Magdalene College Magazine No.63 2018-19

FROM THE MASTER It’s always a specially cheerful matter to be able to report collegiate success on a wide front, and once again we are able to do just that. An unprecedented second placing on the river, after a tense, dramatic and rather wet week was followed by a May Ball generally agreed to have been a particularly warm and relaxed occasion (remarkably undisrupted – despite earlier anxieties – by the presence of a substantial building site in the Fellows’ Garden) and a magnificent showing from our Finalists. Magdalene continues to fire on all cylinders, confirming our conviction that energy and enjoyment in any one area of our common life tends to breed energy and enjoyment in all the others. On top of this, the Choir released a very successful CD of Christmas music last year, and extended their global profile with trips to the US last summer and Italy in the spring of this year. Choral standards have continued to be impressively high, and the recently invented ‘tradition’ of an open-air service in the Master’s Garden with baptisms and confirmations, towards the end of the Easter Term, gave the opportunity for a beautiful rendering of Byrd’s Four-Part Mass in radiant sunshine to a congregation of around eighty. And while we are in the neighbourhood of the Chapel, it’s a delight to report the appointment by HM the Queen of our former Dean of Chapel. Dr David Hoyle, as Dean of Westminster, a position of unique distinction in Church and nation.

But we can also report a different kind of success in the progress of the Future Foundations Campaign. This has exceeded all our expectations: within just over two years of the Campaign’s launch, we have raised more than £22 million pounds. A memorable dinner in the Drapers’ Hall earlier this year celebrated the wonderful progress so far made. This means that the cost of the new Library building is practically taken care of, and a substantial number of new bursaries will be fully funded. I reported last year on the success in raising funding for the new Chair in African Archaeology (Professor Paul Lane is now happily among us as the first holder of this appointment); work also continues to fund more Mandela Scholarships for African graduates, and Standard Bank of Africa has been very generous in its sponsorship of several awards. The building work on the Library is well-advanced (on target and on budget), and the opening is scheduled for September 2020. The next step will be the consequential work needed on the Pepys Building. The Pepys Library will of course remain intact at the heart of the building, but we shall now be able to adapt the use of some of the other rooms for academic and other visitors, and also to carry out muchneeded maintenance on some of the historic fabric. This second phase of the Library project will also be looking for funding as we go forward. But to date, the energy and generosity of our alumni and alumnae has been really extraordinary; the enthusiasm for the Magdalene of the next generation has been equal to the enthusiasm for the Magdalene that alumni remember – which speaks of a 8