St Paul's School: Atrium (Spring/Summer 2022)

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

ATRIUM THE ST PAUL’S SCHOOL ALUMNI MAGAZINE

Joel Sandelson: Herbert von Karajan Young Conductor Award Winner

Last Word

Et Cetera

20th Century Pauline Refugees

David Abulafia – Praeceptoribus Paulinis

Paul Cartledge explains Adam Peaty’s tattoos

David Herman highlights their diversity

Editorial David Herman (1973-75) reminds us later in Atrium that, the young Isaiah Berlin (1922-28) wrote to GK Chesterton (1897-1902) in 1928 that, the boast and peculiarity of St Paul’s has for a long time been … that Paulines are totally unlike men from any other school, and totally unlike each other. More recently, former High Master Mark Bailey said, “there is no such thing as a typical Pauline.” They both made an excellent point.

T

he Pauline Community thrives on and because of its diversity. Ed Vaizey (1981-85) as OPC President has brought in what he said he would. This means that there is a sense that we are at the start of being an engaging and engaged alumni body that will have something for all ten thousand members. The enthusiasm for the 2021 Annual Dinner where we had double the numbers seen at the previous dinner and the ‘in the room’ and ‘virtual’ attendance at other events this year is incredibly encouraging. It feels as though we are on a roll. The Club’s new Executive Committee which includes for the first time women and has four members under 40 is profiled on page 36.

I hope when you read this magazine you can sense how connected the Pauline Community has become with President Ed, Master Mercer Chris Vermont (1973-78), Chairman of Governors Richard Cassell (1968-72) and the High Master leading.

There is so much that can be achieved with the extraordinary and varied talents across our alumni to help our School become more diverse and more inclusive. Ellie Sleeman’s update demonstrates how its bursary and partnership ambitions are becoming realities. Any help you can provide through the 150th Appeal – highlighted on the back cover – will of course accelerate this.

Deciding on a theme for Atrium can be a struggle. So, I was delighted when David Herman was in touch about developing his idea of an article on Pauline Refugees.

I was then told about the Fraser brothers, Charlie (2007-12) and Ben (2009-14) who had founded TERN, which is focused on enabling refugees to thrive through the power of their ideas. They are featured along with their father, Simon (1970-74) and brother, Robbie (2011-16) in Pauline Relatives.

Our cover story by recent Vice-Captain of School, Vivek Raman (2016-21) profiles Joel Sandelson (2007-12), who won the Herbert von Karajan Young Conductor Award in 2021.

Atrium also sends congratulations to Professor Stuart Russell OBE (1974-78) who delivered the 2021 Reith Lectures: ‘Living with Artificial Intelligence’. He is the first Pauline to deliver the lectures.

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

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

Cover photo: ICCR Design: haime-butler.com Print: Lavenham Press

CONTENTS

22

26

32

30

03 Letters

26 Refugees at St Paul’s

OPs comment on war memorials, governance and coxing

David Herman reveals their achievements

46 42 Obituaries and In Memoriam

30 Et Cetera

45 Past Times

Bruce Howitt writes from Vancouver

Paul Cartledge parses Adam Peaty’s tattoos

Michael Simmons remembers the strangest Green Cup boxing bout

08 Briefings

32 A Pauline About Town

including memories of West Kensington, a penny-farthing and a praying mantis

46 Pauline Relatives

Iain Gale on what to do and where to go in Edinburgh

Simon, Ben, Robbie and Charlie Fraser

06 Pauline Letter

18 The Interview Vivek Raman conducts an interview with Joel Sandelson

22 In Conversation Ed Vaizey shares a fireside with OPs George Osborne, Sir Simon Fraser, Matthew Gould, Simon Fox and Patrick Spence

35 Shaping Our Future Update Ellie Sleeman reports on progress

36 Old Pauline Club News

47 Crossword Lorie Church sets the puzzle

48 Last Word David Abulafia remembers Norman Davies and other masters

new structure and Executive Committee members

40 Old Pauline Sport rebuilding as Covid retreats

01

ATRIUM CONTRIBUTORS

Ellie Sleeman is Director of Development and Communications at St Paul’s School. She has worked in fundraising, marketing and crisis management since graduating from UCL. She joined St Paul’s from Wellington College following an eight-year stint as a director at London’s Roundhouse.

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

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

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

Kenneth Baker (1948-53) was a Conservative MP from 1968-1997.

He was the Minister for Information Technology, introducing computers into schools; Local Government Minister; Environment Secretary, privatising BT and abolishing the GLC; Education and Science Secretary, introducing the National Curriculum, Grant Maintained Schools, City Technology Colleges, and Student Loans; and Home Secretary.

He also served as Chairman of the Conservative Party. After leaving government in 1992, he was appointed a Companion of Honour, and became a member of the House of Lords in 1997.

Through the Baker Dearing Educational Trust, he is spearheading the initiative for University Technical Colleges – 48 are already open with 16,000 students.

He is a Past President of the OPC.

club. A solicitor, he worked for Frere Cholmeley Bischoff, becoming a partner in 1973, and chief executive in 1990.

In 1974 he was elected a Councillor for Mortlake Ward in Richmond which he represented for 24 years. During that time he served as chair of Richmond Council’s Policy and Resources Committee for 13 years and as deputy leader 1983–96. In 1986 he became joint treasurer of the Liberal Party and then treasurer of the newly merged Liberal Democrats in 1988. He was appointed CBE in 1993 and was created a Life Peer in 1997 as Baron Razzall, of Mortlake.

He is a former House of Lords Liberal Democrat Spokesman on Trade and Industry and Treasurer of the All Party Parliamentary Intellectual Property Group in Parliament and now serves on various parliamentary committees.

Robin Hirsch (1956-61) is an Oxford, Fulbright and English-Speaking Union Scholar, who has taught, published, acted, directed and produced theatre on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1977 together with two other starving artists, he founded the Cornelia Street Cafe in New York’s Greenwich Village. In 1987 the City of New York proclaimed it “a culinary as well as a cultural landmark.” Cornelia Street Cafe is now ‘in exile’ having been forced to close by greedy landlords.

Bruce Howitt (1952-56) studied History and English at St Paul’s in between rowing. He later emigrated to Montreal attending McGill University for two years, while working and raising two of his three sons. Ten years later, Bruce moved to Vancouver, where he ran several companies in the lighting industry until his semi-retirement in 2015. Bruce now divides his time between Vancouver and Palm Desert, California while focusing on his writing.

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

Tim Razzall (1957-62) went to Worcester College, Oxford, representing the university at cricket. For many seasons he was captain of the Old Pauline Cricket

David Abulafia (1963-67) is Emeritus Professor of Mediterranean History at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College and a former

02

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

Chairman of the Cambridge History Faculty. His books include Frederick II, The Discovery of Mankind, The Great Sea and The Boundless Sea which was the winner of the Wolfson History prize in 2020. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Member of the Academia Europaea, a Commendatore of the Italian Republic and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe and at the new University of Gibraltar.

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

Iain Gale (1973-77) went to Edinburgh University. On graduating he joined Christie’s as a picture expert and worked in London and Scotland before joining the Independent newspaper where he was deputy Art Critic from 1990-1996. He was Art Critic of Scotland on Sunday from 1997 to 2010, during which time he founded and edited Caledonia magazine (2000-2003) and edited the magazine of the National Trust for Scotland (2002-2012). In 2004 he published his first military historical novel Four Days in June about the battle of Waterloo and has recently finished his fifteenth, focusing on British special forces in Greece in 1942. He is also the author of three books of military history, eleven books on fine art and a guide to the novels of Evelyn Waugh. He splits his time between Fife and Edinburgh, lectures on military history and conducts small, bespoke tours to Europe’s battlefields, from Waterloo to Arnhem.

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

Vivek Raman (2016-21) is a gap year student currently working in the Development and Engagement Office at St Paul’s. He is going on to read English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, where he will also sing. He was Vice-Captain of School last year and was heavily involved in sport and music at St Paul’s, particularly in the various vocal groups across St Paul’s and St Paul’s Girls’ School.

Letters

Dear Jeremy,

Jowett bust and Biba

I refer to the recent Spectator article in Atrium lamenting the lack of a statue to Benjamin Jowett (1829-36) at Balliol College.

St Paul’s School and Old Paulines were very proud of Jowett as they contributed to two memorials in The Great Hall of the West Kensington school which comprised an organ installed in 1896, I think nicknamed ‘the Thunderer’ and in 1904 a panelled organ screen with a central niche with a bust of Jowett, an inscription in gold letters and decorated with coats of arms including that of Balliol College.

I am reminded of a very poignant photo attached to an article by Paul Velluet (1962-67), entitled ‘The Last Farewell’ in The Pauline July 1969 which shows the partially stripped out Great Hall with the organ, screen and part of the wall mosaics having already been removed by, I assume, very appreciative antique dealers.

What I found interesting in the article was that the famous mosaics were not fixed on the walls but on removable iron panels and thus, could easily have been removed from the walls and been installed in the new school at Barnes. While the timber panelled front of the cantilevered first floor seating of The Great Hall, with a centrally located clock, found its way into the Biba Boutique on Kensington High Street.

Regards, John Dunkin (1964-69)

Dear Jeremy,

Where is the Boer War Memorial?

I much enjoyed reading the latest edition of the Atrium. Several items triggered memories for me and I thought they may be of interest to some readers. Keith Pratt’s (1951-56) article on the two masters, Philip Whitting (History Department 1929-63) and Frank Parker (Modern Languages Department 1928-65), reminded me of my time in the Upper History 8. As a non-academic I generally floated in the lower quartile of the class. Despite that I benefited hugely from the teaching of Whitting, who was undoubtedly one of if not the best history teacher of his generation. I believe people like Hugh Trevor-Roper dedicated books to him. He did not just stick to the guidelines of the A level curriculum but taught us about civilisation, introducing us to a wide range of topics including covering such areas as Byzantine coins and classical architecture.

I was interested in the article about Pauline statues and Jowett in which was mentioned the fact that Cosmo Gordon Lang was a pupil of Jowett (1829-36) at Balliol. Although he became the Archbishop of Canterbury, he was born a Scots Presbyterian. His father was the Minister of the Kirk in the small village of Fyvie, deep in the Aberdeenshire countryside. During the Second World War my father, an Aberdonian, evacuated the family to Fyvie and there my sister, brother and I started our education in the village school. The discipline was strict. Punishment was administered, not by a cane but the strap, a long thick piece of leather which was applied quite viciously to the open palm of the hand; and we wrote on wooden framed slates not paper. These were the days when Scottish education was considered superior to that of many other countries, sadly not the case today.

The article on War Memorials was very interesting and mentioned that the Boer War memorial was eventually sold to an OP, who had it resurrected in his garden. That was Professor Alfred Ubbelohde CBE (1920-26) who was a very distinguished scientist and a governor of the School from 1966-71 and 1981-86. I was governor with him the 1980s.

The Board of Governors then was a joint one for both SPS and SPGS. What happened to the memorial subsequently was not stated in the article and it would be interesting if any OP has any information about it.

With best wishes, Mike Graham (1952-56)

03

LETTERS

Wrong set book – panic

Dear Jeremy, Your last edition of the Atrium records the inspirational effect of being taught history by Philip Whitting (History Department 1929-63) which I treasure.

But I have a contrasting recollection involving my A level Latin. The day before the exam, the master suddenly went white and announced that he was having to go and see the High Master because he had just noticed that we had done the wrong set book.

On his return he explained that the exam board had been contacted. They had produced a draft syllabus and had changed the set book in the final syllabus; several other schools had also made the mistake of not noticing the change. In the circumstances the exam board had agreed to set papers using either book.

Best wishes, David Iwi (1952-1956)

Easy All

Dear Jeremy,

I feel I must put non-rowers straight about Tim Cunis’ (1955-60) description of a cox as “a small loudmouth [who] shouts instructions at you while you do all the work.”

As one such loudmouth, regretfully not at St Paul’s but subsequently at St Peter’s, Oxford and later in the RAF, if that is the appearance we give, it is because we are permanently in a state of incipient nervous breakdown whilst on the water. Coxing a rowing eight is like navigating a high-speed supertanker up a narrow twisting canal blindfold: minimal manouvreability and massive stopping distance even if you can see when to stop round the eight large bodies in front of you. The engine room will only respond to very loud and precise instructions, although not always, with various consequences.

Fortunately, in my time I only had one serious mishap, when I turned my college eight slightly too late above Iffley Lock and we were swept broadside into a pile above the weir. The boat could have snapped in half – but (as Pooh might say) did not. Slightly less serious incidents were commonplace, such as slamming on the brakes when other craft “accidentally” crossed your path, or when the keel dropped off halfway through the Head of the River race and the boat started to zig-zag wildly, to the amazement of spectators on Hammersmith Bridge. And then of course choreographing the corps de ballet to lift the boat in and out of the water so that it is not dropped or the riggers knocked off.

So, I think we do our fair share of work to keep the crew on course, swift and safe, be it in the muscles of the head.

Any shouting is done with the mildest and most benevolent of intentions, which is remarkable considering we suffer sharp blows in the small of the back every five seconds or so with each stroke. As regards small, I have to admit that I was an outlier in this respect: I was often scarcely a few pounds below the weight of some of the crew; how they all must have cursed.

Best wishes, Rupert Birtles (1963-66)

04

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

Dear Jeremy,

Longevity brings some fame

I have just received my copy of Atrium and wish to thank you for your article “Father of the House”.

Longevity brings some fame. With luck I hope we will be in touch again on my 105th.

As ever, Dennis Frank (1930-33)

Dear Jeremy,

OPC reforms are long overdue

I write to you, both as the Editor of Atrium and as one of the working party who strove tirelessly to bring about the much-needed reforms to the OPC. As you know, I had been asked by the Main Committee to carry out a similar task – some seventeen years ago.

My working party spent very many hours over more than two years thrashing out the ways we thought the OPC might become more relevant to ALL its members amid the changing needs of the 21st century.

My eponymous report found favour with very many on the committee and underwent several drafts and alterations.

However, a small but vocal minority to whom any change was anathema managed to cause such delays that it was eventually, as they say, kicked into the long grass.

I was therefore delighted when your working party was set up to revivify these ideals and was heartened by the approbation given at the various meetings I attended on Zoom over the past fifteen months: there was (inevitably) some disagreement but arguments on both sides were clearly presented and votes taken accordingly, with the vast majority favouring the necessary reforms.

That these reforms were then ratified at the SGM in December means that at long last the Club can move forward to meet the needs of the ever-growing and very diverse membership. No longer will decisions be taken by a narrow gerontocracy but by a vibrant and much more representative committee.

These changes have been carefully thought out and extremely well-presented. They are long overdue and I now have every confidence that the Club, about to be renamed to mark the important 150th anniversary, will be able to thrive and prosper.

Yours very sincerely, Mike Seigel (1964-68)

Dear Jeremy,

Luca Marino

Having reread my article in the Autumn/Winter 2021 Atrium, I realise that I forgot to mention on page 39 that Luca Marino (2016-18) also took part in the International Mathematical Olympiad, representing Norway. My apologies to Luca.

Best wishes, Owen Toller (Mathematics Department 1977-88 and 2006-19)

OPC’s SGM

Dear Mr Withers Green, I have been a member of the Old Pauline Club since leaving the School in 1962, i.e., for nearly 60 years. I have participated occasionally, rather than regularly, in the Club’s activities, but have always valued my membership as a way of keeping in touch with the School itself and with the doings of my contemporaries.

I learned from reading the November/December edition of the newsletter that far-reaching changes affecting the Club were under consideration. I also became aware that a number of members, some of whom had given long service to the Club, had misgivings about the proposals; and were concerned about the short notice and inadequate publicity given for the Special General Meeting (SGM) on 14 December at which they were to be discussed and about their compatibility with age discrimination legislation. I later discovered that a resolution had been tabled asking that the SGM should be postponed. I therefore registered to attend the SGM by Zoom, hoping to learn more about the potential impact of what was being proposed. I was surprised and dismayed at the way the meeting was conducted.

I had expected that there would be a full presentation by the advocates of the changes explaining in detail why they were considered necessary and what their implications would be; together with an opportunity for those opposed to them to explain their objections and for members less familiar with the issues to ask questions. Instead, the Chairman announced at the outset that he wanted the meeting to be as short as possible and refused to allow any interventions to be made. No reference was made to the resolution asking for postponement. Most requests to speak, mine included, were rejected and a vote was taken without any prior discussion of the merits of the rule changes involved. The meeting was over in 15 minutes.

This is surely not how a responsible association should conduct its business. The changes affect not only the governance of the Club, but also its character. Yet the proponents of them seem to have acted in a way which deprives ordinary members of the opportunity to understand what their long-term impact will be. Refusing to allow any comments to be made or any questions asked at a Special General Meeting is extraordinary. I am puzzled as to why the Old Pauline Club should behave in such an authoritarian way.

Yours sincerely, Paul Lever (1957-62)

Terrible behaviour has entered the public discussion

Dear Jeremy, Theo Hobson (1985-1990) gets a number of things wrong in his article in musings on toxic masculinity. There are the undertones of generational superiority (he somewhat sanctimoniously compares the fact that he was learning magic tricks aged fourteen rather than posing on Instagram) and the mischaracterisation of feminism as a movement which teenagers can be ‘semi-excused’ for seeing as ‘bossy orthodoxy’ to which they may refuse to submit.

My main issue however is that a good deal of the article is spent investigating the potential causes of a perceived change in sexual harassment in recent years, with the implication being that because of the rise of movements such as Everyone’s Invited (or MeToo perhaps, by extension) there has been an increase in such behaviour in schools such as St Paul’s in recent years. This misses the point entirely and seems like an astonishingly naive oversight.

It is not the case that sexual harassment and abuse have increased in recent years (“Maybe things have changed since the late 1980s. Maybe today the culture of sexist banter has become more harmful, and more likely to lead to abusive behaviour”), rather the fact that sexual harassment and abuse has always occurred and it is only now that such terrible behaviour has entered the public discussion, and women are being encouraged to come forward and share their experiences.

As a recent leaver I understand the easy response might be to write me off as a Gen Z snowflake, however some of Mr Hobson’s points are so far off the mark that I would hope their misguided nature would be apparent to older readers too.

Dear Jeremy,

Who was Philip Whitting?

Like many of Philip Whitting’s (History Department 1929-63) former pupils I enjoyed the recollections of him in Atrium. He was a great teacher and it is fitting that he is commemorated in the Philip Whitting Lecture.

As the founder (with his encouragement) of the Historical Society – which I believe survives to this day – I had another dimension in my relationship with Philip. It is interesting that even in those days we speculated about his past. There was no mention then of him being an RAF pilot in the War and flying Churchill about the world.

Physically Philip looked like a professional wrestler. It was widely believed that he had been an amateur one. On one Historical Society outing to St Albans, I recall asking him if it was true that he had once fought the then world champion known as ‘the Terrible Turk’, and that he had not denied it.

As for Philip’s George Medal, our belief was that he gained it by defusing a bomb on Hammersmith Bridge, which later struck me as plausible.

My surmise now is that Philip had a policy of never denying these schoolboy rumours or myths about his pre-Pauline life. They added to our awe of him and doubtless helped to keep us in good order. Still, it would be interesting to know the truth.

With best wishes, John Adair (1947-1952)

Best wishes, Rob Hindhaugh (2012-17) 05

PAULINE LETTER

Bruce Howitt (1952-56) writes “A Very Ordinary Perspective” from Vancouver I read with great interest the recent edition of Atrium, especially the discussions with the brilliant professors by Paul Cartledge (1960-64). When one reads these articles about the successful, and in many instances, truly famous Old Paulines one realises what a privilege and honour one’s parents bestowed on us; certainly, in my case making large sacrifices to send me and later my younger brother Andrew (1960-64) to St Paul’s and our sister Sheila to a private girls’ school. It occurred to me that, however, a perspective on School and life after from an ordinary Pauline might be an interesting change.

I entered the School as a small, timid 13-year-old in January 1952. The first few days were totally intimidating. The size of the monolithic red brick Hammersmith edifice alone was extremely intimidating let alone the settling into the Lower Eighth classes. I was assigned to “F” Club, and I recall one of the fellows I sat next to at lunch was Galen Weston (1954-59) a truly famous Canadian. An early introduction to my tutor, Conrad Rainbow (English Department 1951-61), provided me with an anchor, which even to this day nearly seven decades later has held me steady on the sometimesturbulent sea of life. Having grown up in Teddington on the river I gravitated immediately to the Boat Club. My small stature and light weight soon had me sitting in the stern of first the Colts eight then the Fourth Eight, and in 1955 the highly successful Second Eight. Memory has dimmed so I can no longer recall the number of trophies that crew won but it was a goodly number. As a second sport I joined the Boxing club.

Transitioning from Lower to Upper Eighth I prepared for History, English Language and English Literature ‘A’ Levels.

Mr Rainbow mentored and exhorted me to do my absolute best because he knew I desperately wanted to attend Oxbridge on leaving School. The exams were written and passed, but not quite well enough to be offered a place at either Oxford or Cambridge. This was devastating for me.

I felt I had let my parents down, especially since they gave up so much to send me to St Paul’s. Conrad Rainbow urged and counselled me that not attending Oxbridge was not the end of the world; there were several wonderful “Red Brick” universities across the UK. Sadly, my heart was not in it and after a half-hearted attempt applying to LSE at London, I abandoned any ideas of university and instead headed for commerce and industry in the real world. Two years as a trainee at Barclays Bank was a great experience 06

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

for a callow youth learning the intricacies of a junior filing clerk, then promotion to junior cashier and finally a stint in the City Head Office. Barclays provided order and discipline and I still remember that the winter dress code was a dark topcoat and a Bowler hat. That hat cost me almost two weeks’ salary. After the two years I found the bank too staid, and I searched for a more exciting opportunity.

My father worked for one of the high-end couturier fashion houses in the West End and I was offered a trainee position.

It was here that the lessons learned at St Paul’s paid off.

The social skills acquired almost by osmosis served me immensely. The fashion industry in London in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s was a rough and tumble business behind the scenes. Two years after joining the company I was now working in the Sales department. The owner died suddenly, and the company went through many changes that did not appeal to me. I left and ultimately joined a fabric manufacturer which made specialty knit fabrics for clothing manufacturers supplying Marks and Spencer. M&S had rigorous and exacting quality control on all their direct and indirect suppliers; it was one of my responsibilities to ensure that the quality level was maintained. The Hungarian owner had a large network of fellow countrymen in the UK, Europe and North America. One of his friends wanted to establish a similar business in Montreal, Canada and asked if he could “borrow” me for six months. So that is how I came to North America in 1964.

At the end of my six-month tour, I returned home to London, but quickly realised I preferred the modernity and openness of Montreal and Canada. After less than a week, to the great dismay of my parents, I returned to Montreal and became a Canadian citizen. A few months after the London owner of the knitting company was tragically killed.

Once again, the dynamics changed. I left the company and joined another small Canadian entity operated by two Holocaust survivors. I was in a sales position and one account I was managing was owned by a family who I eventually married into. My future father-in-law was interested in a new product which I had presented, and he ordered a bolt of fabric to make garment samples for a major show. The potential for significant business was predicated on delivering that sample in seven days. By the eighth day there was no sample. Forgetting the social and people skills learned at St Paul’s I ignorantly chewed out the owner of the fabric finisher who was late in delivering.

The next day the sample was on my desk and as I started to leave to deliver it one of the owners called me into his office and asked me how many customers there were in Montreal. I really did not know so he handed me the Yellow Pages. I commenced looking and after about twelve pages he looked at me and remarked that there were many potential customers. He then asked how many finishers I could find. There was only one. He then shared something with me that I have remembered throughout my business career; “It seems to me there are an awful lot of customers but only one supplier, perhaps if you don’t have suppliers, it doesn’t matter how many customers there are there won’t be a business” I learned afterwards that the owner of the finishing company and my principal were close friends.

One year passed and I was now engaged to marry, and at the same time the fashion industry was rapidly changing in the mid-sixties in North America. There was a great amount of consolidation and I found I was not enjoying the industry anymore. By the simple coincidence of who you know and not what you know I was offered a sales position with a dynamic and fast-growing lighting company. That was in 1966. I remained in lighting for 52 years. I spent 10 years in Montreal with the company and then moved my now growing family to Vancouver and started my own business.

My younger sister and her husband were already living there so it was an easy transition. Several iterations later all three of my sons joined me at various stages in their lives.

My operations soon became too small for them. My oldest eventually started an extremely successful leading edge LED commercial lighting company which he and his two partners sold to a large lighting conglomerate for a great deal of money which enabled my son to retire. One of his brothers still works there as a senior vice president. My youngest son eventually left my business because his wife, who holds a senior position with Amazon, was transferred to Melbourne, Australia.

Mr Harbord (Modern Languages Department 1928-67) and I both struggled mightily for me to acquire some mastery of the French language. It surely worked when I moved to Montreal, I thanked him many times over for that Along this quite ordinary journey my first marriage ended, and I eventually remarried and now my wife, Joan and I have two wonderful, blended families consisting of five children and eight grandchildren. So even after the disappointment of failing to gain entrance to Oxbridge I consider my journey as an ordinary Pauline most satisfying, and I did eventually attend some evening business programs at McGill in Montreal while working full time, before moving

out West. I know that the time I spent at St Paul’s prepared me for this journey. I look back now and realize that there were many large and small experiences at the School that shaped my life. The incredible teaching. The boxing programme taught me that the application of brains and skill wins out every time over brawn and muscle. Mr Harbord (Modern Languages Department 1928-67) and I both struggled mightily for me to acquire some mastery of the French language. It surely worked when I moved to Montreal, I thanked him many times over for that. I learned the skill of patience from Mr “Red” Brown (Mathematics Department 1932-64) who coached that 1955 Second Eight. He was truly one of a kind, never excited and I can still hear his quiet calming exhortations just to dig down and find a little more effort. Mr Rainbow (English Department 1951-61) was a phenomenal tutor and English teacher. I doubt I would be able to write without the discipline he instilled in me with his English Language classes.

Several years ago, Joan and I travelled to England and took the time to drive up to Lytham St. Anne’s where Conrad Rainbow had retired. We spent a marvellous evening with him and his charming wife Kathleen. More recently I visited London expressly to attend a Leavers 55 plus luncheon. It was just a great experience catching up with fellows with whom I had shared classes and boats. It was almost like we had never parted for nearly 60 years. Next year, trusting my health allows me to manage the rigours of transcontinental and cross Atlantic flights I hope to attend another such luncheon. In the meantime, I am enjoying retirement and my new career as an author.

Without a doubt this ordinary Pauline would be a much lesser person without those wonderful years at St Paul’s.  07

Briefings Escaping Classics Robin Hirsch (1956-61) describes the twists and turns before gaining his History scholarship at Oxford.

Charles Marius Constantine Hendtlass (Classics Department 1939-66) was a thin wisp of a man, with a high noodling tenor and glasses. He was named after two noble Romans: the general, Gaius Marius, who in the year 101 BC was elected consul for a fifth time, hailed as “the saviour of his country” and honoured with a triumph; and the Emperor Constantine the Great who, more than four hundred years later, moved the seat of the Empire from Rome to Byzantium, changed its name to Constantinople, and made Christianity the official religion of the Empire.

CMC Hendtlass taught Classics at St Paul’s. He also taught fencing, which in the pantheon of sports at St Paul’s where rugby stood at the acme, occupied the same dismal latitude as chess. He lived with his widowed mother and his sister, Elizabeth Victoria Boadicea Hendtlass.

When I arrived at St Paul’s, a raw and nervous thirteen year old, in my black and white cap, my black tie, my black blazer with white badge, my first pair of long grey flannel trousers and my first shirt with an awkward detachable collar, Mr Hendtlass was made my tutor, which meant that he would advise me (and my parents) on my future academic career. In my second year, when I moved from V alpha to VI alpha, he also became my form master. It was here, in VI alpha, before I turned fourteen, before I faced the Great Barrier Reef called O levels, that the critical question of my academic future had to be addressed.

So when, one Monday afternoon in Tutorial, Mr Hendtlass called me up to his desk and enquired as to what I thought I might be specialising in once I had crossed the Great Barrier Reef and I said English, it was the wrong answer. First of all, it was not possible to specialise in English – one could take it only as a subsidiary to History.

And second, the School strongly advised that I study Classics.

In the course of that year, when I demurred, and when my parents were consulted on the matter, it was made clear that I could of course specialise in whatever I wanted, provided that my parents agreed, but that equally my scholarship to the School could of course be taken away.

As far as my father was concerned my desire to study English was the desire

of a dilettante. I spoke it already, didn’t I? And, so far as he could tell, without an accent. “Latein und Griechisch sind wenigstens important, since you refuse to study anything praktisch.”

So, the following year, I found myself in the Lower VIII with all the whiz kids from the Remove, watching in awe as they tossed off a dozen elegant Greek hexameters for breakfast and then sat around cracking jokes in Latin.

By the end of the first term I had demonstrated, I thought conclusively, my utter inadequacy as a Classicist.

I was in despair. None of my friends from VI alpha had moved with me into the Lower VIII Mr Hendtlass and my parents had conspired to send me to Siberia. I knew nobody. I was a dullard.

Nobody wanted to know me. I felt utterly alone.

St Paul’s, like most of the great schools of England, measured its prestige in the number of boys it managed to get into Oxford and Cambridge, and in particular the number of boys who managed to win scholarships. Since there were many nineteenth century endowments at the Universities which offered scholarships in Classics and far fewer which offered scholarships in anything else, pressure began to be exerted early on those boys who, four or five years hence, might bring glory on the School, to specialise in Classics.  Science labs at the West Kensington School

8

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

One day, on an impulse, I made a completely unsolicited, and for me quite terrifying, foray into the Science Department. I had developed the notion that in one dramatic move I could not only free myself but also forestall my father’s ire. Rather than waste another two terms stumbling around the foothills while my brethren scaled the peaks, I would grit my teeth, heed my father, and bend my efforts towards something “praktisch.”

I had in my youth at Arnold House from the age of perhaps nine to the age of perhaps eleven been something of a mathematician, although the facility had then begun to wear off. But, as a result of the peculiarities of the English school system, I had not even the most passing acquaintance with Physics and Chemistry. So, the laboratories, with their rows of bunsen burners and their acrid smell and the alien technicians who guarded them, were indeed a foreign country.

I am amazed, in retrospect, at my temerity. Somehow, out of some mysterious alchemical combination part desperation, part chutzpah, I managed to convince the Science Masters that I had missed my calling, that if at this late date they were to let me into the Lower Maths and Science 8th, they would see. I would prove another Einstein he was a German Jew, too, you know, like my parents and I would bring glory and renown to St Paul’s by winning a scholarship to Oxbridge in Physics or Chemistry or both, if necessary.

When I announced my acceptance at home, my father said: “How can you give up Latin and Greek? Ich versteh’ dass bloss nicht.” And his voice began to rise.

By the end of that year, I had demonstrated my inadequacy both as a Classicist and as a Scientist, and so it was that when I finally sat for my Scholarship three years later, it was in History. And I did not even take English as a subsidiary. 

Kenneth Baker (1948-53) shares his memories of going to the ‘Old’ School.

The first time I saw the old building of St Paul’s was in 1948 when, at the age of 14, my father took me there to find out whether I could be allowed to attend. Evacuated during the war, I had attended a Church of England primary school, sat the 11-plus, and got into Hampton Grammar. I did not know anything about public schools, nor had I heard of the Common Entrance Exam, but my Father, who had left school at 16, always wanted his children to have the best possible education.

I was so impressed with the sheer scale of the huge red brick building with trees in the front and a majestic sweep of stone stairs leading to a grand door. I had never been in such a magnificent building. There I met with Surmaster, A B Cook (1929-64), who was very kind, and with two other boys I did a maths paper and an essay on poetry. Fortunately, I passed both.

I was amazed by the high ceilings of the ground floor classrooms and how their windows let in so much light. The corridors’ tiles were adorned with the Pauline crest and John Colet. The main hall was a wonderful piece of Gothic architecture with large narrow windows carrying in colour the names of famous Paulines and their shields, like Pepys, Milton, and the Duke of Marlborough. Each day the whole School assembled for a short prayer service and one hymn. The prayers were all in Latin and every day we recited, “Pater Noster, qui es in cœlis; sanctificetur nomen tuum” and another prayer for the day. My favourite hymn was three verses taken from Milton’s Ode on Christ’s Nativity put to music by Parry – I still remember the last line, “And Heaven, as at some festival, will open wide the gates of her high palace wall.”

The geography of the School was easy to understand. At the top of the stairs from the hall to the first floor there was a huge statue of Laocoon and his sons fighting the serpents which the gods had sent to consume them after warning Troy not to accept the Greek gift of the Trojan Horse. It was the most marvellous statue I had ever seen, though it was often adorned

with caps and straw hats. When the building was closing, I asked if I could purchase the statue but somehow it had disappeared, and no one knew what had happened to it.

On my first day I was told I would be in D Club, and we met in Mr Martin’s (1906-12. English and Music Departments 1920-57) classroom on the ground floor. I was in the junior school studying much the same subjects as in Hampton Grammar, but there were striking differences. There was much more sport even though the playing field at the back of the building was only large enough for one large cricket pitch and a rugby field. As we had sport for half a day each week, we often went by coach to the Old Pauline ground at Thames Ditton. Rowing was popular and we were doing very well, but in winter I preferred rugby, a difference from Hampton. I did not like cricket, preferring squash, but as the School had no courts, we walked down to The Queen’s Club. Every boy was expected to box which took place in a gym close to the playing field under the instruction of Buster Reed (192730 and I/C Boxing 1947-72). All had to participate in the annual Green Cup which meant three rounds with an opponent. Next to the gym was a fives court, which I had never come across, but I rather liked it and some of the boys excelled.

Another striking difference was the long two-hour lunch break when we were expected to take part in sport, swimming, art, music or drama, or the debating club known as The Chesterton Society which was raucous and fun.  09

BRIEFINGS

On entering the Eighth Form you could join the senior debating society that took place after school in the Walker Library. That is where I met John Adair (1947-52) and we set up the first competition with other schools in London, like Dulwich and City of London, and that developed into the Schools Debating Competition run by the Observer. Debating was a great confidence builder.

I went into the Upper Eighth History form where it was assumed that we would apply for a university. Philip Whitting (History Department 192863), a legendary great teacher, had a close connection with Magdalen College Oxford, where two of his students, Max Beloff (1926-32) and Karl Leyser (1937-39), were dons. In due time I went for an interview and undoubtedly St Paul’s helped me to get into Oxford.

In the central tower facing the playing field there were two small classrooms, one in which C P Longland (English Department 1944-61) infected me with

Every summer term the whole cadet force marched three abreast with rifles, from the school through Hammersmith Broadway, over the bridge where we broke step, up Castelnau to Barnes Common, and then onto Richmond Park

his love of English literature. In the other Frank Parker (Modern Languages Department 1928-65) taught French and German and he had us write unusual French words on a small card to be kept in our pockets, and memorised. He assured us that if we used those words in an exam, the examiner would be impressed.

I remember one word – ‘Pantouflard’ – a homebody wearing slippers – a word I have never had to use!

As National Service was still compulsory, St Paul’s had a huge 10

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

 Monty inspecting Pauline cadets

military cadet force which we were expected to join, unless you were a conscientious objector. Its purpose was to provide us with military training so that when we eventually enlisted with the Army, Navy or Air Force we would have the chance of becoming a commissioned officer, rather than remain in the ranks. This meant every second Monday we were expected to attend school in army uniform, with shining boots, blancoed gaiters and belt, and keenly pressed trousers.

For two hours we did drill practice, rifle and Bren training, and military exercises. Every summer term the whole cadet force marched three abreast with rifles, from the School through Hammersmith Broadway, over the bridge where we broke step, up Castelnau to Barnes Common, and then onto Richmond Park where we engaged in field exercises with a lot of crawling, attacking, and defending positions. Our army jackets had shoulders badges with ‘St Paul’s School CCF’ embroidered in black and white, and we wore our berets while travelling by tube.

Another noticeable feature was the number of Jewish boys and that was because John Colet, in his great wisdom in 1509, decided his school

should take all creeds and races.

That has been an immense benefit to St Paul’s over the centuries. In my time, one of the most distinguished students was Jonathan Miller (1947-53), a polymath in medicine and culture.

His group of friends produced hilarious sketches for our end of term concerts and many of these featured in the hugely successful satirical revue, Beyond the Fringe.

I owe so much to St Paul’s, and I especially loved that old building. When the demolition plans were revealed, I protested to the then Labour Education Secretary, Michael Stewart, but he wanted a teacher training college. The move to Barnes has certainly increased the school facilities enormously, but for us very old Paulines, the memories of that old West Kensington school will never be erased. 

Pauline Praying Mantis

Pauline Penny-Farthing

From Tim Razzall’s (1957-62) autobiography Chance Encounters Tales From A Varied Life

Stuart Feldman (circled)

John Dunkin (1964-69) has again contacted Atrium following the launch of The Pauline Continuum Cycling with a reminder of Pauline cycling history.

He informs us that there was a St Paul’s School Bicycling Club, founded in 1889 and prior to that a Bicycle race held on St Paul’s School Sports Day.

“Cricket is a game that seems to attract eccentrics.

But I never met a cricketer more eccentric than Stuart Feldman (1930-35), not as a person, but as the least athletic sportsman I ever played with.

Stuart bowled slow leg breaks and googlies – very slow – with an action that defies explanation. As he approached the bowling crease off five or six paces, both arms went forward in the style of a butterfly swimmer and the ball was released from his right hand, almost as an afterthought. It was as if Piggy from Lord of the Flies had metamorphosed into a praying mantis or Conan Doyle’s spedegue dropper had come alive from his dream. His fielding was indescribably bad. Always at mid-on he usually could stop a ball hit straight at him, but anything he had to chase invariably turned a single into three. To watch him pursue the ball was to watch an octopus struggling on dry land.

But what a bowler! In the 1950s he played for Hornsey on the North London circuit and terrorised the opposition. The ball came very slowly through the air, dipped onto a length and turned sharply either way. Countless batsmen were deceived by the flight and either stumped or bowled or caught in a slog to deep mid wicket. Hauls of seven, eight or nine wickets were commonplace.

I met him when he rejoined the Old Paulines in the 1960s and had several happy years with him. With the advent of league cricket, let alone anno domini, Stuart’s playing days were numbered. His fielding leaked too many runs. My last memory epitomises this wise, gentle man. He had never taken all ten wickets in an innings. We were playing at our home ground and Stuart had taken the first nine. Number 11 struck the ball high in the air in the midwicket area, where two of our fielders converged in an attempt to catch the ball. A terrible collision occurred as the fielders clashed heads and the ball fell to the ground. Blood gushed from one of the fielders heads in huge dollops. As the stretcher came onto the field, Stuart went pale and almost fainted. He could not bear the sight of blood so could not carry on. So, he never got his ten wickets.

The Rules of the Club appear pretty strict and included blackballing. Here are a few from The Pauline of July 1889:

• That the intending members must be in St Paul’s School, and be balloted for one black ball in three to exclude.

• That the subscription be 2s 6d per annum.

• That the club cap be a Black Polo with the School Crest worked on it; and that every member must wear Knickerbockers and Stockings on Club runs.

• That on the Road the Captain or his Deputy shall have absolute power over the other members: and that no member is to leave the ranks without special permission asked and obtained.

• That there shall be no road-racing of any description.

In Pauline and Old Pauline 1884-1931 Hubert Sams (1884-88) remembers the bicycle race at St Paul’s School Sports Day. In his day it was regularly won by von Koppelow (1887-92) on a huge penny-farthing.

Sams observed that the Pauline bicycling tyro later served in the Prussian Guards in the First World War. Charles Ernest Herman von Koppelow did indeed win the race six times in a row between 1888 and 1893. In 1894 he was granted a commission in the Grand Duke of Saxony’s Regiment and doubtless later served in the Prussian Guard. 

He died in the 1970s, far too young.”  11

BRIEFINGS

Pauline Gallantry Colonel the Reverend Gus Claxton (1925-30) while serving as Chaplain to the Dorsetshire Regiment was awarded the MC for his gallantry at the battle of Kohima.

Kohima saw some of the most savage fighting of the war in south-east Asia. In mid-April 1944 a greatly superior Japanese force laid siege and after two weeks of close quarter fighting, the Dorsets were ordered on April 26th to gain control of the District Commissioner’s bungalow complex.

The complex was formed of four terraces – the club square, a tennis court, the bungalow and a garden.

During the fighting, the tennis court became a no-man’s land between the Japanese and the Dorsets with hand grenades being lobbed rather than tennis balls. Fighting continued until May 13th when the Japanese position was overwhelmed.

Throughout the three weeks of bitter exchanges, Claxton was said always to be where the fighting was heaviest. At the height of the battle he was to be found with the stretcher bearers and, however dangerous the mission, Claxton was the first to volunteer and there were many casualties who owed their lives to his prompt, decisive and courageous action – often involving sweet tea and morphine.

Claxton was the first to volunteer and there were many casualties who owed their lives to his prompt, decisive and courageous action.

Claxton was born in Ludhiana, India in 1910 before coming to England to continue his education. After St Paul’s he read Mathematics and Theology at Peterhouse, Cambridge. Ordained in 1936, Claxton served as a curate in Hounslow and Dartford before being called up. After the war, he applied for a regular commission and served as a Chaplain until the mid 1960’s with postings in the UK, Germany, Africa and Singapore. Here his parish took in Nepal, Hong Kong and Borneo. In 1967 he was appointed Queen’s Honorary Chaplain.

After retirement from the Army, Claxton became Rector of St Olave’s in the City with its close association with Samuel Pepys. He retired again in 1985 but continued to act as ‘a casual labourer in God’s vineyard’ into his 90’s when he was still holding services at the Ministry of Defence. He died in Havana in 2003 aged 92.  12

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

Pauline/Paulina Partners Jack Gilbert (1901-03) reached the Wimbledon singles semi-finals in 1922 and competed in the 1924 Summer Olympics. In the same year he partnered Kitty Godfree (née McKane), (St Paul’s Girls’ School) to win the Wimbledon Mixed Doubles. They beat another British pair in the final in three sets. The losing gentleman, Leslie Godfree later became Kitty’s husband and together the Godfrees are the only husband and wife pair to win a grand slam title together.

Gilbert’s tennis success is possibly not the most interesting part of Jack’s life. He was interned in Germany throughout the First World War along with 7 other OPs at Ruhleben. In November 1914 Germany took the decision to intern all British male citizens of military age then resident in Germany. To this end, a civilian detention camp was established on the site of a racecourse at Ruhleben, near Berlin. Those detained in this camp created clubs, teams and associations that helped them overcome the challenges of incarceration. Over the course of the war the camp was home to more than 5,500 British male civilians between the ages of 17 and 55.

The Pauline edition of July 1917 published a photograph of the ‘Ruhleben Eight’ and a letter from Robert Barrett (1895-02) in which he described the activities undertaken in the camp by these OPs. The Pauline editors stated that: “We commend to the sympathetic notice of our readers the very interesting letter which we have received from Ruhleben. There is not a grumble in it, and yet it does not need much imagination to realize some of the mental – not to say physical – strain of such weary waiting in an enemy’s land. We notice that Lt G L Barrett, the writer, was also one of the contributors to the diverting Christmas number of the Ruhleben Camp Magazine. We should like him and his brother Paulines to know that they are not forgotten”.

Barrett’s letter relates Gilbert’s sporting activities at Ruhleben.

Remarkably he was not the best tennis player among the internees.

“Another OP who shines in camp athletics is J B Gilbert [John (Jack) Brian, SPS 1901-1903]. Among the pick of the camp at Norkey, at cricket a slow and wily left-handed bowler in the champion team, namely Barrack X, at tennis he is second only to G K Logie, a youth not unknown to international fame”.

Logie was a Frenchman who had appeared in the World Hard Court Championship before the war.

Jack Gilbert died in 1974.

(Editor: With thanks to Graham Seel (History Department 2012-21) from his retirement in Yorkshire) 

Pauline Pirate Stephen Williams (1922-26) founded Radio Luxembourg in 1933 and was asked to close it down in 1991, signing off with “Good luck, good listening and goodbye.”

Pauline Appointments Robin Walker (1991-96) was appointed Minister of State at the Department for Education in September 2021.

His previous roles in government include being Minister of State at the Northern Ireland Office, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Scotland Office and the Northern Ireland Office and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union.

Robin was elected as the Conservative MP for Worcester in May 2010. 

Stephen was the son of the Rector of Acton when he arrived at St Paul’s. His father Clement lived to be the oldest known Church of England priest dying aged 107. After School, Stephen went to Trinity, Cambridge but came down before taking his degree.

His first job in 1929 in radio was working for the Daily Mail on its broadcasting yacht. He then worked for Radio Normandie and Radio Paris. The French authorities took offence at the amount of English polluting Gallic airwaves so a concession was obtained in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. He personally launched Radio Luxembourg in 1933. It was an immediate success and, with the most powerful transmitter in the world, attracted both listeners and advertisers.

Its largest audiences were on Sundays as the BBC under Lord Reith was given over to religious broadcasts only.

After the war, Radio Luxembourg went from strength to strength leading the rock and roll revolution and pioneering the cult of the disc jockey including Pete Murray (1939-40).

Williams later joined the BBC producing a wide variety of programmes including 20 Minutes and Down Your Way. He retired in 1975 and died in 1994. 

Tom Adeyoola (1990-95) and Ed Vaizey (1981-85) were appointed governors of St Paul’s School in January.

Tom is a technology entrepreneur, advisor and investor with 20 years’ experience in new media, disruptive technology and business strategy focused on positive society and climate related projects. He was CEO and founder of acquired apparel technology scale-up Metail and is currently co-founder of the non-profit Extend Ventures, which aims to diversify access to finance for underrepresented founders through data and research.

He also serves as non-exec director for zero carbon monitoring consultancy Verco and environmental behavioural change start-up Do Nation. Additionally, he is chair of the Gen Z music mindfulness startup Spoke, an active supporter of The Brilliant Club and sits on various advisory boards. He has also served as a trustee for the Black and minority ethnic focused creative incubator MeWe360 and on the board of the revolutionary women’s personal wellness scale-up Elvie.

Ed is a qualified barrister who worked in public affairs, before being elected as the Member of Parliament for

Tom Adeyoola

Ed Vaizey

Wantage. He served as a Minister under David Cameron, and was responsible for culture, the creative industries, telecoms and technology.

He left the House of Commons in 2019 and was elevated to the House of Lords in 2020, where he serves on the Digital and Communications Select Committee. He is President of the Old Pauline Club and a board member of the Tate.  13

BRIEFINGS

Pauline Books

Joe Moshenska Making Darkness Out Of Light

Paul Lay reviewing in The Times comments that “Joe Moshenska, Professor of English Literature at University College, Oxford, is astute in placing music, especially rhythm (a word neither Milton nor Shakespeare used) and its visceral relationship to the body, at the root of this original, penetrating, cleverly constructed and occasionally frustrating biography”. John Carey writing in The Sunday Times remarks that, “Making Darkness Light is unlike any book about Milton I have read. It is often densely erudite, but also richly inventive, and for quite long stretches it is, in effect, an historical novel.”

For most of us John Milton has been consigned to the dusty pantheon of English literature, a grim puritan, sightlessly dictating his great work to an amanuensis, removed from the real world in his contemplation of higher things. But dig a

14

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

little deeper and you find an extraordinary and complicated human being.

Revolutionary and apologist for regicide, writer of propaganda for Cromwell’s regime, defender of the English people and passionate European, scholar and lover of music and the arts – Milton was all of these things and more.

Making Darkness Light shows how these complexities and contradictions played out in Milton’s fascination with oppositions – Heaven and Hell, light and dark, self and other – most famously in his epic poem Paradise Lost. It explores the way such brutal contrasts define us and obscure who we really are, as the author grapples with his own sense of identity and complex relationship with Milton. Retracing Milton’s footsteps through seventeenth century London, Tuscany and the Marches, he vividly brings Milton’s world to life and takes a fresh look at his key works and ideas around the nature of creativity, time and freedom of expression. He also illustrates the profound influence of Milton’s work on writers from William Blake to Virginia Woolf, James Joyce to Jorge Luis Borges.

This is a book about Milton, that also speaks to why we read and what happens when we choose over time to let another’s life and words enter our own. It will change the way you think about Milton forever and as The Spectator review suggests “this sympathetic yet challenging account will undoubtedly win Milton new readers – and for that a chorus of Hallelujahs”.

Floyd Steadman A Week One Summer

Nick Brooks (1965-70) Revenge

John Matlin (1956-61) Trade Off

Everybody faces some degree of adversity at some stage in their lives, but very few have faced as many challenges as Floyd Steadman.

Rejected by his father, he coped with a childhood in care. Told he should train to ‘work with his hands’, he insisted on taking A levels so he could become a teacher. As one of the few black players in English club rugby, he was named Saracens captain at the age of 23 and played a leading role in the club’s progress during the 1980s.

Many thought he might have played for England, but he was never selected.

After retiring from rugby, he emerged as a talented and inspiring teacher and headmaster, having a positive impact on many, many young lives. Over and over again, Floyd Steadman has prevailed against immense odds, prevailing not with anger, argument or hysterics, but with persistence, dignity and integrity.

Peter King (1967-71 and Classics Department and Support Staff since 1976) writes “Floyd was the first black teacher at St Paul’s and a superb colleague. He remains incredibly proud of his status as an Honorary Old Pauline”.

Two years after the publication of his debut novel Betrayed, Nick’s hero Will Slater returns in Revenge.

Will Slater had hoped that the terrifying experience in helping to break up a terrorist arms gang was buried in the past. However, a newspaper article questioning the disappearance of the terrorist money awakened old memories and hatred.

Hiding in a remote Scottish glen in an ancient mansion with his wife Jay, Will discovers that the house also has secrets that he must unravel.

Convinced that he is constantly watched and fearful for his family’s life, Will realises that he must take action himself to survive. Unaware that a contract had been placed on his life from inside prison, he has become the target of ruthless killers once again.

Unwittingly helped by his old adversary Inspector Dawkin, both men converge on the truth that will finally reveal who is seeking revenge.

Following on from Truth to Power and Smoking Gun, the first and second novels, John Matlin (1956-61) has written Trade Off, the third of The Driscoll Quartet. The final quartet novel, End Game, is due to be published in the autumn of 2022.

In Trade Off, journalist David Driscoll has moved to San Francisco where he is less than fully occupied.

Through circumstances beyond his control, he becomes the editor-in-chief of the prestigious San Francisco Chronicle, one of America’s large newspapers. Reviving the investigative journalism department, he uncovers a plot to steal Las Vegas and incurs the wrath of three powerful men: a Mafia boss, a Nevada politician and an old enemy, tobacco baron Jez Burns.

In the meantime, Abby Driscoll, David’s wife, has caught the attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee who believe she is a communist spy. Just when you think David has everything handled perfectly, there is an unexpected twist.

15

BRIEFINGS

Jonathan Kydd (1967-72) has edited Sam Kydd: Be a Good Boy, Vol 1 1945-52 Sam’s son Jonathan found an unpublished autobiography and writings, diaries and scripts in his mother’s loft when clearing out the family home after her death in 2012. He has compiled and edited four volumes from this archive. Sam wrote with humour and great observation about a time when TV was rarely recorded and film was in black and white, about a career crammed with incident and humour. It is an amusing and intimate chronicle of a phenomenally prolific life in entertainment.

The first volume of much-loved actor Sam Kydd’s memoirs follows his career from 1945-52, when he first started acting, having just returned from being a POW in Poland, which he wrote about in For You the War is Over, in 1974. During this period, despite his mother almost persuading him to get a “proper job with a pension,” he was in 119 films.

Sam was a fixture in the nation’s living rooms from the 1950’s to the 1980’s. He was so well-known that a “Spot Sam Kydd” game was played by families whenever a black and white film, such as I’m Alright Jack, Angels One Five, or Appointment in London, was shown on TV – a game that Talking Pictures TV viewers continue to play today. He gravitated from small parts to big roles, mostly on TV, where he starred in plays, sitcoms and series. He was at home in both comedy and straight drama, known for playing Irishmen and Cockneys, in hit TV series like Pickwick Papers, Crane, Orlando, Mess Mates, The Fossett Saga and Dixon of Dock Green, (in which he played many different characters), all at a time when to be in a successful TV show meant being seen by over twenty million people a week. He worked with Benny Hill, Terry-Thomas, Arthur Askey, Harry Worth, Eric Sykes, Charlie Drake, Frankie Howerd and Jimmy Edwards and played Frankie Baldwin in Coronation Street until his death in 1982.

16

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

Bruce Howitt (1952-1956) The Sixth Eye The fourth book in the Ari Lazarus Terror series.

Ari Lazarus has been promoted to director of 9 as Israel is now added to the 5 Eyes as the 6th Eye. Dept 9 continues to hunt Hezbollah around the world. A brutal machine gun attack on a Berlin church at the end of Sunday noon services is claimed by Hezbollah. A team is sent to Berlin to investigate Hezbollah’s involvement.

The team uncovers a sinister plot involving miniature nuclear missiles, Hezbollah, the Chinese Communist Party and their secret service, MSS. The US is threatened with the possibility of nearly 50 missiles that Hezbollah could deploy against US targets. The Eyes coordinate their efforts to disrupt the Hezbollah. Ari and 9 implement the Lazarus doctrine, which follows the terrorist’s money trails.

Hezbollah has politicians and government sympathizers on its payroll. The Lazarus doctrine exposes these people and while showing them a tablet they confiscate their money in front of their eyes. As their search continues 9 discovers that two senior Hezbollah are colluding with the CCP in Africa. Ari and his 9 teams endeavour to cut short those plans.

Krish Bhaskar (1959-63) Disruption in Financial Reporting: A Post-pandemic View of the Future of Corporate Reporting written with John Flower with contributions from Rod Sellers Since the global financial crisis, new regulations have been introduced with the aim of improving transparency in financial reports, yet the quality of information to shareholders and the public has deteriorated. Financial and corporate reporting have never been so fraught with difficulties as companies fail to give guidance about the future in an increasingly uncertain world aided and abetted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with insiders and experts, this book charts what has gone wrong with financial reporting and offers a range of solutions to improve transparency to both investors and the public. Providing a compelling exploration of the industry’s failings, and the impact of future disruptions, this timely text will be of interest to students, researchers, professionals and policy makers in financial reporting and accounting.

Disruption in Financial Reporting: A Postpandemic View of the Future of Corporate Reporting offers a range of solutions to improve transparency to the public and concerning wider ESG issues.

Mark Lovell (1947-53) has contributed to 2 anthologies: Human Kindness and The Turning Point Human Kindness: this anthology to which Mark contributes is of true stories that reveal the depths of the human experience.

Kindness comes in many forms and affects all of us. As Mark Twain said, ‘Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.’ And while a kind gesture can often simply make someone feel better about their day, sometimes – as the twenty-five true stories collected here show – it can save a life.

The first in the ‘Timeless Wisdom’ Series, these stories are sourced from around the world. They are of the everyday and the extraordinary. The result is a book that explores all that is best about human nature.

The Turning Point: this anthology which includes a contribution from Mark, provides a rare glimpse into the most important and fascinating moments of people’s lives.

A collection of extraordinary entries received in an international writing competition, it contains stories about everyday people, from all over the world. It includes the moment when love came along in a note under a windscreen wiper, when the death of a new friend inspired a teenager to live life to its fullest in this captivating insight into the human condition.

17

THE INTERVIEW

Vivek Raman (2016-21) talks to Herbert von Karajan Young Conductor Award Winner

Joel Sandelson (2007-12)

In January, I met Joel Sandelson in the Wathen Hall, after his prestigious win of the Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award, Salzburg Festival 2021.

I wanted to gain an insight both into the world of conducting and professional music, but also to hear about his grasp and understanding of music, which I found to be deeper and more profound than I could have imagined.

18

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

I started by asking about his hobbies other than music. He argues that “music, as a rule, expands to fill your whole life, but I’ve always been very interested in literature.” He is interested in the relationship between “music and the other arts generally”, arguing that music “feeds off” other arts, concluding that the “broad education” that you receive at St Paul’s contributes most significantly to growth as a musician. We talked about his professional life – he is now a conductor working in the UK and Europe, but he “started off as a cellist”, which was the “foundation of my musicianship”. He was in the final of BBC Young Musician of the Year and says that it is “really important to have that bedrock of playing an instrument to a really high level as a conductor”. He started conducting just before university, when Mr Stratford, a piano teacher at St Paul’s asked him to conduct a wind octet – this was “the first time I had properly conducted”. He felt that conducting fulfilled his need for a “bigger canvas than the cello” and that it “really synthesises performing with standing back and reflecting about music”. This year he leads various major orchestras around Europe, including the Philharmonia, Vienna Radio Symphony, Staatsorchester Stuttgart, and several orchestras in the Netherlands.

We went on to discuss the Salzburg Festival Award in more depth, where I learnt that 250 people entered and it was narrowed down to eight semi-finalists.

Joel explained that the semi-final involved rehearsing an orchestra for 30 minutes before a jury. Three competitors were then chosen for the final and each had a concert in the main festival last summer, with the Camerata Salzburg.

He said this stage of the competition was “really nice, because I could choose my own programme, within limits” – he chose “one of the famous later Mozart symphonies”. The prize was some money and a concert with the Vienna Radio Symphony this summer, but “more informally, the recognition that it brought me means that opportunities of guest conducting have opened up – it was a big boost.”

We then began talking more broadly about music, in particular the relationship

He started conducting just before university, when Mr Stratford, a piano teacher at St Paul’s asked him to conduct a wind octet – this was “the first time I had properly conducted”.

Music has a really central place in the history of ideas, art and culture generally.

between music and literature which particularly intrigued me, as a student of both. He commented that “music is too often thought of as outside the cultural mainstream. It is a slight outsider in the humanities. But music has a really central place in the history of ideas, art and culture generally.” Upon discussion of opera, he notes that he is “more interested in musical meaning and opera sometimes feels like it is giving you an excuse not to think about that. Music without a text does not constrict its meaning, it opens it up, only limited by your imagination.”

He thinks that there are broad parallels between the evolution of literature and music, especially apparent from the 18th century. “You can think about the rise of the novel in the 18th century, and simultaneously in music, you begin to get a sense of linear time and a sense of perspective, almost like the depth of perspective in visual art. I am also particularly interested in early modernism, and how writers and composers began to find new ways of representing perception”.

I next decided to quote Professor Mark Bailey, former High Master, from Joel’s Valedictory Report, “every now and then, even a special place encounters a very special talent”. We start to discuss the impact the School had on Joel’s growth as a musician. He explains that he is “very grateful for everything that St Paul’s gave me. The main benefit of going to a school like St Paul’s is getting that rounded education, because it is quite easy as a musician to be somewhat insular, and the more well-rounded you can be, the more meaningful music becomes, so just being in a climate where people were interested in ideas and broader concerns was very important.” He remembers Robin Wedderburn, whose “off-hand comments about music” would “open up new perspectives”; Tom Evans, who helped Joel look at “serious music theory” and Ryan Hepburn, whose passion for American minimalism and Steve Reich led to an “enormous concert” performed for Reich himself, who gave a masterclass at School. “A legendary event”, according to Joel. He calls Hepburn’s “love of that repertoire … infectious and inspirational”.

His best memory was “playing the Elgar Cello concerto with the orchestra in the  19

THE INTERVIEW

Upper 8th” which was “probably the culmination of all the performing I did at St Paul’s”. He remarks that he “came into school every day for 5 years at quarter past seven to practise, so to finish my time here with a big concerto in the hall was special.”

I asked Joel what advice he would give a 4th Form Pauline who was eager to become a professional musician. “Don’t specialise too early. I think school is the time to be trying lots of different things and throwing yourself into whatever opportunities come up. Go to lots of concerts – we are in one of the best and busiest musical capitals in the world.

Have a go at conducting, composing, listening, just immersing yourself in it.

It is not an easy life, but I would go for it, with your eyes open.”

I acknowledge that some readers, like me, may not be particularly well-versed in what Joel terms “the Classical Canon”, and so I inquired about some of his favourite composers and modern artists and asked for some recommendations for those wanting to gain more of an appreciation of classical music.

Surprisingly, he does not “ever listen to any music that wouldn’t be defined as art music or classical music”, which he notes is “quite rare amongst musicians”. He puts this down to “a lack of understanding” rather than “any sense of dislike or disdain”. Many of his colleagues love jazz, “something that’s quite different but also really interesting and rather complex”, but he argues that “what we call classical music is really 800 years’ worth of culture, so even just listening seriously to all of that takes several lifetimes, so he “just doesn’t have time”. The Canon, he says, has “sheer variety and diversity that you would find among a dozen popular, contemporary genres – it is a huge space to explore”. However, he does suggest that “there is probably no more exciting place to start listening than the late 19th, early 20th century apex of the symphonic tradition – Mahler, Sibelius, Strauss and even Elgar, Bruckner, as well as early modernists like Stravinsky and Debussy.

Don’t be put off if you feel you don’t understand anything about it. You just have to dive in and experience it.”

I was particularly struck by his word “understand”, so I probed deeper, asking 20

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

 Joel at the Salzburg Festival 2021

The more time you spend with music, and the more you learn about it, whatever form that takes, in general, the more rewarding that gets.

whether one can ever fully “understand” music in a philosophical sense. “No”, he answers, “but there are as many ways of understanding music as there are listeners, and there are as many paradigms of understanding as there are interpreters.

The more time you spend with music, and the more you learn about it, whatever form that takes, in general, the more rewarding that gets. Imagination is what music depends on for its meaning, so it doesn’t really matter what imagination you have – everyone has a different imagination – but you need to bring something to it to get something out of it.”

I also asked a question that I am sure many have pondered when attending a concert or opera; what is the role of the conductor? Surely, one interpretation of one Rachmaninov concerto cannot be too dissimilar to another. Joel refutes this, insisting that “there are as many ways of understanding conducting as there are conductors – it depends on what you as an individual bring to it.” On the surface, conductors simply “oversee how the orchestra plays, bringing everyone together, making sure they’re all playing in the same way, correcting mistakes, making sure the orchestra as a machine is functioning properly.” However, with professional orchestras, these issues largely come pre-resolved, so the art of conducting has more “nuance”. These orchestras look for someone “who can really get under the skin of the music, bring it to life in a particularly vivid way.

The way you do that is by influencing the sound of the orchestra – the energy, rhythm, balance, articulation and all the other tools that we have at our disposal.

Through those things, you are answering much bigger questions about the music.

You’re thinking about the structure of the music, the style and the expression.”

He implores those who are still “mystified by conducting” to “go to different concerts or listen to different recordings and get a sense of the various atmospheres in a concert hall with different conductors, and the details you hear in different recordings of the same piece. That’s the kind of difference at a professional level that you can make.”

His argument, though clear, is essentially founded on the basis that a conductor

must have excellent musicianship, and as a piano teacher, I wondered whether you can teach this quality. “You have to inspire a love of music in whoever you are teaching”, he answers, “for students to be able to figure it out for themselves. You can teach a technique that is capable of expression. As a cellist, you can teach people, if they work hard enough at it, to find different sounds in the right hand, different kinds of vibrato, and how to shift in a certain way, but you can’t necessarily teach the inner understanding of music – that is a personal journey.”

We then moved on to Joel’s “personal journey” and his goals for the next ten years. He has “ambition”. He does “want to have an orchestra of my own, be a chief conductor of an orchestra in the next few years.” What he really wants to do is “to find orchestras that share what I want to do with the music, and who are open to ideas and are versatile. Conducting is something that you really have to teach yourself and you never stop developing, and I want to explore a lot of different repertoire.” He is interested in composition, but is self-deprecatory, admitting he has “no ability or talent for it at all, and sometimes it is hard enough to understand someone else’s music, so it’s not really the way my mind ends up working.”

I closed the interview by posing the questions from the BBC radio show Desert Island Discs but limit Joel to five discs.

Joel’s records were “The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky because it’s probably the most miraculous piece that I can think of, in the sense that you just can’t believe that one person could have the idea for a piece like that and then also realise it in such detail – it is just completely mind-boggling and revolutionary.

Daphnis et Chloë, the ballet by Ravel, which is hard to listen to structurally without the ballet, because it can kind of feel like there is a story going on that you cannot really grasp, but it is just the most sensual piece of music I can think of, and the detail of the surface combined with the richness of the harmony is just unique.

Symphony No.9 by Mahler – this is Joyce, Woolf, Seurat, all these modernists, feeding into this huge 80-minute symphony. It takes the archetype of a late

romantic symphony but really challenges it in very interesting ways and questions the coherence that the symphony in general is built on. And the last movement is the most beautiful and other-worldly piece of music”.

He then asks for “a CD with the last three Mozart symphonies”, justifying picking what are ostensibly three pieces of music through Nicholas Harnoncourt’s “theory that they form one big work”.

“He wrote them very close together”, he explains, “and the first one has this big, grand opening and the last one has a very complicated finale. They could form one big trilogy. Mozart took the symphony single-handedly from being a sort of trivial curtain raiser that you played at the beginning of an opera, to where Beethoven took it afterwards – he took it to being the prestige genre of instrumental music, and that achievement is incredible.”

His final record is Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich a tribute to Ryan Hepburn and his time at St Paul’s.

“The minimalists came along in the 60s and 70s, in a climate of very thorny modernism, and completely swept away all our assumptions about music, and Music for 18 Musicians is a piece that really challenges your sense of time passing when you listen to it. It’s so repetitive, but it doesn’t sound like it – it is just leading you through its structure. Listening to it can be a very profound experience.”

“You have to inspire a love of music in whoever you are teaching… for students to be able to figure it out for themselves.

You can teach a technique that is capable of expression.

His book is Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, and his luxury item “would be a cricket bat and bowling machine.”

To quote from Joel’s chosen author, “The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for”, and it seems Joel has found just that. For me, this was a fascinating interview that was perhaps more educational in terms of comprehending music than any of my Music studies.  21

IN CONVERSATION

The Future Of

series is available in full on the OPC website As part of the celebrations of the 150th Anniversary of the Old Pauline Club, President Ed Vaizey (1981-85) has had conversations with OPs who are leaders in their fields.

So far, he has covered the Future of Politics with George Osborne (1984-89); Britain’s Position in the World with Sir Simon Fraser (1971-75); Health with Matthew Gould (1984-89) and The Arts with Simon Fox (1974-78) and Patrick Spence (1981-85). In May, his final conversation will be with Lord Baker (1948-53) and the High Master on The Future of Education.

Below are Atrium’s summaries of these conversations.

POLITICS (30th November 2021)

“Keir Starmer doesn’t want it as much as Boris Johnson” George Osborne was appointed one of the youngest ever Chancellors of the Exchequer in 2010 and served the full term of the Cameron administration until 2016. He left the House of Commons in 2017, having served sixteen years as an MP. Since leaving politics, he has undertaken a variety of roles, including editing London’s Evening Standard. He now works as a banker with Robey Warshaw and is Chair of the British Museum.

The conversation covered a number of topics including politics from how to navigate the PM/ Chancellor relationship through Brexit, being in Opposition, the red wall seats, the future of the Union and the two-party system in the UK as well as life as Chair of the British Museum and Culture Wars.

George touched on his time at School and the quality of the teaching which he thought was ahead of his experience at Oxford. He also ruefully reminded us that he was Vice-Captain of School in 1989.

His view was that Labour was becoming more credible. It had a Shadow Cabinet that looked like it could form a government and that it was distancing itself from the Corbyn policies. But “Keir Starmer does not want it as much as Boris Johnson. Boris will do anything to keep the job and be re-elected”.

George’s final answer, however on whether he would go back into politics was possibly the most 22

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

revealing. “Being in politics is an amazing, all-consuming life but, only when you stop, do you realise the damage it does. Political life often ends in the equivalent of a career car crash. If I was to return properly it would have to be as an MP because the action is in the House of Commons and that rules out other things in your life”.

BRITAIN’S POSITION IN THE WORLD (20th January 2022)

“Times have turned darker” Simon Fraser is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of business consultancy firm, Flint Global. He advises on policy, political and regulatory issues in the UK and Europe. Simon was Head of the UK Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service (2010-2015). As a Senior UK Diplomat, he ran the global network of British embassies and was a member of the National Security Council. As Permanent Secretary, Simon led the UK Department for Business (2009-2010) in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Simon is Deputy Chairman of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), a member of the UK board of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and Honorary President of BFPG (the British Foreign Policy Group). He has also served as a governor of St Paul’s.

It is hard to believe that Simon Fraser was ever in trouble at School but in answer to Ed’s first question he reminded us that detention at Barnes in the early 1970s involved removing stones from rugby pitches.

Surely, Simon was supervising the detainees.

Later Simon commented that, “it is very difficult to quantify the economic cost of diplomacy. You know what it costs when you have a war, but you do not know what you save by not going to war”. He had

earlier told us that there was some debate about whether to go to war in Iraq but “I was not listened to”. He particularly admires Tony Blair along with Margaret Thatcher, Peter Mandelson and William Hague of all the politicians he served.

The discussion and questions took the audience from geo-political stands-off and the balancing act in a world dominated by autocracies and democracies, to the disparity between rich and poor which has been accentuated by Covid and climate issues. We were shown that a month is a long time in politics as one of Ed’s questions was “what happens if Russia invades Ukraine?”. The Special Relationship, the vulnerability of Britain’s continued soft power, how to have a balanced relationship with China and the potential of AUKUS (trilateral security pact between Australia, UK and the USA) were also covered.

We discovered that Simon was never an ambassador because he was more interested in policy and issues. We did, however, learn that Paris is his favourite embassy not least because of the manhole cover on its grass tennis court.

Possibly his most haunting comment of the hour was that “in 1989 we felt liberal democracy had won but times have turned darker”.  23

IN CONVERSATION

HEALTH (23rd February 2022)

UK healthcare is being successfully “disrupted” Matthew Gould was the CEO of NHSX, the NHS’s digital transformation arm, where he was responsible for the largest digital transformation programme in the world. He told us that NHSX became part of the NHS in February 2022 because the argument that digital care has to be an integral part of health provision had been won. Matthew was previously the British Ambassador to Israel (2010-2015) and the Government’s cyber-security chief.

During the conversation we learnt that the CEO of NHSX was known by some as “Matt from IT”, that one of the highlights of his career was being spared Ed Vaizey as his boss and that he walks his dog with his friend since School, George Osborne. George mentioned in November that their plan on leaving School was for Matthew to be a Conservative MP and George a diplomat. The best laid plans and all that.

In answer to how being at St Paul’s had prepared him for such a varied career, Matthew replied that the School gave him the chance “to have real intellectual curiosity, the ability to think broadly, develop massive over self-confidence and not speak to a girl until I arrived at university”.

Matthew’s starting point when arriving at NHSX was that he had to view “the NHS not as an organisation but as 10% of the UK economy”. He realised that it therefore needed a safe and mature approach to and use of data, technology that was

24

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

‘easy’ not ‘hateful’, and a workforce that was comfortable using that technology.

It became clear during the conversation that digital developments at the NHS led by Matthew and accelerated by Covid were going to transform health and social care in the UK. The NHS App is now on 25 million phones whereas it was on 2m at the start of the decade. Until this happened, the health care model in the UK had hardly changed since 1948.

It had remained a face-to-face process for patients and doctors and other medical staff.

The last two years has shown that it can be changed and made more efficient with services accessed including triage, consultations and results of tests provided quickly and efficiently over phones.

Easy to access, better data provision is leading to improved diagnosis and therapy. He said that UK health care can and is being “successfully ‘disrupted’ to make it a ‘pleasure’ for all involved”.

Digital care is no longer a tech project but is at the core of the UK’s health and care provision with virtual wards becoming a reality in care homes and across the community. They can provide the equivalent of 42 district hospitals in the UK through remote analysis of long-term conditions with constant, convenient and efficient monitoring. There is a distinct possibility that ‘bed blocking’ could become a thing of the past and we might possibly even have the resources available to mitigate the mental health tsunami of which we are warned.

Simon Fox

Patrick Spence

Streaming is the future and the screens we look at might or might not be called a television.

THE ARTS (3rd March 2022)

It’s all about streaming, digital and the weather Simon Fox is Chief Executive of Frieze, a contemporary art magazine which runs arts fairs in the UK, USA and Asia, since 2020. Previously, he was the Chief Executive of Reach plc (2012-2020), publisher of the Daily Mirror, Daily Express, OK! and 80 other regional news brands. Simon spent most of his career in retail and e-commerce. He was the Chief Executive of HMV Group (2006-2012), which operated the HMV brand in the UK and overseas, MaMa Group (live music) and Waterstones bookstores. His non-executive roles have included the Guardian Media Group and the RAC and currently he chairs the Good Business Charter.

Patrick Spence has worked in television for thirty years. He started as a Script Editor working on Cracker, Waking the Dead, Silent Witness, Line of Duty and Five Minutes of Heaven. In 2010 he became a Producer with his own company, Fifty Fathoms.

Recent credits include Adult Material, The A Word, Fortitude, Peaky Blinders and Marvellous, for which he won a BAFTA. Patrick joined ITV Studios last year as Creative Director. Current productions include Alex Cary’s adaptation of Ben Macintyre’s Spy Among Friends, starring Damian Lewis, Guy Pearce and Anna Maxwell Martin; George Kay’s Litvinenko, starring David Tennant; Gwyn Hughes’ People vs Post Office, and Pete Bowker’s Ralph and Katie, a romantic comedy starring, written and directed by people with disability.

Neither Patrick nor Simon have been back to St Paul’s since they left and were disappointed that a London Underground strike had forced the conversation online. They both enjoyed their time at School but The Arts in the 1970s and 1980s seemed to be viewed as an add-on and not core. St Paul’s had however helped them in other ways particularly by preparing them for the ferociously competitive arts world.

The creative industries in the UK are huge contributors to the economy at 6% of GDP or £120bn a year and are also significant in the UK’s soft power

so their future matters. Patrick questioned what that future might be. He highlighted his shift in job title from TV producer to content provider.

Streaming is the future and the screens we look at might or might not be called a television. The mega global players are squeezing out national champions and will either achieve this through acquisition or by raising production and crew costs to levels that are prohibitive.

Simon commented that Digital Art with NonFungible Tokens as certificates of ownership, so artists benefit on each resale rather than only the first one, is taking hold. This could, however, mean that physical art becomes even more attractive as digital takes market share.

Both Patrick and Simon saw their creative spaces becoming more global with concerns about carbon footprints driving the use of virtual reality. Until 2020, UK only television had a role. The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 could produce relatively low budget programmes without being concerned about whether they attracted a global market, reminding us that Emmerdale had more viewers in the UK than Game of Thrones. The developed (Netflix and Apple) and developing (Disney and Amazon) global providers want product for global markets.

Both saw a future for the BBC but with it concentrating on what it does well – radio, drama and documentaries – and with a much-reduced cost structure. We will probably watch the Queen’s funeral as a community on a terrestrial channel (though not with a Dimbleby commentating) but almost certainly not King Charles’s.

Though a decade apart at St Paul’s, Patrick and Simon came of age when families and communities still gathered around the television to share great events and favourite dramas: the Arts was still viewed through an elitist and often national lens.

They now find themselves at the height of their careers facing global creative markets blown by winds such as cancel culture. It is not unusual for families to watch different content on different devices in the same room. (Editor: Really)  25

IN CONVERSATION

Refugees at St Paul’s David Herman (1973-75) records the influence of 20th Century Pauline refugee families. Both his parents were Jewish refugees from central Europe.

T

he story of the European refugee artists and thinkers who came to Britain between the Russian Revolution and the end of the Second World War is extraordinary.

Thinkers like Ernst Gombrich, George Steiner and Karl Popper, writers like Koestler, Canetti and Stoppard, historians like Lewis Namier, EJ Hobsbawm and GR Elton, filmmakers like Korda, Pressburger and Reisz, psychologists like Freud, Klein and Eysenck, scientists like Bondi and Perutz, Krebs, Born and Chain.

In science they revolutionised physics and biology, physiology and medicine. Bondi wrote about the ‘steady-state’ theory of the universe and Leslie Brent’s work with Medawar on immunological tolerance, was the basis of transplantation biology.

Fritsch and Peierls worked out how much uranium it took to make an atomic bomb and Chain was one of the scientists who discovered penicillin. Decisive moments in the three great scientific stories of the mid-20th century – the making of the atomic bomb, the revolution in molecular biology and the discovery of penicillin – happened in Britain, and in each case, refugees were key figures. Refugees and émigrés founded the Edinburgh Festival and Wolfson 26

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

College in Oxford, the Warburg Institute and Glyndebourne, Thames and Hudson and the Ballet Rambert. They ran world-famous labs and built some of the landmarks of 20th century British architecture.

And they transformed our everyday world: Fritz Landauer’s shopfronts for Boots and Burtons, ‘Vicky’s newspaper cartoons of ‘Supermac’ and Hans Schleger’s advertisements for MacFisheries.

They changed the way we think about Englishness and they re-wrote the British past, from GR Elton’s revolution in Tudor government to the 19th century social history of Hobsbawm. They opened British eyes to European culture and ideas, and they played a crucial role in the Cold War. The impact of European refugees, of Jewish refugees on almost every aspect of British life, was enormous.

What does this have to do with St Paul’s?

Numerous refugees and the sons of refugees came to St Paul’s during the 20th century. Some are well-known, others less familiar, but their impact is undeniable.

First, there were the refugees who fled from the Russian Revolution, including the political philosopher, Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909-97), the historian, Leonard Schapiro (1908-83) and George Ignatieff (1913-89), a leading Russian-Canadian diplomat, son of the last Minister of Education of Tsar Nicholas II. All three

were born before the First World War and went to St Paul’s after the Russian Revolution.

Berlin won admission to Westminster but was warned that with a name like Isaiah, he might have trouble fitting in. His tutor asked him, had he considered changing his name to James or Robert?

So, he went to St Paul’s instead. According to his biographer, Michael Ignatieff (son of OP George Ignatieff), ‘in 1922 there were something like seventy Jewish boys out of a total of 500.’ Berlin attended St. Paul’s from 1922-27. Leonard Schapiro, with whom Berlin had once played in Pavlovsk, a resort south of Petrograd, in 1919, and whose family fled from Russia at the same time as the Berlins, also went to St Paul’s. Berlin was top of his form twice. According to one report, ‘he is sometimes inclined to write about ultimates, instead of addressing himself to the question in hand.’ Arthur Calder-Marshall, another contemporary at St Paul’s, remembered that Berlin talked ‘like playing an instrument – not in pursuit of truth or beauty or anything except sheer pleasure – like a fountain.’

One of Berlin’s closest friends from St Paul’s was Walter Ettinghausen (1910-2001), who was born in Munich. His family moved to Switzerland during World War I and then settled in England where Walter attended St Paul’s. He later taught at Oxford, was a codebreaker during the war, and in 1946 moved to Jerusalem, changed his name to Walter Eytan, and became one of Israel’s leading diplomats.

There was a small handful of Pauline refugees who came to Britain during the First World War, including Ettinghausen and Sefton Delmer (1904-79), who later became a famous journalist. Born in Berlin, Delmer was a British subject and came to London after his father was interned as an enemy alien.

He was educated at St Paul’s and Oxford, and later worked as a foreign reporter for many years for The Daily Express.

Sefton Delmer (1904-79), who later became a famous journalist

The largest group of Pauline refugees came from central Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. One of the first was Professor Karl Leyser (1920-92), one of the great medieval historians of his generation. Leyser was born in Düsseldorf, son of a Jewish manufacturer. Karl came to London in 1937 and studied at St Paul’s (1937-39), helped by voluntary agencies for refugees. The medieval historian, Henry Mayr-Harting (himself a refugee from Prague), wrote in a tribute to Leyser, ‘There is a story that because Karl would have exceeded the then quota of nonAnglicans at St Paul’s, he was at first smuggled by the charismatic Philip Whitting (History Department 1929-63) into his history class. In any event, Whitting was an inspiration from the start. Karl would later say that the most lasting and exhilarating trait of Whitting’s teaching for himself was his use of incident, an anecdote or a saying, to illuminate “as if by a flash” a whole historical landscape. He taught with verve and, “each essay was an event; he went through them with the writers individually, taking if anything more pains than would College tutors”.’

Sir Kenneth Adams set

A contemporary of Leyser’s was Sir Kenneth Adam (1921-2016), born Klaus Hugo George Fritz Adam, in Berlin, to a secular Jewish family. The family fled Nazi Germany in 1934, arriving in England with nothing other than some gold coins his mother Lilli had smuggled out and settled in Hampstead in 1935, when Ken went to St Paul’s. He later became one of the greatest British film production designers, best known for his set designs for the James Bond films of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as for Dr. Strangelove.

He won two Academy Awards for Best Art Direction.

Clement Freud (1924-2009) was a broadcaster, Liberal MP and one of the first celebrity chefs. Seven years after his death he was investigated for child abuse. He was the grandson of Sigmund Freud, the son of Ernst Freud, a Viennese Jew who left Berlin for London in 1933, and the brother of the artist Lucian Freud. Clement went to St Paul’s just before the Second World War. Klaus Friedrich Roth (1925-2015) was born to a Jewish family in Breslau, then in Germany. He  27

IN CONVERSATION

escaped to Britain with his family in 1933 and was educated at St Paul’s (1939-43), where he was a leading chess player, and then at Cambridge. He became a distinguished mathematician, taught at UCL and Imperial and was awarded the prestigious Fields Medal in 1958.

Edward Behr (1926-2007) was one of the most famous foreign correspondents of the second half of the 20th century. Born in Paris, the son of RussianJewish parents, the family escaped to London when the Germans invaded France and he was educated at St Paul’s before serving in India during the war and starting a long and distinguished career with Time and Newsweek.

Franz Daniel Kahn (1926-98) was born in Nuremberg and fled from Nazi Germany to London, where he attended St Paul’s from 1940-44. He later taught as a mathematician and astrophysicist at the University of Manchester for almost thirty years and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Alexis Koerner (1928-84), later Korner, was a British blues musician and radio broadcaster. Like Clement Freud, he was the son of an Austrian Jewish father, and after an itinerant childhood came to London in 1940 and went to St Paul’s during the war.

Hans Werner “John” Weitz (1923-2002) was born to a Jewish family in Berlin. When he was 10 years old, Hitler came to power and Weitz was sent to boarding school in England. He attended St Paul’s from 1936-39 and later became a Vice-President of the Old Pauline Club. In 1938 his family left Berlin, lived in Paris and London and eventually settled in New York where Hans became a well-known menswear designer and later had a second career as a writer and historian.

Hans Werner “John” Weitz (1923-2002) attended St Paul’s from 1936-39 and later became a Vice-President of the Old Pauline Club 28

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

Professor Claus Michael Kauffmann (1931-), was born in Frankfurt, the son of Arthur and Tamara Kauffmann.

In 1938 his family escaped to Burnley. He went to St Paul’s (1943-48) and Merton College, Oxford, then the Warburg Institute. He worked at the V&A for twenty-five years before becoming Professor of History of Art and Director of The Courtauld, Institute of Art. In addition to Pauline refugees who fled to Britain, there were numerous second-generation refugees.

Daniel Weissbort (1935-2013) was the son of Polish Jews who arrived in London in the 1930s. He was educated at St Paul’s after the war and then at Cambridge. In 1965, with Ted Hughes, Weissbort founded the magazine Modern Poetry in Translation which he edited for almost 40 years. In the early 1970s he went to the USA where he directed, for over thirty years, the Translation Workshop and MFA Program in Translation at the University of Iowa.

He edited eight anthologies of Russian and East European poetry and translated more than twenty books of poetry and other works.

Richard Gombrich (1937-) was the son of the great Austrian refugee art historian, Sir Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001) and his wife Ilse. He was born in London the year after his parents fled from Vienna and just months before the Anschluss. Richard went to St Paul’s from 1950-55 and became a leading Indologist and scholar of Sanskrit, Pali and Buddhist studies.

He was the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford from 1976 to 2004.

Robin Hirsch’s parents escaped from Berlin at the last moment, his father in the wake of Kristallnacht in 1938, his mother at the beginning of 1939. Other members of his family were not so lucky. Both of his grandmothers were killed in Auschwitz, those members of his family who survived were scattered across the globe. As Robin wrote to me, ‘my sister and I grew up having to figure out an awful lot for ourselves.’

His parents married in London in February 1939.

After war was declared, Robin’s father was interned on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien. Robin later wrote a book about growing up in the shadow of this history: Last Dance at The Hotel Kempinski. He writes about the hopeless prospect of ‘blending in’, ‘my floundering attempts to find my academic footing, my bewilderment at school and my overpowering confusion at home.’ It became the basis for a cycle of one-man shows called MOSAIC: Fragments of a Jewish Life.

Hirsch (1942-) studied at St Paul’s and Oxford and has taught, published, acted, directed and produced theatre on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 1977 he founded the Cornelia Street Café in New York’s Greenwich Village which he ran for more than forty years. It was one of the most famous cafés in New York. Singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega sang there, Eve Ensler performed The Vagina Monologues there and Oliver Sacks (another Old Pauline) gave readings.

John Reizenstein (1956-) is the son of the great German-Jewish composer, Franz Reizenstein (1911-68), who grew up in Nuremberg and emigrated to England in 1934 to escape the Nazis. In 1958 Franz became a professor of piano at the Royal Academy of Music and in 1964 at the Royal Manchester College of Music. Not only did his son John go on to have a distinguished career at St Paul’s but so did his three sons.

Oliver Musgrave (1958-), a Captain of School in 1976, is the son of Beatrice Musgrave (née Falkenstein, 1924-2017) who was born and grew up in Hamburg and escaped to London with her parents and younger sister in September 1937. She worked for 25 years as an editor and production manager for the German refugee publisher, Peter Owen.

Malcolm Miller (1958-) is also the son of a refugee publisher, Elly Miller (1928-2020). She was born in Vienna, the daughter of the famous publisher, Béla Horovitz (1898-1955), who co-founded Phaidon Verlag, one of the best-known art publishing houses in central Europe. The Horovitz family escaped from Vienna after the Anschluss in March 1938. Horovitz and his partner Ludwig Goldscheider re-founded Phaidon in England. Their greatest success after the war was The Story of Art (1950), by Ernst Gombrich, which became an international bestseller. It was one of the most famous art history books of the 20th century and established Phaidon’s reputation for publishing beautifully produced books of the highest scholarly standards, aimed at a popular audience.

Elly’s son, Malcolm, went to St Paul’s in the 1970s and later became a musicologist.

Simon Milton Sir Simon Milton (19612011), a Conservative politician and leader of Westminster City Council, was the son of Clive Milton, one of the Jewish children who came to Britain with the Kindertransport in 1939.

The journalist Jonathan Foreman (1965-) is the son of a very different kind of refugee, the famous American screenwriter, Carl Foreman (1914-84), who wrote the awardwinning films The Bridge on the River Kwai and High Noon and was blacklisted by Hollywood and forced to leave for England, where Jonathan came to St Paul’s.

These are just a few of the refugees and sons of refugees who came to St Paul’s. There are many more, but several things are striking about these Pauline refugees. First, the range of careers they made for themselves, from philosophers and mathematicians to journalists, diplomats and celebrity chefs. Many became distinguished scholars – Berlin, Schapiro, Kaufmann, Leyser, Gombrich, Kahn and Roth, among them. Others had more

maverick careers, running a famous café in Greenwich Village, playing the Blues, advertising dog food on TV. In 1928, the young Isaiah Berlin wrote to GK Chesterton, ‘The boast and peculiarity of St Paul’s has for a long time been … that Paulines are totally unlike men from any other school, and totally unlike each other.’

Second, how many of them became itinerant in one way or another. John Weitz and Robin Hirsch settled in the United States, Walter Ettinghausen emigrated to Israel. Daniel Weissbort and Isaiah Berlin were itinerant in other ways: Weissbort became a worldfamous translator and Berlin helped introduce European thinkers, especially Russian writers and thinkers like Turgenev and Herzen, to British culture.

Sefton Delmer and Edward Behr both became famous foreign correspondents. Richard Gombrich became a leading pioneer in Asian thought and languages. They added a new cosmopolitanism to British culture.

It is also important to make distinctions between refugees from the Russian Revolution and from Nazism, between refugees and the children of refugees who came to St Paul’s after the war, and between refugees and the sons of immigrants, like Jonathan Miller and Oliver Sacks, both sons of medical fathers of Lithuanian Jewish descent, or EV Rieu, the famous publisher and classicist, who introduced a whole generation of British readers to the Classics, and was the son of a Swiss Orientalist.

Finally, we should pay tribute to St Paul’s, as well as to these Paulines. The School welcomed so many refugees and sons of refugees at a time when many private schools did not want to take in Jews, refugees or otherwise. Germany’s loss, and Russia’s, was Britain’s gain, whether it was medieval history or the look of James Bond films. St Paul’s deserves enormous credit for taking in these refugees and their sons and grandsons.

(Editor: Atrium usually includes the school dates of Paulines in articles. For David’s we are using the dates of the lives of the OPs and others mentioned.) 

The journalist Jonathan Foreman (1965-) is the son of the famous American screenwriter, Carl Foreman (1914-84), who wrote the award-winning film The Bridge on the River Kwai

29

ET CETERA

Paul Cartledge (1960-64) attempts to parse Adam Peaty’s tattoos.

Skin in the Game: Tattooing Ancient and Modern The Olympics have come and gone – again. The delayed 2020 TokyoJapan iteration of the ‘revived’ (post-1896) summer Olympics, that is. I personally was rather heartened and encouraged by the way the International Olympic Committee’s most senior officials attempted to draw attention to the (modern) Olympic Truce movement. That seems to me a far more healthy legacy of the ancient Olympics than say the pre-Games torch-relay invented ex nihilo by the German Olympic Committee for the HitlerNazi Berlin Games of 1936. As I write, the Beijing winter Olympics of 2022, no less politically controversial and for much the same reasons, are upon us.”

Modern professional sport was once stigmatized by George Orwell as ‘war minus the shooting’ – a formulation borrowed by my Cambridge colleague Nigel Spivey for his splendid book of that title on the original ancient Greek Olympics, timed to coincide with the Athens summer Games of 2004. The ancient Olympics could indeed be a paramilitary exercise, and the political manipulation of their modern counterparts by regimes of a militaristic and authoritarian hue strikes an unpleasant chord.

But it was not that aspect of the modern Olympics and professional sport that most caught my attention – or rather my eye – in 2021. It was tattooing. Specifically, the tattoos 30

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

sported by the then 26-year-old multiple world-record breaking sprint swimmer Adam Peaty of the UK, now Adam Peaty OBE. The ancient Hellenes could be keen enough on swimming, especially when, as in a naval battle, the ability to swim could be a matter of life or death. The Athenians even equated an inability to swim with illiteracy. But swimming was not for them an Olympic sport nor, if it had been, would they have bothered (even if they had been able) to time anyone’s winning race. (For the record, Peaty’s winning time in the 100-metre solo breaststroke event in Tokyo was an astonishing 57.37 seconds. And he went on to win medals in two team-relay races, another notion alien to the ancient Greeks’ individualistic sporting mentality.)

have them luxuriantly tattooed. Not that tattoos were unknown to the ancient Greeks. In an outstanding article first published in the March/ April 1999 issue of the US magazine Archaeology the classical folklorist Adrienne Mayor amassed a wealth of ancient evidence for the practice, citing examples from Egypt, central Asia, and the Swiss-Italian Alps, as well as Bulgaria and Greece itself.

What mattered – all that mattered – for the ancients was who won, who came first: there were no silver or bronze medals at the ancient Olympics, indeed no medals at all, just a gloriously symbolic olive wreath for the victor, for the man or boy (or ultimately woman) who had found most favour in the sight of Zeus of Mt Olympus – and of the up to 40,000 crowd of spectators at hot, dusty, thirsty Olympia in the height of a northwest Peloponnesian Greek summer every four years.

Mayor offers a wide variety of possible motivations: medical therapy to relieve pain, magical protection, vengeance, or declaring victory over an enemy. But what she was not able to cite was any example of an adult, free, citizen Greek male, let alone any Olympic victor or even competitor, who had had his skin treated in this fashion. There was, I think, one powerful and overriding reason why not: tattooing was a ‘barbarian’ (non-Greek) – and therefore barbarous and barbaric – practice. Moreover, it was all too closely akin to a practice that the Greeks did not shrink from employing themselves, namely branding – which was used by them as a particularly painful and unpleasant

Nor – and this is my immediate point – would any ancient Greek Adam Peaty have had done to his arms what Peaty has had done to his: that is,

What mattered – all that mattered – for the ancients was who won, who came first: there were no silver or bronze medals at the ancient Olympics

punishment of an enemy, fellowGreeks not excluded.

Compare and contrast Adam Peaty… who has no fewer than thirteen tattoos on his arms and hands.

‘For me’, he has explained, ‘tattoos represent character, especially in swimming where you are pretty much naked’. (For the record: in the ancient Olympics all competitors in the – men-only – athletic competitions competed stark naked. 2008 in Beijing was, however, an exception to the near-naked rule for today’s Olympic swimmers, when they covered themselves up in speed-assisting techno bodysuits.) I shall not describe all thirteen (there are lavishly illustrated websites) and will focus specifically on those with a Hellenic – ancient Greek – derivation or association.

On the upper part of his left arm Peaty has a lion, a ‘British’ one, since ‘I’m very patriotic’. On that same arm he also has the 5 Olympic rings, 2016 in Roman numerals (MMXVI) for his last Olympic gold won at Rio, and ‘equilibrium’. But it is his right arm – the one the ancient Greeks would have valued far above the sinister southpaw – that interests me most.

For there one may see, intermittently, as he breaststrokes his way winningly up and down the pool, images of four figures drawn from the world of ancient Greece. The overall Hellenic effect is, admittedly, slightly diminished by the inclusion of ‘divide et impera’, but we shall draw a Homeric veil over that. Choice of the Olympian god Poseidon was a no-brainer, for his clear associations with water. Achilles clearly appealed as being the most heroic – or at least one of the most lethally efficient – warriors of the ancient Hellenic repertoire, fictional or real-life, and of course we might add that his mother, Thetis, was a water (sea) goddess. But the third image is a little more enigmatic: Athena. True, she was an Olympian warrior goddess, and, being born from her Olympian father Zeus’s cranium, she tended to

favour the masculine side. But Athena and swimming? The fit is not obvious.

Finally, but not least, on the right forearm is inked a clearly Greek, possibly Spartan, heavy-armed infantry warrior.

warrior. And I already remembered that retired Australian-Greek tennisplayer Mark Philippoussis proudly carried – and indeed presumably still does carry – on his right arm an image of Alexander the Great.

Adam Peaty is by no means alone in drawing on the ancient world for tattoo inspiration. A quick internet ‘research’ trawl yields Rasheed Wallace, an American basketball champion who sports images of Egyptian pharaoh Akhnaten, his wife Nefertiti and their two children on an arm; and Matt Kemp, an LA Dodgers baseballer who, also on an arm, wears a sword-bearing ancient Greek

But for me Peaty wins the crown, the stephanos, for the range, power and indeed coverage of his Hellenic tattoos. He indeed has skin in his game, no question.

Editor: An earlier version of this article appeared in ARGO: A Hellenic Review, a journal of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, of which Paul is the current President.  31

PAULINE ABOUT TOWN

Iain Gale (1973-77) unveils

EDINBURGH ‘Auld Reekie’ is a city of two halves, as both Ian Rankin and his literary precursor Robert Louis Stevenson would tell you. It is a real Jekyll and Hyde of a town, where the close-set medieval/ Jacobean tenement skyscrapers of the Old Town sit high above the expansive squares and crescents of James Craig’s 18th century New Town, offering two very different characters, which are clearly reflected in those of its many pubs, clubs and restaurants.  The Lookout

WHERE TO EAT

Rollo Tucked into a neat terrace of shops on bohemian Broughton Street, in the city’s east end, Ailsa Rollo’s restaurant is a real gem. It is tiny and also very dark but these are a virtue. Perhaps ‘intimate’ is the best word to describe Rollo’s teak, leather and stone interior.

No more than you might expect from an owner whose parents are an architect and an artist (her mother Alison carved the stone heads which adorn the room). The staff are attentive but not overbearing, the wine list reasonable and quaffable and the food just superb. Go for the haggis bon-bons and the sliced beef with parmesan and rocket, but there are also delicious vegetarian options.

Booking is essential and they do not take under 18 diners. R ollo

Ondine For a seafood experience you can hardly do better than Ondine. Set just off the Royal Mile, on the Old Town’s George IV Bridge, the restaurant has recently undergone a superb design makeover and the interiors are even more opulent than before, setting off food to match. Celebrated, award winning head chef, the amiable Roy Brett, honed his seafood skills with his old friend Rick Stein and the wealth of experience really shows. Do not miss the lobster thermidor.

Chez Jules If you are looking for evidence of the Scots-French Auld Alliance, then go no further. Chez Jules is exactly what it looks like: a slightly down-at-heel Parisian brasserie serving everything you might expect from escargots to superb steaks. The wines are classic rural French and the ambience is legendary, as are the loos. Not to be missed.

Dishoom This is far more than an Indian restaurant. Entering Dishoom feels like walking into one of Manhattan’s finest, although it styles itself a ‘Bombay bar’.

The place specialises in small dishes and its left to you to combine although advice is freely given. They do not generally take reservations, so just walk in.

Café Andaluz The thing about Andaluz is that, as in its mother country, here you can just drop in and grab some tapas and a glass of rioja. It just feels authentic, a huge cave of a place, decorated with classic blue and white Andalucian tiles and ceramics. Try the ox cheeks and the unctuous black pudding and chorizo.

32

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

The Lookout Set atop Carlton Hill, next to the Royal Observatory, this exquisite glass cube offers Michelin listed tasting menus sourced from local, sustainable, seasonal produce. It also boasts an incredible all-round view of the city and across to the hills of Fife. As you might expect the food is not half bad either but be sure to take a fat wallet.

Patisserie Florentine The closest thing that Edinburgh has to offer to a genuine Parisian or Florentine café, this is a regular haunt of the urbane locals of Stockbridge and the lower New Town. A few tables sit outside for the more hardy patrons, while the little back room is a wonderfully discreet rendezvous.

Leo’s Beanery Stylish, boho-chic Leo’s is renowned for its great selection of hand ground coffees and delicious brunches. Try the poached eggs and pesto.

Tuk Tuk Authentic Indian Street food says it all here and the interior is styled to match.

No fuss, no frills, just the genuine smells, tastes and atmosphere of the sub-continent. On the corner of the main artery to the south side, it is conveniently situated, directly opposite the King’s Theatre and that old school Edinburgh hostelry Bennet’s Bar.

WHERE TO DRINK

Teuchters A justifiably popular West End rugby international hang out, either before or after nearby Murrayfield, but away from the crowds with some great real ales and craft beers and a huge range of whiskies.

Kay’s Bar This tiny old style Edinburgh bar, tucked away in a mews off one of the New Town’s most elegant streets, hasn’t changed a jot since I was a student here in the late 70s. The flames from the real fire are reflected in the gloss paint of the elegant, dark red walls. The beers, and there a good number of them, flow freely as does the banter between the eclectic mix of patrons, from lawyers and financiers to a healthy spattering of artists and writers. The back room, furnished with a library of books, is perfect for a secret assignation.

VISIT & SHOP

suspended from the ceiling. Others are dotted around the pub’s intriguing maze of rooms, including one devoted to Winston Churchill. Do not forget to sample the superb bloody marys. Well worth the trip to Jean Brodie’s genteel Morningside on the south side of town.

 Whigham’s

Whigham’s Haunt of many a West End flaneur, Whigham's, in Charlotte Square is something of an institution, offering a great wine list, some good beers and a fine and dependable restaurant menu in the conspiratorial surroundings of cosy vaulted 18th century wine cellars.

From the Obvious to the Oddball Edinburgh Castle is iconic but with hideously expensive admission, while Holyrood Palace at the other end of the Royal Mile and the Queen’s official residence, offers a more genuine flavour of the Scottish monarchy and boasts the stone floor where the lover of Mary Queen of Scots was murdered, complete with annually repainted ‘bloodstain.’ While you are there, take a hike around the Queen’s Park which takes in the towering magnificence of Arthur’s Seat, the most dominant of Edinburgh’s hills.

The best hidden vista in Edinburgh is surely the spectacular, panoramic view from the lofty third storey balcony of the New Club on Princes Street, opposite the castle. The club, far from ‘new’, was founded in 1787 and is open only to members, although most private London clubs, from Brooks to the East India, have a reciprocal arrangement. (And while you are there do not miss the opulent panelled dining room, transplanted from the old club building in 1968).

The Magnum A New Town street corner pub and old-style wine bar, with polished wood tables and a tranquil atmosphere. It also boasts a good restaurant.

 Arthur’s Seat

 Kay’s Bar

The Canny Man This landmark pub, established in 1871, is famed as much for its décor as for its drink. The pub sign says it all, picturing the ubiquitous canny man, a Napoleonic rifleman. Inside various items of militaria are among the eclectic mix of antiques which hang

 The Magnum

Edinburgh is a party city and not surprisingly there are more than a few places to find that elusive costume.

For an unusual alternative to the classic gallery visits why not visit one of the city’s two high-end auction houses. Bonham’s on Queen Street has all the quality you would expect from a branch of the international auctioneers although you will find specifically Scottish themed sales on display.  33

PAULINE ABOUT TOWN

WHERE TO BE SEEN  Lyon & Turnbull

 Festival Theatre

For plays, shows and live music ranging from top rank performers to jazz, rock and classical, Edinburgh is awash with venues, from the Usher Hall and King’s Theatre to the Playhouse and Festival Theatre, not to mention the still avant-garde Traverse. But there are also a few less well-known alternatives.

Nearby just off Broughton Street, Lyon & Turnbull has made a real name for itself over the past decade, scooping some spectacular lots. Their Scottish picture sales are particularly worth watching. With what has been called the most beautiful auction room in Europe and some of the business’s most flamboyant and amusing auctioneers, if you can time your trip with an auction, you are in for a treat.

Edinburgh is a party city and not surprisingly there are more than a few places to find that elusive costume.

The best though must be Armstrongs in the Grassmarket. Established in 1840 it specialises in vintage clothing.

Expect to find everything you could possibly need, from a hussar’s uniform to Seventies Hippy chic.

Summerhall Located in the quirky neo-classical/ utilitarian buildings of what was the University Veterinary College, since opening as an arts venue in 2011, Summerhall has become an Edinburgh institution, specializing in truly oddball and off the wall productions and exhibitions. It also houses a fine café and bar and it is home to a gin distillery and micro-brewery.

 Summerhall

Fingers Piano Bar Think Billy Joel meets Rebus and you’re somewhere close to defining this long-established Edinburgh music bar. In brief it is a buzzing, charmingly down-at-heel venue, frequented by an eclectic mix of well-heeled local patrons.

The Caves Party venues do not get more unique than The Caves, a maze of early 18th century stone vaults beneath South Bridge. Some were once whisky stores while others housed the French cavalry Bodyguard of the Stuart kings.

Never turn down an invitation.  The Caves

 Armstrongs in the Grassmarket

A short walk away up Victoria Street, you will find a string of more down to earth fashion boutiques and tucked between them a branch of Ian Mellis’s justly renowned cheese shops. For a real epicurean treat though do not miss the legendary Valvonna and Crolla on Leith Walk. Established in 1934, this world-famous deli displays a mouth-watering array of Italian produce. Still owned by the same family, it also has a great restaurant and organises event catering.

34

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

CAMPAIGN UPDATE

Shaping Our Future Campaign Update Ellie Sleeman, Director of Development and Communications reports on progress.

The Shaping Our Future campaign was launched in May 2019 with an ambitious £20m fundraising target. As we enter the last 18 months of the appeal (it is due to finish in summer 2023), we are pleased to update the Old Pauline community on its progress.

At this stage of the campaign, we have raised £15.7m, with the vast majority towards our bursaries and partnerships work.

O

ur bursary provision is expanding alongside our funding capability; we now have 147 boys on bursaries, and we are making great strides towards fulfilling the target of funding 153 bursary pupils by 2023.

In total, we have raised £12.5m towards our bursary appeal. The bursary programme aims to offer an outstanding education to those pupils who have the potential to thrive at St Paul’s but not the financial means to attend.

We are also proud of the pioneering work the partnerships programme has continued to develop over the last few years at the school and pleased to say its projects are flourishing. For example, the Colet Mentoring app, the first of its kind and developed in collaboration with Old Paulines Phil and Dom Kwok, allows peer on peer mentoring. This would not have been possible without funding from the Shaping Our Future campaign. We are close to finalising plans for a multi-purpose sports pavilion on the east side of the School site, which will greatly benefit the pupils and our partner schools.

One of the most important aims of the appeal is the scale of participation.

We hoped that almost everyone in the Pauline community would feel able to give at a level right for them; we are pleased that we have 47% of current parents and approaching 7% of OPs giving, which we hope will continue to grow as we enter the final stages of the campaign. The collaboration with the OPC around their 150th Anniversary

Campaign will make a big difference in this ambition. The total cash received from our two most prominent constituent groups is 46% from current parents and 42% from Old Paulines; we are also delighted to report that we have 2,100 donors supporting the appeal.

We are so grateful for all that has been achieved in these challenging times, made possible by the support of our community, to whom we owe a huge debt of gratitude. If you would like any further information about the Shaping Our Future campaign, please contact Director of Development and Engagement Ellie Sleeman (ems@stpaulsschool.org.uk).

The chart below shows the split of the 2,100 donors of the £15.7m raised so far for Shaping Our Future.

8%

4%

46%

42%

“St Paul’s School is where students from all backgrounds, regardless of financial circumstances, are always welcome (assuming they fit the academic prerequisites). Paulines go into an extremely wide variety of fields, and I think I’m an example of that.

From the view of a donor, the most rewarding thing they can receive is to follow the progress of pupils that have grown through the system and benefitted from the bursary programme.

I can’t think of a place better than St Paul’s to produce individuals of which a group of donors can collectively be proud.”

Noah Zhou (2014-19) Royal Academy of Music, (Sir Elton John Scholar)

Current parents Paulines & Old Paulines Former parents Trusts & other

35

OLD PAULINE CLUB NEWS Following an OPC Special General Meeting in December the Club’s governance structure has changed. The votes in favour were 49 and against 11. The effect of the change is that the Club no longer has a two-committee system with the Executive Committee now setting policy, making decisions and seeking approval at General Meetings.

An Advisory Council has been established whose members will advise the Executive Committee on areas where they have expertise.

Three sub committees have also been established covering Nominations, Strategy Implementation and Sport.

Executive Committee Profiles The Club’s new Executive Committee has been appointed with involvement across the membership and the Pauline community in mind. It is diverse and inclusive with different genders represented and with four members under 40, five in their 40s, three in their 50s, three in their 60s and one in his early 70s.

Ed Vaizey (1981-85) (President & Chairman of the Committee) – is a qualified barrister who worked in public affairs, before being elected as the Member of Parliament for Wantage.

He served as a Minister under David Cameron, and was responsible for culture, the creative industries, telecoms and technology. He left the House of Commons in 2019 and was elevated to the House of Lords in 2020, where he serves on the Digital and Communications Select Committee. He is a board member of the Tate.

Sam Hyman (1992-97) (Surveyor) – has been proprietor of Hyman Developments since 2009 which specialises in new homes in the Cotswolds. He is a chartered surveyor having qualified at Donaldsons/DTZ where he focussed on retail development, compulsory purchase and regeneration.

Sam is also Managing Director of VinoVeritas Asia Limited, a Hong Kong based wine company specialising in the wholesale of Italian wine to the trade and private markets. He is Hon. Treasurer of the OPCC and a director of the OP Trust.

36

ATRIUM

Brian Jones (1961-66) (Immediate Past President) – is a qualified Chartered Accountant who spent most of his career in the City with Schroders. He is a Freeman of the City of London, a Past Master of the Guild of Mercers’ Scholars and a Vice President of the OPFC. He has been a Governor at Twickenham Prep School for many years.

Nick Brooks (1965-70) (Treasurer) – is a qualified Chartered Accountant and spent over 40 years working in London as an accountant in practice. He started his writing career on retirement in 2018.

His second novel – Revenge – was published, under his pen name N S Brooks, at the end of November last year.

Sam Turner (2011-16) (Secretary) – is a qualified commercial pilot flying for a European airline. Having previously worked in schools including St. Paul’s for around 5 years as a rowing coach but also in various roles across the School. Sam lives with his partner on a houseboat in Thames Ditton.

James Grant (1990-95) – (40s Decade) – is Head of Individual Giving & Legacies at SSAFA the Armed Forces charity, the UK’s oldest tri-service military charity.

Prior to moving roles, he was Head of Corporate Partnerships & Events. After graduating with a degree in French at St Andrews University, James started his career in commercial events before moving to the charity sector. James is heavily involved in OP Golf and Cricket and is Fixtures Secretary for OPCC.

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

Elizabeth Monro-Davies (Parent) – trained as a solicitor at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer after obtaining a degree from Cambridge University in Law. Following a career break, Elizabeth returned to corporate law at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.

Elizabeth lives in Barnes and has four sons – two Old Paulines and two current Paulines.

Nog Norgren (1981-86) (50s Decade) – trained and worked as a solicitor at Freshfields before moving on to in-house roles at Merrill Lynch and then a specialist finance company, ETV Capital. In 2011 he set up Norgren Legal. Nog lives in East Sheen and has three sons, all of whom went to St Paul’s.

Ali Palmer (Governor) – started her career in investment banking working in credit risk after gaining a degree in Business Management. Ali was a Partner at Odgers Berndtson where she led the Interim Consumer and Telecoms division. She is now Senior Director of Employee Experience at Avanade, a leading IT solutions organisation.

She is an Old Paulina and for many years was Chair of the Paulina League. She is a Freeman of the City of London.

Ali is an avid middle-distance runner in her spare time.

Rishi Patel-Warr (2009-14) (20s Decade) – (he/him) studied PPE, specialising in continental philosophy. He lived in Tokyo for a year, a Zen monastery for 6 months before joining the Foreign Office, where he is now posted in

Brussels – but due to return to London shortly. He is passionate about meditation, techno and community organising for the queer, bipoc and now OP communities. He also seeks to represent under 30s on the Executive as well as queer and bipoc members of our community. He would very much welcome any ideas, feedback or input in general on how we can revolutionise the OPC to serve the community in relevant ways and come together in our rare Pauline/a fraternity/siblinghood in fresh, diverse, and exciting ways.

Jehan Sherjan (1989-94) (Thames Ditton) – is currently Insights Director at boutique consultancy SRM Europe, having worked in Financial Services for over 20 years with a focus on customer insight and data analytics. Jehan has been heavily involved with Old Pauline football since 1997 and is the current Chairman of OPAFC. He has also been a member of OPCC for 15 years and is a non-exec director of Colets.

Ellie Sleeman (Development) – is Director of Development and Communications at St Paul’s School. She has worked in fundraising, marketing and crisis management since graduating from UCL, she joined St Paul’s from Wellington College following an eight-year stint as a director at London’s Roundhouse.

Simon Strauss (1968-73) (International) – graduated from the University of Edinburgh, is a Chartered Accountant and CPA who has lived in New York City and State since 1980. He finances renewable energy and green infrastructure projects (solar, geothermal, EV charging, large-scale desalination). He serves as Co-Chair of his Town’s Conservation Advisory Council and is President of the Colet Foundation, the US charity formed in 1991 to benefit St Paul’s. In his spare time, he races sailing boats, skis and hikes.

Neil Wates (1999-2004) (30s Decade) – worked in the property sector for 15 years. The first five were on building sites as a labourer and stonemason’s apprentice. The latter ten were in Project Management, as Head of Planning with a firm of Chartered Surveyors and then as Managing Director of his own firm. He is a Trustee of both a UK grant making charitable trust and a charity committed to the alleviation of social violence in East Africa. He is the founding director of Friendship Adventure, a craft brewery and taproom in Brixton. He lives in Thames Ditton and has organised OP Comedy Nights.

Jack Turner (2008-13) (Sports) – studied Economics at the University of Exeter before completing an MSc at King’s College London. His career has been in financial services and he currently works for a company specialising in payment technology. He has been a regular for the OPCC and is keen to promote OP sports clubs so Old Paulines can continue playing sports after School and university.

Alex Wilson (Staff and AROPS) – is Associate Director of Pauline Relations and Master in charge of cricket. He works closely with Ellie Sleeman and the OPC. He was previously Senior Undermaster and a member of the Classics Department.

Jeremy Withers Green (1975-80) (Communications and Engagement) – is Atrium’s editor. After approaching thirty years in investment banking, he has worked at not-for-profit organisations for a decade as a trustee.

37

OLD PAULINE CLUB NEWS

150th ANNIVERSARY EVENTS The Club’s Annual Dinner in October launched the 150th anniversary celebrations. It was held at School and hosted by Ed Vaizey who announced the launch of the 150th Bursary Appeal. The speakers were the High Master and John Simpson (1957-62).

By The British Parliament Volume II published 1808. Volume II contains the famous diagrams of the Brookes slave ship which were used in the campaign to abolish the slave trade.

Every year, this book is taken into lessons where pupils are learning about the slave trade.

The Future of… series is up and running with great support for the discussions with George Osborne, Sir Simon Fraser, Matthew Gould, Simon Fox and Patrick Spence in the four that have been held as Atrium goes to print. With politics and Britain’s position in the world, health and the arts covered leaving education to be discussed with the High Master and Lord Baker in May.

On 31st March the Earliest Vintage Lunch returns with all OPs who left School before July 1972 invited to lunch at the School. Ginny DaweWoodings, the Club’s Archivist will be displaying archive material and looking for volunteers for an oral history that is planned to cover the two decades from the return to West Kensington after evacuation at Crowthorne through to the move to the Barnes site in 1968.

The Feast Service returned to St Paul’s Cathedral on the 7th February. The School Choir performed at evensong and a Reception was held afterwards at the Mercers’ Hall for Old Paulines, their guests and Upper 8th parents and pupils. After speeches by Ed Vaizey, the High Master and Master 38

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

Mercer, Christopher Vermont (1973-78), the School’s Librarian, Hilary Cummings was presented with a first edition of Whisky Galore by Compton Mackenzie (1894-1900). The OPC is also helping to conserve one of the library’s most heavily used rare books, Thomas Clarkson’s The History Of The Rise, Progress And Accomplishment Of The Abolition Of The African Slave-Trade

Then at the conclusion of the school year, the Pauline Reunion Festival will be held at School and the 150th Appeal Fundraiser Dinner which will be held at The Tabernacle in Notting Hill on 23rd June.

BASIL MOSS (1948-53), OPC PAST PRESIDENT’S MEMORIAL SERVICE Below are extracts from a description of the service written by Stephen Pidcock (1995-2000).

“You make a living by what you get; you make a life by what you give”.

That was how Richard Cunis (1958-63) fittingly began his tribute at the memorial service for Basil Moss.

In September, more than 500 people filled Southwark Cathedral for a service of thanksgiving for Basil’s life, led by the cathedral’s Canon Precentor, the Revd Canon Andrew Zihni. The tributes to Basil reflected the many facets of his life of service.

As well as Richard Cunis, Giordano Orsini spoke of working alongside Basil for many years at Colets, the health

and fitness club with strong links to the Old Pauline Club. Jane Sherwin read the words of his friend and occasional co-star, Marcia Warren. Andrew Puddifoot (1974-79) spoke movingly of the overwhelming importance to Basil of his Christian faith.

Basil’s passion for music was represented by extracts from Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg and Elgar’s Nimrod both played by organist Stephen Disley. Adam O’Taylor (1999-2004) and Peter Teverson (2005-10) performed Somewhere from West Side Story, and Basil’s own setting of the Kyrie and the Gloria was sung by the choir of St Michael’s and All Angels, Barnes, under Tony Henwood’s direction.

Mark Harrop (1981-86) read from Wordsworth’s “…Tintern Abbey” and Peter Mothersill (1970-75) from Revelation 21.

Old Pauline Club Spring 2022

President The Rt Hon the Lord Vaizey of Didcot Past Presidents C D L Hogbin, C J W Madge, F W Neate, Sir Alexander Graham GBE DCL, R C Cunis, Professor the Rt Hon the Lord McColl of Dulwich, The Rt Hon the Lord Baker of Dorking CH, J M Dennis, J H M East, Sir Nigel Thompson KCMG CBE, R J Smith, B M Jones Vice Presidents Professor D S H Abulafia, Rt Revd R W B Atkinson OBE, Professor M D Bailey, P R A Baker, R S Baldock, J S Beastall CB, S C H Bishop, J R Blair CBE, Sir David Brewer CMG, CVO, N St J Brooks, R D Burton, W M A Carroll, Professor P A Cartledge, M A Colato, R K Compton, T J D Cunis, A C Day, S J Dennis MBE, Sir Lloyd Dorfman CBE, C R Dring, C G Duckworth, A R Duncan, J A H Ellis, R A Engel, D H P Etherton, The Rt Hon the Lord Etherton of Marylebone PC, Sir Brian Fall GCVO KCMG, B R Girvan, The Rt Hon the Lord Godson of Thorney Island, T J R Goode, D J Gordon-Smith, Lt Gen Sir Peter Graham KCB CBE, The Rt Hon the Lord Greenhalgh of Fulham, Professor F D M Haldane, S R Harding, R J G Holman, J A Howard, S A Hyman, S D Kerrigan, P J King, T G Knight, J W S Lyons, I C MacDougall, Professor C P Mayer CBE, R G McIntosh, A R M McLean CLH, I C McNicol, J D Morgan, A K Nigam, The Rt Hon George Osborne, Sir Mene Pangalos, T B Peters, D M Porteus, R M Rayner, The Rt Hon the Lord Razzall of Mortlake CBE, The Rt Hon the Lord Renwick of Clifton KCMG, A M Rind CVO, B M Roberts, J M Robertson, J E Rolfe, M K Seigel, J Sherjan, J C F Simpson CBE, D R Snow MBE, S S Strauss, A G Summers, R Summers, J L Thorn, R Ticciati OBE, Sir Mark Walport FRS, Professor the Lord Winston of Hammersmith, J Withers Green Executive Committee The Rt Hon the Lord Vaizey (President & Chairman of the Committee), B M Jones (Immediate Past President), S B Turner (Secretary), N St J Brooks (Treasurer), J S Grant (40s Decade), S A Hyman (Co-Opted, Surveyor), Mrs E J Monro-Davies (Parent), N H Norgren (50s Decade), Mrs A J Palmer (Governor), R T Patel-Warr (20s Decade), J Sherjan (Thames Ditton), Ms E M Sleeman (Development), S S Strauss (Co-Opted, International), J F Turner (Sports), N E Wates (30s Decade), A G Wilson (Staff and AROPS), J Withers Green (Communications and Engagement) Nominations Committee The Rt Hon the Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Chairman), J M Dennis, B M Jones, P J King Strategy Implementation Committee B M Jones (Chairman) – other members to be appointed Sports Committee J F Turner (Chairman) – other members to be appointed Advisory Council Chairman J H M East Professor D S H Abulafia, Rt Revd R W B Atkinson OBE, P R A Baker, S C H Bishop, J R Blair CBE, Professor P A Cartledge, M A Colato, R K Compton, R C Cunis, T J D Cunis, A C Day, J M Dennis, C G Duckworth, J A H Ellis, R A Engel, Sir Brian Fall GCVO KCMG, The Rt Hon the Lord Godson of Thorney Island, Sir Alexander Graham GBE DCL, The Rt Hon the Lord Greenhalgh of Fulham, R J G Holman, P J King, C J W Madge, A R M McLean CLH, J D Morgan, F W Neate, R M Rayner, The Rt Hon the Lord Razzall of Mortlake CBE, J E Rolfe, M K Seigel, R J Smith, Sir Nigel Thompson KCMG CBE Archivist Ms G E M Dawe-Woodings Accountants Kreston Reeves LLP Trustee OPC Trustee Company Limited

Photographer: Tom Bradley (1999-2004) 39

OLD PAULINE SPORT

Old Pauline Cricket Club A full league season returned in 2021 after the shortened seven match Challenge Cup of the year before.

It brought a similar season for both 1st and 2nd XIs, with both teams registering some stunning victories but ultimately struggling to string together enough momentum to challenge for the top of the table, finishing 8th and 6th respectively.

Both teams will continue to fight it out in Surrey Championship Division 4 next year.

Sam Cato (2006-11) topped the runs aggregate for the club, including a truly remarkable 135 not out in a successful chase of 207/8. With the ball it was 1st XI skipper Chris Berkett (2005-10) who led the way with a personal best 35 league wickets in the season. 2021 also signalled the end of OP legend Alex Duncan’s (1993-98) league career, as the opener hung up his boots with a phenomenal 9233 runs behind him.

Looking ahead to the 2022 season, we have several changings of the guard as George Waugh, 2nd XI skipper since 2017, is moving north and will be replaced in the position by Jack Turner (2008-13). For the first time in several years OPCC will be fielding a 3rd XI, with Henry Dodd (2001-06) stepping up to the plate to lead the side. This creates a fantastic opportunity to recruit some new players and continue our journey to competing at a higher level across the teams. Charlie Malston (1995-2000) will lead the Sunday XI, after Jamie Lyons’ (1974-79) marathon tenure came to an end. We thank all those individuals who are stepping down for all their incredible effort over the years.

The club is due to begin nets this month ahead of a pre-season involving the annual match against the School 1st XI, always an excellent curtain raiser for the full season. If you are interested in becoming involved with the Old Pauline Cricket Club please reach out to Chris Berkett (berkettc@gmail.com) or Jack Turner (turner.jack2@googlemail.com).

40

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

Old Pauline Association Football Club (Football) St Paul’s School versus OPAFC A cold, crisp, sunny February morning provided the ideal platform for SPS to host OPAFC in their annual footballing fixture. OPAFC arrived with high hopes of success against the well drilled outfits assembled by Luke Warriner (1997-2002) and Nick Troen (1998-2003).

The undercard saw OPAFC 2nd XI take on a St Paul’s Select XI, with the visitors taking an early lead in the 2nd minute through Conrad Barclay (2012-17). The School responded with concerted pressure, Nick Troen was unlucky to see one effort hit the crossbar. OPAFC continued to move the ball well and further goals from Luke Swan, Joe Cohlin and Henry Owen (2010-15) provided a comfortable cushion for the visitors.

St Paul’s pulled a goal back through Harry Turner but alas ran out of time to build a comeback.

Special mention goes to Alex Stewart and Ian McDonell (Teaching Staff) for helping OPAFC with their balletic wing play and solid centre-back skills.

The main event started at pace, with both sides sparring well to create that all important first goal. The crowd did not have to wait long, before Powell

finished incisively after a well-directed press saw an Old Pauline back pass intercepted in front of the goalkeeper.

Both sides created further openings but were unable to convert before half-time. The second half followed a similar pattern, and it was the School that made their possession count when a neat through ball behind the Old Pauline defence saw Shai on hand to finish coolly in the bottom corner.

OPAFC were now rocking, and more trouble loomed when another burst into the box drew a foul to win a penalty. Spot-kicks and pressure are a heady mix for goalkeepers, and a well hit penalty was superbly smothered by Conor Rowson.

Perhaps this was the break OPAFC needed, and further drama ensued when they went straight up the pitch to earn their own penalty. Stand-in skipper George Mayo (2010-15) confidently strode up, only to see his shot strike the post. SPS were in no mood to sit back, and a further lightning break saw Thompson latch on to a slide-rule through ball and finish with aplomb for 3-0. Fortunately for St Paul’s, Mr Warriner had not paid for the VAR extension of the game-recording technology and after some deliberation, the goal stood. OPAFC did manage to respond, with a header from Mayo, but could not muster a further decent attempt in the remaining time.

St Paul’s ran out deserved 3-1 winners in an entertaining game of football.

A particular mention goes to Ciaran Harries (2006-11), who showed great stamina to play 180 minutes for OPAFC. As ever, thanks to Mr Warriner for organising the games this year. OPAFC is run by Old Paulines for Old Paulines, so please be in touch if you would like to become involved. Email: Ciaran.harries@btinternet.com

2021/22 Season Update All three sides have settled well into their new divisions following last season’s promotion success. The 1st XI has reached the semi-final of the AFA Intermediate Cup and host league rivals Reigate on Saturday 5th March.

The Vets are also on the hunt for silverware as they await their Cup Quarter-Final trip to Barnet where they will take on the London Lions.

OLD PAULINE LODGE David Cons (1954-57) writes: The winter meeting of the Old Pauline Lodge took place at the School on the 20th January. This year’s Master, Rabbi Zvi Solomons (1981-86), conducted the ceremony for our newest member and we had several visitors from other School Lodges.

After the meeting, we were joined by interested Old Paulines, wives and partners for a splendid dinner in the Milton Gallery followed by an update from Alex Wilson about what is happening at the School.

Zvi announced that the Lodge will donate £1,000 to the SPS Shaping Our Future Appeal.

Old Pauline Football Club (Rugby) This season has continued to be a very strong one for the OPFC with the 1st XV currently in 2nd position in Surrey League 4 with just three league games to go and very much in the frame for promotion. It has been especially pleasing to see the average age of the 1st XV come down materially this season with the addition of recent Pauline leavers forming the backbone of the team. In addition, the club has put out a series of strong 2nd XVs and a phenomenal Vets XV for a recent Friday night game so the mood across the club is extremely positive.

In addition, the now twice delayed OPFC 150th Anniversary Dinner is set for Saturday March 26th at Twickenham for what should be a special evening. All members of the OP and St Paul’s Rugby Community are most welcome and tickets, which cost £125, can be secured using the following link: opfc.org.uk/150

After a year’s gap, the traditional ‘Recent Leavers’ vs 1st XV match took place on the Saturday before Christmas as a strong SPS side made the trek down to Thames Ditton to battle Elway’s less fit but more experienced team. The day ended with a victory for the Leavers and was followed by tea and some short speeches from OPFC members.

There was then a reunion at a pub in Waterloo for all 2021 Leavers – there was music and some more speeches as they celebrated their time at St Paul’s, having not had the opportunity last year. The OPFC is very grateful to James Blurton, and others at St Paul’s, for their continued support of this fixture.

There are 32 Public School lodges meeting in London and every year one of them hosts a Public School Lodges Festival at their school to which members of the other schools are invited with wives & partners.

Last year, Cheltenham College hosted the festival and this year Ardingly College will be the host in June.

More than 100 years after it was founded, the Lodge is still fulfilling its original remit of bringing Old Paulines together across the years and supporting the School. Our next meeting in March will be the Installation of our new Master, Nigel Codron (1969-73). The Lodge has four meetings a year at Barnes with the kind permission of the School.

The Lodge is exclusively for OPs and members of staff and, if any OP is interested in receiving more information or joining us at a meeting, he should contact our Secretary, Nigel Young, by email at secretary@oldpaulinelodge.org.uk 41

OBITUARIES A self-portrait

by Chris Arnold

Anthony Adler (1956-61)

Christopher Wilberforce Arnold FAIA (1939-44)

Nicholas Driver (1957-1962)

Anthony Adler passed away aged 78 on 25th September 2021, suddenly from a heart attack. Anthony attended St Paul’s School from 1956 to 1961 where he chaired the debating society. He worked for many years in the music industry. More recently he was known for his historical research activities, often questioning accepted and/or recently re-assessed historical interpretations and frequently disproving them by presenting the facts which he investigated meticulously. A loving husband to Jan and brother to Gill, he will be forever missed by them and by family and friends.

Anthony’s family and friends

Chris was born in Barnes and like his elder brothers Pat, Michael and Hugh, he attended Colet Court prior to St Paul’s.

World War II was declared days before Chris’s first term at School. So, Chris set off on his bicycle together with brother Hugh, to Crowthorne. There, Chris followed the classics and later history, though he loved most his time in the art room, coming under the influence of Erik Sthyr. Chris recalled Sthyr as revolutionary and brilliant. Though it was not to be his career, Chris was an innately talented artist and his paints were to become his constant companion. In his final year Chris became Captain of School.

Chris next enlisted in the RAF. After a short course at Cambridge sponsored by the Forces, he was sent to Arizona for pilot training. To Chris’s regret the war ended before he won his wings. However, the experience of the U.S was life changing and he vowed to return. After demobilisation, he studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture, following which he won a Fulbright scholarship to Stanford University. While at Stanford he met his wife, Jodie. They were to make their home in Palo Alto, a short distance from the Stanford campus. They were together for over 67 years.

Chris began his career by designing a number of houses and buildings in the Palo Alto area, including some of the dormitories at Stanford. In 1965, he co-founded the architectural firm Business Systems Development to further the then-new principles of systems design. Later he became a specialist in seismic retrofitting and travelled extensively to earthquake sites. In 2000, he served as president of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI).

Chris also taught at UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design and was elected a fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA).

Chris is survived by Jodie, children Vivien, Corry (Sharon), Gina, grandchild Caitlin and his extended family across the globe.

John Arnold OBE (1962-67), nephew, and Gina Arnold, daughter

Nick was both son and father of Paulines – Robert (Bobby) (1920-24) and William (1986-91) – and greatly enjoyed his time at School, making many lifelong friends through both his sporting endeavours and the Christian Union. He was a prefect, a member of the 1st XV and the 1st VIII, rowing in the Princess Elizabeth Cup at Henley.

After graduating from the College of Estate Management in 1966, he joined Cluttons, before moving in 1970 to London Merchant Securities, where his career flourished as he rose to become Managing Director, a position he held until retirement in 2004. His sound commercial judgement was highly regarded by his chairman Lord Rayne.

In 1968 Nick met Anne while queuing outside the Royal Albert Hall for a performance of Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius.

This was the start of a long and devoted relationship, which lasted the rest of his life – 53 years. They were married in 1969 and subsequently had two children, Emily and William both now GPs. Nick was very involved in the local community, twice serving as churchwarden at St Mary’s, Stoke d’Abernon and being a member of the PCC for 20 years and in retirement he accepted an invitation to chair the steering committee for the Cobham Envisage Project which involved canvassing the opinions of 22,000 residents on their views for the future of the local area. Additionally, he was a Trustee and volunteer visitor for Independent Age for several years.

He, Anne and the family spent many happy holidays, often with friends, in villas in Italy and France and many memorable weeks were spent in Cornwall in their cottage and in Paris in their apartment.

For the last few years of his life Nick struggled against the debilitating effects of leukaemia with great courage and resilience, always replying “I’m fine” however parlous his condition. Nick will be remembered with great affection by his wide circle of friends for his kindness, good humour and great generosity.

Anne Driver (widow) and friends

42

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

H Franklyn Ellison (1958-1962)

Sean M Mitchell (1975-80)

John R Partridge (1959-1964)

Franklyn was born on 2 November 1945 in London to a Viennese mother, and Czech father, both Holocaust survivors. Their family name was Elefant, changing, when they became British, to Ellison.

He particularly enjoyed the musical opportunities at St Paul’s and throughout his life enjoyed music in many forms.

His parents’ European background and the need to acquire equipment for a fledgling jewellery business meant his father travelled abroad and began to take the family to Europe from the mid-fifties where Franklyn learnt to ski, something that became one of his passions throughout his life. His last ski trip was three weeks before he died.

When he left School, he was articled to a firm of chartered accountants in Mayfair, qualifying in 1968 shortly before he married.

He worked in Johannesburg and Geneva before joining a London firm of accountants in 1970 becoming a partner there two years later.

He and Margaret welcomed the birth of their three children and he took great pride in their achievements, academic, sporting and musical, but also taking particular pleasure in introducing each of them to skiing in Europe.

In 1986 he decided to become a sole practitioner, setting up a practice that operated from home in Ealing supported by a loyal team of part time staff who liked the informal work setting. After 18 years he amalgamated his practice with a larger one so as to ensure he could oversee the care of his clients whilst he prepared to retire to Switzerland, moving to Montreux on Lake Geneva in 2007.

The life there appealed to him and he especially enjoyed sharing activities with his children and their families when they visited.

Lockdown meant he and Margaret were unable to come to England until March 2021. Sadly, the second night after they arrived, with no warning he died peacefully in his sleep.

He was greatly loved and loving and had many friends.

Margaret Ellison

Sean Mitchell, actor, singer, US Marine, software developer, devoted husband and father, died of brain cancer in August 2020 at age 57.

American-born, he became internationally aware because of the multicultural student body at St Paul’s and its exchange programme that sent him to Germany. After St Paul’s, he earned a degree in computer science at Stanford University, along the way serving 4 years in the US Marine Corps, where he rose to the rank of sergeant. Many of his later enthusiasms were shaped by his years at St Paul’s. His success in software development at Microsoft owed much to his instruction in maths and science, and his theatrical achievements began with backstage work for a St Paul’s show. After leaving Microsoft, he pursued his passions for acting, singing, and teaching in the Seattle area, giving memorable performances in How I Learned to Drive, many Shakespeare plays, Waiting for Godot, and A Christmas Carol. He taught programming concepts and helped to build sustainable computer science programmes in local schools.

Sean had a gentle wit and generous soul.

He knew something about almost any topic and could strike up a conversation with just about anyone. An engaging and giving performer with a booming bass voice, he was also an appreciative audience member with an unmistakable laugh. He always sang, with the Stanford Fleet Street Singers, the Microsoft Baud Boys, in the church choir, and simply around the house. He was known for his unfailing kindness, endless patience, one-dimpled smile, and completing the New York Times Crossword Puzzle in ink – also informed by his St Paul’s education.

Diagnosed with glioblastoma in July 2019, Sean faced every treatment and setback with optimism, never losing his exuberance and determination to live life to its fullest.

Sean is survived by his wife of 28 years, Elizabeth; three children, Gene, Grant, and Gus; mother, Carol; sister, Jenny; brother George, and countless beloved family and friends.

The Mitchell Family

John Partridge was born in Twickenham on 19 October 1945. He attended the Mall School and went on to St Paul’s in 1959.

He formed many firm friendships at both schools and his affection and loyalty to them continued throughout his life.

At St Paul’s, John was a keen sportsman representing the School in swimming, rowing and rugby. Indeed, in later years he was always keen to lead a chorus of ‘swing low’, Guinness in hand with the Old Paulines.

John was also in the RAF air cadets and thought of flying as a career after achieving his pilot’s licence. On leaving St Paul’s however he decided to study law and joined his father’s practice before moving to Slaughter and May in the City.

In later life he moved to Dubai to practise law and then settled in Thailand to enjoy his retirement.

John loved sailing and skiing as well as tackling plenty of swimathons. As a keen reader with an intellectual curiosity, he even made it through Proust and was knowledgeable across a huge range.

He was an enthusiastic traveller and his time in Thailand was spent enjoying the local cuisine (maybe a little too much) and learning about Asian history. In recent years he treasured trips exploring the Baltic states with his Pauline friends.

He was diagnosed with cancer in July and after a short illness died peacefully at St Christopher’s hospice in Sydenham.

John and all the family are extremely grateful for their outstanding care.

He leaves his two children Kathryn and Robbie and will be greatly missed by all.

Contributions from family and friends

43

OBITUARIES

In Memoriam Charles Abrams (1965-69) Anthony (Tony) R Adler (1956-61) Alan M Bayes (1956-61) John R T Brazier (1967-72) Nigel I Cameron (1947-52) Howard A Clark (1961-65) James A Cuming (1957-60) Michael John Stacey (1949-53)

Rear Admiral Chris Stanford CB OStJ (1963-67)

Born in Windsor in October 1935, Michael died in Nottingham in November 2020.

He lived firstly in Slough, and then Eton Wick. As a small boy he sang in the choir of St John the Baptist Church, Eton Wick.

This led to an audition, and subsequent selection as a chorister, in the choir of Eton College Chapel from 1945 to 1949.

Michael entered St Paul’s School in 1949 and found himself in V Alpha. Apart from his musical interests, Michael loved sport, particularly cricket. He played for the Junior Colts, Colts and 1st XIs. He was awarded first team colours in 1952 and 1953, being mentioned in Wisden for those years. Leaving St Paul’s in 1953, Michael began his training as a chartered accountant with the firm of Edward Boyles and Co. in London, which he described as “quite a Pauline firm”. Having qualified in 1959, he immediately entered National Service, and was posted to Cyprus for two years.

Michael was demobbed in 1961 and joined the firm of Hubbart, Du rose and Pain, chartered accountants in Nottingham, becoming a partner, until the firm merged with Cooper Parry in 1996.

A member of Nottingham City Business Club, Michael became its President from 1988 to 1989. In 1993, a heart problem became apparent, and Michael underwent heart by-pass surgery in 1994. He retired in 2000.

Michael enjoyed watching cricket and rugby. In his musical life, he was a member of Nottingham Bach Choir, and the Newstead Abbey Singers. He conducted a Derbyshire choir, and formed an ‘acapella’ quartet of singers, whose concerts raised funds for charity. He was an auxiliary tenor lay clerk in the choir of Southwell Minister for seventeen years, the highlight being singing for the Royal Maundy service in 1984.

Michael loved gardening and, as a relaxation, created beautiful tapestries for pictures, cushion and chair covers.

Michael was married with two sons and four grandchildren.

Janine Stacey – widow

Christopher David Stanford attended St Paul’s (1963-1967) then read Modern History and French at Merton College, Oxford. Joining the Royal Navy in 1967, his naval career spanned 35 years and included major sea commands during the Cold War, Gulf and Bosnian conflicts, interspersed with senior positions within the Ministry of Defence. In his final, much lauded role, Chris oversaw the transfer of the last military hospital to NHS ownership and the establishment of Birmingham’s innovative Royal Centre for Defence Medicine. In 2002, Chris moved seamlessly into a second career as an international headhunter at Odgers Berndtson, handling senior roles across Government, the Healthcare sectors, Life Sciences and Education. Notable appointments under his stewardship included the President and Provost of UCL, the President and Principal of King’s College, London, the Chief Medical Officer, and the Chief Executive of NHS England.

Chris will be remembered as an enormously capable, open-hearted and gregarious person, and a greatly valued mentor and friend to many. He was passionate about British railway history, and with his wife, Annie, rescued and renovated an 1882 Victorian railway carriage, which resides in their beloved Somerset cottage garden. Other passions included maritime history, photography, singing and playing the guitar (and entertaining the ship’s company during long stints at sea), live music, the arts, visiting historic houses and gardens, rugby, and enjoying leisurely restaurant meals with his children.

Chris was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Birmingham City University, made a member of the Order of St John in 2001, and appointed CB in 2002. He was a Fellow of the Nautical Institute and of the Royal Society of Arts, a Master Mariner, Chairman of the Somerset and Dorset Marine Society and Sea Cadets, a Younger Brother of Trinity House, a Board member of the White Ensign Association and a Governor of King Edward VII’s Hospital.

Chris is survived by Annie, his four children, and four grandchildren, whom he adored.

The Stanford Family

44

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

Geoffrey B Curtis OBE, MC (1935-39) Ian A Deane (1947-52) Ian C Dewar (1966-70) Nicholas G E Driver (1957-62) Anthony E W Dux (1966-71) Alexander R R Eason (1943-47) Harry (Franklyn) F Ellison (1959-1962) (Tom) Gerald A Everett (1941-46) Erle Gardner (1939-42) David A Grobecker (1943-45) David W Hearn (1942-47) Julian J R Mason (1964-68) Sean M Mitchell (1976-80) John R Partridge (1959-64) Peter J F Richardson (1948-50) David J H Rogers (1938-39) Christopher D Stanford (1963-67) David E W Stone (1950-55) Roslyn C Zurlinden (1947-51)

PAST TIMES

Fight of the Century Michael Simmons (1946-52) remembers one of the Green Cup’s strangest bouts

I

n my time, St Paul’s had a great reputation as a boxing school.

Translate that to modern days and anxious parents would be rushing to remove their boys from the School for fear that their half-formed brains would be reduced to scrambled eggs. The height or the depth, depending on your point of view, of the School’s boxing year was the Green Cup. This competition was not only open to all but compulsory for all boys in their early years. As we became more senior, ways became apparent to wriggle out of competing in order to preserve our newly acquired dignity.

This was an inter-Club competition and you acquired one point for your Club by appearing in the first round.

Many of us hoped that our participation would terminate at that stage without having suffered too much pain. In theory, we were matched by weight and ability but that became an impossible dream in the first round as there were far too many entrants whose abilities or the lack of them were unknown to those in charge.

Some nasty mismatches were bound to occur and you had to rely on those running the show to bring proceedings speedily to an end before real damage was done. They were not sadists or at least I do not think so. Mr Williams was the professional boxing instructor and a decent enough type. I think he found it difficult to cope with the multiplicity of wiles and excuses that Paulines would employ to escape his clutches.

The master in charge, who always struck me as a man of mystery in his impeccable blue suit, was “Bo” Langham (1916-56 and 1959-60) He must have had a real name but I never discovered what it was. By no means young, he took delight in standing in the ring and encouraging us to hit him as hard as possible in the stomach area. He had muscles of iron & we did far more damage to ourselves than we ever did to him. Digressing for the moment, St Paul’s at the time was a tough school with heavy penalties for transgressing its many rules.

Nevertheless, there was a strong and healthy streak of subversion about.

The trick was to go so far and no further. You needed not to be on the list when the call went out to bring in the usual suspects. I had the greatest difficulty explaining to my sceptical

mother that the High Master’s cryptic comment at the end of my term’s report “the leopard has not changed his spots” indicated just how well I was doing.

At some stage in the future, someone will write about the importance of the Number 28 Bus in the history of Pauline intellectual development. In those days, St Paul’s regularly raided the North London prep schools, particularly the Hall, to recruit their best talent. Jonathan Miller (1947-53) and Oliver Sacks (1946-51) were part of the same trawl.

beasts carries no conviction whatsoever.

Thus Jonathan and Oliver went about each other. It looked so awful and contrived that you might have thought that they had rehearsed it. Knowing Jonathan’s genius for improvisation having stage managed him in the Colet Clubs’ Review, I knew that not to be the case. They huffed and they puffed; they grunted and growled; they stamped their feet; they uttered weird and wonderful cries; they slowly circled each other exchanging imaginary blows. What they never did

At some stage in the future, someone will write about the importance of the Number 28 Bus in the history of Pauline intellectual development.

You wait patiently at the bus stop and then two polymaths come along together. What happy co-incidence drew them against each other in the first round of that year’s Green Cup! If the match had been properly publicised, tickets could have been sold at a premium. As it was, I heard of it at the last moment and sloped over to the gym to watch the entertainment. There were not too many present with Messrs Williams and Langham presiding but the protagonists did not let us down.

Imagine a very bad, black and white Hollywood B film of the 30s entitled something like “Wars of the Prehistoric World” or “Clash of the Cavemen.” The task of animation has been handed over to a drunken prop man on his last job working in some back lot. The dinosaurs move jerkily or hardly at all.

Realism is completely forgotten.

Tyrannosaurus Rex would be ashamed of his Hollywood-created descendant.

The fight between the two pseudo

was hit each other. If smoke and flame had belched forth from their slavering jaws, nobody would have been in the slightest surprised.

Meanwhile, it was difficult not to be distracted by watching the faces of Langham and Williams who both looked as if they had swallowed something increasingly bitter. They could have stopped what passed for a fight but they seemed paralysed by the spectacle. We who were privileged to be watching were equally paralysed but by mirth. My ribs were aching.

Eventually, things came to an exhausted halt. There was no winner.

By some clever managerial trick, neither Miller nor Sacks progressed to the next round of the competition. The Green Cup was never the same again in our eyes. They say that Paulines are known for portraying a healthy scepticism. Events like this show how it is created. Incidentally, I entitled this article “the Fight of the Century.”

Of course, I meant the last century.  45

PAULINE RELATIVES They feel keenly however that the School’s culture needs to place more emphasis on public service and an obligation towards social justice as the payback for the privilege of a private school education.

The Frasers In the 1970s it seemed that every other pupil at St Paul’s was called Simon. From 1971 to 1974, there were two Simon Frasers at School and to make matters worse they shared the second initial, J. Just before Christmas, I caught up with Simon John Fraser (1970-74) and his three sons, Charlie (2007-12), Ben (200914) and Robbie (2011-16) over lunch at Sam’s Riverside.

This Simon Fraser never minds being mistaken for the other one because Simon James Fraser (1971-75) is an eminent knight of the realm and former School governor. Simon enjoyed his time at St Paul’s; a doctor’s son from Ealing, a Coletine, a prefect, Captain of B Club and a member of the 1st XV. His first stop after School was a Navy backed place to read History at Oxford followed by the Royal Naval College and then, logically, into finance at Salomon Brothers and Morgan Stanley.

He is still, as described by his sons “an independent financial innovator”.

This could have been a very short story. When it came to choosing a school for their eldest son, Joanna and Simon had different opinions. Joanna had been to Eton (sent there by St Mary’s, Ascot. She was one of three girls attending during the Oxbridge term). She wanted Charlie to go there.

Simon preferred St Paul’s. They went for an interview at Eton. Simon promptly switched sides; part of his memory of St Paul’s was that it looked like a factory and you had to take the Tube to Osterley to play rugby.

However, they decided to do the 46

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

St Paul’s tour. On arrival, they were handed over to a scruffy teenager emerging from a classroom for his lunchbreak. He was asked to act as their guide and his enthusiastic inability to find his way round the School won Joanna over.

So, Charlie arrived at School in 2007 and for the next decade there was a Fraser excelling on the rugby pitch and in the classroom at St Paul’s. Robbie and Ben both remark on the intellectual influence of Dr Rufus Duits (Philosophy Department since 2009) and Charlie on that of Will Williams (Geography Department, 2008-2014). They were members of the Christian Union (though are now all atheists). Robbie comments that “the CU was incredibly valuable for me. You always felt you were being taken seriously”.

Gap years can be wasted. Ben, before going up to Cambridge, took two of them and does not appear to have wasted a minute. He did formative voluntary work with ‘Leaders’ Quest’ whose founder was Joe Levin’s (2009-14) mother, Lindsay as well as with the VSO in Nigeria. In 2015, he and Charlie spent two weeks in Kos at the height of the refugee migration. Their eyes were opened and in 2016 TERN (The Entrepreneurial Refugee Network) was founded with its first programme launched during Ben’s freshers’ week. TERN was the first organisation in the United Kingdom to create programmes and services specifically tailored to the needs of refugee entrepreneurs, built on a vision of a world where every refugee has a

chance to develop a progressive, integrated livelihood. TERN’s work is focused on enabling refugees to thrive through the power of their ideas, providing services addressing business exploration, business start-up, and business growth.

In 2016, Charlie was leaving Oxford and as a volunteer took on the roles of CEO, COO and CFO of TERN (or so his brothers joke). Eighteen months later he was paid for the first time. Revenue in 2016 was around £15,000. In 2021 it will be £600,000. They have now worked with some 450 refugees and have been involved in setting up over 100 businesses. Among the individual and corporate partners are management consultants Oliver Wyman, who have provided office and financial support and Apax Partners, the private equity firm (introduced by Will Englander (2009-14)). Ben and Jerry’s, the longest term and largest supporter, has launched refugee branded ice cream flavours and the eponymous Jerry has spoken at TERN’s graduation ceremony.

While Charlie continues to work at TERN, Ben and Robbie are social workers in West London. Both joined graduate programmes similar to the “Teach First” programme and work full time alongside their studies for Masters degrees. In Ben’s case this is the “Frontline” programme which is focused on safeguarding children as a child and family social worker. He had to leave lunch early as he was involved in a pre-Christmas intervention. Robbie when he left Oxford joined the “Think

CROSSWORD Ahead” programme which focuses on adult mental health care. He is part of the Hammersmith and Fulham Adult Mental Health team providing secondary care for the 2,000 ‘service users’ in the borough. His daily challenge involves helping people suffering with psychosis and severe mood disorders Charlie, Ben and Robbie all mention the depth of the intellectual challenge at St Paul’s and enjoyed their time at School.

They feel keenly however that the School’s culture needs to place more emphasis on public service and an obligation towards social justice as the payback for the privilege of a private school education rather than the longstanding focus on philanthropy and generosity. This seemed to have been an aspiration shared by Mark Bailey and they are hopeful it will continue to be so by the current High Master.

They also question why there are not recent refugees among current pupils. They recognise that there would be language difficulties for many recent arrivals but suggest that boys who have been in the London for 3-5 years could form part of an intake as bursary pupils for A levels with Charlie commenting that “a pupil base without refugees is hardly reflective of modern-day London and is not as inclusive or diverse as it could be”.

As we are leaving, I ask Charlie whether he would send a child to St Paul’s. After a moment’s reflection, he replies “yes, if the School continues to develop its bursary provision and goes co-educational”.

After Christmas, Simon is returning to sea with Charlie and Robbie to search for a ship (her name is a secret) which lies 4,000 to 5,000 metres under the Atlantic.

He is confident of finding it this time after a failed mission alongside Clive Hayley (1970-75) in 1995. Now that is a story for Atrium in the Autumn…

(Editor: There are opportunities for public service in all year groups and the Lower Eighth are expected to carry out at least 10 hours of service across the year.) 

What’s the point? by istenem

The grid has 8-way symmetry. 5 pink squares are crowded. The other 4 pink squares explain why it has to be this way up.

Clues with two answers are shown as (x/y). The U instead of 1 is intentional to make real words throughout. All 26 letters appear in normal squares.

U

2

3

1

1

1

4

5

6

NW

NE

1

1

7

8

1

1

N

9

1

12

1

1

13

14

1

1

1

18

1

1

10

11

1

1 1

1

15

1

1

1

N

W

W

S

1

16

1 17

1

E 19

1

E

1

20

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

21

22

23

1

1

24

25

26

1

1

27

28

1 1

1

1

1

1

1

1

29

30 S

SW

1

1

1

32

SE

31 Across U Snoop does this: opens present (4/7) 4 Divided by voice (4/6) 7 Manchester ship could be made from Carbon/Aluminium/Sodium alloy (5) 9 Dance graduate follows spirit of the Caribbean (5) 10 Reported fix chasing i-pad for eskimo (5) 11 Dilemma: tzaddiq kept bread (5) 12 Take off football kit (5) 15 A certain amount of little piggies for market went by car (5) 18 To roll in a swamp, everybody gets in to cry of delight (6) 19 Royal fabric of cockney girl’s belonging to me (6) 21 Curry favour with leaving youth-leader, he wrote The Apology (5) 24 Yanks plonkers (5) 27 In Stepney, Joanna can be grand (5) 28 Hat-tips stuffing mid-West flatbread (5) 29 Smelly crack essential in cycling gear (5) 30 Reconfigure sails for Indian draught (5) 31 Arsenal crowds (4/6) 32 Show up to trade fair (6/4)

Down U Greek god of war was unknown to Shakespeare (4/7) 2 He shoots at bull amid shanghai merrymaking (5) 3 Rascal I took away from pub grub (5) 4 Tragedy of haemophilia diagnosis (5) 5 Colet reforms media industry (5) 6 It is fundamental, more please (4/6) 8 Drunkenly anoint common people (6) 13 One dries out after Blackpool landmark turns right to left (5) 14 Opening of Chain-letter (5) 16 Cologne’s flower tips of recipe: holly, ivy nothing else (5) 17 Drink down-in-one after very top revealing hairy chest (1-4) 20 Old dutches for Sioux thousand departing makes noise like a bird (6) 21 Custard apples for Dad (6/4) 22 Trying to be eponymous for posterior (5) 23 Ring friends for semi-precious gemstones (5) 24 Pretty French actress Angelina (5) 25 Runner goes back to visit main points again (5) 26 Thin scrap (6/4)

47

LAST WORD

David Abulafia (1963-67) Praeceptoribus Paulinis When I wrote my most recent book, The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans for Penguin, I knew that I had to dedicate it to those who taught me so well at St Paul’s. They taught me to enjoy writing and to love history. Soon after the book appeared I was invited to tell the Friends of the British Library about it, and someone asked a question about the mysterious list of initials in the dedication: Praeceptoribus Paulinis PNB CED TEBH AHM JRMS PFT necnon INRD – that is to say Dr P N Brooks, Colin Davies, Tom Howarth, Hugh Mead, J R M Smith and Peter Thomson, adding also someone who taught me French, not history, Norman Davies.

Each had a very different style of teaching. High Master Howarth’s Special Subject on the French Revolution was delivered as a superbly constructed course of lectures, punctuated by an occasional sardonic witticism. Colin Davies introduced me to the Middle Ages. Hugh Mead, who still flourishes, was a model of scholarly patience, even when we expressed dislike for economic history – nonetheless I became a sort of economic historian. J R M Smith’s ancient history lessons were at least as good as anything I witnessed in Cambridge (with exceptions for OP Michael Crawford (1952-57) and the illustrious Moses Finley). Peter Thomson’s unstoppable energy motivated all of us.

48

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2022

Fewer will remember Norman Davies, but he is now Poland’s most distinguished historian. A series of essays by those who have known him throughout his career was published to mark his seventieth birthday. Here is part of what I wrote in that book: “It is September, 1963. A massive Gothic building constructed in red terracotta brick rises behind a screen of trees planted to soften its vivid colours. Its claim to antiquity is only in part a pretence, for, though built in 1884, this is the home of one of England’s great and ancient schools, St Paul’s, founded in 1509 by the eminent Renaissance scholar John Colet, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, for the teaching of Greek and Latin.

A small new boy of thirteen (viz: myself) discovers that he has been assigned to the top French set. He will soon realise that this is a tribute not to his accomplishments in French but to the quality of teaching by his French mistress at his previous school.

She was herself French, but omitted one crucial aspect of language teaching: the language was taught as a dead language; there was no attempt to make conversation; outlandish pronunciation was tolerated. At St Paul’s, I discover that my French master (the word ‘teacher’ being regarded in those days as somewhat vulgar) is Mr I N R Davies. Being a new master, he is forced to peregrinate from room to room, unlike the older established members of staff, who have their own form-room with their own desk and bookshelves and blackboard. Mr Davies sees us in a pokey room full of beams, half-way up the broad flights of stairs that lead to the dining hall above our heads – clearly one of the worst rooms in the School.

Mr Davies arrives – a neat young man – and he opens his mouth. We are dumbfounded. He speaks to us in French. He tells us he will be teaching us by the méthode directe. We are to be taught entirely in French. We will, it is true, have to translate passages from French to English and vice-versa. But words of English rarely pass Mr Davies’ lips. Once in a while, when all other attempts at explanation have failed, he pronounces a word or two in English.

His English voice is much deeper and we detect an accent (maybe Lancashire?). A

French boy, named Smith (1962-67), is sitting behind me and asks me whether Mr Davies is actually French. Who else but a Frenchman would know how to pronounce properly the name of the poet Joachim du Bellay? After all, if Smith can be French, so can Davies. We conclude that he does not really speak English, though we accept he can read it well enough to correct our work.

Later, rumours will circulate that he was educated at Oxford, and that he is a very capable historian. We will hear of his attempts to establish a soccer team, against the express wishes of his colleagues (at St Paul’s ‘football’ is rugby football and it is accepted that young gentlemen should play nothing else). He will only stay for two years.

Soon we will be speaking French in the new-fangled ‘Language Laboratory’ deep in the basement. But we will owe to Norman Davies a sense that languages are living tools.”

One of our daughters lives in Barons Court, so my wife and I have stayed a couple of times at the St Paul’s Hotel at 153 Hammersmith Road, which occupies all that is left of the old buildings, and where the owner lays welcome emphasis on the history of the School. In my day it was a boarding house and off-limits to those who did not board, having been built as the High Master’s house; I think of it as a sort of archaeological site that gives frustrating clues to the lost glory of a much bigger structure that has now been swept away. A PhD thesis by Lisa Freedman about the move to Hammersmith, which you can find on the web, explains what was in the mind of Dr Walker and the Mercers when the School moved from its much smaller building in the City. The aim was not to mimic the eight other ‘Public Schools’ that had been identified by the Clarendon Commission in the 1860’s, among which only St Paul’s and Merchant Taylors’ were day schools. The aim was, rather, to create something distinctive, a school that owed as much to the highly academic German Gymnasium schools as it did to the character-building public schools promoted by Dr Arnold at Rugby. Although, sadly, Walker’s name has disappeared from the School library, St Paul’s remains as much a monument to his foresight as to that of Dean Colet. 

S t N i c h o l a s Ro a d | T h a m e s D i t t o n | K T 7 0 P W

SH S UA I O L SQ U D O M ST PO GY 4

COLETS HEALTH & FITNESS

A HEALTH CLUB LIKE NO OTHER Not-for-profit + independent

C

A UN RY SA SE HE UR C A N RE SP

Home of the Old Paulines Discounted rates for alumni & staff Call today to arrange a tour 020 8398 7108

@COLE TS H EA LTH

THE 150TH APPEAL If you would like to support the 150th Appeal, please visit: www.stpaulsschool.org.uk/opcappeal Alternatively, please use your phone camera to scan the code below to access the website.

OLD PAULINES SUPPORTING EXCELLENCE, INCLUSIVITY AND INSPIRATION