the perks of editing the school magazine is being allowed to poke our noses into everyone else’s business at King’s and remind ourselves why we love the place so much.

In the following pages, a budding Fifth-Form engineer muses on the wonders of Bell Harry, a potent symbol of the Christian faith all over the world; a 6a literary scholar celebrates the quirkiness of old boy, Paddy Leigh Fermor; and a 6b historian commemorates an OKS hero who worked out how to dump that famous soil from the tunnels in The Great Escape. And three (living) OKS brothers, from another fine King’s dynasty, tell us where they are now.

have an economist who’s half in love with China, an English historian obsessed with Tolstoy, and a Russian teacher who did simultaneous translation into English while living in Hong Kong? But this year Maths takes the prize for teachers with other lives because it harbours one competitive powerlifter, one hustler at pool and one qualified stargazer.

(And they are all ladies.)

And what about the marvellous Malthouse?

We had to have a love-in for the luvvies, so we demanded chapter and verse from the man who runs the whole place, while a Fifth Form dancer and actor gives her verdict on ‘the space’ from a performer’s side of the footlights. Other King’s settings get a look-in too: a 6b explains, with a guided tour, why Linacre is his home from home, Shells get page space too. One reminds her peers and a 6a reveals how the artistthat Polonius’s maxim, ‘to thine in-residence uses a medieval own self be true’, is essential for ‘Did you know that we form of cartography to put the growing up stable, or growing up school on a global cultural map. at all; another reminds us that have an economist who’s there is Science in everything; half in love with China, an Of course we couldn’t leave out and a young rower says he was English historian obsessed Kent, the cradle of King’s, so humbled by discovering his with Tolstoy, and a Russian we sent a 6b satirist to assess family’s past as boatmen on The teacher who did simultaneous the rival picture houses of Thames. translation into English while Canterbury, although he seems to have spent most of his time Humbling also is the modesty living in Hong Kong?’ in the loo, and asked a 6a what of two talented parents. it’s like when her home in Dover One is a giant, literally and nestles in the ashes of Home Guard preparations metaphorically, when he tours the world playing for a German invasion. the ukele, even for The Queen, to universal applause. School musicians tell his story. The And that’s not all, but you can find the rest out for second is so cool about his stressful job controlling yourself, starting with a fine Captain’s Speech. air traffic he could be a boy buttering toast. We are still haunted by the image of his working world Before I go, I must say thank you to Peter Roberts as a 3D chess board inside which the pieces must for giving us creative freedom; to Ian McEwen for never touch. his excellent article ideas; to Peter Henderson for being so astutely always there; to our contributors, We all know teachers are never just teachers. who delivered copy despite you-know-what; to We show that History and Chemistry and English the designers, who had to change and change love their subjects, yes, but did you know that we and change again; and to the genius behind the lens, Matt Mcardle, who will capture the spirit of Curtain Up! (Page 16) anyone or anything anywhere at the drop of a cap.

Plucky Charm (Page 44) Dizzy Heights (Page 38)

Anthony Lyons Editor The Cantuarian

A Word in Your Shell-like (Page 100) 4

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Great Escape (Page 30)

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CAptain’s

by Mabel Pickering

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ounded: 597 AD. Endured: Viking raids; The Norman Conquest; despots; The Dissolution of the Monasteries; the threat of invasion from the Spanish Armada; Napoleon; two World Wars. But King’s still stands. Our time at King’s is fleeting. The two years for Sixth Form arrivals, five for Shells, or even Mr. Miles’ 39year reign are all brief in comparison to the long history of King’s.

And yet maybe it is such context that enables all of us to be so enriched by our time here. As Nehru said, ‘Time is not measured by the passing of years but by what one does, what one feels, and what one achieves.’ In this respect, our time at King’s is monumental.

Speech

Being custodians of the venerable, and I mean the buildings, not the staff, does not mean resting on laurels. While The Cathedral is being taken care of, King’s has sought to enhance its reputation with impressive new assets, such as the new science block that will be artfully sown into Mint Yard. There is boldness with the new International College campus, not to mention a whole new school in Shenzhen, and creativity with the imaginative transformation of the characterful Malthouse.

These additions to King’s not only expand the physical estate but maintain the ethos, spirit and tradition of the school.

On my first day at King’s, five years Mr. Dean, members ago, other than of The Chapter, meandering around Headmaster, Governors, Green Court like a lost ladies and gentlemen sheep, I remember and fellow pupils. Good Mr. Anderson, afternoon.

Housemaster of Marlowe at the time, It’s Commem. Day saying to the new 2019 and many things Shells, ‘Time flies at have come to an King’s, so make the end: Theresa May’s most of it.’ He was ‘For this year’s crop of leavers, emotions will range Premiership, Game surely right. So many from excitement as we take our next step in life, of Thrones, the Sixth chapters: the Shells to nostalgia tinged with poignancy as we leave the Form Ball, the use of disco, GCSEs, UCAS comforting familiarity of these ancient Precincts. ’ plastic straws and the applications, A’ Levels 6as’ time at King’s. For and now our last this year’s crop of leavers, emotions will range from day of school. He also said that we could take lessons from excitement as we take our next step in life, to nostalgia everything that we experienced here. Well, I’m not sure what tinged with poignancy as we leave the comforting I can learn from 20 guinea fowl chasing me around Green familiarity of these ancient Precincts. Fortunately we Court and trying to attack me savagely, but I suppose it could can return for a fix and, when we do, we can be sure mean life chases you. So much happens here that five years that very little will have changed: The Cathedral will still can speed past in a blur. be looking down over Green Court; winged collars will be intact; and Mrs. Worthington will still be nurturing The house system provides pupils with a home away from home her Mars Bar collection. For all of the continuity, and I would like to thank all housemasters and -mistresses on however, King’s would not have thrived for so long behalf of the 6as and personally Mr. Harrison of Marlowe, a without looking forward, so carefully crafted change is deep font of wisdom if you can look past the Kylie Minogue back a constant theme. catalogue, and Simon Anderson, his predecessor. Although CANTUARIAN | 2019

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I have been a day pupil, Marlowe has been my home throughout my time at King’s. This is not only through the effectiveness of my housemasters but also through my tutor, Mr. Franks. This man has been my rock from the very first day of King’s. He has continually supported and encouraged me throughout my King’s journey, and I look forward to continuing our friendship when I am an OKS. A big thank you must also, of course, be given to the Headman. Throughout the year, in fact over my five years at King’s, he has been supportive, understanding and generous, supplying history books and recommending plays whilst always being firm in the belief that our schoolwork must take priority over everything else and, therefore, being of great assistance to me with time management.

Mr. Roberts loves a bit of Latin, knows every students’ name, and is the omnipresent figurehead of the school. He is well known for his colourful sartorial style, and I’d like to think that one day he will take after me and own a pair of bright yellow Doc Martens. ‘dux magnus auctor!’, stylish big chief.

Harry, Angus and I have worked very closely with Mrs. Worthington, meeting weekly throughout the year, plotting control-andsubdue tactics over the school with Mrs. W. imparting crucial, secret information to us, her henchmen, such as the occasion when she showed us her collection of confiscated vapes and demonstrated how to use them, information we then dutifully and diligently disseminated lower down the school. We have loved our Wednesday coffee mornings, our lunch-duty gossips, and most notably our Café des Amis evening when Mrs. W. led us on to a rabid night out in Club Chem.

Could I ask all the Purples in the room to please stand up. Please stand up. Ladies and gentlemen, the Purples are invaluable in greasing the cogs of the school to ensure smooth function, from corralling hordes to and from The Cathedral and other venues, dealing with dining room queues, and transmitting information to the houses from the Headman. I couldn’t have asked for a more able group of Purples. Thank you, Purples.

But I would especially like to show my gratitude to my two Vice-Captains, who have been beyond fantastic. Harry, Angus, please stand. Harry and Angus have been an absolute dream team, the purpliest of Purples. We didn’t really know each other too well before being appointed to our positions but now I have them drinking peppermint tea and dressing up in shimmerpink, skin-tight ABBA costumes. They love 8

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it. We are planning a Captain’s trip to the Edinburgh Fringe over the Summer. And we have even invited Aidan. Thank you to my Vice-Captains.

One of the great joys about King’s is its breadth of expertise and depth of opportunity: sport, drama, music and art all hold equal weight, and everyone is involved in something. King’s admires willingness, effort and courage as much as success.

‘Mr. Roberts loves a bit of Latin, knows every students’ name, and is the omnipresent figurehead of the school. He is well known for his colourful sartorial style, and I’d like to think that one day he will take after me and own a pair of bright yellow Doc Martens. ‘dux magnus auctor!’, stylish big chief.’

I had the honour of captaining the 1st XI hockey team this year, which was mostly made up of younger players whom I consider friends, and this is another aspect of King’s that I have cherished – inter-year friendships. The integration of different years is encouraged by the community feel that King’s fosters. I have mentioned Hockey, but it is equally prevalent in all sports, drama, music, and other activities. It’s a community that does not express an imposing hierarchy of upper years but rather a meritocracy: if you are good enough to play, then you will be encouraged to do so, regardless of age.

This encouragement to pursue our dreams can be evidenced simply by looking at the diverse array of OKS and what they have accomplished, from playwrights to scientists to Olympians to astronauts, all made in King’s, some even Made in Chelsea.

As a year, we have, on the whole, been a cohesive group who have helped and witnessed each other develop as individuals and grow into the fledgling adults that sit before you. There have been inevitable scandals and scandalous behaviour: take, for example, the Beadle’s bowler hat disappearance, and one 6a’s inebriated

attempt to play hide-and-seek with the Medical Centre nurses. This mischievous behaviour epitomises the King’s motto: ‘Imps of Promise’. ‘Imp’ can mean a shoot or bud, implying growth into a flourishing flower, or a small demon or mischievous child. I like to think that we are all small demons of promise.

Captaining King’s has been an incredible honour and immensely rewarding. My time as Captain is now over and I pass on the gown to next year’s Captain knowing that he will do a fine job and will enjoy it just as much as I have. Ben Helme, next year’s Captain of School, please come up onto the stage. (Gown is handed over.)

I would like to end with a profound quote from the wise and ever-thoughtful Winnie the Pooh: ‘This is the beginning of a new day. You have been given this day to use as you will. You can waste it or use it for good.

What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever. In its place is something that you have left behind. Let it be something good.’

The 6as in this hall are now leaving King’s, but I like to think that we have left something good behind and that something great will come from our time here. I see in this room great people with unlimited potential. I see future doctors, scientists, artists, musicians, actors, entrepreneurs, corporates, sportsmen and -women, even lawyers.

Today is the last day of our fleeting time at King’s. Tomorrow is a new day and the first day of the rest of our lives. Let it be something good.

Thank you.

‘This encouragement to pursue our dreams can be evidenced simply by looking at the diverse array of OKS and what they have accomplished, from playwrights to scientists to Olympians to astronauts.’

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Scientist Elias Boehmer (Fifth Form) celebrates an engineering miracle, the tower of Canterbury Cathedral known as Bell Harry.

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he Cathedral is, of course, an important feature of Canterbury and a large part of school life. However, even though it dominates Canterbury’s skyline, few know the origins of the tower. The 250ft Bell Harry was designed by John Wastell, the English Gothic architect and master mason who was also responsible for parts of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, and sections of other cathedrals. It was completed in 1498. Although from the outside the tower looks to be made completely of stone, it actually has an inner lining of almost half a million bricks. The cladding that we see is made of the famous Caen stone, a light, creamy yellow limestone, which, as its name suggests, comes from north-western France. Starting in the Middle Ages, this stone was shipped to England in large quantities and was also used in the construction of Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London.

Conservation of this delicate masonry is a challenging task, because limestone easily corrodes, especially if the rain is slightly acidic. Accordingly the cathedral management carries out regular studies to identify which stones need to be replaced or repaired, an arduous process that includes the removal of mineral stains caused by rainwater percolating through the mortar between the stones.

The name of the tower comes from its bell. The original Bell Harry was given to the cathedral in 1288 by one Prior Henry, hence the name, but the current bell was recast in 1635 and weighs around 8cwt (900lbs or 400kg).

It still tolls twice daily, at 8am and 9pm, to herald the opening and closing of the Cathedral.

The stone tower called Bell Harry, however, does not just reside in Canterbury. Surprisingly there are parts of it all over the world. Usually, when a new Anglican cathedral opens anywhere it receives a stone cross carved from a piece of Bell Harry. Sometimes the gifts from the mother church are larger than this. The Washington National Cathedral, for example, the Gothic design of which was actually influenced by Canterbury Cathedral, houses the ‘Canterbury Pulpit’, which is built from the stone of Bell Harry and depicts the history of English translations of the Bible.

Some readers might know the John Donne poem, For Whom the Bell Tolls, with the lines ‘...send not to know / For whom the bell tolls, / It tolls for thee.’ It is in such a spirit of unity that the bell now rings for two minutes every evening to express ‘continuity, solidarity and reassurance’ during the Covid pandemic.

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For Whom the Bell

Tolls

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A Rocky

Past Josie Sawyer (6a) has World War Two right on her doorstep.

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ll over the English countryside there are many curious relics of ages past, from Roman roads to medieval lighthouses, but the period of history that seems to have left the most indelible mark on our landscape is World War Two and the structures it left behind.

‘This tiny village had once been at the heart of Britain’s struggle for liberty, and the vestiges of this struggle can still be seen, hidden on the shore, today.’

St. Margaret’s Bay looks across to the hazy outline of the coast of France, the stage for the Allies’ last stand against the Nazi forces. This threat became very real on the 16 July 1940 when Hitler issued Directive Number 16. It read, ‘England, in spite of the hopelessness of her military position, has so far shown herself unwilling to come to any compromise. I have decided to begin to prepare for, and if necessary to carry out, an invasion of England... and if necessary the island will be occupied.’ Britain prepared for invasion.

In a small, quiet bay, just up the coast from Dover, the residents of St. Margaret’s were told their homes and village were needed for the war effort. Over 1500 military personnel flooded the area, sent to defend the coast, and to operate newly-built cross-Channel guns, two of which were called ‘Winnie’ and ‘Pooh’. The wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, made many visits to the village to inspect the gun sites.

Miles of barbed wire filled local fields, and the beach and seafront became a ‘Battle School’. Beachside homes, The Bay Hotel and the

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Image: The Green Man - Dover Kent Archives Image: St Margaret’s Bay pre-WWII by RJ Gough

‘In a small, quiet bay, just up the coast from Dover, the residents of St. Margaret’s were told their homes and village were needed for the war effort.’

ancient Green Man pub were destroyed by troops practising with guns and bombs for an invasion and street fighting. The village was left little more than a mournful shell, and by the 1950s, when all but a few 1930s houses at the end of the beach were deemed beyond repair, the area was cleared.

It is there, in one of the white houses built in the 1930s, that I live, and I have had the privilege to explore the abandoned pill boxes, gun turrets, and the secret subterranean structures which litter the cliffs, all of which my brother and I spent hours climbing and investigating during our childhood.

On the green in the middle of The Bay one can see the concrete foundations of the old village peeking through the grass, where a swimming pool, hotel and local community once thrived. One can even see, nestled in the cliffs, and behind a canopy of greenery, the remnants of the pipe lines designed to carry oil out into the sea and set the water on fire, as part of the ‘flame barrage initiative’.

Image: The Bay Hotel Pre WWII - www.stmargaretshistory.org.uk

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My enjoyment of history, especially to do with World War Two, is rooted in my childhood.

This tiny village had once been at the heart of Britain’s struggle for liberty, and the vestiges of this struggle can still be seen, hidden on the shore, today. 

‘Over 1500 military personnel flooded the area, sent to defend the coast, and to operate newly-built cross-Channel guns, two of which were called ‘Winnie’ and ‘Pooh’.’

Image: ‘Pooh’

Image: ‘Winnie’

‘Miles of barbed wire filled local fields, and the beach and seafront became a ‘Battle School’.’

Image: The Bay Hotel as a damaged shell - www.stmargaretshistory.org.uk CANTUARIAN | 2019

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Curtain Up!

Multi-talented theatre manager, Bill Baxendale, tells us what makes The Malthouse such a great venue.

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ith its history, seamless blending of old and new, light, modern technology and warm, inviting atmosphere, The Malthouse effortlessly produces a creative environment for learning and theatre.

For myself, the significant word here is ‘creative’. The Malthouse is an intensely creative environment for pupils and professionals alike. People can ‘create’ anywhere, but the impact of environment and the potential to enhance the product of creativity varies enormously. The warm, embracing welcome the building offers to all, the space and resource the studios and teaching areas offer, the advanced technology and flexibility available in the theatre, are all in service to creativity, whether individual or collective.

Since we moved into the building in April of 2018, it has become home. It has supported productions from GCSE monologues to fully mounted Shakespeare and a contemporary musical with a live band, as well as accommodating various touring companies of every shape and size, and an International fencing competition. Pupils who inhabit it every day bring their energy, curiosity and willingness to learn. They own it with increasing confidence as they recognise its welcome. As they come to understand the theatre’s potential, it nurtures them and allows free rein to their imagination and the realisation of their creativity.

My first sight of The Malthouse was via a scramble across an arid lunar landscape to a scaffolding-covered building with yawning gaps where doors should be. Inside, floors were unfinished. Dusty concrete, bare walls and ceilings were dressed only with drooping cables in a rainbow of colours.

Rooms were discernible but their purpose unguessable without direction. In the Foyer, only the stairs to the first floor was usable or indeed in place, the galleries surrounding the foyer secured only by temporary handrails. The auditorium, the heart of any theatre building, was lost under a welter of scaffolding platforms and bridges. The floor was a muddy hole with a full-sized excavator halfway through digging out the orchestra pit.

But even then, stepping into the auditorium for the first time, despite the noise, the scaffolding and the dirt, I felt a sense of expectant energy. It’s a feeling I’m familiar with from a long career in theatre. On every show I’ve worked, my most treasured moment is to be alone in a darkened auditorium moments before Front of House Staff open the house: the actors waiting in the Green Room, preset lighting on the set, pre-show music playing, empty seats and an empty stage. There is a sense of pent-up energy, a hard-to-define expectancy. Standing alone for a moment, high in the dark, noisy, dusty, scaffolding-clad auditorium, I felt this same energy and anticipation and recognised the potential not just of that space but the building as a whole. 

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‘The Malthouse is not just a venue for theatrical performances but also a place where the memories of students from those shows can be preserved.’ CANTUARIAN | 2019

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‘The auditorium was conceived and designed to offer as much flexibility and therefore as much potential as possible.’

I believe this feeling, this energy, is a part of the ‘wow’ factor that most first-time visitors to the building report. I have worked in professional theatre for many years, as both a set designer and in stage management. I’ve learned that all theatres have an atmosphere, something created by no single element alone within the space but by everything that makes a theatre: the structure itself, the people, the technology that makes it function and the way all these discrete elements come together to make a whole.

Perhaps the simplest place to begin to explore these elements is the technology and infrastructure that support the teaching and productions that go on within the Malthouse. The auditorium was conceived and designed to offer as much flexibility and therefore as much potential as possible. Whilst the stage itself is a fixed platform, the auditorium floor is composed of multiple steel ‘decks’ in a variety of shapes and sizes, each one adjustable in height depending on demand. This flexibility combined with a variable proscenium opening offers every type of theatre format, from a completely level floored studio space nearly nineteen meters long through multi-sided, traverse, thrust and finally the more conventional proscenium or end-on stages. In addition, the decks can be removed and repositioned to allow access to two (one large and one small) orchestra pits dug three metres into the floor of the auditorium. The balconies that surround the space, combined with fully flexible seating, allow audience unrestricted views in any format.

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‘All theatres have an atmosphere, something created by no single element alone within the space but by everything that makes a theatre.’

‘In every corner of the building, in teaching spaces, technical spaces, hidden corners and open walls, elements of the industrial archaeology of the building remain in situ.’

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‘The light creates an endless variety of highlight and shadow: constantly moving, varying in intensity and direction with sun and weather and seasons.’

Again, in order to accommodate the flexibility of the space, stage lighting is rigged from overhead bridges and galleries in the auditorium, while onstage it can be flown on moveable bars or rigged from catwalks above the stage. For lighting designers and technicians this is a gift, not simply for the flexibility of position it offers but also because lighting can be accessed at all times without recourse to ladders or scaffold towers. In an emergency, lighting can even be worked on during performance.

Stage lighting comes in various forms of lantern or instrument, each type designed for a specific task from hard spot to soft wash. The Malthouse carries a stock over 150 lanterns, ranging from reliable industry standards to modern LED profiles. In addition, moving lights can be hired in when required by a production. The sound system also carries ‘flexibility’ as its watchword.

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A wide range of speakers can be placed or hung anywhere within the space to support any format. Additionally the theatre boasts a powerful laser projector and automated screen as well as a professional standard ‘roll out’ dance floor.

Distributed throughout the auditorium and stage ‘facilities’, panels offer ‘plug in’ or distribution points for lighting, sound, projection and both 13-and 16-amp power. Finally, to facilitate both lighting and set, fourteen flown bars are fixed above the stage allowing lighting, scenic elements or cloths to be rigged at stage level and ‘flown’ out.

Both flown bars and the seven individual winches situated in the auditorium roof are controlled by a single digital, tablet interface. In the upstage wall large 4.5-metre high dock doors allow access to a large, modern, well-equipped scenic workshop.

‘I was amazed at how well the Victorian elements of the building have been merged together with the modern additions.’

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To have all this versatility ‘built in’ to the building from day one offers us a vast array of possibilities for both staging and teaching.

For the many and varied professional touring companies who use the Malthouse it offers them a state-of-the-art, professionalstandard, flexible space in which to fully mount their performances.

As production manager for the theatre it would be easy to continue singing the praises of the technology and hardware but in limited space I must move on to the building itself. Before I move on, the last areas I need to mention are the theatre control room or ‘Tech Box’ from which lighting, sound and often stage management are controlled, and also the two studio spaces, one offering a fullysprung dance floor and ballet mirrors and the other equipped as a drama studio. Both studios carry a full complement of lighting and sound equipment, the controls for which are concealed in sympathetically designed and painted housings.

It would be easy to imagine, from the descriptions above, that the historical building would be easily overwhelmed by the technology.

However, I was, and still am on occasion, amazed at how well the Victorian elements of the building have been merged together with the modern additions. Replacement floorboards, for example, have been treated to match the colour of existing boards but no attempt has been made to distress or disguise them further. The ironwork has a modern look and feel but is either painted in colours that blend with original brickwork and timber, or left as treated bare metal that supports the ‘industrial’ feel of the building.

In every corner of the building, in teaching spaces, technical spaces, hidden corners and open walls, elements of the industrial archaeology of the building remain in situ. Formed from one of the original ovens (which provided the warm air throughout the building to germinate the barley) the bar houses the original cast-iron oven doors. In other areas, large metal tubes, once used to move malt from one floor to another, still protrude from walls. Fireproof steel doors stand alongside their contemporary replacements. Huge, dramatically angled beams, dark with smoke and age, stand exposed throughout the building. Supported on ancient mellow brick, the beams in their turn form interlacing structures supporting the lofty ceilings of modern classrooms and studios. These rooms, recognisable to any worker from fifty or a hundred years ago, now house state-of-the-art teaching aides, lighting and sound equipment, cable conduits and lighting fixtures either exposed and boldly modern, or carefully enclosed to give an industrial feel and painted in the house colours.

Aside from imaginative design, although it may seem an anomaly within a theatre, I believe that light helps marry these potentially conflicting elements into a whole. Light floods in from every corner and in varying degrees: wide washes of light from the huge arched windows in the studios, small shafts of light from the mullioned windows in offices and corridors, light flooding down from skylights high above. The light creates an endless variety of highlight and shadow: constantly moving, varying in intensity and direction with sun and 24

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weather and seasons, it creates an ever-changing atmosphere and environment.

The Malthouse also exists, of course, within the wider King’s community and it’s important to note that while most of the pupils who use the Malthouse are either IC or Drama students, the building is also used by the whole school: for competition, demonstration, conferences, productions, exhibitions and celebrations. While speaking of the wider community of King’s, it’s vital to state that the building is of enormous credit to those within the school who had the foresight and imagination to create and nurture the idea and bring it to completion.

In conclusion, then: this wonderful building is more than just a building, more than just a theatre or a teaching space, more than the sum of all its parts. However, no matter how wonderful the building and infrastructure, without people any building is merely an empty shell and technology silent and still. Ultimately, it is the people who bring a building to life. Born from the will and energy of those who conceived

it, supported it, financed it, designed it, built it The theatre is also currently being developed as and made it work, it has grown into something a resource for the wider educational community. special: a place that nurtures learning of every For in-house staff it is an environment to test and discipline, offers a resource explore not only our own skills to support drama students and resources but also those of as they explore, not just the the building itself as we come ‘This wonderful craft of theatre, but their to realise and develop its full building is more than potential, whether working on inrelationship with the world.

For drama teachers it offers the just a building, more house or professional productions. opportunity to support their liaison with the community than just a theatre or a While students in that exploration and and the staging of professional teaching space.’ realise, in every sense, their productions grow, The Malthouse potential. The Malthouse is a will become not only a valuable resource used by the whole resource for Canterbury and the school – JKS, IC and KSC – for every type of surrounding area but also a showcase for everything activity from art exhibitions, seminars, lunches that is King’s. But most simply, for those of us who and lectures to theatrical performance. work and learn there, it is becoming a home. 

‘The Malthouse will become not only a valuable resource for Canterbury and the surrounding area but also a showcase for everything that is King’s.’

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StagING the

Scene

Actor and dancer, Hannah Dickson (Fifth Form), explains why it’s such a privilege to perform in The Malthouse.

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had my first tour of the Malthouse in Remove. In the school’s other performance spaces, casts had to contend with cramped dressing rooms and little privacy, so imagine my excitement when I discovered there were several dressing rooms of varying sizes scattered throughout the building. For me, these areas that the audiences never see were the most exciting parts of the new building: Hollywood-style mirrors, plenty of light and inbuilt speakers linked to the stage meant that these rooms instantly felt more professional.

If you’re going to be nervous, at least you can be nervous in a fancy dressing room.

black comedy was a huge contrast to the tragic story of Satine, so it felt completely different to perform. The ‘thrust’ section of the stage was transformed into an orchestra pit, which disconnected the audience from the actors, whereas previously the edge of the stage was right next to the heads of the first row.

However, the time spent in the theatre rehearsing is as important as the actual performances. In Moulin Rouge, the whole process from start to finish felt a lot more personal than just another show in King’s Week. I had at least two rehearsals every week (mostly in The Malthouse) starting from before the Easter holidays, The first time I performed on The ‘The whole experience of and this repetitive immersion in Malthouse stage was in the KiDaCo creating and performing the choreography on the stage and production of Moulin Rouge in in the dance studios meant that by King’s Week 2019. I remember a piece of theatre seems the time the performances rolled feeling vulnerable when we so much more significant around, every memory I had from rehearsed on stage, because you than ‘just a school play.’’

Moulin Rouge was inextricably feel a lot more exposed when linked to The Malthouse. I seemed dancing or acting in front of an to spend every spare moment of audience seated directly in front my school life there, and this meant that I became very as well as above you. The impressive quality of the familiar with all its corridors and secret staircases. Going place threatens to intimidate you when you perform. back there – even to establish new experiences with a When I walked out on stage for each show, I felt like my different production – still provokes nostalgia for that performance could go one of two ways: either I would show. The Malthouse is not just a venue for theatrical let the vastness of the space dominate me, or I could performances but also a place where the memories of harness the professional atmosphere and use it as students from those shows can be preserved. leverage to become more confident and command the stage. There is a point in every performance – often the I think that it must be the atmosphere of The Malthouse moment when you feel most exposed – when you reach that helps to elevate the standard of the performances the mental state of, Well, I may as well go for it. For me, that take place there. The fact that it is – to all extents it was when I walked out as Satine in the opening night and purposes – a professional theatre ignites a desire of Moulin Rouge. Being so exposed gives the performer in the teachers and pupils to match this standard; and an element of power over the audience, and it was this this energises each performer. Perhaps this is because, power that enabled me to fully inhabit the role, and not for most pupils at King’s, this theatre is the closest to to shrink back into who I am day-to-day just because it performing ‘professionally’ we will ever get, and so, would have been more comfortable. subconsciously, we are more determined to make sure the performances put on there are at an equally high In December last year, the school put on a production of standard. I think this makes the whole experience of the musical Little Shop of Horrors. It was very rewarding creating and performing a piece of theatre seem so much to be a part of the first musical production staged at The more significant than ‘just a school play’; and perhaps Malthouse. The best bit for me was being able to sing as this is why we feel so attached to the productions we part of a company and experience all the performances create there. without the pressure of being a main role. This crazy

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In February this year, a ‘Cabaret’ night was put on at The Malthouse – an evening of dance interspersed with a few songs. Many of the dance pieces were pupil-led solos and duets, with a couple of group dances created and organised by the teachers. In the weeks running up to the Cabaret, I spent a lot of time choreographing my solo in the dance studio – an arduous process, but one made easier by the availability of a space tailored for dancers. A sprung floor, mirrors stretching across one wall and large windows letting in streams of natural light all create a vibrant and inviting space.

My tech and dress rehearsals were unsettling, since there was absolutely nothing on the stage to hold the audience’s attention except me. However, although this can be intimidating for the performer, ultimately it was quite refreshing to have the whole stage to oneself, and to have nothing – no set or props – to create the tone I was aiming for in my solo except for my own choreography. The experience of creating this dance piece and eventually being able to perform it on The Malthouse stage was truly memorable. Although it may seem insignificant compared to the many large shows put on during King’s Week, the Cabaret was a way to allow many students to showcase their individual dance styles in front of an enthusiastic audience – something I believe deserves much more praise than it is given credit for. Going out on stage is never easy, especially not when an audience is waiting to critique what you have worked so hard to produce. The desire to make a lasting impression on the audience 28

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was a key factor that drove me to keep pushing myself to try to create something a bit different – and I felt that the space allowed me – almost empowered me – to deliver that.

As is usual in the run-up to a first performance, the week of the Cabaret everyone seemed to descend into a mild state of panic. The two hours before a show is when chaos runs rampant and the panic reaches its peak – and this is always most evident backstage in the dressing rooms. Everyone is nervous – rushing around, searching for lost costumes, having a breakdown, spraying hairspray, frantically retouching makeup... You observe all of this but are never irritated by it. The combination of nerves, excitement and stress creates a kind of infectious emotion that affects the whole company. Yet despite its anxiety-inducing properties, it’s always exhilarating to be part of it, and it’s hard not be exhilarated by this enabling new space.

‘The Malthouse is not just a venue for theatrical performances but also a place where the memories of students from those shows can be preserved.’

‘It’s hard not be exhilarated by this enabling new space.’

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Great Escape

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Image: A pair of wire cutters made by Prisoners of War at Stalag Luft III - Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund

A keen historian, Ned Richards (6b) found out about the OKS prisoner-of-war Bertram James whose tunnel-soil distribution strategy was made famous by The Great Escape.

T ‘By September 1944 James had spent the last four years between several prisoner of war camps.’

The night sky was lit up by explosions At King’s James was in Holme House, an of flak detonating all round the old boarding house located outside the city squadron of slow and heavy walls. He was a quiet boy not afraid to get Wellington bombers. From his seat in the stuck in. He enjoyed sports such as crosscockpit, twenty-five-year-old pilot officer country and relay racing, giving him stamina Bertram ‘Jimmy’ James had a commanding that would serve him well when trekking view of the battered remnants of Holland through occupied Europe ten years later.

10,000 feet below. The cockpit was abruptly When he left school he embarked upon caught by a German searchlight. Unable to an expedition across a depression-ravaged escape its piercing glare, the North America with little aircraft became easy prey for more than the clothes he eager flak crews below. The was wearing. It was this ‘Hanging vulnerably thirst for adventure that plane rocked as explosions from his parachute, would lead him to undertake shook it about in the sky.

It shuddered heavily when thirteen attempted escapes James watched an explosion destroyed the during the war. the bomber scream port-side engine, which overhead in flames By September 1944 James burst into flames. The order came: ‘Bail out! Bail out!’ and plunge into the had spent the last four years between several prisoner darkness below.’

Hanging vulnerably from his of war camps. In the last parachute, James watched one, Stalag Luft III, James the bomber scream had taken part in the heroic overhead in flames and plunge into the ‘Great Escape’. He was the 39th of 76 to darkness below. Observing the landscape, he escape on the night of 24th March. Of the 76 planned his route to the coast. From there who escaped, three made it back to England he hoped to get a boat across to England but fifty of those captured were murdered and be back in action in no time. It was only on the orders of Hitler. Hitler also ordered when he hit the ground, spraining his ankle, that officers caught in subsequent escapes that reality struck. In the adrenalin-fuelled were all to be executed, and yet this did not bail-out James had got a black eye and a deter James from his next attempt. heavily lacerated nose. He was in no shape to undertake a covert escape to the coast, let alone get hold of a boat to sail back to England. He was soon in enemy hands and spent the next months being transferred between various holding cells and being subject to numerous interrogations. The only answer he gave his captors was, ‘My name is James; my rank is pilot officer; and my number is 42232.’ After a month of harsh interrogation James was sent to ‘Stalag Luft I’, a camp for RAF prisoners near Barth, a Baltic town in eastern Germany. It was July 1940.

Images: PoW digging a tunnel. From ‘The Great Escape Stalag Luft III the original drawings made by Ley Kenyon 1943’.

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Stalag

er

atchtow

Luft III W

Squadron Leader Bertram “Jimmy” James (left) and Flight lieutenant Sydney Dowse at London’s Imperial War Museum, to mark the 60th anniversary of the breakout.

NCOs in the OTC c1913

The Merlin-engined Wellington Mark II.

Almost at once James and four other British officers captured in ‘The Great Escape’ set to work on a tunnel, fuelled by the thought of a smug SS officer discovering their used tunnel in their supposedly ‘unescapable’ camp. Eight foot underground with no ventilation, digging the tunnel was gruelling and claustrophobic. Extracted soil was dumped under the prisoner’s hut, where a six-inch clearance between ground and floor made for unpleasant conditions. On the night of 23rd September James and his group escaped, using a ladder to scale the twelve-foot wall that stood between the end of their 110ft tunnel and freedom. James travelled with Lt. Col. Jack Churchill (spared from ‘The Great Escape’ massacre due to his perceived relation to the Prime Minister) and headed north-west towards the main Berlin-Rostock railway line. From here they would head North to a Baltic port where they hoped to board a neutral ship to Sweden and then England.

After a day’s walking they could hear the sound of puffing steam trains growing louder. The next day they discovered the line, next to a large German army barracks. To avoid detection they lay under 32

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Avro 504

“James and four other British officers captured in ‘The Great Escape’ set to work on a tunnel, fuelled by the thought of a smug SS officer discovering their used tunnel in their supposedly ‘unescapable’ camp.” the cover of leaves till darkness fell and they could safely head north along the tracks. On the fourth night of walking they reached a small station at Dannenwald. After recuperating with a supply of stolen local vegetables they decided to stow away on the goods wagons at the station that were destined for Stettin, a Baltic port. The arrival of a train at the station signalled that their transport was leaving imminently. They threw themselves in between two of the wagons. Churchill dropped his water bottle and as the pair dropped down between the sleepers with him to catch it, the train reversed over and past

Bertram James

After being captured 350 km away from Stulag Luft III a day later, James was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp outside Berlin. James was kept in a compound outside the main part with around twenty others. Security was tight, with one guard per prisoner. It is here that James later said he ‘realised the evil we were fighting and that the war was worthwhile’, for here he could see the gallows where public hangings took place and the starving prisoners forced to test German army boots by marching all day on different surfaces. If they fell due to exhaustion, the guard dogs were let loose.

Image: Map of escape tunnelFrom the original drawings made by Ley Kenyon 1943’.

them, stopping only twenty yards behind. Its forward spotlight shone down on the two stunned figures sitting snug between the rails.

Wasting no time, the two scuttled off into the woods and, seeing the train starting off again, leapt onto a lumber wagon. Later that night they left the train and continued North.

They came across a group of Russian lumberjacks, who had been captured as civilians in 1941 and put to work in the German pine forests, and were generous enough to give James and Churchill a bounteous meal. In return James told them morale-boosting – if slightly exaggerated – stories about bombing Berlin. A few days later the two were caught hiding in bushes by the Volksturm (German home guard). They were taken to an inn where they were given a drink and much-needed food. The SS’s entrance into the inn ended the friendly atmosphere and the two were taken away. The journey back to Sachsenhausen took little more than four hours, adding insult to injury since the pair had spent fourteen days slogging the 120 miles which brought them so close to freedom.

‘James and his group escaped, using a ladder to scale the twelve-foot wall that stood between the end of their 110ft tunnel and freedom.’

James spent the next five months in a prison cell 8ft long and 4ft wide. He suffered harassment from guards, harsh interrogation and even mock executions. James and other prisoners were moved around, following the German retreat, eventually ending up in Niederdorf in the South Tyrol in Italy where he was liberated on the 4th May 1945. The war in Europe was over. After continuing work in the RAF and joining the Foreign Office briefly, Bertram James retired in 1975.

Stalag Luft III

Image: PoW digging a tunnel. From ‘The Great Escape Stalag Luft III the original drawings made by Ley Kenyon 1943’.

‘James spent the next five months in a prison cell 8ft long and 4ft wide. He suffered harassment from guards, harsh interrogation and even mock executions. ’ CANTUARIAN | 2019

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Well

Played Did you know that Dr. Karen Palmer (Maths) is a bit of a hustler?

A

s a first-year PhD student my lunchtimes were 2) Do play a deliberate foul and give away two shots if it will be spent with friends in a university bar with a to your benefit so feel free to pot that annoying opponent’s pool table. They were keen on pool, but at first ball covering a pocket.

I was just there for the social. I started going along to their pool matches in Canterbury, again mainly for an 3) Do know your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, evening out, but then if possible, and play they were a player accordingly. short once and had asked everyone they 4) Don’t rush a shot and could think of… – only play shots you feel and that was my first comfortable with. league match. I was a substitute on and 5) Do concentrate, for off after that and I most shots, on hitting learnt the World 8 Ball the centre of the cue Pool Rules through ball with the tip and watching and asking keeping your head and questions. I remember upper body still while a time when my more cueing. experienced doubles partner told me to pot 6) Do control the pace the opponent’s ball of your shots, since the that was sitting over a harder you hit a ball the pocket and I was quite more accurate you need confused, thinking he to be if aiming to pot it, had forgotten what and always think about colour we were. (I where the white ball soon learnt not to be may end up. afraid of deliberately fouling if it puts you in 7) Before you go down a stronger position.) I to take a shot, stand acquired from a friend behind the line of the a pool cue called and form a solid ‘I soon learnt not to be afraid of deliberately fouling if shot Jimmy (it’s a Jimmy stance; this should it puts you in a stronger position.’

White cue) and he’s become routine. still with me today. I eventually became a 8) Don’t grip the cue too full-time member of the team and now play two nights tightly, and do form a firm bridge hand so the cue doesn’t a week. Our team tends to be more successful in the wobble when you move it backwards and forwards in a Wednesday rather than the Tuesday League but the straight line. most important thing is that we enjoy ourselves.

9) Never give up during a match: in a doubles match this year, Top 10 Tips (with thanks to friends) our opponents cleared all except the black ball, which they left over the pocket, and we had all our seven reds still on the 1) Don’t feel you have to pot a ball every time; your ball table; fifty minutes later my partner and I were the victors and may be sitting tightly over a pocket and stopping your this still amazes me. opponent potting a ball so it may be worth leaving it where it is.

10) Practise to improve, just as you should with Maths, and play to have fun.

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Listen up Geoff Nelson (Chemistry) gave

a talk to the school on hearing impairment and this is what he said.

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I

f you take a trip to the National Cathedral in Washington DC, you will find the grave of two women. One overcame extreme obstacles and became famous; the other, less famous, was her teacher. It was the teacher whom the United States honoured first, and her name was Annie Sullivan Macy. Annie was Helen Keller’s teacher and helped the deaf, blind and mute Helen to go to college. Annie’s painstaking work led to a famous breakthrough: as water flowed over Helen’s right hand, Annie fingerspelled water on her left hand. From that point onwards, Helen’s mind was freed from the silence and darkness of her childhood.

Compassion is the first characteristic shared by servant leaders. To be compassionate one must view the world only from the other person’s viewpoint. Imagine that you are the one in one thousand mothers and fathers who give birth to a deaf child. Your child’s first sixth months were spent in near silence; hearing aids or a cochlear implant are not possible for another sixth months. What do you do? By viewing the world through my eyes, my parents realised that any success begins with what every child needs: unconditional love, equal treatment, endless patience and the necessary work ethic. Later, my brother, wife, and closest friends came to the same understanding. The struggles and A great Canadian died recently, Jean Vanier. frustrations of life with deafness are lost in He was the son of a Canadian Governor a fog of happiness and adventure, shared General, Georges Vanier, and his wife, with the proverbial village. By treating Pauline Vanier. The the disabled equally, family name is on your own life will be the tongue of every ‘By viewing the world through enriched.

Canadian: our national my eyes, my parents realised football trophy is called speak up that any success begins with Advocates the Vanier Cup. Jean for the needs of the what every child needs: Vanier became an disabled, perhaps, long officer on an aircraft after they find their unconditional love, equal carrier and earned a voice. They make treatment, endless patience own PhD. He was destined difficult decisions on and the necessary work ethic.’ behalf of the disabled to enjoy the trappings of academic and for some or all of their establishment life, but rejected both to set lives, and exercise this power with care, for it up L’Arche, a community for the learning has consequences. Here are a few decisions disabled in France. It was to be the first of my parents made for me before I was free 150 founded by him in 38 countries. Jean to make my own: I was to wear hearing aids Vanier’s philosophy was that people with from dawn to bedtime, without exception; all disabilities are teachers, rather than burdens dreams were possible, unless prevented on on families. L’Arche enriches the lives of medical grounds; I was only to be spoken to the severely learning disabled by providing in English; I went to private school until age them with community and purpose to their 12; music lessons, books and newspapers lives. One L’Arche community is beside were on tap; prep was completed, without Mitchinson’s just past The Dolphin. fail; no video games and limited television; and we moved out of a major city to a very Annie Sullivan and Jean Vanier personify the quiet, suburban street. Not every decision ‘servant leader’ whose service helps others was popular, but they were essential. My achieve their full potential. Thousands brother’s decision-making is closer to what do the same: Stephen Hawking’s doctors, you can do right now: he hears on my behalf, nurses, and the programmers of his synthetic tells me how all the jokes and stories end, and voice; the advocacy of Eleanor Roosevelt uses his quick wit to educate others about for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s politics and my hearing. Continuous good judgement care; and my friend, Erika, who takes a boy and zero tolerance for unequal treatment is with Down’s Syndrome on city adventures key to successful advocacy for the disabled. once a week. These servant leaders have certain characteristics that are shared; they Supporting the education of the disabled is can be adopted by anybody in this room: vital to their chances of becoming productive compassion, advocacy and appreciating the citizens. Educators are truly unsung value of education and technology. heroes: parents, friends, speech-language pathologists, audiologists, special-needs Examples that help explain each experts, teachers, professors and mentors. characteristic must come from my own life, Some of my earliest memories give a flavour not others. I cannot speak for those who are of their work. I am sitting at our dining dyslexic or paraplegic; however, I hope our room table with a lovely lady, who played stories share common principles. puzzles with me. These were not ordinary puzzles, but sound puzzles. I could not place

pieces onto the board without hearing, and then perfectly repeating her sounds. Later, another speech pathologist taught me how to whistle and tackle the ‘f’ and ‘s’ sounds.

My parents reinforced these lessons by having me repeat any word I mispronounced three times; the same applied for spelling.

I still have this habit. Mastering English and whistling was incredibly frustrating but, once achieved, the feeling of heady success was shared by all. Serve the disabled by holding them to achievable, but high standards, thereby maximising their opportunities in life.

Technology magnifies the effects of compassion, advocacy and education. You can serve those with disabilities in two ways.

First, you can choose the best technology and assistance that you and the government can afford. With the help of my parents, the Canadian government and talented audiologists, I wore custom-fit hearing aids throughout my childhood. They had all the advantages of miniaturisation, digital, and wireless technology, a decade before wireless headphones became common.

Noise-cancelling microphones and receivers worn at school enabled me to eliminate background noise and only hear the teacher, for the first twelve years of my education.

Second, you can apply your expertise and abilities. My cousin Ryan, who is not disabled himself, is now Vice President (Technical Services) of an American company that manufactures custom wheelchairs for thousands across the USA. He is using his understanding of technology, leadership skills and business ideas to improve the lives of thousands of customers. You can do the same right now. Be My Eyes is an app for the blind, in which volunteers who can see perfectly provide audio descriptors for blind users. To aid the deaf, you could become a notetaker at university, or take a course on sign language and become an interpreter.

Compassion, advocacy, education and technology must be brought into the lives of the disabled with humanity and perseverance. These are the ingredients of the successful servant leadership for the disabled. Your reward will be our friendship, our capacity to surprise, and the immense pride of watching us have our own form of success. Our eyes might light up from the bedside when you walk into our room; the confidence you give us could command the world’s stage; and some of us might even return the favour and become teachers. Your service – in whatever form it takes, large or small – will be echoed in our development.

Those that help us live on in all that we do. CANTUARIAN | 2019

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DIZZY HEIGHTS

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Father of Isaac (6a) and Josef (Fifth Form), King’s parent Max Rahman has enjoyed his career in Air Traffic Control.

I

magine, if you will, a game of chess, not on a board with 64 squares but larger than 64,000 square kilometres, and 14km high. And imagine the chess pieces weigh hundreds of tons and move three-dimensionally at anything up to 1000 km/hr.

And the rules of the game are very different. These pieces must never touch. Ever. Not a game at all, of course, but the real-life domain of the Air Traffic Controller.

nautical miles and at low altitudes (anywhere up to 5,000 feet). Approach Control units are normally based at airports co-located with Aerodrome Control units, but in the recent past the trend is to locate Approach units for busy airports at Area Control Centres. The Area Controller, located at a dedicated Area Control Centre, manages traffic everywhere above and around the Approach Controller’s area of responsibility. At all times the ‘Controller’ must keep aircraft separated by 1000ft vertically or five At any given moment, on average two-thirds of the nautical miles if at the same altitude. The separation global aircraft fleet are airborne and under the care is permitted to decrease in certain portions of and guidance of an Air Traffic airspace and in the arrival and Controller. From the moment an departure phases of flight. These aircraft leaves its parking bay until unseen professionals constitute the it rolls to a stop on the far side of ‘At any given moment, on cornerstone of aviation. the world, its destiny – and that of average two-thirds of the I’ve had the privilege of working as its crew and passengers – are in the global aircraft fleet are an operational Air Traffic Controller hands of an Air Traffic Controller. airborne and under the for 15 out of my 32 years in the It is generally considered one of care and guidance of an aviation industry. I have since the most stressful occupations, had roles in training, incident Air Traffic Controller.’ one in which the magnitude of investigation, safety management, error or omission is cataclysmic. operational management and However, ask most Air Traffic business development. I currently Controllers and they will tell you work for DFS, the national air otherwise, mainly because they have learnt ways traffic control company of Germany. DFS manages to manage stress and because they love doing what the airspace in Germany, including all its major they do. It’s not a profession in which one survives airports, and also provides air traffic control services without an in-built passion for aviation. A Controller at London Gatwick and Edinburgh airports in the must possess high levels of situational and spatial UK. Furthermore, it provides technical support and awareness, concentration, focus, anticipation, and manpower to the government of Bahrain, helping it projection. manage Bahrain’s airspace, which stretches from the boundary with the UAE all the way up the Arabian Airspace is normally divided into smaller, more Gulf to Kuwait. manageable ‘sectors’ and there are three disciplines within Air Traffic Control: Aerodrome, Approach and While studying Aeronautical Engineering at Glasgow Area Control. The Aerodrome Controller works in a University, I decided in my final year that I wanted Control Tower, located at an airport, managing traffic to become an Air Traffic Controller: an environment on the ground and in the air within approximately ten heavily populated by aircraft that is constantly nautical miles of an airport. The Approach Controller changing and operates 24 hours a day 365 days a year will manage traffic within approximately forty was hugely appealing. It is a decision I have never regretted. I love working in the aviation industry.

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e e S&be e n e Sc

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Now famous at King’s for his review of The Red Shop and a guide to local cafés, this time Charlie Griffin (6b) tackles local cinemas.

T

he brutalist exterior of The Odeon in Canterbury is one of the most eye-catching sights in the city. It’s a reminder that one is trapped in Kent and recalls the gorgeous hard-Sixties architecture of Margate and Maidstone. The cool, weathered letters of O, D, E, O and N which, at some point, cascaded beams of light onto the citizens of Canterbury, are now matt and coated in rust.

nervous tweens were desperately trying to gel up their hair into a sweet trim for their first dates. In a cubicle, I gazed at the ancient text scrawled around me. Some thug had taken a knife to the inside of the door and listed the various things that would be done to me if I disrespected ‘C-Block’. There was also a lude masterpiece of Margot Robbie in her full glory. Impressed with the artistic abilities of Canterbury’s finest, I headed for the film room.

The first thing I noticed in The Odeon was the complex human matrix of scents based In fairness the screen was impressive, far on sweat. The outrageous, larger than that of The blistering heat was caused Curzon. It took up the entire by a broken heater that went of a much larger room, ‘I make the mistake wall full throttle throughout the which reminded me of the of reaching into year. It was, as I occasionally Apollo or Soho theatres in hear the ‘brightest and London. Sinking into the my bag to grab a best’ of King’s kids remark, of ‘red-carpet’ couple of crisps and comfort ‘council-house hot’. seating, I enjoyed some a menacing strike sensual car advertisements After waiting in the ‘people’s’ team of millennials before 1917 exploded onto queue, I approached a the screen. descend.’ greasy teenager behind the counter. He looked bored After bombardment by the and more infatuated with hailing winds of Storm Ciara, the blonde who’d just finished cleaning the I scramble through sleek glass at The Curzon baby-changing area than with the task of entrance. The smell of coffee spills out from giving me tickets for the film. behind the counter, suggesting comfort and sophistication. Huge bookshelves house I had selected ‘red-carpet’ seating, which predictably pretentious titles. Jane Austen meant my chair would be far, far wider and more comfortable than everyone else’s in the cinema. At the popcorn stand I gave the man a (for a King’s kid) sturdy £5 and was rewarded with a regular salted popcorn. My purchase was hampered by the screeching of toddlers denied 3kg of pick-and-mix.

Wanting to get an impression of the whole cinema, I ventured into the loos. I was greeted by a flashing condom machine with fizzling and popping slogans for brands I had never seen before. The smell had deteriorated. The sinks were inaccessible because a parade of

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and multiple volumes analysing Hans Zimmer’s genius litter the shelves. A snobbish old couple sit on the plush couches reading programmes for various plays coming to The Marlowe. They have the look of people who rarely enjoy the things they see. I make the mistake of reaching into my bag to grab a couple of crisps and a menacing strike team of millennials descend. They circle me like sharks and demand I turn out my bag, reminding me that only food purchased in the cinema may be taken into the screening room. I take the walk of shame up to the bin. When I order my tickets, another millennial behind the counter gives me a smug grin and demands ID for a 15.

When I skulk up the stairs I’m hit by the true majesty of the building. Beams of light on the stairs light up my shoes and every so often the shade of orange changes. Clubesque. How exciting. When I enter the room I’m right next to the big screen that dominates the space. I duck and shuffle along, trying not to block the radiance of the Vauxhall ad. The seat’s plush comfort enfolds me and I feel rather sleepy. Confusion sets in. I haven’t paid for comfort at the door; there must be some mistake.

Then I realise. The Curzon doesn’t make you pay more for something that should be standard.

What a wonderful surprise. All around me I can hear educated chatter and scoffs at the quality of the adverts, the type that equate the latest Corsa with class. Intense camera angles showcase joyous, pixel-perfect families.

Halfway through Parasite, which is amazing by the way, I pop to the loo, anxious that a full review needs access to the latrine. I am pleasantly surprised.

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‘A snobbish old couple sit on the plush couches reading programmes for various plays coming to The Marlowe. They have the look of people who rarely enjoy the things they see.’

Unlike many cinemas’ filthy dungeons, The Curzon boasts a clean and sleek toilet block design. One peeve was how dark it was. I suppose this allowed me to continue the cinematic experience but often I felt nervous touching anything at all.

So, despite some rather intense staff and the intellectual superiority of a few frequenters, The Curzon is my pick if you want to watch a film in Canterbury.

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Plucky

Charm Joe Denley & Alicia Fielding (6b) ask Peter Brooke-Turner, musical genius and father of Poppy (Shell), about playing the ukelele.

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I

n the warm light of a February afternoon we sat across from a wise man in coffee-steamed spectacles who, when standing, is close to seven feet tall. After some King’s-related small talk, Peter Brooke-Turner explained his humble beginnings in music. He didn’t take to his first instrument, violin, nor his second, trumpet, because of his parents’ disdain for jazz.

‘He played grandiose events and venues such as the BBC Proms, Carnegie Hall and TV programmes like Jools Holland’s Hootenanny.’

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Peter’s concluding philosophy from his childhood years?

‘You don’t choose your instrument; your instrument chooses you.’ Perhaps he believes this because one day he fell in ‘love at first sight’ with a ukelele in a shop window and had to buy it, despite having played guitar for ten previously. Playing the ukulele, the path holding a pink pygmy guitar. But this was an ironic into the music industry was long and arduous, filled choice to reflect what society at the time thought of with juggling jobs, parental pressures and watching the ukele, ‘a toy rather than a proper instrument’. Peter many of his talented ‘conservatoire batch’ peers getting recalled that this musical journey took him from the nowhere. Peter was often advised to get a ‘proper job’ remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, inhabited and he duly worked for a charity until he made the life- by 2000 people and almost as many polar bears, to the altering leap into playing full-time with Queen’s star-studded 90th birthday his band, the Ukulele Orchestra of cabaret in Windsor Castle.

‘Peter was often advised Great Britain. to get a ‘proper job’ and he Even with his colourful touring lifestyle duly worked for a charity in full swing, Peter sensed a change in The Naughties were Peter’s glory years, when he played grandiose events his relationship with the instrument, until he made the lifeand venues such as the BBC Proms, altering leap into playing which went from being a fun ukulele Carnegie Hall and TV programmes full-time with his band, the hobby to a professional obligation with like Jools Holland’s Hootenanny. Wife matching expectations. And in the Ukulele Orchestra of Great stressful flurry of travelling, rehearsing Patricia has witnessed a great ascent Britain.’ from pub to Albert Hall that Peter and performing, Peter found himself attributes to the band’s subversive in need of an outlet, a means of filling range of material other than hackneyed Hawaiian the mundane days on tour. So he started a blog to ‘keep music, and to his loyal audience who support the insanity at bay’. A pivotal moment in his personal life band regardless of their steps away from the banal was slipping into a coma for six days whilst touring in spotlight. At the start of his career as a professional Germany, after which he attempted to metabolise his ukulele player he said he was ‘a bit mad really’, which brush with death and resolved that ‘life is a precious is understandable when you imagine a giant of a man thing and you should seize it the best you can’. His

second lease of life wouldn’t go to waste.

In later life Peter has taken the time to reflect not only on his career but also on his mortality by creating an Ingmar Bergman-inspired film where he meets Death personified on a beach. This work sits amongst other videos on his YouTube channel that he has made for his own ATTC, or Airline Toilets Theatre Company.

This in-flight entertainment involves Peter performing the Gettysburg address or a Shakespearean sonnet in full costume whilst a gaggle of confounded aeroplane passengers eavesdrop outside.

Given our own musical backgrounds, we soon moved on with Peter to the complex evolution of the music industry and of music itself, and we compiled quite a smorgasbord of music tastes from the modern jazzfunk genre of ‘Snarky Puppy’ to William Byrd’s choral settings. Peter described the struggles of fighting the urge to revert back to the music of his youth by listening to playlists and podcasts that paved the way for artists such as Kendrick Lamar and Tyler the Creator, which were worlds apart from the monoculture in which he was raised.

Throughout the 60s and 70s everyone watched the same films and listened to the same music on their home radios, creating musical giants such as The Beatles, which wouldn’t be possible nowadays due to the varied dissemination of music on streaming sites.

However positive this absolute musical liberty may be, it poses the paradoxical question: does the abundance of music tastes and accessibility means that nothing new can actually be created in the music scene? We mused on this ponderous question but found the answer was yes: there is no strife or rebellion to define our era or any obligation to live up to greats such as Bach “At the start of his career as a or Elvis. professional ukulele player he said he

was ‘a bit mad really’.”

The next step? Peter leant back in his chair. ‘I’m not too sure but I think I’ll continue touring and finding ways to keep myself engaged and not go mad.’ He adores his craft and makes a bold claim, despite the hardships of touring and missing his family: ‘I will keep doing it until I can’t do it any more.’

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With a postgraduate degree in AstroPhysics, Ellen Berry (Maths) explains just how big the universe could be.

I

t is generally agreed that humans cannot visualise numbers much more than one thousand. So how can we possibly start to consider an infinite universe? Our best approach is to use analogies as stepping stones, considering progressively greater and greater structures. In other words, there is no sense in comparing the size of Canterbury to that of the observable universe.

With this in mind, let’s begin our journey at the heart of our Solar System. It is fairly well known that our Sun is one million times larger than the Earth, but how can we comprehend this? Consider a commercial airliner, flying around the equator. One circuit would take around 45 hours – a long and uncomfortable flight.

Comparatively, to fly once around the Sun would take over thirteen months, not including the 21 years it would take you to get there in the first place! Alternatively, if we could shrink the Sun down to the size of Canterbury Cathedral, the Earth would be a basketball just past Westbere Lake in Sturry, and Pluto would be the size of a table tennis ball in Ghent.

Similar analogies will be familiar to anyone who has read popular science fiction. Less frequently discussed than the mind-boggling size of it all are the many other dimensions in play above us, such as time, velocity and force. Although gravity is the ‘weakest’ force, it is truly the architect of the universe, even across such vast distances. Soon after the Big Bang, the universe consisted of largely homogeneous clouds of hydrogen gas. From here, small random fluctuations in the density of these gas clouds caused varying gravitational attractions, and so denser parts began to pull in more of the neighbouring regions, slowly but surely accumulating and conglomerating into larger and more concentrated pockets of gas.

After one hundred million years, these became dense and hot enough to fuse hydrogen itself: the birth of the first stars.

In the present day, the Earth is inexorably pulled towards the Sun with a colossal force of tens of sextillion Newtons – that’s 21 zeros. If we weren’t hurtling around the Sun in orbit, we would be helplessly falling into our star, eventually crashing into it at a speed of about two million km/h. Thankfully we are saved from this fiery end by our orbital velocity of one hundred thousand km/h – a speed that would allow you to travel from Canterbury to London in under four seconds (some food for thought next time you’re stuck at Ashford International).

But remember that speed is only relative, and here we use the Sun as our reference point – we orbit The Milky Way at a speed about ten times that.

To continue to larger scales, we need to start using light-years as a 48

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measure of distance, i.e. the distance travelled by light in a year. Even the concept of light-speed is alien, normalised only by science fiction: ‘Warp factor nine, Mr. Scott.’ For example, you can travel eight times around the Earth’s equator in a single light second, but it would take you one hundred thousand years to cross the entire Milky Way. Here our Sun is only one of a few hundred billion stars. If you were to pick every blade of grass off Green Court, with each blade representing a thousand stars, you’d be within the right order of magnitude.

So just how many galaxies are there? The famous Hubble Ultra-Deep Field images provide an answer. Over a few months, the Hubble telescope gathered data on a small patch of the night sky, about as much covered by a grain of sand held at arm’s length. Every single light in this photograph is an entire galaxy. Astronomers estimate around 10 thousand galaxies in this miniscule patch alone. From this, they have deduced that the total number of galaxies in the observable universe is around two trillion.

Beyond

Infinity

As far as we can tell, our universe is isotropic which in turn form super-clusters and filaments that and homogenous, which means it looks the permeate the universe, with voids in between. Our galaxy is located in a relatively same in all directions, and from small filament, surrounded by a any reference point. If Hubble large void around two thousand were to look at any other patch ‘There is a structure times the size of the Milky Way. of sky, it would find a similar to our universe on a result – a seemingly random With all this structure and array of galaxies, of various much grander scale scale, it would be easy to think shapes, sizes, and orientations. than galaxies – the so- the universe was a fairly busy Surprisingly there is a structure to our universe on a much place. However, ‘space’ is aptly called ‘cosmic web’. ’ grander scale than galaxies named. Only 0.00000000001% – the so-called ‘cosmic web’. of the solar system is actually Just as galaxies are formed by the gravitational matter. This is equivalent to a golf ball of matter in attraction between their stars, so too is the web a void the size of the Earth. And our solar system formed by attractions between galaxies. These is a comparatively dense region of the Universe! mutual attractions create clusters of galaxies, Even worse is that only 15% of this sparse matter is

‘ If we could shrink the Sun down to the size of Canterbury Cathedral, the Earth would be a basketball just past Westbere Lake in Sturry.’

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actually anything like the matter that we encounter.

The remaining 85% is the forebodingly-named ‘dark matter’, so-called because we have been unable to observe it directly yet.

In 1884, Lord Kelvin estimated the mass of all the stars in the Milky Way, and noticed the number was far too small to account for the observed rotation of the spiral arms of the galaxy. He postulated the existence of what we now call dark matter. Since then, many anomalous and independent observations of the universe can be explained by the existence of dark matter. Furthermore, they all predict the same amount of dark matter. After years of theoretical development, further observations and simulations, it is now widely agreed by the scientific community that dark matter does exist. It is expected to be an

‘After years of theoretical development, further observations and simulations, it is now widely agreed by the scientific community that dark matter does exist.’ (undiscovered) elementary particle, not interacting with any known form of electromagnetic radiation, but experiencing the mutual attraction of gravity.

Currently, several detectors are hard at work on Earth trying to find these particles.

Now that we have a rough grasp on the scale of the universe and our position in it, we must ask: how large is the universe? This comes with an important caveat: we can only consider the observable universe. This is an imagined sphere centred on the Earth, consisting of all the matter that we would currently be able to detect. It is believed to be around 93 billion light-

‘Just how many galaxies are there? The famous Hubble UltraDeep Field images provide an answer.’

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years in diameter. Anything outside this is unobservable, since the light from these objects has not had enough time to reach us over the age of the universe. Another wellknown consequence of the finite speed of light is that the further away we look, the further back in time we reach. We observe stars and galaxies as they were when the light started travelling towards us. As a result, some stars that we currently observe no longer exist.

The astute reader may be confused. The age of the universe is well known to be around 13.8 billion years and so how can the observable universe be 93 billion light-years across? It is because the very fabric of the universe has been expanding since the Big Bang that we have this much larger figure.

This expansion is a mere fragment of what it was: in the first moments after the Big Bang,

we believe the universe grew by a factor of 1078 – equivalent to stretching a molecule of DNA to just over 20 light-years in length in just a fraction of a second. This sudden inflation accounts for a great deal of the structure in the universe we see today.

Conversely, there are also regions of the universe we will never be able to interact with, even if we had an infinite amount of time. This is a jarring concept. If the universe started at a single point with the Big Bang, and nothing can move faster than the speed of light (as per Einstein’s theory of special relativity), surely nothing should be out of reach? The expansion of space itself breaks our understanding here too, the current rate of which is estimated to be 72km per second per megaparsec. In other words, for every 3.3 million light years you travel away from Earth you will be receding at a speed

of 72km a second faster, purely due to the expansion of the space between you and Earth. So, at distances greater than around 15 billion light-years, objects appear to be receding from us faster than the speed of light. As a consequence, light from these galaxies will never be able to reach us.

Conversely, there are galaxies currently observable which will soon slip outside the sphere of the observable universe due to this same expansion – a slightly troubling thought! Einstein rests happily in his grave, though – special relativity has not been violated, because nothing is moving through space faster than the speed of light. It is space itself that is expanding, which gives the illusion of this motion.

Unfortunately, this means we are unlikely ever to answer the question whether the universe is infinite. Luckily for us, there is clearly more than enough to observe and keep us occupied. I will leave you with one final thought: what if we were to condense the lifetime of the universe down to a single year? We would find the first stars emerge on 3rd January. On 13th January, some of the galaxies in the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field emit their light. On Valentine’s Day, the cosmic web begins to form. Our Sun only forms on 3rd September, and the Earth a couple of days later. Soon after, on 21st September, the first life forms on Earth, but we have to wait until 11.53 pm on 31st December for modern humans to appear. And the entirety of recorded human history now takes place in the countdown to New Year’s Eve.

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Learning to

Fly!

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‘A twin-tip is used for freestyle and big air, which involves doing high jumps and generally the stronger the wind the more height you can get.’

In the unusual sport of kitesurfing, Olympic hopeful Francesca Maini (6a) is flying high.

K

itesurfing only works with the right conditions and there is a lot of gear involved. First, you have a harness to which you attach something called a chicken loop, a loop that is attached to a bar that has lines attached to the kite so the power of the kite is felt through your core. Then you have a board and there are different types of board. A twin-tip is used for freestyle and big air, which involves doing high jumps and generally the stronger the wind the more height you can get.

Unhooked freestyle is better in lighter winds because this involves unhooking your chicken loop so that all the power of the kite goes into your arms and not the harness. Then you have a directional board, which is a board with no straps, a bit like a smaller surfboard, used for wave-riding, in simple terms like surfing but with a kite. This board is also used for strapless freestyle that involves jumping with a surfboard without straps. To jump with this board you position the board in a way that the wind keeps the board on your feet. Third, you have a hydrofoil, which is a board that rises up out of the water when the rider is travelling at a certain speed and has their weight distributed in the right place on the board. This is generally used for racing as there is little friction between the foil and the water so you can travel at high speeds. With this board you generally use a foil kite, which is similar to a paraglider. Foiling is generally for lighter winds and you can just about get going in four or five knots of wind.

Hydrofoiling is now in the 2024 Olympics.

Kitesurfing doesn’t work without a certain wind speed. The wind speed needed varies according to the type of kitesurfing. For example, hydrofoiling requires little wind and you can get going in about five knots, whereas for freestyle you could probably just about get going in twelve knots (depending on the weight of the individual) because more power is required due to more friction between the board and the water. However, the more wind the easier it is to jump and go upwind. You also need to have different kite sizes for different conditions. In very strong winds you want a smaller kite and in light winds you need a bigger kite. The kite sizes range from about 21m to 4m. There are different types of kites: inflatable kites are the most popular kites and are used for all types of kitesurfing, and foil kites are used for racing but can also be used to play around with.

However, they are a lot harder to get up out of the water if they fall in. It is a lot easier to learn on an inflatable kite.

There are many great kitesurfing destinations around the world.

Different destinations hold different specialities. For example, some countries favour good waves and some spots have super-flat water.

However, there are certain seasons when the waves and wind are good throughout the year so you have to make sure you get the right season. For example, in the UK the wind is generally light in the summer so it’s better for hydrofoiling but from October onwards the UK gets strong winds, generally better for big air. 

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All Mapped Out Serena Brunswig (6a) finds

out why Artist-in-Residence, Paul Claydon, is making such a splash.

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A

discreet figure whose work-inprogress is a closed book to students, Paul Claydon is always friendly and interested in what they are working on, so when he was about to unveil the final piece from his residency for King’s Week, 2020, I called him on Zoom for a chat.

After the University of Bath, where he read History of Art, Paul studied Fine Art at the Chelsea College of Art in London during the late 80s. His early work was collaborative: he and two other artists set up an art journal entitled Inventory, which ran from 1995 to 2005. The journal won them international recognition and they sold work to big names in the industry, such as The Tate and Centre Pompidou in Paris, and had exhibitions in the RA and ICA. Paul explained that artists want jobs flexible enough for them to pursue their work, which means taking up part-time teaching jobs or residencies. He chose King’s because he had moved from London to Kent and enjoyed the prospect of collaboration with talented students and the subject matter the school would provide. He sees his job as capturing the living culture of the school. He says, ‘Some artists-in-residence might go in, make a nice picture of the cloisters, sell their work and move on – all very nice, but not celebrating the school.’

Paul’s found that a number of OKS who went on to achieve great things were actually his personal heroes but as yet have not been properly celebrated by the school, so to celebrate their lives he produced their portraits, now on permanent display in Old Grange. The first was Alan Watts, a key figure in popularising Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism in the USA. Paul has a lifelong interest in Buddhism and was ‘absolutely amazed to find that Watts was utterly unmemorialised’. He also selected Cornelius Cardew, an experimental musician who composed such complex scores that they are ‘almost impossible to play, but just about possible to interpret if you are an adventurous-enough musician’. He also chose two 20th Century film directors: Carol Reed, famous for The Third Man in 1949; and Michael Powell, who made A Canterbury Tale in 1944 as a tribute to the city. Despite having ‘made significant contributions to the culture of this country’, none of these figures has been awarded any honours, no ‘physical, lasting, durable’ tribute, and Paul believes they ‘deserve to be celebrated in the place where they were educated’.

When he had finished all the portraits, he realized he had included no women, so he did some research and came up with a long list of outstanding female OKS, but he still struggled with how to portray them. He ended up deciding not to include any of them merely because they were not in his original plan. He wanted to portray his heroes and adding a woman because it would be more politically correct seemed token. This is by no means saying that the women are not worth remembering and he said he could ‘do a whole project on them’.

manipulate digitally so he used brushes and paint to create a fantasy map in which ‘parts are grotesque and parts are decorative’.

There are dragons, forests, mountains and rhinos that track the student body across the globe, the more prominent areas of the map showcasing places which produced a greater number of students, but even places that are home to the fewest students are surprisingly detailed.

The piece was originally envisioned as a tapestry for which the painting would be a guide to weavers in Bruges, Belgium, but the He did include a famously antagonistic figure, painting has a few subtleties not achievable Richard Culmer, who was a Reformation by weaving. Oil paints can be built up in layers wrecker of The Cathedral responsible for to create an ethereal quality close to the light the loss of irreplaceable stained glass: ‘We of real life. The painting, for example, has need to talk about the fact that he was a bars running across it as if it was a stained King’s student. He is a glass window in the vandal, but he is part of cathedral, the oil paints ‘Paul wanted to blend the story.’ By doing this making the bars and Paul is celebrating the their shadows incredibly the medieval heritage history of the school and naturalistic. Paul finds of the school with the remarkable people the cathedral an inspiring its living culture so who came out of it but place where you can be in the presence of art he is not idealizing the he asked students to in its original context, institution. Paul’s work for send in artworks that regardless of whether King’s Week developed from the portraits. Whilst represented their own you practise religion, and he describes himself the portraits represent countries.’ as an ‘aesthetic pilgrim’ the past of the school, who sees The Cathedral this piece depicts the present. He started off with the idea of a as essential to the King’s culture and ‘mappa mundi’, the name for European atmosphere. maps created during the Middle Ages in which the scale of the places represented Covid19 has delayed the weaving of the is not objectively accurate but subjective to tapestry until November, which has given the importance of those places in relation to Paul time to get the piece exactly right, the people making the map. The city where before the four metre by three metre work finds it home on a wall of the St. Augustine’s the map was made would be in the centre.

Library. Paul has included ‘little insects, By creating a mappa mundi Paul wanted to elements of play and fun’ so students can blend the medieval heritage of the school always ‘find something new’ when they with its living culture so he asked students look up from their books at his wonderful to send in artworks that represented their tapestry and appreciate the rich heritage of own countries. These were impossible to the institution it represents.

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OUR HEROES

Members of The History Department choose their most memorable historical characters.

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Alfred the Great by William Flint Alfred the Great (c.848-899) burned some cakes, thrashed the Vikings, created England, bob’s your uncle, job’s a good’un. Except not really. Alfred’s army did defeat the Vikings under Guthrum at Edington in 878, but he himself was no warrior. Being the fourth son of King Aethelwulf of Wessex, he was never destined for the throne. The singular achievement of his childhood was winning a book of poetry for being the first of his brothers to memorise the contents. He was a sickly youth and suffered from a life-long debilitating pain that could well have been Crohn’s disease. While king he bemoaned the state of English education, leading the way to his remarkable translation of Pope Gregory the Great’s ‘Pastoral Care’. The defeat of the Vikings did set in motion the unification of the various kingdoms, but really it was Alfred’s grandson, Athelstan, who should be considered the first king of England. The story of the cakes is a much later invention: whilst wandering through the dank depths of the Somerset marshes, Alfred sought shelter with a peasant who asked him to watch her buns on the fire. The king was so caught in thought that the cakes burned to a crisp, and the woman beat him out of her home for his foolishness. It’s a very ironically English fiction, but a fiction that accurately evokes this most enigmatic of historical figures: a man, for better and worse, a man of wisdom, a quiet leader, a thoughtful king.

Mary Tudor by George Harrison Mary Tudor is an underrated monarch. She’s remembered for burning Protestants at the stake (nearly 300 of them), and for taking England into an unpopular war against France and thereby losing Calais, England’s last foothold in continental Europe. She is mocked for having believed herself to be pregnant only to find that the symptoms were those of another condition. Yet she is remarkable for her inner strength, made all the more impressive by the fact that she was the first queen regnant in England at a time when women had no recognised political role. The deck was stacked against her but she not only took the throne but was able to introduce the policies which she (but not her advisors) thought proper. Bastardised (and later legitimised) by her father, made to bend the knee to her younger half-sister and half-brother and (on the latter’s death) opposed by the regency council which installed a rival as queen, Mary nevertheless took the throne, tried to reverse the Reformation and saw off a rebellion. Fewer were executed in her reign than in her father’s, but he is largely remembered for having six wives and being overweight. She, unfairly, is remembered under the soubriquet ‘Bloody Mary’.

Ernesto Guevara by David Perkins No image is more ubiquitous in the world of counter-culture t-shirts than Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara‘s floating face. Guevara was an Argentinian doctor-andtravel writer-turned-gunslinger. Che has become an icon for affluent youth.

He is appealing because he resembles a critical soul free of all associations, an adventurer who crossed boundaries and tested limits. In a world of political instability, cynical apathy, loosely restrained hedonism and obsession with consumer goods, Che cuts an attractive figure. Here was a man who burned with a fierce and pure light. The trouble is that the real Che has been abstracted and inflated into a winning personality. We are presented with a de-caf Che, a version of Che with all the kick taken out. It is the kind of Che you could take home to meet your parents. It is possible that Che has become such an icon precisely because he has ceased to be dangerous. The image allows people to connect with a superficial, scratch-‘n’-sniff version of radicalism without the need to develop a head for heights. Che has been converted into anti-Che.

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Power

Hungry

Breakfast with Florence Walton (Maths) shows why she’s keen on powerlifting: it’s all in the protein.

D

uring my final year at university I watched online the previous year’s Varsity Powerlifting Competition and realised that weekly weights training sessions for rowing in a mediocre college boat already rendered me stronger than the girls competing. This is not a boast: there were very few girls involved in the sport and often they had not been remotely active before they joined the club. I set my heart on achieving a Half-Blue, and that March became the first girl at Oxford to do so. I don’t think I envisaged keeping it up: I had seen an opportunity, ticked a box and wasn’t really sure how this would pan out when I got a job.

Five years on, I still compete regularly and really enjoy my training. Powerlifting is a very fast-growing amateur sport, with the same structure as Olympic lifting (the professional one you see on TV) but with different movements. Powerlifting consists of three attempts at each of squat, bench press and deadlift, but you cannot decrease the weight between attempts. To give an example, in a competition last November, I squatted 150, 157.5 and 162.5kg. It was only a regional competition and so I was happy to gain the prize for Best Female Lifter, but I was much more pleased with the fact that I broke my own personal records on bench, deadlift and total. The lovely thing about powerlifting is that you are mostly competing against yourself, making competitions fun regardless of your standard. Competitors cheer each other on and take an interest in how each lifter’s day is going.

I have won a couple of South East competitions, but am much further down the pecking order nationally. At first I had a vague dream of competing internationally, which is now clearly unattainable since my performances in the British and All England leave me hoping for, but usually falling short of, top five in my weight category. I train four times a week for around 90 to 120 minutes and the three rest days exist deliberately for recovery. At university, my lack of coach made for inefficient training but my amazing coach of the past four years still writes my programmes since I moved to Canterbury.

The Rec. Centre staff have been incredibly accommodating in allowing me to buy and store my own bar with the exact competition regulations, so that I can train properly there.

‘Powerlifting is a very fast-growing amateur sport, with the same structure as Olympic lifting (the professional one you see on TV) but with different movements.’

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‘I have even been warned that lifting is for men and I should stop now if I ever want to be able to have children.’

Not everyone in my life has thought and vegetables for health, but not putting powerlifting a good idea: many have told on weight. This does present a challenge but me they are concerned I’ll ‘get too big’, and I am, by now, quite used to managing my there has been much talk of danger from diet. Sometimes people suggest competing those who know nothing of the sport except in the next weight category, but I think it’s its name. I have even been warned that lifting is for ‘I was happy to gain the prize for Best men and I should stop now Female Lifter, but I was much more if I ever want to be able to have children. In reality, pleased with the fact that I broke my own it is a very safe sport and personal records on bench, deadlift and has many health benefits.

There is, admittedly, a slight total.’ trade-off between strength and fitness, but my annual parkrun allows me to check I can still run 5k safe to say that ‘bulking up’ to 84kg would in half an hour and, until that is impossible, predominantly be an exercise in putting on I’m not too concerned. fat.

‘But you’re not huge…or Eastern European’ is probably the least acceptable reply I have ever received to saying that I compete in powerlifting. The latter is clearly not a prerequisite, and the fact that powerlifters compete in weight categories means that the aim is simply to be strong for your weight.

For exactly three days a year, therefore, I have to weigh 72kg or under and the ideal is to sit just above this the rest of the time.

This means consuming over 100g of protein a day and making sure I’m having lots of fruit

Training and competing are now significant parts of my life and so, regardless of whether I move up the rankings or achieve anything further relative to others, I will continue competing for pure enjoyment. I’m not suggesting that everyone competes in the sport, but I do think it is worth realising, when you train with weights for other sports, that this is a competitive sport in its own right and it’s a lot more fun than it looks! 

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SAY WHAT? If you don’t know your ‘bant’ from your ‘bounce’ or your ‘peng’ from your ‘chong’, Daisy Ledger (Fifth Form) is here with her glossary of King’s slang.

PENG Something or someone who is incredibly beautiful and attractive. This word is usually used to describe people and food but can be used to describe anything. Many boys refer to girls as ‘peng’ and vice versa.

Synonyms: fit, gorgeous, god-like.

BOUNCE Going away from something. This term is often used when one wants to make a quick getaway, reasons ranging from an awkward to a boring situation.

Synonyms: leave, depart, exit.

Example: ‘This pizza is so peng.’

Example: ‘This shop is rubbish. Let’s bounce.’

CHIRPSE The act of trying to score with a person one finds attractive.

Usually, this is what a boy does to get a girl, but it’s not uncommon to be otherwise. This differs from flirting, which is common between friends and colleagues. You only ‘chirpse’ someone you really fancy.

Synonyms: graft, chat up, grind on.

Example: ‘David is definitely on the chirpse tonight.’

GRIMY Having a naturally arrogant personality whilst also coming across as dirty.

Being ‘grimy’ does not mean one is disgusting, only that one does certain things that may come across as childish and nasty. Usually, being ‘grimy’ makes one unattractive largely due to the self-love that ‘grimy’ people possess.

Synonyms: icky, grotty, greasy.

Example: ‘No, not him. I find him a bit grimy.’

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HEADIES The worst detention at King’s that one can get. This term is an abbreviation of The Headmaster’s Detention, which consists of three hours on a Saturday night due to an act committed against school rules.

Synonyms: detention, punishment.

Example: ‘I can’t come to the social; I have headies.”

SACK The decision not to do something that has been planned. This is typical of events such as lunch plans, lessons or a detention.

‘Sacking something’ is usually linked to not being bothered. The term ‘sack’ can also be used if a member of a couple wants to end things between them, often due to boredom.

Synonyms: end, cancel, dissolve.

Example: ‘I think I want to sack Jenifer, boys.’

BANT Having a joke about or with something or someone. Many adults see this term as a form of bullying, but it has a clear difference, reason being that ‘bant’ is always a joke. This is especially common in many boys’ boarding houses. If you can take the ‘bant’, you are seen as a true joker and it is often seen as a great personality trait.

Synonyms: joke, tease, jest.

Example: ‘Learn how to take the bant, Harry!’

WEEKLY Having an exclusive lunch or dinner date with someone. It is often frowned upon, depending whom you ask, if you request to join someone’s ‘weekly’ because you are often seen as an intruder. This is unique to King’s.

Synonyms: meet, date, get-together.

Example: ‘Sorry, I can’t do lunch; I have a weekly with Jane.’

CHONG Possessing and/ or actively using a piece of smoking equipment. This is seen as a very bad act by most adults, especially teachers.

Very common in boarding schools, where it can be seen as a social thing.

Synonyms: vape, juul.

Example: ‘Come on, mate. Pass me your chong.’

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l e v No

Characters

Members of Mr. Hurst

The English Department choose their most memorable fictional characters.

by Lilla Grindlay

I

Ethel Monticue

by Lucy Carlyle

E

t is one of the most memorable moments in Jane Austen’s Pride thel Monticue, ‘quite a young girl’, lives alone with amorous and Prejudice. Picture the scene. A group of society sophisticates bachelor Mr. Salteena – but there’s no need for alarm. The are gathered at the breakfast table. In crashes our heroine, Young Visiters is the work of a Victorian nine-year-old, Daisy Elizabeth Bennet, and a raft of snobbish eyes turns towards her. Ashford, and Ethel is completely in control. She lacks material means She has (shock horror!) walked rather than taking a carriage. She (her dress has grown ‘rather short in the sleeves’) but has everything has (double shock horror!) a muddy she needs: feminine charm, a ‘very petticoat. The elegant ladies are superier run throwing her legs out appalled, but one gentleman has a behind’ and ‘a pot of ruge in case’. very different reaction. Mr. Darcy When the housemates embark on gazes at Elizabeth, entranced by the a visit to dashing Bernard Clark, ‘brilliancy which exercise had given Ethel secures the best bedroom in to her complexion’. Literature’s the house (‘a handsome apartment most eligible bachelor is well and with purple silk curtains’) and the truly ensnared in love’s net. Another adoration of her host. Bernard gentleman in the room, Mr Hurst, proposes and Ethel responds by has a very different reaction to the crying ‘you are to me like a Heathen commotion caused by Elizabeth’s god’, briefly fainting and regaining entrance. He simply doesn’t notice. consciousness with the magnificently Instead, Austen informs us, he ‘was decadent instruction ‘take me back thinking only of his breakfast’. Mr. to the Gaiety hotel’. What Ethel lacks Hurst is glorious evidence of Austen’s in psychological depth and political ability to dismiss a character with one awareness she makes up for in joyful caustic swipe of the pen. On the rare comic value. Literature boasts many occasions he does interact with other nuanced, complex characters – and Mr. Hurst & Elizabeth at the dinner table characters, it is merely to prove what our engagement with them is one a waste of space he is. He is, Austen of the great experiences of reading tells us with another caustic swipe, – but there is enormous comfort to ‘an indolent man, who lived only to be found in Ethel, a girl born in the eat, drink, and play at cards’. And this is pretty much all he does. stubborn imagination of a child who conquers all through copious Pride and Prejudice may be a novel about love, but it is full of couples amounts of blusher, laser focus and luck. trapped in miserable marriages, and the memorably unmemorable Mr. Hurst serves as a pithy reminder of this. He is the husband of one of the novel’s in-crowd, the moneyed snob, Luisa Hurst, but we never see any tenderness between them. How could there be? Mr. Hurst is fictional wallpaper, but he tells us a great deal about a society that valued breeding and money over depth of character. 

‘Mr. Hurst is glorious evidence of Austen’s ability to dismiss a character with one caustic swipe of the pen.’

Daisy

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Ashfor

d as a Child (1919)

Skimpole fills this reader with the desire only to protect the Olivers or Tiny Tims of this world, or any other, in case they be defiled by the abusive association of the claim ‘I am but a child’.

Mr. Mell

by James Wilper

W

hat? You’ve never heard of Mr. Mell? Of course f e is ‘o n e d r you haven’t. He’s probably at Eve h gre Harold Skim heba pole stands Baths ff of whic made’ the least important character in David u e in front of the st mothers ar the fire Copperfield.

But here is why I think this men’s character deserves his due. When young David is carted off to school by his frightful stepfather, Mr. Murdstone (don’t Dickens characters have such wonderful names?), Mr. Mell collects David in London and escorts him to the school, Salem House. But before they reach their destination, they drop in on an alms house in which, Bathsheba Everdene by Lucy Stansfield it turns out, Mr. Mell’s mother lives. At school, Mr. Mell is the only athsheba Everdene, the fearless, brave and very recognizable adult to show David any kindness whatsoever. The other masters, heroine of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, was and above all the headmaster, Mr. Creakle, are complete and utter the first grown-up character who leapt out of a book for me. prigs. Speaking of complete and utter prigs, David befriends an older She doesn’t hesitate to take on her uncle’s farm; she gets stuck in, boy, James Steerforth. To curry his favour (David has what can only works hard and wears her heart on her sleeve. She shuns Gabriel be described as a massive crush on Steerforth), David tells Steerforth Oak for being dull, despite his ability to pierce toxic sheep, and about Mr. Mell’s secret, that his mother is a pauper. Steerforth uses she understandably rejects his claustrophobic proposal. She wants the information to get the teacher fired. And we hear no more of more than he can offer. What I love about her is not her competent poor Mr. Mell … until the very end of the novel. David reads in an management style nor her ability to disarm Wessex farmers at the Australian newspaper that Mr. Mell has emigrated and is now Doctor corn exchange, but her flaws. She is ensnared (literally, on his spur) Mell of Colonial Salem House Grammar School, Port Middlebay,

by Hardy’s bad-boy, Sergeant Troy, and when he stoops to kiss her married with children. Mr. Mell suffered a terrible misfortune but after a flashy demonstration with his sword in the glade she loves him it turned out to be one that set his life on a new trajectory. Had he ‘to very distraction and misery and agony’. He (predictably) breaks stayed in England, he would have remained a poor schoolmaster, but her heart but after she forces open Fanny Robin’s coffin and sees her emigrating allowed him to start anew, open his own school, marry, with her ‘babe’, Bathsheba shows tender and courageous kindness by and become a prosperous and respected member of the colony. laying flowers around the pair despite this gut-wrenching revelation. Sadly, we do not live in a Dickens novel (or luckily, depending on Bathsheba is ‘of the stuff of which great men’s mothers are made’ the novel), so we can’t rely on everything turning out all right for when she cradles the dying Troy in her arms and finally comes to us in the end. So, what can we learn from Mr. Mell? It is this: we do appreciate the friendship, protective kindness and unequivocal love not know what is misfortune and what is luck when the events are of Gabriel Oak. happening to us. Only time and perspective can teach us that, and so often in life the challenges and setbacks teach us who we are and empower us to become the people we want to be.  Harold Skimpole by Kate Newsholme

B

S

kulking within Charles Dickens’s Bleak House is the most memorably appalling character in English Literature, Harold Skimpole. Sponging off anyone vulnerable enough to fund his lifestyle, Skimpole’s sickening renunciation of adult responsibility is epitomised in his signature phrase, ‘I am but a child’. Masquerading as a carefree innocent, by which appeal he lives a selfishly irresponsible existence, his actions taint both genuinely innocent adults and also, by association, slander the innocents with whom he claims an affinity. Insult to child and adult alike, his claim sees him slip, like a soap bubble (outwardly beautiful but inwardly hollow), out of harm’s way, leaving nothing behind but the sensation of having been used.

Perhaps worst of all, Dickens’s character was widely and immediately recognised as a representation of the famous writer, Leigh Hunt; thus, even the deliciously repulsive chill that might be the result of meeting him in print gives way to horror at the thought that his double actually swanned around fashionable Europe. Dickens’s children are often puke-worthily saccharine, but the vileness of

rth

erfo l & Ste Mr. Mel

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“As he passed them he kissed them in succession where they stood, saying ‘Good bye’ to each as he did so.”

Angel Clare

by Anthony Lyons

W

hen I was fifteen I threw a book at my bedroom wall because I didn’t take kindly to the courts at the end of the story hanging the beautiful innocent girl with whom I was in love. A rising black flag in the distance shows the hanging is done. That delicate neck! I’ve been haunted by the death of Tess Durbeyfield ever since. And I’m still angry. Not with the judge, nor with her cigar-smoking, strawberry-dangling, pitchfork-wielding seducer, Alec D’Urberville, who rapes Tess in the woods and abandons her to single motherhood and her baby’s death. He is what he is. No. It’s his idealistic rival, Angel Clare, who maddens me. He has the most ironic name in Victorian fiction because he is neither angelic nor clear in the head or heart. What were his parents thinking?

This bookish, anemic son of a parson wins the love of local girls by playing a dreamy, gentle-hearted scholar who despises convention, religion and class distinction but admires beauty and innocence. He plays the harp, carries the girls one by one over a swollen river, and calls Tess Artemis and Demeter (chastity and harvest). But he turns out to be a lily-livered prig and chauvinist who wants Tess to be the virginal paragon he’s read about in books, and he can’t stand it when he discovers she’s flesh and blood, a real woman who’s lived a lot already but is still pure of heart. He’s behaved worse than her in the past and knows she would die for him, as die she does, but he flounces off to Brazil on a farming jolly to sulk because real life is not like bland devotional art. Meanwhile his wife has to tend booming red threshing machines in the hot sun, pick out parsnips from a frozen field of phallic flints, and give in to the stalking of lubricious Alec. It’s a lifetime since I first read this novel but I’d still love to ram the harp over Angel’s head and push him in a vat of butter.  66

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Tess begs An gel Clare fo r forgivenes s

Rememberance Day 2018 CANTUARIAN | 2019

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Long Story William Flint (History) shares his love of Tolstoy and explains why you

should read War and Peace.

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f you know one thing about Leo Tolstoy, it is that he wrote enormous and complicated novels. What you might not know is how enormous and complicated his own life was. Even if it weren’t for his books, Tolstoy would present ample fodder for biographers.

He was born into the aristocracy and, similar to War and Peace’s Nikolai Rostov, spent his young adulthood gambling, womanising, and running up frightening debts before fleeing to the army just before the Crimean War. A diary entry from 25 January 1851 shows his libertine lifestyle: ‘I’ve fallen in love or imagine that I have; went to a party and lost my head. Bought a horse which I don’t need at all.’

We’ve all been there. His time in the army would serve him well, and his experiences in the Caucasus would inform his best short story, ‘Hadji Murat’. After the army he toured Europe for a while, witnessing a guillotining in Paris before becoming very unimpressed

by English boarding schools (again, we’ve all been there). He then headed back to his sprawling estate, Yasnaya Polyana, in which he was born, spent the vast majority of his life, died, and is buried. He married the 18-year-old Sonya, a family friend about half his age. On the night before their wedding Tolstoy presented her with his diary, which described all of his sexual exploits, including his many visits to prostitutes, and the illegitimate son he had with one of his serfs who was at the time his legal possession.

Safe to say we haven’t all been there.

strove within himself for love, acceptance, forgiveness, and peace, but to those around him he was extremely difficult, often taking his anger out on his family and treating them with contempt.

really is reading the world. His books are enormous, yes; they are difficult, confusing, and at times boring, yes. But life is difficult at times, and confusing, and boring, and at times frantic and full of fury, at others slow and gentle.

There is so much of the many sides of Tolstoy in his novels, but to read novels just There is a huge amount to be gained from to understand the author both reading Tolstoy and is far too narrow. As Isaac reading about Tolstoy.

Babel wrote, ‘If the world ‘He is the master of love, His life was huge, and his could write itself, it would impact was enormous. of hate, of mortality, write like Tolstoy.’ He is So how to start? ‘Hadji the master of the quip, of birth, of everything: Murat’, about an heroic like at the start of Anna rebel, is Tolstoy reading Tolstoy really is Chechen Karenina: at his best and most reading the world.’ concise and an excellent ‘Happy families are all introduction to his work. alike; every unhappy From there, it’s up to family is unhappy in its own way.’ you: if you want moral philosophy, read The Kingdom of God is Within You; approachable He is the master of the existential, for existentialism, A Confession; family drama example when Prince Andrei is lying and tragic romance, Anna Karenina; if you want to come face to face with life, The wounded on the battlefield of Austerlitz: Death of Ivan Ilyich.

“Above him there was now nothing but the sky – the lofty sky, not clear yet still Then, get stuck into War and Peace. If you immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds gliding read a chapter a day, you’ll spend the next slowly across it. ‘How quiet, peaceful, and year reading the literary Mount Everest solemn; […] How was it I did not see that – vast, exciting, difficult, exhilarating, the lofty sky before? And how happy I am to ultimate peak. Skip the historical essays (you have found it! All is vanity, all falsehood, have my permission); listen to Neville Jason’s except that infinite sky. There is nothing, remarkable audiobook performance using nothing, but that. But even it does not exist, the school’s Naxos account; watch the BBC there is nothing but peace, and quiet Thank adaptation to help you along the way; read it on Kindle, on the beach, in the bath; read God…’” it in the original; read it however you want He is the master of love, of hate, of mortality, but, whatever you do, don’t miss out. Life’s of birth, of everything: reading Tolstoy too short to never read Tolstoy.

When he aged Tolstoy radicalised into something of an anarchist Christian fundamentalist, growing a huge scraggly beard and wearing peasant smocks and sandals. Despite (or perhaps because of) his fiction having brought him fame and fortune, he came to hate it, denouncing it as decadent. In his later years he held a long correspondence with a young Indian lawyer in South Africa called Mohandas Gandhi, who was so inspired by the man and his philosophy that he named his first commune outside of Johannesburg Tolstoy Farm.

In his final days, at the age of 82 Tolstoy secretly fled Yasnaya Polyana in the middle of a winter’s night. He hopped onto a train headed South, fell ill of pneumonia and promptly died in a station master’s bed surrounded by his bemused and sorrowful family. Tolstoy spent his final hours running away in anger from his wife, but preaching love and tolerance to strangers on the train. This is the man: Tolstoy preached and CANTUARIAN | 2019

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BookING AHEAD King’s Librarian, Philippa Rose, shows why the Library is still the beating heart of the school’s culture.

M

y secondary school didn’t have a library.

I’m sure there were shelves of books somewhere but I never noticed them and I doubt I’d have felt inclined to take one off a shelf and peek inside what would in all likelihood have been dusty, old, and scribbled in. There was a public library ten minutes away and I used to sit inside on cold, rainy days and wait for my mum to collect me.

Librarians are an unusual sort: we live under a mantra of consistency. Each time we describe a book in our catalogue we assign keywords (like hashtags) that intersect other keywords in an unending, curated web of associations and knowledge hopefully clear and concise enough for retrieval by people of all ages, backgrounds, and perspectives. It’s a grotesque tentacular database and any weak, duplicate link or synonym can cast the whole system into disarray.

Each step I took into the public library, towards After spending most of the day immersed in this world that formidable front desk, was an ever-increasing of controlled vocabulary, classification and fixed acknowledgement that I was somewhere I shouldn’t identities, we open the pages of a book and enter be. Part of me wanted to run; part of me wanted to through a doorway into multiple universes, dreams defy that feeling of being unwelcome; most of me that can’t be codified or systematised. Then we have just wished that my mum would to reduce the whole experience into let me walk the two miles home a 280-character precis in an effort to ‘There was a time sopping wet. The library staff reinterpret the magnetic force of an would squint at me as I’d inch when people thought author’s voice to willing readers open over to the young adult section to embracing the pages of another Google would to read the next Point Horror new view, new voice or new world. novel (think evil twins, unhinged obliterate libraries but cheerleaders, diabolical school we’re now busier than There was a time when people proms, lots of gore, bad writing thought Google would obliterate ever.’ and even worse storylines). It was libraries but we’re now busier than always a quiet part of the library ever teaching people about fake and I could sit by the window and watch until my news, filter bubbles, political hustling of search mum’s car pulled up outside. Had you told fourteen- results, paywalls and databases. #bookstagrammers year-old me that I’d become a librarian one day, I and Facebook Live read-alouds are ever more wouldn’t have responded very kindly! popular on social media. There are now many more ways of reading and writing creatively for apps, Now I find myself inching down the library, trying interactive fiction and online games, not to mention not to make a sound as my heavy feet (despite my the hybridised book that expanded out from its best efforts) clomp past pupils reading Hemingway, paper stay into an amorphous and intangible cloud of Steinbeck, Dostoyevsky and Bulgakov. On rainy days digital bonus or supplementary content. Information the library fills up with damp teenagers who have comes in so many different formats now that we walked across school to sit in steamy window-bays with blankets and hot chocolate. I wonder how they see us library staff, our crinkled foreheads the only visible sign of the current classification puzzle and metaphysical implications we need to resolve before anyone can see, let alone borrow, the latest seemingly unclassifiable book.

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‘Now independent research is a mainstay of the Shell programme at King’s, where we aim to connect pupils with books, engage their sense of wonder, investigation, and serendipitous discovery.’

do our best to help the uninitiated navigate the swell which can be at times thrilling but often overwhelming if you don’t understand the currents beneath.

Online research was still a fairly new concept when I read Art History at university. I used slide projectors and OHP transparencies. True e-journals (as opposed to paper journals that had been digitised) were just niche vanity projects for computer scientists or tech-y academics who seemed interested only in communicating their thoughts to a small fraternity of like-minded academics. The library had a great café that served mugs of Twining’s tea for 20p! I spent whole days in there, working side-by-side with friends, the tsk-tsk-tsk of pencil on paper and our muffled murmuring a comforting memory. The library was a storehouse for books and journals.

There was a designated ‘Slide Librarian’, a title that would baffle many today! I blundered my way through the process of research, picking up skills the more I worked at it, only beginning to grasp the mechanics – and joy – of the quest for buried knowledge in my final year.

Now independent research is a mainstay of the Shell programme at King’s, where we aim to connect pupils with books, engage their sense of wonder, investigation, and serendipitous discovery, guide them through the process of constructing and communicating new knowledge drawn from their own thoughts about the world, and reflecting on what it all means to them and to others. Do I pity today’s pupils who have to wade through the mire of mis-information, disinformation, and just mad information? I take comfort in knowing that the upshot is that it’s no longer just the 1st of April when they’ll critically evaluate things they find on the internet before accepting them as true!

Seeing young people come to the realisation that information can be incredibly powerful is a rewarding part of the job.

They come to know that stories, whether they are captured in paper or untethered and free online, can transform our understanding of love, war, disease, isolation, political systems;

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‘Each and every library is an argument about the nature of the world, complete and uncompletable, filled with secrets, complexities and contradictions.’

(2017), Elizabeth Acevedo’s Poet X (2018), and Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other (2019). The library is wholeheartedly filling its lungs!

can inspire us to seek great adventures, to travel to other countries; or can simply anchor us where we are and help us to know ourselves a little better.

Some pupils have been reading Fahrenheit 451 this year, a story book set in a future world characterised by apathy and antipathy towards reading. Books are outlawed and firemen burn them. Entertainment has replaced reading and critical thinking.

Existential anxieties permeate the novel.

While no novel is without its failings, a world without Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird or Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple – both of which have experienced long histories of censorship and countless burnings – would be a world deprived of profound lessons about prejudice, justice, and equality.

Each and every library is an argument about the nature of the world, complete and uncompletable, filled with secrets, complexities and contradictions. The ‘Seeing young people Dear Reader, whether logic to the capturing, your library is a refuge, labelling and arranging come to the realisation a place where you of knowledge that strives that information can be can immerse yourself for permanence, is – in its incredibly powerful is a in other worlds, or suspension of time and rewarding part of the job.’ somewhere you can fixed ideas – already a learn and think about metanarrative tinged with how to make your nostalgia. Nevertheless, corner of the world a tugged by the gravity of readers’ desires, books and other media little better for yourself and others, libraries flow in and out of the library like the tides. and their staff will fight to protect the words, They are exhaled in great whorls, reminding written, spoken, or otherwise, that educate, us of the continued relevance of old classics inspire, and support you for as long as you like Robert Tressell’s Ragged-Trousered will allow us that privilege. Philanthropists (1914) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949); while pupil requests prompt inhalations of fresh new voices, like Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down

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Beyond Words

In her final year at King’s, Charlotte Panton (6a) found out why travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor OKS will always be a good read.

A

Time of Gifts (1977) portrays Leigh Fermor’s school days, stating that his Patrick Leigh Fermor’s journey from friend’s creative imagination was beyond Rotterdam to Constantinople in 1933 the school’s control. Watts describes him as as a young student eager to explore new ‘a romantic, a fine poet, a born adventurer, locations with a backpack and hiking stick. It a splendid actor, and a gallant lover of is the first account within a trilogy. The other women’, the last tendency resulting in Leigh two volumes are Between the Woods and Fermor’s expulsion from King’s after he was Water: On Foot to Constantinople (1986), caught holding hands with the daughter of which opens with crossing the Danube and a local greengrocer. Leigh Fermor’s charm pauses when Leigh Fermor reaches the Iron and spark were not only present during his Gates dividing the Carpathian mountains school days but imbue his prose. from the Balkans, and Leigh Fermor’s The Broken Road (2013), ‘I appreciate Leigh language is emotive, which continues from carefully portraying there, ending at Mount Fermor’s writing because the history of a Athos. These memoirs he captures a feeling of place and creating have a nostalgic and possibility and a leap into an overwhelming sentimental tone impression of what because Leigh Fermor the unknown.’ was there centuries penned them later before. For example, in life, reflecting on previous adventures. As a student myself, I his presentation of the Groote Kirk is appreciate Leigh Fermor’s writing because furnished with his imagination, which notes he captures a feeling of possibility and a leap that ‘so compellingly did the vision tally with into the unknown that is relevant to me as I a score of half-forgotten Dutch pictures that my mind’s eye instantaneously furnished the leave school and begin my own adventure. void with those seventeenth-century groups Leigh Fermor, effervescent and enthusiastic, which should have been sitting or strolling spent part of his school years at King’s, in there: burghers with pointed corn-coloured The Grange. At the beginning of his trilogy beards – and impious spaniels that refused he describes ‘the wide green expanses..., to stay outside – conferring gravely with the huge elms, the Dark Entry, and the their wives and children, still as chessmen, in ruined arches and cloisters... the booming black broadcloth and identical honeycomb and jackdaw-crowded pinnacles of the great ruffs under the tremendous hatchmented Angevin cathedral itself, and the ghost of pillars.’

St. Thomas à Becket and the Black Prince’s bones.’ In this rich style the author portrays Flowery and fanciful, Leigh Fermor’s The Cathedral as a haunting Gothic character language lets history breathe, ‘black broadcloth’ and ‘honeycomb ruffs’ evoking in its own right. the clothing worn during the Dutch golden The author’s awe endures when he visits age. His reflections on who once stood other cathedrals: ‘I was haunting cathedrals where he stands allow Leigh Fermor’s writing these days. Only a few hours later I was inside to go beyond ordinary description, instead yet another.’ Alan Watts’ autobiography demonstrating the intense impact visiting In My Own Way comments on his and such sites had upon the author. He also

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Image: Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermor at home in Kalamitsi. Photo courtesy of the National Library of Scotland.

‘Flowery and fanciful, Leigh Fermor’s language lets history breathe, ‘black broadcloth’ and ‘honeycomb ruffs’ evoking the clothing worn during the Dutch golden age.’

emphasises the kindness offered to him upon his travels, creating a history of not just places and events but of people. Attending a church on Christmas Eve, he is invited to stay with a family he meets there, and the following morning is given ‘a tangerine and a packet of cigarettes wrapped beautifully in tinsel and silver paper’, as well as an invitation to join their celebrations.

Leigh Fermor leaves, not wanting to interrupt the family’s time together, but nonetheless he describes the festivity as ‘the time of gifts’, of which hospitality and friendliness are the greatest gift of all.

Leigh Fermor wrote during the interwar period, and this is evident in his literature. In A Time of Gifts he describes a town: ‘hung with National Socialist flags and the window of an outfitter’s shop next door held a display of Party equipment: swastika arm-bands, daggers for the Hitler Youth, blouses for the Hitler Maidens.’

Leigh Fermor’s account is poignant because he not only visits Germany but specifically the country during the years of Hitler’s rise, allowing his musings to be unlike those of any other travel writer and more than simply a guide.

Image: Patrick Leigh Fermor at home in Greece - courtesy of PatrickLeighFermor.org

‘Leigh Fermor’s language is emotive, carefully portraying the history of a place and creating an overwhelming impression of what was there centuries before.’

Without wanting to be hyperbolical, I’d say Leigh Fermor enables the reader to access a time machine and visit not just new countries but another era too. In The Broken Road, he also illustrates a uniquely impressive moment

Image: Patrick Leigh Fermor - Joan Leigh Fermor - John Murray Collection

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Image: Fermor writing under a makeshift shelter in his garden at Kardamyli, Greece.

Credit - Estate of Patrick Leigh Fermor.

in history. On the southern bank of the Danube are ‘a group of officers in white tunics buttoning under the left ear in the Russian style... No women. Dogs wrangled over a sheep’s jawbone. A row of skinned sheep’s heads.’ He says ‘it was a grave moment.

I realized that everything had changed’, emphasising the cultural and socio-political shift he was witnessing in Europe. This trilogy was written retrospectively, based on diaries which accompanied his adventures, and Leigh Fermor noted that ‘my whole life had seemed to revolve around those stiff-covered exercise books...keeping them up to date had acquired the charm and mystery of a secret religion.’

Although A Time of Gifts and The Broken Road are written with nostalgia, they nonetheless convey his presence in those moments.

‘Strewn with extensive knowledge and laden with classical references, Leigh Fermor’s books are as interesting as they are exciting to read.’ island of happy sojourn dropped below the horizon.’

Despite not spending ten years at sea or having encounters with monsters and a battle in a dining hall, Leigh Fermor’s travels are epic regardless. They are filled with optimism and exuberance, captivating readers from the first few pages. He creates unique contemporary history masquerading as a travel guide at once adventurous, historical and intimately autobiographical. Strewn with extensive knowledge and laden with classical references, Leigh Fermor’s books are as interesting as they are exciting to read.

With its brilliant escapism, his work is especially inspiring if you are about to leave school.

Image: Patrick Leigh Fermor - courtesy of PatrickLeighFermor.org

Image: Patrick Leigh Fermor - by Artemis Cooper

I have enjoyed reading both A Time of Gifts and The Broken Road. The verbose language is ambitious, creating a sense of grandeur, and whilst the extensive classical references complement this, they are at times too frequent. His references demonstrate his passion for observation and history but can overwhelm the reader, weighing the narrative down. That being said, such references also propel these books into the realm of heroic adventure. Indeed, Leigh Fermor compares himself to Ulysses ‘gazing astern while some

‘Leigh Fermor’s account is poignant because he not only visits Germany but specifically the country during the years of Hitler’s rise, allowing his musings to be unlike those of any other travel writer and more than simply a guide.’

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You do

YOU

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Lucy Gaffney (Shell) says you must always be yourself.

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n my opinion you doing you is the best possible thing you can do. We weren’t born on this planet for other people. We weren’t born to try and change ourselves.

We were born to be ourselves, our amazing, kind, beautiful selves. So why can’t we just be us? Because in this day and age the media is all about changing ourselves. Why, I don’t understand, because all this does is affect people’s mental health.

because in the end you’re living in this world and to me that’s enough of an achievement and it should be to you. It’s time for you to put your health first and that means being kind to yourself and doing what makes you happy and no one else because you only live once, and that’s for you, not others.

Self-doubt occurs when we are lacking in confidence. People who doubt themselves panic about things going out of control or not 38% of people own a social media account, going as expected. This is often caused by past whether that’s Facebook, Instagram, Tinder mistakes, comparison of yourself with others, or Snapchat. I’m not saying that social media and a rise of a new challenge that you are is bad. Trust me: I’m a lover of it myself! But scared to overcome. But if you’re going to love what you see on social yourself you cannot selfmedia can affect your health doubt, and I have some subconsciously, whether it’s tips and tricks that will help ‘This world was not because you’re not in a post you. created to be perfect. with your friends or you wish you had that person’s It was created to have If you’re going to make life, or you fear that you’re happy and accept imperfections that create yourself not good enough. Well, you you as you, you might want challenges for you to are. to learn how to recast your overcome and feel good weaknesses and strengths There is nothing wrong by mental redecorating. If overcoming them.’ with you. No one, not one you are stubborn and you person on this Earth has see that as a weakness something wrong with it can cause self-doubt. them. Flaws and little imperfections that you But being stubborn can be standing up for might put down just make you who you are. what you believe in, which is most definitely Yet instead of leaning into loving ourselves and a strength called perseverance. If you think doing what we want, we lean into what others your weakness is being too pessimistic, all that expect from us, because we lose confidence means is that you’ll be ready when things start in ourselves because of others’ looks, gains or going wrong, which makes you prepared, and perfections. But it’s time to put your happiness that’s a strength. By recasting your weaknesses first. It’s pointless to compare yourself with as strengths you are eliminating the chances of others or try to be perfect. This world was not self-doubt and lack of confidence and adding created to be perfect. It was created to have to the chances of self-love and acceptance. imperfections that create challenges for you to overcome and feel good overcoming them. So be who you are. Live for you and be It’s time to put away your worries and doubts accepting of others when they try to do them about yourself and just accept you for you for them but, most importantly, you do you.

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Healing

Powers

With all manner of therapies now available in the UK, Gary Heskins describes what’s on offer at the King’s School Recreation Centre.

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started massaging over twenty years ago. My girlfriend asked me to rub her shoulders, hands and feet after she finished work. As it turned out, I seemed to be quite good at it and I enjoyed doing it so I thought I should learn to do it properly to be able to help out more people. Since then I have massaged men and women of all ages, shapes and sizes, and continue to do so week in, week out.

Getting massaged is deemed a bit of a luxury in this country, but in others it’s the norm.

It seems we largely feel we should only sign up as part of a spa treatment. When we’ve booked a spa we look forward to how nice it will be just to relax and let someone else relieve our body of its tension, as we close our eyes and let our minds drift off. Sounds great, eh? And it can be, but should we really leave it to random spa days?

Obviously it’s great to relax and chill out and let someone else do the work but massage is also great for increasing blood flow, helping injury recovery, increasing flexibility and reducing stress, amongst other things. Let’s face it: in today’s world we could all do with reducing our stress levels.

Massage is probably the most commonly known holistic therapy out of many. Some work on any part of the body and some are more focused. Reflexology can work on the hands or feet but is mainly recognised as working on the feet. As the feet are massaged it works also on different areas and organs of the body. Again, this can be

hugely relaxing and calming. I mean, how often have you sat down, taken your shoes off and given your own feet a bit of a rub and probably wished someone else would do it for you? I understand not everybody is happy having someone else touching their feet, so maybe a different kind of treatment would be better.

You may be thinking, ‘What can I do if I’m not comfortable with somebody else touching my bare skin?’ If this is the case, and there are plenty of people who feel this way, why not try Reiki healing? Reiki comes from Japan and is quite a spiritual therapy.

As a client all you have to do is lie down, fully clothed, shut your eyes and relax. Some Reiki practitioners use a chair but I prefer to put clients on my table. I then lay my hands on or

‘Massage is also great for increasing blood flow, helping injury recovery, increasing flexibility and reducing stress, amongst other things.’

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Image: Sports massage by Gemella Evans

Image: Gary Heskins taking class

‘It works on any blockages there may be in the body, be it physical, mental, spiritual or emotional. It’s extremely relaxing and can help reduce aches and pains, release tension, stress and pent-up emotion as well as improve sleep.’

just above different parts of the body. As I do maybe try a different therapist or different this I pass on energy from me to the person type of treatment. I realise cost can be an on the table and then that person’s body issue and that’s very understandable but, if does what it needs to do with that energy. It you find the right therapist for you, they may works on any blockages there may be in the do you some sort of deal and when you do body, be it physical, mental, spiritual or emotional. It’s extremely relaxing and can help reduce aches ‘Getting massaged is deemed a bit of a and pains, release tension, luxury in this country, but in others it’s stress and pent-up emotion as well as improve sleep. I the norm.’ understand that this isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, like other therapies, but they can all help out one way or another, and if find the right one I’m sure you’ll find them you’ve never tried any of them it’s certainly worth the cost. worth giving at least one a go.

I have to say that these therapies should not If you’re not sure about trying a therapy, be seen as a ‘cure’ for medical conditions but do some research and ask around to see can certainly assist in helping you feel better if there’s a particular therapist people and compliment other treatments. I’ve been recommend. Any decent therapist will helping people through alternative therapies happily sit down and answer any questions for a long time. I love it and I’m always keen you may have, before you have a treatment. to learn more types of treatments to help as If you don’t get what you expect from a many people as I can. I hope you try one kind treatment it may be that the therapist was of therapy or another soon, and I sincerely not the right one for you. If this is the case, hope you enjoy it. 

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Behind The

Scenes Why, when he isn’t on stage, is Tommy Károlyi (6a) always behind a lens?

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was told I would need ‘passion, talent and drive’ to We also learnt to improvise when things did go wrong, succeed in The Arts. I like to think I exude all of these although this was a rare occurrence. The buzz I get from things when behind the sound desk in the tech box, the risk of theatre is something that cannot be recreated thrusting a camera in somebody’s face or sitting at my with anything else. Every production is different and there computer, editing. The Arts industry is a magical world is always the chance to get it wrong, but I think that is what that has fascinated me from the moment I was born. As a makes theatre so exciting. child, I used to cry at the end of every play we went to see because the theatrical magic would have such a massive, After moving from Loretto (in Scotland) to King’s, I had the overwhelming impact on me. I have since managed to amazing opportunity to design and operate the sound for get out of this habit, much to my family’s relief. I spend (as well as act in) the opening show at the Malthouse, A all my free time (and time I should be doing school Midsummer Night’s Dream. I am really looking forward to doing the same for the upcoming work) working on some form of production of Blood Wedding. theatrical or video project, making ‘The key part to succeeding These experiences, where I am it as professional as possible. in this world is about allowed to get it wrong, are what Nowadays, I focus on video and have set me up with the practice film work. I started off doing a lot collaboration, not being I need for a career in the creative of theatre production and still try afraid to critique and be arts industry. Everything I have to be involved with as much as critiqued, as well as being learnt from the theatre world is possible. I have worked backstage directly transferable to film and on every school production since prepared to make a lot (and I video work. All the fundamentals the age of 10 and have even done mean, a ton) of mistakes.’ of lighting, sound, costume and set paid work for external companies design are all equally relevant in too, including travelling with a local school as their technician to operate two performances both worlds. It was just a matter of time before I started in the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. I will be taking a year overlapping and experimenting in this area too. off to develop my video-making skills further, hopefully collaborating with the owner of Helmworks Film. I am My interest in video-making started when I was in Year 7, also hoping to be accepted on a six-week film-directing and we were set the task by our Biology teacher of making course in Sofia, Bulgaria, where I will gain invaluable a presentation about the journey a sandwich takes through the digestive system. For some random reason, I decided I experience in the industry. wanted to create a Lego stop-motion for this project. I had My love of creative arts started when I was in Year 5, never undertaken any project like this before but I decided when I was asked to hand-draw all the backdrops for a I wanted to have a go, and thought if it failed I could rustle junior production of Macbeth. This was when I found up a quick powerpoint like everyone else. I spent the my love for theatre and this opportunity got me into the weekend using an iPad and free stop motion software to backstage world. Little did I know I would end up falling make what ended up being a one-minute video that looked head-over-heels in love with both theatre and film, and incredibly home-made. However, this project sparked be looking to pursue it as a career. I moved on to helping something inside me that has been burning ever since. I with light rigging as well as both lighting and sound began making all sorts of videos from short stop motions operating for every school production from then on. to fictional shorts, Lego reviews, gameplay commentaries I formed the dream team with my great friend and co- and tutorials (which, looking back, are horrendously cringe techy Stevo (a nickname before you ask). We both learnt and have since been removed from the internet to avoid to stay calm under super-stressful conditions, which any personal embarrassment). It was in these projects that is a key skill to have when working on shows because I taught myself how to use a camera, how to light objects it keeps the Director as happy and calm as possible. and people, and of course edit. After a couple of years

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Images: Tommy’s work

‘I started filming everything: holidays, day trips, the smallest things.

I wouldn’t leave the house unless I had all my kit.’

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making gameplay videos, including a number of Latin projects, made digitally using games like Minecraft and more manually through Lego Stop Motions, I discovered drones, and my life changed forever.

Drones are controversial. They are probably the most revolutionary piece of tech to be invented since the camera itself, and they have altered amateur filmmaking for the best in recent years. Most notably, DJI’s range dominate the market and I bought their starter-level drone, The Spark, in 2017, and haven’t landed it since. It has allowed me to get shots that were once only possible from a helicopter and a film studio with a multi-million dollar budget. It is crazy to think I It’s easy to get caught up buying the latest technology, can get similar shots, some even more breathtaking, but it is important to remember, as cinematographer from something that fits in my rucksack. The Spark Roger Deakins perfectly puts it: ‘Technology is changing was my gateway into the filmmaking world. I fell in love all the time, but for me nothing has changed in the with the smoothness of the shots and the different sense that you are still telling stories by the use of light, ways I could fly the drone in and out of small and tight the use of a frame, the way you move a camera. I’m spaces as well as get the classic bird’sstill hoping to be part of telling stories eye shots. I received a camera-gimbal ‘ I am a big believer about people and the way we are.’ combo for my birthday (a gyroscope When I started out, I didn’t have the that no subject is stabiliser that works using small motors). cameras (I still don’t!), but I have ‘boring’ if you use your best I started filming everything: holidays, a passion for filmmaking, story-telling imagination and get day trips, the smallest things. I wouldn’t and creating something aesthetically leave the house unless I had all my kit. creative it is possible pleasing that will also challenge a I’ll be the first to admit that it became to make full cinematic viewer when I want it to, and so I a tad fanatical and I gathered 1000s of persevered, trying to copy techniques sequences out of the gigabytes of footage that I now have and colour grades I had seen, and tell simplest activities.’ stored away just in case I need it one my own stories. The quality of the day. I am a big believer that no subject is image or how much fancy tech you ‘boring’ if you use your imagination and get creative. It have does not matter. Yes, it can be nice to have crystalis possible to make full cinematic sequences out of the clear 8K images but it doesn’t mean anything if the filmsimplest activities, like buying milk and eggs or having a story you are telling is bad. pint of beer. If you get a handful of different shot types, focussing on lighting, depth of field and then sound The key part to succeeding in this world is about effects in post, you can make anything exciting. collaboration, not being afraid to critique and be

FAQ:

How do you pronounce your surname?

Károlyi - ‘Kaa-rull-ee’

What A’ Levels are you taking?

Drama, Photography and English (+EPQ in 6b)

Favourite film?

My three favourite films of all time are Little Women (2019), 1917 (2020) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) mostly for their incredible cinematography but also because I went into these three films having never watched the trailers, which made every surprise that bit more exciting.

Favourite video project you have worked on?

Definitely the video that was shown in Moscow. Because it was all in Russian, it focussed my visual storytelling skills and made me think hard about each shot. I am proud of the final result, which can be found on my YouTube Channel.

Favourite play you have worked on?

Something Wicked This Way Comes: I was opping sound for this and it was the second play I had done sound for. I just remember there being so many awesome sfx.

Favourite book?

The Woman In Black

Any ideas for future films?

Yes, so stay tuned…

What camera do you use?

critiqued, as well as being prepared to make a lot (and I mean, a ton) of mistakes. It takes practice but that is where the fun is: developing and improving. There’s always a new project just around the corner to sink your teeth into and experiment with.

My favourite project I have worked on was a video about life at King’s that was shown to Russian parents at the British Embassy in Moscow. It was challenging because the voiceovers were in Russian, and I don’t speak a word. But this pushed me to make a video that focussed on the visual story and could be watched and understood by anyone, regardless whether they speak Russian or not. It was enormous fun to film and edit, and I loved the pressure of working to a strict deadline.

Looking back at it, there are many things I wish I could change, re-shoot and edit differently but that is part of the process of growing as a filmmaker.

As of March 2020, the Sony a6500 with the DJI Ronin-S gimbal.

Where are you hoping to study?

I’m applying to RADA, LAMDA, Guildhall and Bristol Old Vic, so we’ll see who wants me!

Have you got a website?

No, but there’s one in the works coming soon.

Can you make a video for me?

Of course. Please get in touch via Instagram, E-mail or Facebook.

I have a number of exciting projects coming in the near future, including a handful of fictional short films, wedding videos, adverts and more. I am always looking for projects to take on to develop my skills and I always aim to make each new project better than the last. 

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I want to be…

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Lexie Whitmore (Shell) asked her peers what they want to be when they grow up.

I want to be a doctor so I can help other people like they help me.

I want to be an actress because I’ve been doing it for a long time and I love it so much.

I want to be a football player because I’m good at it.

I want to be happy and rich and marry a footballer.

I want to be a businesswoman because I want to succeed and have my own company.

I want to be a librarian because I love reading and it makes me happy.

I want to be a professional artist and have a gallery in Tate Modern because art is the thing I resort to when I’m stressed.

I want to be a fencer because I do a lot of competitions and I love it a lot.

I want to be an athlete because athletes have been in my family for a long time.

I want to be a CEO of a multi-millionpound company because I like money.

I want to be a professional cricketer because it’s my passion and I want to pursue it for my lifetime.

I want to be a professional golfer because I would be doing my favourite thing all day long as my job.

I want to be a horse rider because I love horses and I’ve been doing it since I was three.

I want to write and direct movies. I don’t know. I just do. It’s just a thing.

I want to be a professional singer because it’s my dream.

I want to be a zookeeper because I love animals.

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The Norman Arch and Schoolroom 88

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n the first study of its kind, a collaboration between Italian and Canadian university professors concluded that learning a second language can slow the rate of mental decline in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

This information may not impress you, and it was never a factor in my decision to join the School of Linguistics of my alma mater, St. Petersburg State University in Russia.

What I wanted to do was to travel the world being able to communicate and work at the United Nations, doing interpretation jobs to make ends meet. The UN didn’t quite happen after my travels took me on a different route, but the extensive nomadic appetite at some point brought me to Hong Kong.

Found

In Translation

In a previous life, Elena McCaffrey (Russian) was a highflying simultaneous translator and tells us what it’s like to play go-between with words.

My first job in Hong Kong was to interpret at a meeting involving Russian and English languages, an opportunity which I sourced by talking to locals involved in various businesses. As I managed to successfully navigate that first opportunity, more offers started coming in. I registered with all the local interpreting agencies that I could see in the Yellow Pages (online wasn’t really a thing back then). In the blink of an eye, I became one of two resident Russian/ English simultaneous interpreters covering South-East Asia.

Simultaneous doesn’t really mean at the same moment, but refers to interpreting in a booth with your headphones on with about a two-second delay after the speaker. It is tough and requires a perfect command of both languages since there is no time for contemplation.

You might ask why couldn’t you just work on your own in this type of role? Well, it takes two to tango when undertaking a simultaneous interpretation, so it’s not a job where you could go solo. Simultaneous interpreters work as partners, swapping over at least every forty minutes. This is the maximum time a human brain can process information at such a high level of concentration. When working, I’d rarely leave the booth even on my recuperating break because sometimes a partner may have a word block, at which point your mind should be sufficiently recovered to produce the necessary term or decipher a new acronym. Professional etiquette and buddy aid can’t be underestimated in simultaneous interpretation.

I did medical symposiums, business forums and legal conferences together with my partner. There was also an annual camping association convention in Hong Kong and a horse racing federation summit in Taipei followed by a banking roadshow in Singapore.

One of the toughest conferences I worked at was the Security Printing congress. I can now confidently explain how a biometric pass is printed and works in practice, but at the time I felt that the frequency of highly technical terms was excruciating. Finishing my forty-minute shift I glanced at my partner and she had that astonished look on her face: apparently my crimson face was not far off looking like a Chinese flag. All the plugs, cores, bungs and ferrules did me in completely.

Each time for a particular event certain technical vocabulary was acquired very quickly, which was a steep learning curve, but it felt very rewarding. I was travelling, exploring, using my language skills and, best of all, getting paid! Simultaneous interpretation pays better than consecutive interpretation: a skilled interpreter can expect to make £800+ a day.

Conferences don’t happen every day, though, sometimes not even every month. To create a steadier income, I started teaching English

at the University of Hong Kong and got accredited with the Consulate General of the Russian Federation where I translated legal documents subsequently notarised by the consulate. During the same period I became a government interpreter and translator, which involved working with the police, hospitals, prisons and other government groups. One day I would be taking a delegation with the mayor of Moscow to visit a state-of-the-art flight control centre at Hong Kong airport, whilst the following day I would be called in to assist legal aid in court for a rape case.

I worked with presidents, governors, mayors, ministers and business leaders, world-famous artists, musicians and jewellers. With finance professionals during our banking roadshows I dined in the best restaurants in Asia. Other days I might have to rush to the police station to be there before a detainee had a night of incarceration, especially since I quickly learnt being in the room on the morning after may not be tolerable since detainees generally don’t have access to a brush and toothpaste.

One morning in April 2011 I received a telephone call from the protocol department of the Chief Executive of Hong Kong. A soft female voice inquired if I could assist with a forthcoming event taking place on Sunday. I calmly yet firmly explained that I didn’t normally work weekends. She paused then said, ‘But it’s is a very important event. We are hosting the President of Russia!’ I covered the phone, jumped up and down, making gestures in the air. Big breath. ‘I’m available,’ I said.

Translation and interpretation jobs opened many doors for me, affording me a host of wonderful life experiences. It has been constant journey of learning that can provide those fortunate to be on board an opportunity to do what they enjoy (if you share my love of languages).

Even if there is no guarantee with regard to Alzheimer’s, another study recently revealed that people who can speak two or more languages make their mind work harder, feel generally happier and may live longer. CANTUARIAN | 2019

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t n e Pot

Chemicals

Members of Cinnamaldeyde

The Chemistry Department choose their favourite chemicals.

by Geoff Nelson

T

Arsenic

by Helen Hunter

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his molecule was the answer to a university exam question: hereas I have a distinct memory of flicking balls of mercury ‘Here is a vial containing an unknown compound. What is around a tray during 4th Form Chemistry, Arsenic is an the compound?’ I opened the vial of clear, yellow liquid and element I have never had the pleasure of encountering immediately entered a room full of cinnamon buns. Yum! Hunger was in the flesh, so it has always held a degree of fascination. Element soon followed by the answer: Cinnamaldehyde! Without a doubt. number 31, Arsenic is a metalloid and in its pure form a grey solid.

But then I noticed the small print.

Its name derives from Arsenikon, the The rules stated that smell was not Ancient Greek name for the yellow sufficient evidence, on the grounds pigment ‘orpiment’, a form of arsenic of safety. This was understandable. trisulphide. Nineteenth Century Now, I just had three hours, a stack of homes needed arsenic on flypaper, data, and a battery of chemical tests as powder for termite infestations to conduct; the results could be used and in weedkiller. By 1814, Arsenic to prove that I had cinnamaldehyde. as a copper arsenate dye was being Surely this was possible. What could used to make the shade ‘Paris Green’ go wrong? The usual frustrations of commonly found in wallpapers of science and a few tricks employed the day (and possibly linked to the by my examiners, that’s what. After death of Napoleon on the damp my exam, I went to the local café and island of Sardinia). When bed-bugs treated myself to a nice cinnamon died in rooms papered with the bun, which made me feel better. I new designs, more wallpaper was never proved inconclusively that I sold, but then people too started had cinnamaldehyde, despite all my to die. The toxic nature of Arsenic efforts. I received my examination compounds became apparent with result with a sense of deflation. I as little as 100mg sufficient to kill.

‘I opened the vial of clear, yellow liquid and immediately entered a finally empathised with scientists, It took little effort to extract the room full of cinnamon buns. Yum!’ long gone and from the present, poisonous compounds from these who spend their lifetime identifying readily available sources, to dispose elements and compounds without of an unwanted guest or relative. The quite convincing others their gut feeling is correct. We scientists must symptoms of gradual low-level arsenic poisoning are very similar to accept this feeling at least once in our careers; conclusion must be cholera and dysentery, common ailments of the day. backed up by evidence that convinces our peers. This process is the last hurdle which every scientific work must pass before publication.

I never take the flavour of cinnamon for granted nowadays. It arrives in our mouths thanks to the efforts and time of those who discovered its properties, learned to extract and purify it, and then understand its structure and character. This results in happy bakers and their guests, and a life-long, bittersweet relationship between me and those delicious cinnamon buns.

Fun fact: Cinnamaldehyde is cultivated in Sri Lanka and Southern India. The dried bark of the tree Cinnamonum zeylancicum comprises 1-4% cinnamaldehyde, which must be extracted by steam distillation of this cinnamon bark. This molecule has had many uses, including as an insecticide and anti-microbial agent, with some pharmacological applications. mpounds re of Arsenic co ‘The toxic natu le tt li as th wi became apparent .’ ll ki to nt ie as 100mg suffic

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Water

by Luke Bartlett

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s Roger McGough’s 2013 poem written for a new fountain in Liverpool puts it, ‘water is… fountainous, mountainous, mysterious, serious, humorous, curious, sumptuous, tempestuous, curvaceous, flirtatious, mischievous…’

It’s extraordinary, strange and very surprising stuff, anomalous in so many respects. If it weren’t, we and life as we know it would not exist on Earth. Its shape is not just H¬–O¬–H in a straight line but a V angled at 104.5o (on average, since water molecules are keen dancers, constantly jiggling and jiving, stretching and twisting). This V-shape allows the molecules to slow down and link together in hexagons, growing symmetrically to make the crystals we call snowflakes.

Water dissolves more different types of substances than any other liquid and, strangely, ice floats on water. Think about it: shouldn’t a solid always be more dense than its liquid? It’s only because the oceans froze from the surface down, insulating the waters beneath, that life continued swimming and evolving during the long ice ages on this planet. It also has a really high boiling point. 100oC might not seem much but for a tiny molecule it’s extreme, and the fact that it’s a liquid at all is unexpected. Many of these special characteristics are caused by the ‘hydrogen bonds’ (ask an A’ Level Chemistry student to explain) between water molecules, but they don’t last long – about 10-11 seconds. When you next hold a glass of water, have a second look at perhaps the most amazing compound in the universe.

Buckminsterfullerene

by Lewin Hynes

H

ow cynical can I be? I immediately thought of C60, or buckminsterfullerene, an allotrope of carbon that various people promised would revolutionise everything from engines to medicine to computer chips, but until now has been used for no practical purpose at all. It just shows the hype that can damage the public perception of science and the wilfully credulous nature of the media when discussing what are at best the blue-sky musings of a few scientific nutters.

Fun Fact: C60 was named after American architect, Buckminster Fuller, who designed domes that looked like the chemical’s structure.

lotrope e is an al rfulleren omised te pr ns mi le ck op u ‘B various pe at g.’ th in h on everyt of carb lutionise would revo

‘Its sha pe i line bu s not just in t a V a a ngled a straight t 104.5 o ’

‘Water’ by Philip Larkin (1954)

‘Water’ by Roger McGough (2013) water is fountainous is gymnast is flash water is mountainous is scallywag is splash water is mysterious is playhouse is dream water is serious is stargazy is steam water is humorous is teardrop is serenade water is curious is careless is cavalcade water is sumptuous is rainbow is ecstatic water is tempestuous is babyface is erratic water is curvaceous is shipshape is piggyback water is flirtatious is scatterbrain is paddywhack water is mischievous is fidgety is chatterbox water is Liverpool is river is paradox

If I were called in To construct a religion I should make use of water.

Going to church Would entail a fording To dry, different clothes; My liturgy would employ Images of sousing, A furious devout drench, And I should raise in the east A glass of water Where any-angled light Would congregate endlessly.

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King’s Rugby

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King’s 2019

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Home from home Joshua Platt (6b) tells us why Linacre is so special.

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here’s a strange feeling in the crypt tonight. boys to whom he plays father. The Listers are quite We feel distinctly out of place; everybody here possibly the kindest, warmest family you will ever knows each other. They could well be family. meet. Mr. Lister cares about every Linacre lad like As we proceed to our seats, snippets of conversation his own flesh and blood. He’d put himself on the line catch our attention: old stories, long-forgotten for any boy in the house, and frequently does. The memories of the red brick Georgian building that study door is rarely, if ever, closed and he is always these men were proud to call their home. This is the around for a chat. With his signature phrases from memorial of Peter Allen OKS, Housemaster of Linacre Saracens mottos to ‘Let’s have some decorum, boys’, from 1976 to 1987. Former Captain of School, Black he is truly the pillar of the house.

Watch member and Canon of St. Mary’s Cathedral, Peter was loved by all. Incredible dinner parties, On your right is Linacre’s main hall, a traditional quick quips and wonderful wines provided some room painted burgundy with dark oak benches and of the fondest memories of his former students red sofas around the walls. On the wall by the door and colleagues. Once the moving service was over, is a piano and a grandfather clock. Opposite is the the old boys came back to the open staircase leading up to the house for a tour. Two generations dormitories. Sitting in the centre of ‘Much had changed collided. Much had changed in one of the two longer walls of the Linacre, all these decades on, but room is a mahogany table, waist in Linacre, all these what was most important stayed with all three outward-facing decades on, but what was high, the same: that warm, welcoming sides covered. This is known as the most important stayed coffin. Above it is the portrait of the experience as you walk through the same: that warm, house’s long-dead patron, Thomas the unchanged hall. welcoming experience Linacre, looking sternly over the Approach Linacre with the ruins where the boys congregate in as you walk through the space behind you and you’ll see a red the mornings and evenings, for house unchanged hall.’ brick Georgian house, a former meetings and roll calls. On this same Canon’s house to be precise. In wall, before the staircase is an almost Summer you may find the bright un-noticeable plain alcove, with a greens and reds of ivy creeping up the wall and doorway. This leads into the housemaster’s drawing lavender blooming either side of the tiled pathway. room. It is said that in this impressive drawing room In Winter, delicate frost will coat the grass and princesses have danced on tables. shrubbery, and you may find a Robin chirping away on one of the naked branches. If you knock on the Ascending the staircase, you may feel watched. The front door most times of the day, you will no doubt eyes fixed on the back of your neck are those of the be greeted by the most wonderful, radiant matron, infamous former headmaster, Canon Shirley, whose Mrs. Amanda Tapp – quite possibly, as we boys joke, portrait hangs above a blank honours board. A recent on her way to Prêt à Manger. innovation, the honours board is planned to list all of the former heads of houses, dating back as far as On your left is the Housemaster’s study where, surrounded by Geography folders, children’s toys, dogs and bicycles is Mr. Mat Lister, Head of the KSCRFC and Housemaster of Linacre for three years.

Mr. Lister lives in the house with his three dogs (two pugs and a beagle), wife, daughter, son and 57 other

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‘Mr. Lister cares about every Linacre lad like his own flesh and blood. He’d put himself on the line for any boy in the house, and frequently does.’

records go. However, it was really constructed to fill a hole in the wall that emerged last year.

Moving into the largest dormitory in the house, that of the Shells on the first floor, one can see six neatly-made beds and tidy desks. The Shells (well, most of them) keep their areas tidy out of respect for the wonderful Mrs. Tapp and our incredible ladies, who are the most integral part of the house by a country mile, not to mention the most lovely group of people you’ll ever meet. Some of the responsibility falls on the boys, of course, but our ladies, headed by the glamorous Pauline, are tasked with the far-from-easy job of making sure the house doesn’t look perpetually like a bomb’s gone off, an effect that tends to occur when the ladies aren’t there at weekends.

The household responsibilities of all of the boys, most notably the few duties given to the Shells, are overseen by the Head of House, the prefect or ‘Purple’ for Linacre. The Head of House’s dorm is situated on the first floor, adjacent to the landing and Shell dormitory. What the two rooms share are striking views of Canterbury Cathedral and the neatly-kept Linacre front garden. The Head of House’s dorm comes with various privileges, including a fridge, old-fashioned bureau, sofa and Head of House’s cane (not to mention the dark purple robe passed down generationally, with the name labels of three generations of Heads of House on the back). The Shell dorm brings back many memories for me, the most notable being the moment I threw a lemon through a 16th Century window.

The dormitory’s excuse for the possession of the lemon? ‘We apologise, sir, but it was needed for the smoked salmon!’

Moving through the Head of House’s dorm and out the other side (since it links the two sides of the old house and sadly for the Purple residing it is often used by the rest of the 6a’s as a corridor), one reaches what is currently a sixth form common room, but until recently served as ‘The Penthouse’, a small apartment with modern kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and study, which once upon a time was used by a resident tutor, but until this year was a dormitory for one or two lucky sixth formers, envied by their peers.

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Mat Lister

‘Our ladies, headed by the glamorous Pauline, are tasked with the far-fromeasy job of making sure the house doesn’t look perpetually like a bomb’s gone off.’

What little I can reveal to you is that it is played with a broken hockey stick, a tennis ball and some cricket stumps. It is a summer game that can only be played in the Linacre back yard because many features of the house provide special advantages, disadvantages, and points, such as the points you get for hitting the ball onto the blue doors of the house. There used to be an ancient, dark oak shed in the yard, constructed for the purpose of housing the boys’ trunks and suitcases, and from the early 1970s (so far as I can tell) the shed served also as the Shmicket honours board, where boys would have their names and high scores carved into one of the many thin planks making up the left outer wall of the shed, immortalising their great sporting achievement and, indeed, a great Linacre tradition.

Moving down the narrow, winding, smaller staircase, past Mrs. Tapp’s office, through the perpetually-stinking sports locker room and Sadly the old shed was knocked down a couple of out the back door, you will reach a minimised years ago to make way for a new, less meaningful copy of the yard in Shawshank Redemption. The shed, but it is rumoured that the wall making up the honours board was netting over the concrete yard, kept, although I have never however, is not designed to ‘I cannot tell you much about seen it. What I have seen, prevent the great escape, but Shmicket because it is a however, are the countless to prevent balls and sports dusty beer, gin, port and items of every description Linacre tradition handed champagne bottles that were flying into the gardens or down from generation to discovered in the rafters of through the windows of the generation and we are the house this year when a Deanery, the Choir House and Luxmoore. In my Remove year forbidden to explain the rules few of the dormitories were we attempted to make a prison to anyone outside the house.’ being refurbished. The labels show they must have been drama using the yard, but to no drunk well before the year avail. Besides, there are many more things one can do to amuse oneself in the 2000, unless of course someone’s pater has a wellyard, most notably Linacre’s own sport, known as stocked cellar of excellent vintages. No doubt there are many stories that can be told regarding those Shmicket. bottles, spanning from pre-Great War to the fall of I cannot tell you much about Shmicket because it is the Berlin Wall, but the rather cheeky evidence is a Linacre tradition handed down from generation kept in Mr. Lister’s study, perhaps as an ice-breaker, to generation and we are forbidden to explain the perhaps as a warning to any future Linacre boy who rules to anyone outside the house. Not even Mr. thinks he might be able to sneak in undetected a Lister, who explains his ostracism rather amusingly rather nice Château Lynch-Bages.  in our house video, should know about Shmicket.

It is a game shrouded in mystery and tradition.

Not even the spelling of the name is certain, but it is pronounced shhh (as in ‘be quiet’) – mick – it.

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A Word

in your

Shell-like Guaranteeing anonymity, The Editor asked outgoing Purples to give advice for incoming Shells.

It’s always hard starting a new school because there are so many different things one has to consider when making a good first impression, not only to your peers but also to those who are several years your senior. You’ll likely be nervous and that’s ok, but what’s key to remember is that you’re no longer top dog and just as you once had respect from being the eldest at your junior school, you now need to appreciate the importance of your elders at KSC. Respect is a key part of life here and it’s what makes us such a closeknit community; simple gestures like standing aside when a member of staff or pupil passes through, or holding a door open, are actually the most appreciated ones. You’ll probably take one look at the sixth Formers and be absolutely terrified, but they’ve all been in your position at some point and so understand your anxieties about not fitting into the King’s community. Just remember that you’re not going to like everyone and not everyone is going to warm to you, but that’s no reason to excuse yourself from being polite because the effortless act of being civil is one that will be reciprocated.

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Having survived five years at King’s I believe it is only right that I provide the Shells arriving in 2020 with some insider knowledge of how to cope at this pretty awesome school.

First, don’t worry about finding your way around; you just have to ask a teacher, a Purple, or a girl (NEVER a boy) and, if that doesn’t work, you might miss out on a slightly boring Science or Maths lesson. (Bonus!)

Second, avoid the mistake of sitting in the wrong Maths class for half the lesson. I eventually realised everyone around me was too clever to be in my set so I swiftly asked the teacher to check if I was on the register. I wasn’t. Last, DON’T FEAR THE DINING ROOM! You think everyone is looking and judging, but really they are either shocked at how small the Shell boys are, or they’re just gazing into mid-air!

Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Being in a new environment for the first time might be a bit intimidating, but we are always very willing to help you out!

We have been in your situation ourselves and we know how you must be feeling. You can also have a chat with one of our Peer Listeners about whatever may be bothering you and we promise to keep your information confidential as long as it doesn’t put anyone in danger. King’s provides you with unbelievably many opportunities so try different things out, find your passion and discover your potential. Once you move up the years, your academic studies will become increasingly more important so I suggest that you really ‘play hard’ in your Shell year when you still have plenty of free time. Lastly and most importantly: JOIN ROWING. PERIOD. The thing about Shell is at first it’s terrifying and you probably just have to embrace that and spend the year taking the most active part in King’s life that you can, and form friendships.

Pick up co-curriculars, take part in house activities (and obviously study as well) but this is the year to try everything and see what you enjoy, or perhaps don’t enjoy so much. Coming into the school you find everything is new but remember it’s the same for every other member of your year and your peers as well as the older year groups, and that all the staff are there to look out for you, to answer your questions and to help you with whatever you need. For new boarders: bring photos to make your room homely; do not be ashamed to bring your teddy (we all have at least one) and you will be fine! The five years at King’s go by so incredibly fast even though so much happens every day, so treasure every new beginning and every day.

When starting Shell, every person will be a bit anxious and daunted by the environment of a new school and the unknown. My main advice for Shells is that everyone is in the same boat and know that there are many people surrounding you and looking out for you. This could be your friends from your old school or even the older years in the house.

The easiest way to settle in is by fully taking advantage of every opportunity that King’s has to offer. This could be in sport, dance, drama, music or just generally socialising in break times at the social centre. Your time at King’s will go faster than you could ever believe so, when you are having a bad day, or feeling a bit overwhelmed, try and focus on your friends and find something that you enjoy.

Although it is often difficult at first, everyone wants to help you adapt to the school, so never hesitate in asking for help with anything! Missing home is totally normal; we have all been there, and it does get better!

Your time at King’s will be over before you realize it. Try to not worry too much about stuff, since everything usually falls into place in the end. Instead, enjoy every moment as much as possible!

Don’t be afraid to try new things, because by getting outside your comfort zone you will grow and develop as a person. Make an effort to always keep an open mind towards new things and new people, and embrace the multicultural environment you are in. It’s not often you get the opportunity to live with people from such different parts of the world!

Apart from the classic advice not to walk on Green Court, I would say that it’s important to respect your peers. In particular, if you have never boarded before, it might take a little while to work out how to get on well with those you are living alongside. This generally comes down to being considerate of those around you, with these bonds within houses often turning into strong friendships.

Don’t worry if it takes you a few weeks to settle in (there’s a lot of new things to get used to) but people seem to find it far easier than they expect. New students often say that they have learnt their way around very quickly. If you ever don’t know where to go for something, it’s a good bet to ask a Purple for directions, as they’ll be in the oldest year and are likely to know where the various classes are situated. My other piece of advice is to get involved in as much as you can. There are so many opportunities at King’s and I have certainly discovered interests in subjects and activities which I didn’t expect to enjoy. So keep an open mind, get involved and enjoy yourself!

First, strive for the best. There is so much that one can achieve in five years at King’s with the endless list of resources and opportunities available. Make the most out of it! Second, be yourself! This may sound like a cliché, but this advice certainly applies to many King’s pupils, from Shells all the way up to 6as. Stop spending time trying to become an ‘ideal person’ who you think will fit in best amongst your peers. True originality and uniqueness (which, by the way, is something that everyone wants from you) is only achieved when you think, act and interact as yourself, NOT as someone who you think will be ‘popular’ at King’s.

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Water Babies Ancestors of Harry Cordeaux (Shell) were lightermen, the most fulfilling job in the world, according to Hermann Hesse in Siddartha.

T

he River Thames is still one of the busiest waterways in the world. Central to London’s economy over the last 2000 years, the famous river offered imports and exports as well as jobs. Until modern times roads were poor and the easiest way to travel was always on the water. Going up and down the river was easy enough but simply to cross the river was still a bit tricky: bridges were expensive to build and maintain, so by the late 1700s there were only three bridges spanning the Thames (now there are over twenty). These original bridges were spaced so far apart that, unless you were lucky enough to live or work close to one of them, it took a long time to cross the river. And even then, if you had stuff to move, it was hard to haul it over a bridge. This is where watermen and lightermen came in. Watermen meant people could cross the river with ease and lightermen meant the same for goods.

‘She recounted how her family used to travel up the Thames in one of their boats to somewhere like Richmond or maybe even as far as Windsor.’

My fascination with watermen and lightermen started when I was talking with my great grandma. She had fond memories of them because most of her family were lightermen. She kept telling my sister and me the same story over and over again. She recounted how her family used to travel up the Thames in one of their boats to somewhere like Richmond or maybe even as far as Windsor. They would pack a picnic and spend many weekends and holidays out on the water. The reason why she probably told us this story so frequently was because she lost her favourite silk bonnet in the river when it was blown off by the wind.

The Moss family grew up in Bermondsey where they had their own boats moored at Cherry Garden Pier in South London, where many watermen and lightermen were based. The family occupation began in the 1820s where my great great great great grandad broke from the previous family tradition of shoemaking to become a lighterman.

It really took off from there with all men in the family afterwards following in the previous generation’s footsteps and becoming lightermen.

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Image: Doggett’s Coat and Badge - a painting

by Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827)

Image: Man with Doggett’s Coat from the Company of Lightermen and Watermen - unknown artist - Lambeth Archives

‘The Moss family grew up in Bermondsey where they had their own boats moored at Cherry Garden Pier in South London, where many watermen and lightermen were based.’

‘The Doggetts Coat & Badge claims to be the oldest rowing race in the world. Up to six apprentice watermen competed to win the prize of a watermen’s red coat with a silver badge.’

You may be wondering whether any person could become a waterman or lighterman but sadly this was not the case. In order to qualify you had to serve as an apprentice to others.

All the men in the family did this with others in the family, such as brothers and fathers, and once qualified many of them became apprentice masters themselves.

The Doggetts Coat & Badge claims to be the oldest rowing race in the world. In the race, up to six apprentice watermen competed to win the prize of a watermen’s red coat with a silver badge. The route along the Thames is approximately 7.5 kilometres and ran between London Bridge and Cadogan Pier in Chelsea. In 1907, Albert Thomas Moss, my great great great cousin, came second in the Doggetts Coat and Badge. He even went to places such as America and Canada to compete in rowing races.

In London today you can still find watermen and lightermen working. The Thames Clippers could be considered a waterman service and there are also other private operators who do the same things that watermen and lightermen would have done all those years ago.

Image: The Weekend Millionaires - An Oral History of the Thames Lightermen / YouTube

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When I started rowing at King’s last September I had forgotten my family heritage of rowing on the River Thames. Now, as I look back on my choice of sport, I feel humbled.

Image: Thomas Doggett founded the Coat and Badge Wager in 1715 and specified that the race was to be held annually on 1st August ‘for ever’.

Image: Barge Family Millwall Docks c1930

Image: The Pool of London. c1903 - www.VictorianWeb.org

‘Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.’ ― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Image: Harry’s great grandma (left) with her sister Edna. Notice the height difference?!

Image: Harry’s great great grandpa William George Moss in uniform before WW1

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The

Loyn

Brothers The Loyn brothers OKS tell us where they are now, and how they got there.

Tom (2010) OKS

I

have the honour of being the first of the Loyn dynasty and was the trailblazer at King’s, joining Linacre in 2005 with Mr. Teaton as Housemaster and Mr. Outram as my tutor. I was drawn to the school for its musical excellence and I remember my tenor audition like it was yesterday. I had to sing in the Shirley Hall while a young and tenacious Mr. Bersey (then Deputy Head of Music) plinked out the accompaniment to ‘Every Valley’ from Handel’s Messiah. I was offered a Music Scholarship and also attained a King’s Scholarship on my entry paper.

Cathedrals, working as a Lifeguard in Cornwall where I also undertook a PGCE as a music teacher but quickly realised it wasn’t for me.

By the mid-2010s, I’d been bumming around surfing in Cornwall for a little longer than felt comfortable and took a grip of life, commissioning as an Army Officer from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 2015.

Since then I’ve been all over the world, working in Nepal on disaster relief (and grabbing a cheeky trek to Everest Base Camp) and in Cyprus as part of the UN mission. I also enjoyed a memorable stint in Canada training Armoured Battlegroups, which mainly involved ingesting large quantities of Canadian Poutine (a delightful dish involving chips swamped with cheese curds and gravy) and revving 4x4s around the plains of Alberta.

I have been unjustly accused of lacking academic rigour in the past and the second scholarship has always felt like an afterthought when I look back, although when The King’s Scholar jumpers were brought in (only weirdos wore the black robes) I started wearing it. But A Everest Base Camp with the Army I’m still in the Army, now based it was very much music that would in London. I sing as often as I can, shape my legacy, singing in the King’s getting round the London semi-pro Men and all the choirs as well as church and cathedral circuit as well playing trumpet in the Big Band. The as the occasional cameo at Christmas highlight for me was performing as Enjolras in the school production of Les Mis, on three packed nights parties (and Karaoke bars in Budapest, but that’s a story for another in the old Marlowe Theatre. day). I fondly remember my time at King’s and still get warm shivers when I walk past Linacre or through the cloisters on my way now Since leaving King’s I’ve had an eclectic professional life. I worked as and then to sing in The Cathedral. My greatest lifetime achievement a Genius at Apple whilst at King;s London studying for a War Studies remains guiding Linacre to 3rd at the 2007 House Song Contest, with degree. This was clearly one of the many times in my life that such a our virtuosic performance of ‘Feel’ by Robbie Williams. term would be used to describe me. I did various stints as a Choral Scholar and Lay Vicar (full-time singer) at both Canterbury and Truro

‘I’d been bumming around surfing in Cornwall for a little longer than felt comfortable and took a grip of life, commissioning as an Army officer from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.’

Image: Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Author: Antony McCallum, CC BY-SA 4.0

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First day as a doctor

After completing the first half of my Medicine degree, I transferred to Imperial College to begin my clinical studies. I loved Cambridge but I grew restless in such an insular ‘bubble’ and wanted the excitement of London. Having supposedly mastered the academic knowledge, it was time for me to head out onto the wards and learn how to be a clinician.

No number of textbooks and exams (and I had sat 49 at Cambridge!) could prepare anyone for this, and I learnt to appreciate the immense value of soft skills in the application of medicine. Having now finished my first year as a junior doctor, working in the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough, my honest opinion is this: the NHS is not in ‘crisis’ but is certainly under huge pressure, and many hardworking people are trying very hard to make it better in lots of small ways every day.

Chris (2011) OKS

‘A

ge dum agis’ (‘work while you work’ or ‘do it while you can’) was a dusty old motto quietly displayed in my corridor of The Grange. I’m not sure I knew what it meant as I passed it on my way to breakfast every morning, but I have definitely pondered the meaning of work since leaving King’s in 2011.

I went straight into a Medicine degree at Clare College, Cambridge.

This was a hard course. The workload was like nothing I had ever experienced before and, coupled with the freedom that university offered, I struggled at the start. I was lucky enough to sing in the Chapel Choir – a phenomenal experience, with a busy international touring schedule and regular CD recordings. It was not easy to balance singing with the demanding Medicine schedule, and my exam results suffered, along with the theoretical patients I was learning to heal using hefty textbooks.

And now to the future. Throughout the last eight years I have always opted for the ‘certain’ option: a lengthy medical degree followed by a ten-year contract with the British Army, contrasting perhaps with the increased freedom of both my brothers. However, my career trajectory has its own uncertainties – the troubling pressures in the NHS as well as a new era for our smaller and more flexible military services make it difficult to predict where I will find myself after another eight years. But perhaps I will be happy if I can look back again and say I worked when I worked, and did it when I could.

With my privileged middle-class background and boarding school security, I had never experienced true failure like this before, and a few set-backs made me seriously question my motivation to become a doctor, a life choice made at a young age in this country. I decided to continue, but to explore other branches of medicine that might offer me personal fulfilment: I completed a Masters in Biochemistry, conducting research into potential treatment for a rare genetic disease, and joined the Officers’ Training Corps, a branch of the Army that gives university undergraduates a taste of military life. I found the latter rather suited me and I was successful in my application for a military medical bursary: financial help at university for the last few years and beyond in return for some years of service in the Royal Army Medical Corps. I would encourage any undergraduate to join the Officers’ Training Corps, even with no intention before or after of joining the military. The selfconfidence and teamworking skills ‘I had never experienced I learnt through this organisation true failure like this have changed me more than any before, and a few setuniversity course, and I continue backs made me seriously to use them daily.

question my motivation to become a doctor.’

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Jamie (2013) OKS

I

n 2013 I left the King’s bubble. Since then I have thirsted for the same structured lifestyle. I headed off to Oxford Brookes to study English Literature and Sociology – no gap year; just straight through like a freight train. A gap felt too tempting. Could it have turned into a gap life like Patrick Leigh Fermor? A littleknown fact about the Loyn boys is that we lived in India for the first few years of our lives. I was lucky enough to meet Mother Teresa in Calcutta when I was nine months old. After going back when we were teenagers to travel around Jaipur, Varanasi and Khajuraho, I could feel my feet becoming itchier, spurred on by an epic tour with the Crypt Choir to both coasts of America. So straight to Brookes, where there was only one OKS, and the likes of Harry Mann and Max Morris (both fellow Linacre-ites) arrived with a bang the year after. For now, I was free to engage in intellectual debate with complete strangers.

parents used to give you a kickstart. When it’s just you hurtling down the icy bobsleigh run of life you realise that every day is a school day. After university I worked as a freelancer for Radio Oxford and BBC Introducing where I was lucky enough to be sent to music festivals and interview some of my teenage heroes: The Vaccines, The Wombats, Herbie Hancock and even the hotpick for the next 007, Idris Elba (I bet you didn’t know he was a deep house DJ). I have also dipped my toe into the world of Marketing and PR and worked as a Client Sales Executive for a business development company in Kingston. I have taught myself new content-creating skills and also done stints at several start-ups in Farringdon. Alongside all this I work at University College Hospital in their radio station. I host two shows a week: one Live Lounge and one where I encourage the kids from the Cancer Wing to ‘Make Your Own Radio Show’.

I wanted to team up my love for the third sector with my creative work so present-day I work at The Prince’s Trust as a caseworker. I got my job there by turning up at the offices with my CV in hand. Try this because employers never expect a walk-in! I have a caseload of around 100 young people aged 16 – 30 from London and my job is to get them into education, training or employment.

My specialty is youth violence and gang culture so this involves conducting Project Turn-Over provides ‘at risk’ group sessions and 121s in prisons and youth with the tools to help take back control of their lives.

Youth Offending Teams around London.

I’m looking to start a counselling diploma in September so I can more The rest of my time in Oxford went past like a blur. The highlight effectively help my clients and keep delving deeper into human reel would go something like this: working every week in a motivation. homeless shelter and seeing a very different side of the dreaming spires; spending one of my summers working in an Irish pub, The Where do I see myself in five years’ time? I haven’t the foggiest…

Half Moon (folk until 4am); depping as a tenor all around Oxford, but I do know that King’s has given me a hefty shove down the icy including New College and Queen’s and becoming a lay clerk at St. slope. The King’s ethos, to me, has always been to love and support John’s (they actually let Brookes students do that); co-writing and my peers (and now colleagues) and to always keep yourself busy! directing my first opera, an adaptation of The Threepenny Opera; Something we OKS certainly take for granted. getting involved with Comedy Improv nights every Thursday; playing my double bass in Brookes Big Band (something I never got ‘I have a caseload of around to do at King’s as de-throning 100 young people aged the talented Chevonne Wong 16 – 30 from London and proved tricky); seeing in New my job is to get them into Year of 2016 with a funk version of Auld Lang Syne with education, training or my jazz trio, Jazz + Tonic.

The first thing I learnt about uni is ‘the seminar silence’. The lecturer asks a question of the twenty fee-paying undergraduates and no one wants to come out with an idea lest they get shunned, even though in English there are no ‘right’ answers. King’s is effortless in teaming education with extra-curricular stimulation so that, no matter what your talent, you take part.

Watch out for this at uni; the others might not want to get involved. Just wait until you tell your new mates how many times you did sport a week.

employment.’

When it came to writing my dissertation, I decided to use Sociology in the end, English proving too subjective. I focused on the growing crisis of masculinity in the 21st Century, attempting to get to the bottom of the worsening mental health of young men in my peer group. I interviewed counsellors from Oxford and Brookes and, with my findings, I drew up for them an alternative handbook.

When I graduated I was sure I was done with education. What you don’t realise is that ‘education’ is purely a word your teachers and 110

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Jamie’s job involves co nd sessions an d 121s in pr ucting group ison Offending Teams arou s and Youth nd London.

‘The King’s ethos, to me, has always been to love and support my peers (and now colleagues) and to always keep yourself busy!’

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‘From the nature of a drop of rain to the vastness of our universe, there are many things we would do well to learn.’

SCIENCE

example. We have all seen what particles look like in our text books, but really understanding and putting into perspective the true scale of particles is more surprising than you think. Imagine blowing up a Nitrogen atom to the size of a blueberry and, if you look for the nucleus, finding it’s invisible. Now imagine blowing up the atom to a size of a football stadium, and running to the centre. The nucleus would be only as big as a marble. Now the electrons orbiting atoms carry only 0.01% of the atomic mass while the nucleus carries 99.99%. If the nucleus holds most of the mass, how dense would a typical nucleus be? To put it in simple terms, imagine you have a box 1m by 1m by 1m. Let’s say a small Indian elephant weighing about 2.5 tonnes was put into your box. You would need six billion elephants compressed into your box to achieve the density of a nucleus.

Schrodinger’s Cat is a famous thought experiment involving a cat being put into a box along with a Kunal Checker (Shell) sees science in everything and bomb that has a 50% chance of blowing up. Until we open the box and check whether the cat is shares some of his daily observations. alive or dead, the cat is both. The cat is in a state of superposition, meaning it is both alive and dead until we observe it. Now let’s take the experiment cience does not know its debt to imagination.’ and change it a little. Imagine two cats in two boxes, These famous words, said by Ralph Waldo each with a bomb having a 50% chance of blowing Emerson, suggest science is a beautiful thing up. Common sense dictates both cats are alive, taking part in every moment of our lives. Little things both are dead or one is alive and the other is dead. we take for granted are always owed to science. From This gives each possibility a 25% chance of working the nature of a drop of rain to the vastness of our out. But due to quantum entanglement we can rule universe, there are many things we would do well to out both being alive or both being dead. One cat is learn. always alive, and the other is always dead, meaning the states of the cats are entangled. Even though the Have you ever wondered why you have one dominant cats or the bombs have no way of communicating, hand or one dominant foot? Well, the answer lies in one will always be dead. You may think this is your brain. A theory states that the left hemisphere impossible but scientists have tested this in a lab. of your brain controls the right side of your body When one particle is rotating one way, another will and since the left hemisphere of your brain is wired more intricately than your right side, most people are right-handed. always rotate in the opposite direction without having any form of But there are special cases where the right side of the brain is wired communication. This is the idea of quantum entanglement. more intricately than the left side, which is why some people are Science is an astounding subject, which explains everything, but it left-handed. can be taken for granted, and there is much going on in this world Every little thing in life has a scientific explanation. That odd feeling about which we still know little. It’s kind of hard to imagine that a of butterflies you get when you are with someone special - even few hundred years ago we thought the Earth was the centre of the something as simple and complicated as love - has as scientific universe. Science always finds a way to surprise us, either for the explanation. This feeling has been expressed in many ways - through worst or for the best. songs, through acting. In fact, a whole industry has grown around it.

But it’s oxytocin and vasopressin, chemicals in your brain, that trigger romantic love. They are released by the pituitary gland. The type of love you see in movies, the type that makes your eyes swell, concerns regions in the brain mostly associated with reward and motivation, such as the hippocampus, hypothalamus and anterior cingulate cortex, which inhibit defensive behaviour and increase trust in your partner. So commitment to a significant other and satisfaction in a relationship are determined by the intensity of brain activation. Love can be explained chemically and biologically.

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‘Science always finds a way to surprise us, either for the worst or for the best.’

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Jonathan Pope (Economics) is a sinophile.

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n 2006, after finishing my degree, I decided to take a risk. I’d go to live in China and teach English at a university.

After I was drawn in by China’s astonishing culture, language and pace of change, my temporary move became a six-year stay.

It is a country that defies expectations; its sheer scale, diversity and dynamism are breathtaking. Trying to make sense of this and what it meant for me was a challenging and humbling experience.

We often attempt to define China as socialist, authoritarian or collectivist as an attempt to simplify and describe a group of peoples, places and collective memories so that they might make sense to us.

Things that make sense require no further thought; thinking about things takes time and effort and so labels are useful and needed. However, living in China forces you to challenge yourself to understand the world around you in a new way, sometimes to delay judgement and acknowledge you just do not know. Many of my experiences in China were enjoyable because they put me in a position of uncertainty. I saw that uncertainty reflected across the country while it looked inside itself to reinvent itself and its place in the modern world.

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‘Many of my experiences in China were enjoyable because they put me in a position of uncertainty.’

Since leaving China, I often find myself watching Chinese TV on YouTube to keep myself connected in some way to the country. I was instantly captivated by the story of a young man from the rural West of China, singing in his native language of the Yi ethenic minority broadcast on national TV from Beijing. The contrasts were stark – an ancient value system colliding with the metropolitan glitz and glamour of Beijing. So much of this resonated with what I had seen and learnt in China: the depth of feeling, complexity and collision of very different ideas was fascinating to me.

‘University only led to two outcomes: finding a job in the provincial captial or returning to the family farm where life was tough and the future uncertain.’

This poem was written in the language of the Yi: The morning sun spills onto the roof of my home.

Granddad and I herd our sheep.

The lambs are dotted across the hills.

I smell the scent of the flowers.

Standing on the highest peak The distance is so distant.

Ancestors, come.

Tell me what the future holds.

This reminded me of some of my students in Hunan, a central province, that at the time was in many ways left behind from the big booming coastal cities. I thought of Andy, a medical student from the countryside, who was a little different. He had a glint in his eye, a fierce wit and an optimism that defied the circumstances of his upbringing. He was deeply attached to his home in West Hunan, a beautiful area of the world; he missed his family, the food and the scenery. University only led to two outcomes: finding a job in the provincial captial or returning to the family farm where life was tough and the future uncertain. Water flows down the mountain and people climb up, as the Chinese saying goes.

While I cannot relate to many aspects of many people I met, I could certainly connect to their strength of feeling and deep emotions: the ancient poet longing to stay at the imperial court and be recognised but sent away for speaking his mind; the poor student who carries the weight of his family’s expectation but is destined to travel far away; or the singer embracing the new to tell us about fading memories of the past. The weight of the past is huge because it both casts a long shadow of pain and suffering, but is also a source of inspiration, wisdom and pride. This constantly moved me to think, to question and to learn about the language and culture of China.

In the hustle and bustle of an airport terminal when I go back to China, I sometimes wonder why I spent so long here, so far from home. I only have to sit down at a meal with friends or family for those memories to come back.

‘To appreciate the cultures of this country takes time and effort, but the rewards are more than worth it.’

Seeing my two-year-old switching between the two languages gives me hope that we are becoming more understanding of each other and more willing to delay judgement.

To appreciate the cultures of this country takes time and effort, but the rewards are more than worth it.

‘Hunan, a central province, that at the time was in many ways left behind from the big booming coastal cities.’

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