Mansfield College Magazine 2008

Mansfield WINTER 2008

Principal’s Welcome scene vividly – President Jimmy Carter coming into the sitting room in the Lodgings for the first time and, as we all rose to greet him, asking: “So what does a Principal do?”

“A Principal… ah… presides”, I said. He smiled. So began a fascinating three days with this remarkable man and his equally remarkable wife – days that none of us in the College will never forget. But even before he arrived, the out-riders of his twelve-strong Secret Service detail had come to inspect the Lodgings and to rehearse every aspect of his stay at Mansfield and the award of his Honorary Doctorate at the University’s Encaenia ceremony. I will never forget one of them seriously asking me if our Head Porter carried a gun! I should have guessed that my Monty Python-esque reply – “he has no arms but he can spit!” – would not have raised a laugh. But the sniffer dog, in his little bootees to avoid muddying our pale carpet, made me smile, as did the sight of the Secret Service doing their ‘follow that punt!’ thing as President Carter and his party were punted past Christ Church meadows, eating strawberries and drinking the obligatory champagne. Nor will I forget how the College catering and domestic staff transformed the Lodgings for those three brief days into the equivalent of a five-star hotel and faultlessly prepared and

I RECALL THE

presented a sumptuous dinner in honour of the Carters, to which many notables and all Fellows were invited. But, above all, I remember the packed Sheldonian theatre in which I presented President Carter with the framed certificate, shown in the photograph left, proclaiming him an Honorary Fellow of the College. He then delivered the Seventh Annual Hands Lecture on ‘Peace with Justice in the Middle East’, a speech born of his own first-hand knowledge of the region and his abiding interest in it since the days when, as President, he negotiated the Camp David Accords that brought lasting peace between Israel and Egypt.

A week before the Carters’ visit, Mansfield held its first-ever Gala Fundraising Dinner. Some 130 guests enjoyed a veritable banquet, including an exotic – and healthy – main course of ostrich. This was followed by an Auction of Promises, ranging from a videoed skydive over Oxfordshire to a week’s houseparty in a villa in Tuscany for up to fourteen people, with free wine included. Skilfully coaxed by our expert auctioneer, guests bid with huge generosity, concerned less with the actual value of the lots than with helping to raise funds to support the College. The evening raised a magnificent £48,000, which was matched, pound for pound, by the College Contribution Fund – a grand total of £96,000! Everything had been either sponsored or donated – the meal, the wines, the promises, the printing costs – so this was an evening of pure profit and genuine delight all round. We are hugely indebted to everyone for their generosity. (Please see back cover for images from the evening).

Those were a heady few weeks indeed, crowned by the news that our Professorial Fellow in Physics, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, had been appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire in the Queen’s birthday honours. Then, at the start of a new year, we welcomed 72 new undergraduates, 44 new graduates and 38 new Visiting Students, our largest intakes ever.

We also welcomed several new members of the academic staff – Dr Romola Davenport, college lecturer in Human Sciences; Dr Nancy Eisenhauer, lecturer in Law for this year; Dr Vincente Grau, Junior Research Fellow (Engineering) funded by Research Councils UK, and Adrian Viens, who not only continues as our Junior Dean but is also now a nonstipendiary lecturer in Philosophy.

President Jimmy Carter and Dr Diana Walford

In this Edition… page 2 page 3 page 5 page 8 page 9

Principal’s Welcome President Carter’s Visit Mansfield Fellows Bursar’s Report College News

page 11 page 12 page 13 page 15

Access, Excellence and Egalitarianism Examination Results 2007 Development Office Mansfield Guardians

Designed by:

Holywell Press Ltd, Oxford

Edited by:

Stephen Blundell, Carrie Fehr and Katherine Morris

page 17 page 18 page 32 page 35

Mansfield in America Life after Mansfield Our Alumni Alumni News Events Calendar

We welcome suggestions and contributions from our readers. Please contact the Development Office for further information on any item in Mansfield.

Cover image: Carrie Fehr

Visit of President Jimmy Carter During his three day visit to Mansfield, President Carter gave the Hands Lecture on June 21, 2007 in the Sheldonian Theatre on the subject “Peace with justice in the Middle East”.

The full text of this article is available on http://216.24.170.159/news/editorials_speeches/ oxford_062107.html

Photos: Carrie Fehr and Rob Judges.

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Mansfield Fellows Researching Climate Change: Pam Berry, Supernumerary Fellow in Geography a family of geographers, but I have always been fascinated by the natural world, fostered perhaps by I-Spy books and collecting PG Tips cards! At the University of Liverpool, where I read Geography, I was delighted to be able to take Ecology as a subsidiary subject and I combined the two in my thesis on “An evaluation of the Landscape, Ecological and Recreational Potential of Woodland on Merseyside”. This flowed from my interest in the application of science and from my Christian faith, which has led to a desire to use my research to further understanding of how best to use our environment.

I COME FROM

I was fortunate because this has been a growth area; the Environmental Change Institute was set up in 1991 and I joined them one year later. The focus of my research group has been the potential impacts of climate change on biodiversity, particularly in the UK and Europe. This has been based on modelling the current relationship between species and climate and then seeing how climate change scenarios would affect the areas which could be climatically suitable for the species in future. This led to work with a diversity of stakeholders, such as Natural England, Defra, and the RSPB, as well as the European Commission and research partners across Europe. It has also involved plenty of travel – a great thing for a geographer and my carbon emissions help to ensure climate change remains a key research area!

My interest in the application of science to conservation policy has led to briefings for government ministers, most notably David Miliband when he became Secretary of State for the Environment. It is also good to see how our research has been translated into policy by our stakeholders.

Pam Berry with David Miliband

I was appointed to Oxford as a Departmental Demonstrator in 1978 and also accepted a Lectureship at Mansfield. At the end of the Demonstratorship I was expecting our first child, so put my research on hold while maintaining my College teaching. Family is important to me and I have always tried to put them first, although this has involved some interesting juggling. The boys rapidly became familiar with fieldwork and the identification of certain plants; in return they had a few extra weekends away.

When I returned to active research in the early 1990s I wanted a change of focus and settled on climate change.

Researching climate change means that the research agenda also is always changing, so more recently my group has started investigating adaptation and mitigation activities in a range of sectors and their potential effect on biodiversity, trying to identify where there are possible synergistic and antagonistic interactions. Another emergent research area is ecosystem services, where consideration is given to what ecosystems do for humans, for example in terms of providing goods and regulating processes, such as water runoff. Given that biodiversity is often like Cinderella when there is competition for resources, including land, this new perspective means that ecosystems are now beginning to be valued for the many functions that they perform for us. We are working towards effecting the paradigm shift that puts biodiversity at the forefront of development. Biodiversity may yet rule the world!

Symmetry, Supersymmetry and the Special Numbers of Mathematics: C. V. Sukumar, Lecturer in Physics symmetry has played an important role both in the arts and in the sciences over many centuries. The famous physicist Richard Feynman described symmetry as follows: if something is done to a system, and it is impossible to tell the difference between the system before and after the change, then symmetry is present. For example, if a perfect cube is rotated by ninety degrees about a vertical axis it would not be possible to tell if anything has changed by looking at it before and after the rotation. This is an example of a geometrical symmetry. The concept of geometrical symmetry may be extended further to embrace a wider set of possibilities, including the way mathematical equations

THE CONCEPT OF

are altered by changing their parameters and the way in which systems behave as a function of time (a dynamical symmetry). In the early years of the 20th century it was proved by Emmy Noether that corresponding to every symmetry operation there is an associated conservation law and vice versa. For example, she realised that the conservation of linear momentum is associated with the homogeneity of space that in turn is related to the invariance of the laws of physics under a translation of the coordinate system. This link between invariance under a transformation and conservation laws has proved very useful in describing atoms, molecules and elementary particles.

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been observed experimentally. The optimists hope that the new high-energy colliders coming into operation at CERN in the next few years will provide some clues.

However, all is not lost! The low-energy extrapolation of this theory, known as “supersymmetric quantum mechanics”, has already proved very useful in explaining observed properties in atomic and nuclear physics, and a large part of my research has been concerned with working out the consequences of this supersymmetric quantum theory. Recently I have found a link between these ideas and a corner of mathematics that has been studied for three centuries.

Pioneers of symmetry: Emmy Noether (1882-1935), Hermann Grassmann (1809-1877), Jakob Bernoulli (1654–1705) and Leonhard Euler (1707-1783)

Until the late 1960s it was widely believed that all the geometrical and dynamical symmetries had been classified and that the list of symmetries was complete. There was even a theorem claiming to prove this. However, there was a subtle error in the proof of the theorem. The proof had tacitly assumed that the physical system was to be described by ordinary numbers in which the order of mathematical operations is unimportant: 3 times 4 is the same as 4 times 3. Another possibility was explored by Grassmann in the early 20th century for Grassmann’s numbers, the order of the mathematical operations is important. In the early 1970s it was shown that if a physical system were to be described not only by ordinary numbers but also by Grassmann numbers, then it was possible to have one further symmetry, over and above the geometrical and dynamical symmetries, and it was called a supersymmetry! Physicists describe all elementary particles as either fermions (including electrons and protons) or bosons (including photons), and supersymmetry opens up the possibility of studying both sets of particles in a unified way, using a supersymmetric transformation to provide a link between the two sets. This was an exciting possibility because it had hitherto been believed that fermions are fermions, bosons are bosons and ne’er the twain shall meet! Over the last thirty years various field theories incorporating supersymmetry have emerged (superstring theory being the most well known among them), which have attempted to provide a unified theory of elementary particles. Unfortunately, the beautiful unification comes at a great price: the supersymmetric theories predict a whole host of new particles, none of which has yet

The power series expansions of functions such as exponentials, sines and cosines familiar to most students of mathematics and physics. However, the power series expansions of tangent, secant and cosecant functions are not so well known. The coefficients that appear in the series expansion, of tangent and secant numbers were studied by Bernoulli and Euler nearly three centuries ago and are named after these famous mathematicians. I have been studying these numbers with the mathematician Andrew Hodges at Wadham College and we have been able to show that a particular pattern in these numbers may be mapped onto a problem involving a quantum algebra with an underlying supersymmetry. We found that permutation classifications corresponding to the Euler and Bernoulli numbers are connected to the ‘bosonic’ and ‘fermionic’ sectors of a ‘supersymmetric’ system. This is an unexpected connection between number theory and theoretical physics that has led to a some interesting results.

For example, I have been studying how the quantum algebra used to ‘unify’ the Euler and Bernoulli numbers can be modified to understand the occurrence of what are known as “parityviolating” effects. Physicists use the word ‘parity’ to describe ‘mirror’ symmetry, and although most physical processes exhibit mirror symmetry, there are some types of nuclear decay that don’t. The idea I have developed to describe these effects is quite general and should apply to nuclei and molecules that have a certain kind of symmetry in their charge distribution.

It’s an idea that can actually be tested experimentally and a candidate system has been identified for doing this. Thus even though we are still lacking experimental evidence to show that a complete supersymmetric quantum field theory successfully describes the physical world, the insights gained from supersymmetry have profound implications that already enable the building of bridges between areas of mathematics and theoretical physics that before looked entirely unconnected.

The Strange Career of British Democracy: David Marquand, Honorary Fellow, Principal 1996-2002 AT LONG LAST I have nearly finished revising the manuscript of a book on what I call ‘the strange career of British democracy’.

It’s taken me four years to write, but the gestation period has been far longer. Indeed, I’ve been wrestling with the subject matter ever since I published a shorter book called The Unprincipled Society back in 1988, at the height (or depth)

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of the Thatcher revolution. But whereas The Unprincipled Society was a mixture of political economy, political theory and political analysis, my approach in this book is historical – albeit with (I hope) contemporary relevance. It starts with the proposition that the insistent rhetoric of change, novelty and modernity with which politicians, managers and pundits of

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all stripes seek to compel our agreement – a rhetoric marvellously encapsulated in the famous cry of ‘new, new, everything is new’ with which Tony Blair hoped to dazzle a meeting of European socialist leaders just after he became Prime Minister – is profoundly dangerous, despite the obvious element of truth it builds on.

Yes, everything is new, in a certain sense. But no, everything is not new. ‘Men make their own history’, Marx famously wrote, ‘but they do not make it just as they please.’ And he added: ‘The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living’. As anyone who has ever watched a debate in the House of Commons will know, this is particularly true of Britain. The Thatcher governments of the 1980s and the Blair governments of the 1990s and 2000s liked to picture themselves as the discoverers of a brave new world.

In reality, they were the most recent protagonists in a story that went back for at least 300 years, and perhaps for longer. They faced a host of new challenges and opportunities, of course – globalisation, de-industrialisation, accelerating technological change and the collapse of Communism, to mention only a few. But they viewed these changes through the prism of the ancient, though evolving British political tradition. They were bound to: it was the only prism they had. That tradition

was fluid, flexible and contestable as living traditions always are, but it was also constraining. And it was stamped through and through by the legacy of a long-drawn-out, occasionally violent and always fiercely contested transmutation, through which a pre-democratic state, ruled by a tiny elite, slowly acquired a more-or-less democratic constitution.

My book focuses on British political history since 1918 – the year of the ‘Fourth Reform Act’ that finally enfranchised all adult men and women over 30. But to make sense of that story, I have put it in the context of the long, slow march of British democratisation, starting with the so-called ‘Levellers’, who demanded something close to manhood suffrage in the tumultuous years of the mid-seventeenth-century English revolution. After an opening chapter tracing the long march from 1647 to 1918 I have looked at the complex, interwoven narratives with which rulers and ruled tried to make sense of the story, and at the divergent visions of democracy and the democratic state that the narratives helped to generate. For most of the 90 years since 1918, the dominant narrative has been quintessentially whig, emphasising gradual evolution and timely accommodation by a statesmanlike elite. But there are at least three other narratives, which I call, respectively, ‘tory nationalist’, ‘democratic collectivist’ and ‘democratic republican’. These four narratives and the visions drawn from them, I try to show, have structured our politics for the last 90 years – and still do so. When Thatcher and Blair claimed to be new, they proved that they were old.

I’ve had a lot of fun writing this book. I hope my readers enjoy it too.

David Marquand will give the Adam von Trott lecture on 3rd March.

Exploring Egypt: Joanne Rowland, Research Fellow, Egyptology and Archaeological Science trip to Egypt was during Easter 1998, when I worked as part of a joint team from University College London and the Supreme Council of Antiquities, the organisation responsible for all archaeological fieldwork in Egypt. Subsequently, having worked with the German Archaeological Institute and with the University of Durham/ Egypt Exploration Society’s projects in Buto and Sais, in the northwestern and the northern central Delta, I instigated the Minufiyeh Archaeological Survey, under the auspices of the Egypt Exploration Society, who are celebrating 125 years of fieldwork in Egypt this year. Fieldwork in this central Delta province, c60km northwest of Cairo, started on a small scale during our first season in 2005, when I was joined by three colleagues – Egyptologists and archaeologists – to conduct a ground survey across the province, looking for any surface traces of archaeology and talking with villagers, to assess whether there was local knowledge of ancient sites in the area. Bearing in mind that the area under consideration is roughly 50km by 50km, this was obviously to be no small feat; however, after only three weeks of fieldwork we had visited thirty prospective sites, many previously unrecorded and others either very scantily known or unvisited since the

MY FIRST FIELDWORK

Joanne Rowland

travels of the Egyptologist Georges Daressy in 1912. The 2006 season saw the mission expand in terms of both the team of specialists and the methods that we were using – with geophysical prospecting methods (as often seen in action on the television programme, ‘Time Team’) being employed to

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help locate and ascertain the extent of archaeological features beneath the surface. Ceramics specialists joined the team in 2006 and 2007 and their systematic recording of the types of pottery vessels that we have been finding across the province has allowed us to make initial interpretations about site longevity across the region.

There are many problems – as well as great opportunities – when conducting fieldwork in the Delta and one of the greatest issues stems from the water. Today there is everrising groundwater, which is not only extremely damaging to the archaeology, but also problematic when trying to dig deep beneath the surface, calling for the use of expensive water-pumping equipment. There is, however, another water-based problem that, although not insurmountable, causes problems when we are looking for both Pharaonic and pre-Pharaonic archaeology in the region. While we might find Roman, and later, pottery lying on the surface today, the fact that the ancient river branches of the Nile Delta were in flux means that site placement has drifted over time. Sites were frequently located on river branches and have both gone out of use and been re-located through time as river branches have changed direction and silted up. This means

that we cannot hope to find earlier archaeology by simply looking directly beneath surface scatters of Roman pottery sherds. Thankfully, however, due to the analytical work by our team geologist, Prof. Mohammed Hamdan, professor of geology at Cairo University, we have created a model of the ancient local environment which includes the position and migration of local water channels in the prehistoric, Pharaonic and Roman periods. So, in spring 2008, the search for prehistoric material in the region will recommence after a break of exactly 80 years, when prehistoric sites in the region were last surveyed by Hermann Junker and the German West Delta Expedition.

The Minufiyeh Archaeological Survey has been funded by: The British Academy, The Egypt Exploration Society’s Centenary Fund, The G. A. Wainwright Near Eastern Archaeological Fund, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust and the Society of Antiquaries of London. Articles have been published in Egyptian Archaeology, the bulletin of the Egypt Exploration Society, in the Spring 2006 and 2007 issues and in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology in the 2006 edition and the forthcoming 2007 and 2008 editions.

Bursar’s Report AS BURSARS ARE supposed to have an obsessive if not unhealthy interest in money, I am required to start with the fact that the College accounts for 2006-07 show that we actually ran a surplus for that year of some £19,000.

This still represents a tiny fraction of our turnover but it is the direction of travel that is so encouraging – with Mansfield now emerging from its annual deficit position of a few years ago.

With growing endowments (now over £10m compared with £1m in 1997), a burgeoning conference and events trade, filming income from “Lewis” (successor to the Morse series) very active and successful fundraising, our biggest ever freshers intake in 2007, and even the main quadrangle potholes now repaired the question is: what should we be doing next and where do we go from here?

I guess the answer from my point of view has to relate to the buildings. Feedback from current and past students shows a depth of affection for the College which transcends the trips to cold bathrooms, the enforced exile to the (expensive) bed sits and (cheap) kebab shops of Cowley for a year, and a College bar which occasionally reminds us that it is sitting

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several feet below the water table. However times, standards and expectations move on. We have therefore embarked on an overall examination of the whole of the College estate to see (suspending any disbelief about money for the time being) what could and should be done in order to increase and improve accommodation – not only for undergraduates and graduates – but also for Fellows and for staff. The architect who has carried this out, Rick Mather, (who recently designed two buildings for Keble and is currently working on the Ashmolean Museum refurbishment) has produced an exceptional feasibility study for us. It shows how we could house all second year students on the main site, develop new kitchen and dining facilities and, at the same time make a whole host of other buildingsrelated improvements too numerous to list here.

It is an ambitious scheme but one which, if achieved, would certainly represent an enormous leap forward for Mansfield in both environmental and financial terms. The College website will shortly provide further details of the proposals.

Meanwhile, on the theme of student accommodation, we said ‘goodbye’ last year to Zoe Belcher, Accommodation Manager since 2003, and Mike Sherwood, Head Porter since 1987.

Zoe in her time brought about many improvements to the management of accommodation and the general cleanliness and appearance of the College. Mike was fiercely loyal to all things Mansfield and will be greatly missed by student and staff alike. We wish him a long and enjoyable retirement.

(Please see College News on page 9).

Steve Waterman, December 2007

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College News Jocelyn Bell Burnell DBE Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell has been awarded a DBE for services to science in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in June 2007. Professor Bell Burnell, Visiting Professor of Astrophysics at Oxford University and a Fellow of Mansfield College, is best known for her involvement in the discovery of pulsars, which opened up a whole new branch of astrophysics, and her tireless work to encourage more women to consider a career in science. Her career highlights include 10 years as Professor of Physics at the Open University, managing the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii, and a spell as President of the Royal Astronomical Society. She was made a CBE in 1999.

Paul Ruddock to Chair of V&A Paul Ruddock, Law 1977, was elected to Chairman of the V&A in June, taking effect from November. With over 27 years experience in global financial markets, Mr Ruddock is co-founder and Chief Executive of Lansdowne Partners Ltd – an investment management firm which has won numerous business awards. He was previously Managing Director at Schroder & Co Inc, and has also worked in investment equities at Goldman Sachs. Mr Ruddock has been a Trustee of the Victoria & Albert Museum for the past five years. He has helped bring in significant capital sums for Museum projects including the British Galleries, the Sculpture Galleries and the Jewellery Galleries.

Steve Blundell: Electrons’ love-hate relationship breeds superconducting apparition A form of ‘shimmering’ superconductivity may offer vital clues as to how superconductors work, according to Stephen Blundell and co-workers in Oxford’s physics department.

The ‘shimmering’ occurs when electrons are caught in two minds about whether they ‘love’ each other (pairing up to create superconductivity) or ‘hate’ each other (are repelled, creating insulating behaviour). In work published in the journal Nature in October, the team report that, for a molecular superconductor on the borderline between superconducting and insulating behaviour, a slight preference for love over hate can result in a fluctuating state of superconductivity that exists at temperatures 50% higher than that at which ordinary superconductivity is destroyed.

The arrangement of molecules inside the molecular superconductor used by Oxford University scientists in their experiments.

Women’s Rowing Last year was a difficult one for any crew rowing on the Isis. Poor weather hampered training for much of the year and necessitated the cancellation of Torpids in Hilary term. In spite of this, with a strong team spirit and a lot of hard work and determination, the Women’s 1st VIII fought hard to secure blades in Summer Eights, with some nail-biting bumps action from a loss of steering to a threeboat chase on the final day. In spite of all the challenges of the year, the girls did themselves, their boat club and their college proud. The blades chalked up on the college walls will serve as a reminder of their success for years to come.

Well done all!

Rebekah Finch Visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, visited Mansfield to preach on the theme of Wholeness and Healing on 24th October. In fact, Mansfield hosted not one but two archiepiscopal visitors because on Alison Salvesen’s invitation, His Excellency Mor Polycarpus Eugene Aydin, the Archbishop of the Syrian orthodox church in the Netherlands, was also visiting and met Rowan Williams for the first time over dinner. We hope and pray that the meeting of two archbishops at Mansfield will contribute to ever greater healing and fellowship between the Reformed, Anglican and Orthodox traditions. In his sermon, Rowan Williams recalled being invited as Archbishop of Wales to the Greek Orthodox rite of the ‘Great Blessing of Water’ when a cross is cast into the nearest body of water (in this case, Cardiff docks). Dr Williams illustrated that effort is needed to enter into the suffering of others, casting ourselves into it, as it were, before a journey towards healing can begin.

Ben Williams, Acting Chaplain

Dr Rowan Williams with Ben Williams, Acting Chaplain and Dr Diana Walford, Principal

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Bob Adams: Election to British Academy Professor Bob Adams, Senior Research Fellow at Mansfield has been elected as a Fellow of the British Academy. He has done very important work in philosophy of religion, ethics, the history of modern philosophy and metaphysics and his papers are substantial contributions to the literature of each of these topics. Professor Adams’ book on Leibniz (1994) made him one of the leading historians of early modern philosophy, and his subsequent writings, no less careful and challenging, have become part of the literature of the subject.

Mike Sherwood We said farewell to Mike on his retirement in December following 20 years as Mansfield’s Head Porter – having joined the College after a career in the chemical industry.

The Bursar writes: “Mike was fiercely loyal to all things Mansfield with a mental list and knowledge of college members past and present which outperformed any electronic filing system. I will very much miss Mike’s unflappable approach to his duties, his daily reassurance that ‘everything is under control sir!’ and our occasional discussions on the state of the nation and its institutions. His system of key fines played a not insignificant part in Mansfield’s financial recovery, and of course his love of Britain’s railway heritage was legendary.

I would like to wish Mike and his wife Mary a long, happy and much deserved retirement.”

Zoë Belcher Zoë joined the College in 2001 as Assistant Steward and shortly afterwards was promoted to the post of Accommodation Manager. She and her team transformed the cleanliness and appearance of the College environment during her time at Mansfield. Always dependable, Zoë’s advice was never less than sound and she was frequently able to identify ‘cost effective’ solutions to Mansfield’s perennial accommodation issues as well as being on hand to deal with the steady stream of day-to-day crises. Zoë left the College in October to take up a post as project manager to oversee the development of a holiday complex near Dorchester. We wish her every success in this new endeavour.

Walter Houston Walter retired at the end of summer 2007 after 7 years as our Chaplain Fellow in Theology and Director of Ministerial Training. However, Walter’s connection with the College is longer than that as he was a Mansfield undergraduate himself in the 1960s. In the intervening period, Walter has been a lecturer in Nigeria, and a United Reformed Church minister in Liverpool and has had many years of experience in training ministers. As well as his work as Chaplain and his training of ordinands, Walter has been active in research while at Mansfield and recently completed his book on Social Justice in the Old Testament. Walter and his wife Fleur, also a URC minister, have made a superb contribution to the life of the College and we wish them well for their retirement.

Philip Kennedy At the end of 2007, Philip ended his term as Senior Tutor of the College, a job he has performed with his characteristic dedication, energy and tact, lending a sympathetic ear to students and staff alike and earning enormous respect from everyone. Philip has also been a theology tutor, with research interests focussing on the history of modern Christian thought, Christology and liberation theologies. His book A Modern Introduction to Theology: new questions for old beliefs was published in 2006. We are grateful to Philip for his service to the College, his friendship and for the pleasure of having him as a colleague and we wish him all the best for the future.

Gala Dinner 9TH JUNE, Mansfield held its first ever Gala Fundraising Dinner. The five delicious courses, produced by the College chefs, were enjoyed by 140 guests in a beautifully dressed Chapel. Following dinner, a thrilling Auction of Promises rounded off the evening.

Our Auctioneer, Mr Simon Pott, a past President of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, not only provided us with superb entertainment, but also sold the 14 lots, generously given to Mansfield by a wide number of donors, raising £21,000. The event was a tremendous success for the College, bringing in a total of £48,000 towards our target for matched funding.

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More images of the Gala Dinner can be found on the back cover.

Zoë Belcher (centre) with Lynne Quiggin and Dawn Oliver

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Access, Excellence and Egalitarianism Brian Seaton, Chemistry with Biochemistry 1963, Patron of Mansfield situated at 310 Barking Road, Plaistow (pronounced cockney “plar-stow”, not “plays-toe”) in the East End of London. The link between the name of the building and a former principal of Mansfield College, Revd.

Dr. A. M. Fairbairn, is no coincidence. Fairbairn Hall was just one of the activities of the Mansfield House University Settlement, now part of the Aston-Mansfield organisation (www.aston-mansfield.org.uk) founded towards the end of the 19th century by students of Mansfield College as an outreach activity to the underprivileged in east London. The links with the College have somewhat dwindled over the years but Mansfield House continues to provide much-needed social outreach services in what is still a relatively deprived area of London.

FAIRBAIRN HALL IS

Fairbairn Hall is now a rather sad building and is a shadow of its former glory. In the 1950s it was a flourishing and prestigious boys’ club with a wide range of social and sporting facilities and a long waiting-list of would-be members.

Its grand entrance hall and stairs were a far cry from the relatively poor working-class environment in which it was situated. In the 1950s Plaistow and neighbouring Canning Town, part of West Ham (now Newham), was the home of the large number of low-paid labourers who worked in the nearby docks of the Port of London Authority (now trendy Docklands). Both my grandfathers were dock labourers, though my father rose to the exalted height of foreman.

However, the links between Mansfield House, Fairbairn Hall and Mansfield College Oxford did not normally extend to education, with which many of the local working-class inhabitants had little truck. I had school friends who, having successfully passed their 11-plus exams, were told firmly by their parents “yer ain’t going to no grammar school – secondary mod. was good enough for me and it’s good enough for you!”

Not that a Grammar School place meant quite as much there as it did elsewhere. In staunchly left-wing “egalitarian” defiance of low levels of academic achievement, the local council provided more grammar school places per head of population than most other London boroughs. As a result, 25% or more of the pupils (the entire D-stream, and others too) left grammar school at 15 without taking any GCEs at all and even in the highest A-stream the majority of pupils would get fewer than 5 O-levels. “Comprehensive” education came early to West Ham !

So it caused something of a stir when a sizeable sum of money was left to Mansfield House to promote education amongst local school-children, and it was decided to use the money to pay for students coming up to their GCE examinations to spend two weeks of their Easter Holiday in Mansfield College to revise for their exams. Given that not many West Ham pupils at that time even went on to university – and going to Oxbridge was unheard of – places on the revision course, in

Oxford of all places, were in great demand and always over-subscribed.

So I was very fortunate to get a place on the course and the opportunity to come to Oxford and to Mansfield College.

And so it was that I – together with about twenty others – had the opportunity to spread my books out on the big oak tables in the library bays; to gaze in amazement and pleasure at the wonderful beams and ceiling, the musty books and the quaint balcony; to look out over the beautiful quad to the chapel and the new building; to sit on long wooden benches in the dining room and actually be served my meals under the gaze of portraited redoubtables; to sleep in a room of my own and be looked after by a scout; and to enjoy all the other accoutrements of a student lifestyle of which I could never have dreamed because I never knew it really existed. A number of the College’s students (Geoffrey Roper, the Association’s President, being one of them) gave up some of their Easter vacation to act as “tutors” (technically “mentors” as they weren’t allowed to teach us) and, more importantly, to help organise the outings and parties that so admirably counterbalanced the revision periods. I even learned that Oxford (i.e. Mansfield College) wasn’t populated entirely with toffee-nosed, academic snobs (the East End of London’s perception).

Not surprisingly, I fell in love with Mansfield and Oxford and, to the consternation of friends and teachers, abandoned all thoughts of trying for a place to study chemistry at University College London (then the pinnacle of achievement for someone from West Ham) in favour of a place at Mansfield.

There were, however, obstacles. First of all, I was aspiring outside my working-class background: nobody – but nobody – from West Ham ever went to Oxbridge. Secondly, and consequently, in West Ham even grammar schools had neither the curriculum nor the experience to prepare their pupils for Oxbridge entrance. So, even though I had taken all the subjects that the timetable allowed, I did not have the appropriate combination of GCE subjects to meet Oxford entrance requirements.

Inevitably, many were sceptical, and a few overtly hostile, to the notion of a West Ham lad going to Oxford. But there were, fortunately, some who were supportive – parents and, particularly, the teachers who were willing to provide the one-to-one tuition necessary to enable me to obtain the additional entrance requirements. And so it was that I managed to get these, the College was kind (but not too kind, I hope) with my entrance examination submissions and, as the saying goes, “the rest is history”.

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I was, as far as I have been able to discover, the first West Ham pupil to get a place at Oxbridge, although there have been many since. I have, therefore, a personal reason to be an enthusiastic supporter of the College’s leading role in the University’s FE Access Consortium and in encouraging applicants from state schools.

I don’t know exactly when the first of the Easter Vacation revision courses took place but, working back, it seems likely Fairbairn Hall that the 50th anniversary will be in 2009. It was also gratifying to learn, when I went back recently to Mansfield House in West Ham to do some research for this article, that not only is the outreach centre that the College founded some 120 years ago still providing valuable social outreach in what is still a relatively deprived area, but also that the current student body of the College has been exploring ways of reviving the association between the College and the Centre.

As with all bold initiatives, the instigators could not have envisaged some of the consequences of their actions. The

Easter Vacation courses were radically life-changing for me, and I would be very surprised if that was not also true – albeit in different ways – for at least some of the other lucky participants. I hope that Mansfield College will continue to be a bold innovator in its outreach activities – both social and academic – not just for the immediate and visible benefits that it brings to the College but for all the invisible and wider benefits, too.

Fairbairn Hall and Mansfield House

Examination Results 2007 Philip Kennedy, Senior Tutor, writes…

LIKE EVERY OTHER college in Oxford, Mansfield is primarily an academic

community. As such, it seeks to provide the resources and environment for all its members to flourish intellectually and humanly. Its scholarly life continued to improve slowly yet steadily during the past academic year. Over the last twelve months the College extensively improved computing facilities for students, and every effort was made to help students working with illnesses or disabilities.

In addition to accomplished work by fellows and lecturers of the College, a cohort of talented and industrious graduate and undergraduate students achieved highly distinguished results in public examinations.

More specifically, during Michaelmas Term, 2007, the College awarded scholarships to the following students for obtaining Class I results or Distinctions in their First Public Examination: Anuvrat Kottamasu Rao (Engineering,Year 2) Katharine Boon (English,Year 2)

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Vassilis Pandis (Physics, Year 2) Thomas Swinburne (Physics,Year 2) The thirteen students listed below achieved First Class results in their Second and Final Public Examinations: Kevin Jones (Engineering) Man Ho Lam (Engineering) Clare Sutton (Human Sciences) Wing Chu (Mathematics) Timothy Davies (Mathematics) John McCarthy (Mathematics) Duncan Blythe (Mathematics & Philosophy)

Charlotte Spurrell (English,Year 2)

Markus Mittermaier (Materials, Economics & Management)

Frederick Price (Geography, Year 2)

Katie Moore (Materials Science)

David Putnins (Mathematics, Year 2)

Helen McKenzie (PPE)

Quang Thach Tran (Mathematics, Year 2)

Fergus Nelson (Physics)

Ernie Bell (PPE, Year 2)

Andrzej Nowojewski (Physics)

Siddhartha Haria (PPE, Year 2)

Claire Robison (Theology)

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Quite apart from Class I results, Andrew Nowojewski in Physics, and Claire Robison in Theology, achieved the highest marks in their fields of study in the entire University.

Three students achieved results of Distinction for Masters’ degrees: Ian McGeoch (MSc Medical Chemistry for Cancer) Norman Meyer (MJuris) Alan Peters (MSt Jewish Studies) Because of eminent examination results, the following students were awarded prizes by the University: Semjon Terehhov (Materials) – QinetiQ prize for the best third-year team design project 2006-07 Stanley Li (Materials) - QinetiQ prize for the best third-year team design project 2006-07

Duncan Blythe (Maths & Philosophy) – Gibbs prize for the best performance in the Mathematics papers in Part C Andrzej Nowojewski (Physics) – Scott Prize for performance in the BA examination Andrzej Nowojewski (Physics) – Physics Prize for the best BA project Claire Robison (Theology) - Denyer and Johnson Prize for the best performance in the Final Honour School of theology.

Not only are they achieving brilliant examination results, but by far the majority of students in the College have been working well, cooperating with their tutors, attending University lectures, and relating happily and intelligently with each other. The contributions they will eventually make to the lives of others beyond the College remain a considerable catalyst for wonder!

Katie Moore (Materials) Armourers & Braisiers’ Company Prize for the best Materials Science Part II Thesis 2006-07

From the Development Office IN

2011, MANSFIELD celebrates its 125th Anniversary. Such an

event requires not only preparation, planning and direction, but also ambition and targets: another side to the celebratory coin. Since August, the Development Office has taken this historical milestone as its directive. We have been working hard on our 125th Anniversary strategy, one which will take Mansfield forward, with the support of alumni, parents and friends, to a firmer footing. We aim to involve as many of you as possible in our objectives over the next few years and ensure that your College is in the best possible position for the next 125 years.

We cannot deny that our financial objectives are large, but we believe that these are achievable. With your help, we can raise Mansfield’s educational and physical calibre, ensuring that the College moves through the 21st Century with a healthy endowment, providing further financial support to our students, endowing our tutorial fellowships in perpetuity and upgrading our built environment.

Our programme for involvement exists at four levels: Guardians who have joined our Development Board; Patrons of the College through our 125 Club; Friends of Mansfield via The Mansfield 500; and Supporters of Mansfield. It is a unique method within the collegiate system of ‘development’, but one with which we have had tremendous success to date. For more information and to become involved with our 125th Anniversary, please contact the Development Office and work with us in looking after your College.

The last six months at Mansfield have, once again, been packed with events. As you will have read over previous pages, we held our very first Gala Fundraising Dinner at the beginning of June – it was a hugely enjoyable and successful event. We very much hope that many more of you will be able to join us when we

hold our next fundraising event. The Gala Dinner was swiftly followed (literally ten days later) by the visit of President Jimmy Carter (see pages 3-4). It was a real pleasure to see the whole College involved with our most distinguished guest.

These enjoyable, action-packed days were then speedily followed by our summer Gaudy – for alumni who matriculated between 1975 and 1980. It was a pleasure to welcome you back and hear of friendships rekindled and old tales retold. Sadly, the warm weather came to an abrupt end just in time for the Garden Party the following day. However, thanks to careful planning and the hard work of those in our kitchen, we enjoyed a superb summer lunch in the comfort of the marquee accompanied by a local jazz duo – literally, sunshine on a rainy day!

We were rather quieter throughout July and August, turning our minds to matters of development, but as soon as September arrived, events loomed large on the agenda once more. The first of four events was our Tenth Annual Parents’ Dinner, to which we welcomed a number of parents from our 2006 student intake. Special thanks must go to our Parents’ Network Committee for their help in welcoming new faces and we do hope that many more of you will be able to join us for the next parents’ event which is our Midsummer Reunion (22nd June 2008). On 15th September, we held a very special event: our first Glover Society Lunch gave us the opportunity to thank and honour those who have made provision for Mansfield in their Will and it was a delightful afternoon. Sadly, many were unable to make the Lunch and I very much hope you will make a note of the Second Glover Society Lunch (19th September 2008) details of which can be found on the Events Calendar at the back of this publication. That same day, we celebrated 30 years of Mathematics at Mansfield and the teaching of our first Mathematics Fellow, Dr Janet Dyson. The celebration event, which began with a lecture given by Prof. Jon Chapman and

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was followed by a champagne reception and dinner, was very well attended. We were absolutely delighted that a couple of our very first mathematicians, from 1977, were able to join us for the evening. The last event for the autumn was our Seventh London Drinks Evening, held at the Counting House on

Cornhill. Once again, it was a busy evening and it was super to see so many of you join us for this bi-annual event. Thanks to those of you who have made it a regular date in your diary: please encourage your contemporaries to join you for our next drinks, on 17th April 2008 (venue TBC).

▲ Gaudy

▼ Garden Party

▲ Tenth Annual Parents’ Dinner

▲ Mathematics Dinner

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▼ Second Glover Society Lunch

▼ Seventh London Drinks Evening

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3000 Missing students – why we wanted to be Mansfield Guardians…

Sarah and Peter Harkness became the first Guardians of Mansfield College and Sarah joins The Development Board IN SEPTEMBER 2007, The Sutton Trust published research which showed that every year in the UK, some 3,000 children from state schools who have the grades necessary to get in to the top 13 universities in the country, fail to apply for these places. Over the last five years, the top 200 schools in the country have provided nearly half of all Oxbridge entrants.

For the other 3,500 schools, only 1 % of their sixth form will make it to these top academic institutions. This seems to raise one key question – what more can be done to improve bright pupils’ prospects of going to a top university? As a couple, my husband and I have been very impressed by Mansfield’s leadership of the debate on these issues, and we are pledging funds targeted at encouraging more applications from Yorkshire schools, hoping to do our bit to make some progress.

I read PPE at Mansfield from 1980 to 1983. At that time the college was still a Permanent Private Hall – and confined to the back pages of the Admissions Prospectus.

This meant that for some of its subjects, PPE being one of them, the college was not exactly over-subscribed with applications, and considered students rejected from other colleges. I had applied to St John’s – there were 27 of us up for interview for just six places at that college. The whole two days’ experience of staying at St John’s was intimidating, to say the least, and most of the candidates were more than slightly depressed by the mathematical odds stacked against us. Sure enough I toddled back to Dorset with my tail tucked firmly between my legs, convinced that this was not going to be a year when my little state grammar school would achieve the coveted ‘destined for Oxbridge’ entry in the sixth form leavers’ list.

Two weeks later the phone rang – Dr Freeden asking if I could come back up to meet him for interview. I remember feeling very reluctant – it was Christmas party season, it meant catching a train at 7am in the snow and ice – and I remember falling over on the walk from the station to the college and cursing the whole idea. Just two hours later, depression had been transformed into elation - he put me out of my misery by confirming my offer before I had even got back on the train – and my life would never be the same again….

That sounds over-dramatic, maybe, but I genuinely believe that the chance to take an Oxford degree was life-changing for me and led to interests, friendships and opportunities for which I will always be grateful. I came from a small girls only grammar school. Staff were only too happy to see most girls settling into nursing or teacher training. I was lucky – I had my own personal Miss Jean Brodie, a dedicated history teacher called Dorothy Austen, who nagged and bullied me through my entrance examination preparation, arriving at our ‘mock tutorials’ each week with teetering piles of classic literature for me to scan, pushing me to think, question and challenge in a way that was totally in contrast to my previous educational experience.

Luckily it did the trick, and in October 1980 I quickly discovered that most of the rest of the newcomers at Mansfield had shared my experience – had applied to other better known, better endowed colleges, but now found themselves in a JCR which always felt it had something to prove, was slightly chippy but very supportive, friendly and welcoming.

There were only around 50 students in our intake and yet undergraduates from other colleges would remark not just on how friendly Mansfield seemed, how relaxed we all were, but how we seemed to pop up all over town, over-represented in social clubs, doing well on the river and the sports fields, and generally having a very good time!

So I look back on my three years with great gratitude – I was lucky that Miss Austen pushed me harder than was the norm at my school, lucky that Mansfield found me in the pile of St John’s rejects, and lucky to find myself in a small, friendly college that was the perfect stepping stone into the world. Would I have had the skills and confidence to pursue a career in banking and become a Corporate Finance partner in one of the world’s largest accountancy firms without the springboard of an Oxford degree to propel me?

My husband Peter’s motivations for supporting an Oxford college, with which he has no personal connection, are rather different – but for him it is more than just family loyalty. His route from a small northern Grammar School to a career of chairmanships in private and public companies was via a 1960s commercial apprenticeship. And he has no regrets. “I reckon more than half of my school didn’t consider university at all, let alone Oxford. There were so many paths to employment that most of us felt that University was almost a cul-de-sac on the route to a decent job.”

Four decades later, he feels that school leavers have too few choices – and that they need encouragement not just to go to university, but to try for the best.

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“Life offers few safety nets and second chances” he says. “And I want to ensure that schools and families in the North give real consideration to an Oxford application – and particularly to Mansfield which I find a very down-to-earth and caring community.”

Now, as I look at my three teenagers, working their way through school in Wakefield, I can only hope that they will have all the life-enhancing chances and opportunities that I had. And we want the same for all bright children, whatever their background, the aspirations of their families or their schools. We know Oxford is working hard to reach out to all types of schools, but we are concerned that not all schools have the ambition and vision to push children to achieve the very best they can. The recent studies by The Sutton Trust and The National Foundation for Educational Research showed that many teachers do not encourage Oxbridge admission; indeed one study found that more than 90% of teachers who advise on university admissions in the state system worried that able students from disadvantaged areas would find it hard to fit in.

Mansfield advertises and acts on its belief that an Oxford education should be available to all those with the requisite talent, potential and application, whatever their background.

Sarah and Peter Harkness

The proportion of students from the state sector is one of the highest among Oxford colleges, and the admissions policy encourages applications from groups which have hitherto been under-represented at Oxford. If the universities are going to reach out to all sections of society, as we believe they should, then this initiative needs support from all of us who have benefited from what Mansfield, in its friendly and unassuming manner, has to offer.

Sarah Harkness

Simplifying complexity: from English to Equity Philip Rattle, English 1984, Guardian of Mansfield and Member of The Development Board AN ENGLISH GRADUATE with a career in Private Equity, Philip’s

relationship with Mansfield reached an exciting pinnacle as he became a Guardian of the College in December and joins the development board.

Ever since leaving Mansfield, and Oxford at large, I have remained interested in higher education and academia. In today’s global economy, where capital is invested wherever it will generate the greatest returns, the only unique thing which a country ultimately has that can attract that capital is its people. A nation’s educational system is crucial in nurturing that talent, enable it to receive investment and so hopefully create economic success. My education has helped me to get to where I am today and, for this, I am really grateful. These beliefs have underpinned my decision to support Mansfield at this time.

I remember my time at Mansfield fondly. I thoroughly enjoyed reading English, studying in the Bodleian, the tutorial system and the friendships. I’d taken a rather controversial decision at the time to study English when my strongest subjects at school had originally been maths and physics but decided I should try and study the subject I enjoyed most,

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Philip Rattle (photo: Henry Uniacke)

rather than something which might have been seen as more vocational. Other memories include the slight nervousness before a tutorial with John Creaser, the bone numbing January weather, trips to The Kings Arms with friends, the sound of New Order, whose gigs I saw frequently in London, the voice of Margaret Thatcher and all the changes going on in the City and the UK economy around the time of ‘big bang’.

I’d always had this fascination with entrepreneurship and business, having seen it from a family perspective as I grew

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up. This stemmed from seeing my dad set up his own company from scratch and growing it, through good times and bad. This meant that I was more interested in the actual workings of business rather than in just pure finance. If I was lucky, I wanted to get into private equity, then known as venture capital.

I began at 3i, joining its graduate training programme, and soon afterwards the UK hit a recession. This was an environment in which you had to learn fast, work hard, and take responsibility early on; I led my first Management Buy Out (‘MBO’) aged 25. It might not sound much like much fun, but it was, and also immensely rewarding to be working with management teams and helping them to acquire the businesses they run.

In 1998, I moved to JPMorgan Partners where I worked in both the European and US private equity markets. I became a partner there and also established its European healthcare practice. I am currently a partner at August Equity, having joined in 2004, where I head up the investment team and have a much more hands-on role, working closely with the management teams in companies we acquire. Here it is exciting to be investing directly alongside entrepreneurs, with all the associated risks and upsides. Companies I’ve invested in recently include Healthcare Homes Group, Lifeways Community Care and Rollfold Holdings.

One of the other reasons behind my wish to be involved with Mansfield’s development has its roots in my experiences from the USA. Many of my colleagues at this time remained closely linked to their universities and it became clear to me that the US model for alumni support is firmly established.

Furthermore, the relationship between academia and business

appears to be closer. In the UK, we seem to be far behind the US in this respect and we could learn a lot from that model.

When I met with the College’s Development Director, I was surprised by the low level of alumni contributions and felt that I really should become involved. Mansfield’s financial position is such that my decision was made relatively quickly.

For a start, it does not benefit from University wealth or the land estates enjoyed by other, larger colleges, nor does it have corporate sponsorship like others, such as Wolfson or Kellogg.

This presents an enormous challenge to the College. The other reason behind my support for Mansfield is perhaps closer to home. Not only do I have such fond memories and hold a great deal of affection for the College, but I also owe it a lot for the way it helped me. Becoming a benefactor of sorts is a way of trying to help out in return. Since my interest in higher education has remained with me, it seems only natural, that together with my experience in private equity and business development, I should choose to support the College.

I have followed then, in some ways perhaps, a rather unusual career path for an English graduate. However, it seems only natural to me and I can’t see me doing anything else! The English degree has also helped me in the world of business. Language, analysis and communication skills, alongside empathy are necessary in both. The need to simplify complexity or pull together an argument is similar to developing a business and investment case – condensing a wide range of information and perspectives into something which is hopefully clear and easy to understand. My advice to any English undergraduate is don’t let stereotypes dictate; go after what you feel really interested in and where you will be most enthusiastic.

Mansfield in America Honoured - and very, very grateful, Giles Harrison, Geography 1989, Guardian and Member of The Development Board 2008 WILL SEE Mansfield visiting the United States. In line with our work for the 125th Anniversary (see p13), it is our intention to meet as many of our American alumni as we can and bring you on board. This is the first time we have initiated such activity in the US and we are confident that our American alumni will be very supportive. We will be making several trips to North America in the next year and should you wish to catch up with us, please contact the Development Office. Our first trip will be in February, and our second during April for the North American Reunion in New York. We do hope to see as many of you there as possible.

We already have the tremendous support of Giles Harrison and Diane Dunne (featured below) in our work with the United States and they have kindly agreed to assist us along the way by acting as flagships for the Campaign.

It is only with the benefit of hindsight that I truly realize just how fortunate I was to have been given the gift of attending Mansfield College. Opening my acceptance letter from the college over twenty years ago (standing with my parents in the checkout line in Tesco’s, don’t ask...), was one of the best days in my life. As the first person in my family to go to university, it was a “big deal”. My tutors Tony, Pam and Michael were (indeed, are) unrivaled: they challenged, they criticized, they expected a lot...and I am the beneficiary of their selfless Giles Harrison

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investment. I have wonderful memories of my time at Oxford and many life-long friendships - including my wife Catherine, who I met at the Oxford Union in my first week.

Mere nostalgia? Perhaps. Reflecting though on the skills I gained at Mansfield, on the start in life that it provided me, this is much more than nostalgia. Much to my tutors’ chagrin (particularly Michael’s...) I chose to go into finance - but with the education I received I know there were few closed doors. The tutorial format prepared me better than anything for Harvard Business School, as did - I am sure - my recommendation from Mansfield (thanks Tony...I still owe you).

Many years later, and back in London after almost 20 years in New York, I continue to benefit from the investment that Mansfield made in me. My renewed involvement in the college’s development efforts is a small way of saying “thanks”.

Whatever your politics, Mansfield needs our support (in whatever way works for you) in order to continue to provide the kind of education that we were lucky enough to have received. We would all like “Access to Excellence” for the next generation, and I am honoured (and grateful) to have been asked to support Mansfield. Please join me.

Diane C. Dunne, mother of Dana (Visiting student 1983) Diane Dunne, has been a long-standing donor and supporter of Mansfield College. Unlike Dana, Diane lives in the United States where she resides in New York City. She is looking forward to our visit to America in April and has been full of suggestions for our Reunion, which kick-starts our trip.

Diane Dunne is Vice President of The Corcoran Group Real Estate. Marketing service, products and entertainment has been a lifelong successful accomplishment for Diane and, in fact, when it comes to marketing, it is said she wrote the book! Diane has spent her career in marketing at Fortune 100 firms: CBS, NBC, Bloomingdale’s, and consultant to American Express and Du Pont. Sponsored

by Bloomingdale’s for an Executive MBA, Diane is the only employee ever to have been so honoured.

Diane has been very dedicated to the Oxford University Alumni Association in New York and had worked hard to establish success and growth of the organization. Her pro bono activities have also included being Co-Chairperson for the Regional Committee of the Fashion Group International – the world’s largest women’s professional organization and she has served on the Board of Directors for the Women’s Economic Round Table. Formerly Diane was active in the American Cancer Society. She is a Founding Member of The Guggenheim (Museum) Society.

It is beyond doubt that Diane’s background and wealth of experience are enormously beneficial to us at this time. Her commitment to Mansfield, both socially and financially, is a real boon as we concentrate on our development activity in North America and we are extremely grateful to her for her tireless assistance.

Life after Mansfield: Our Alumni David Bailey QC, Law 1984 (Patron of Mansfield) interviewed by Law Society President David Johnson What was your time at Mansfield like?

I came to Oxford in 1984, having spent the previous six months working in a solicitor’s office. I greatly enjoyed reading law at Oxford and studied hard accordingly; however, in addition to law, the range of extra-curricular options provided fantastic opportunities to get involved with a range of commitments.

I was President of the Mansfield Law Society (then named the Norman Carter Society); one of the highlights of my time was securing Michael Heseltine to speak at the annual Law Society dinner, days after he had walked out of the Cabinet.

To be honest, I was unaware of the magnitude of our coup until I saw all the subsequent publicity surrounding him.

The much larger Oxford Union was extremely annoyed that they were unable to secure his attendance, yet he honoured his commitment to Mansfield despite this.

David Bailey (centre) with David Johnson and Diana Walford

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Coming back to Mansfield brings back a lot of memories.

Geographically, the college has remained largely unchanged, although the Garden Building accommodation block and modernisation of old facilities are wonderful to see and hugely beneficial for the College.

Why did you become a barrister?

My family (in particular my uncle) were somewhat negative about the legal profession at first – though I think this pessimism only spurred me on! Enjoying the subject-matter and dynamic environment of the law encouraged me greatly, and advocacy experience through taking part in various moots (mock-trials) in Oxford, coupled with the encouragement I received from my tutors at Mansfield, persuaded me to aim for a career at the Bar. What has been your best day at work?

One of my main areas of practice is insurance, and I was involved in a pro bono probate case where an elderly widow was seeking to claim her deceased husband’s life insurance policies. Success in the case meant a lot to the lady, as the money at stake was to make a huge difference to her life.

Receiving the letter that informed me that the insurance companies had acquiesced was hugely rewarding for both me and her. Such a human element rightly attracts a lot of people to the Bar, but can of course be both advantageous and not.

What advice would you give to students considering a career at the Bar, and to those considering a career in the law in general?

Unfortunately, the obvious advice is to work hard! Nowadays the competition both at the Bar and in the legal profession in general is stiff even for those with their heart set on it, and it is therefore important to make sure that you can obtain as much information beforehand as you can. In addition, both the legal profession and the Bar are essentially a series of very different professions – for example, the work of a criminal barrister is highly different from one involved in commercial law. Finding out as much as you can gives you the best chance of choosing the right approach to take.

Access to the Bar is widening, as shown by recent pupillage statistics. Nevertheless, universities have a crucial role to play in ensuring that everyone who can potentially benefit is provided with the opportunity to pursue their career.

You represented the auditors accused of professional negligence in the landmark Barings Bank litigation following the bank’s collapse at the hands of ‘rogue trader’ Nick Leeson. What was this time of your life like?

The Barings Bank case was a very important and interesting part of my life. It started in September 1996 when I was presented with a Bank of England report into the bank’s collapse, although proceedings did not start properly until 1999. I then worked solidly on the case for almost three years; which is highly unusual to devote so much time to just one case. Cross-examining Nick Leeson over three days on technical issues was immensely challenging, and it was

hugely rewarding when the judge accepted the majority of our submissions at the end.

Describe some of your extra-legal interests It is my main extra-legal focus that has now found me returning to Oxford on a regular basis. I am the Chairman of the English Sinfonia chamber orchestra, which, having been founded in 1961, is one of the oldest chamber orchestras in the country.

However, funding issues had recently placed the orchestra’s future in some uncertainty. I have since worked with several others to provide financial backing for the orchestra. Whilst we are still lacking in funds we are now firmly back on track, having secured a contract with the BBC and a permanent residency. The English Sinfonia is now based at the North Wall Arts Centre, a brand-new, purpose-built venue, which opened in north Oxford last summer.

The orchestra’s development is now the brainchild of acclaimed composer George Fenton, who has composed scores for many productions, including Gandhi, and the BBC series Planet Earth.

The project seeks to provide not only a centre for excellence but a chance to widen access to chamber music for schools and universities. It provides the chance for individuals to view the orchestra as they work, and to observe how pieces are approached and developed by an orchestra over time. It is my hope that the project will provide a truly valuable educational experience, and as such is very important to me.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years’ time?

Now my children are at university and school I will hopefully have a chance to spend some more time abroad! However, I imagine that I will be largely unchanged, but I hope to continue to pursue my various interests outside of the law.

It is important to remember that the great thing about the Bar is the fact that you are self-employed: provided you are organised and fulfil your responsibilities to your clients, you have the chance to pursue your life as you wish. The law has been incredibly rewarding for me, but it has equally provided me with the opportunity to do many other things, and it can be easy to forget these benefits at times.

Barristers have to be succinct. How could you sum up your philosophy towards work and life in one sentence?

Unfortunately the ‘work hard, play hard’ cliché still applies!

Nevertheless, it remains a highly pertinent one, and it is important to seek to obtain reward from your interests outside your profession as well as within it.

David Bailey QC is a barrister from 7 King’s Bench Walk Chambers, London.

He was interviewed in November 2007 by David Johnson, who is a 3rd year law student and current President of Mansfield Law Society.

Information about The English Sinfonia can be found on their website: www.englishsinfonia.co.uk

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Yes, Prime Minister: Oliver Bolton, Geography 1999 THE POLICE SERGEANT showed me to the interview room, just like the ones in The Bill. He looked almost as nervous as I was. This was my first interview with the police, the first of many as it turned out.

There is no doubt that the numerous tutorials I attended whilst at Mansfield held me in good stead for these interviews. This time, however, I was the one asking most of the questions – probing the interviewee to see what they had learnt. I think I was the person regarded with trepidation, a feeling that I like to think I was able to assuage early on in the proceedings!

As a member of the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit (PMDU) it was my job to be part of the review teams looking into the Prime Minister’s (Tony Blair’s at the time) top priority areas in public services. The Unit covered approximately 12 key targets (a number varying over time) principally across the health service, education and home affairs. Reviews combined key individuals from the relevant department with a small group of problem-solvers from the Unit and aimed rapidly to turn around under-performing areas. There was, however, no ability to increase the funding, which proved crucial to the Unit’s effectiveness. Without the opportunity to solve problems with cash, people became less distracted, focusing on the real issues at hand. It also avoided any awkward conversations with the Chancellor.

I never imagined when I left Mansfield that I would find myself in this prestigious job with so many inspiring people.

Indeed, my career in the Civil Service actually emerged through various temping placements around Whitehall after coming down from Oxford. I hadn’t decided upon a chosen career and, relying on gap-year experience in the Department of Trade and Industry, I registered with a couple of agencies to find temporary work in Whitehall. Providing me with a steady income, this work enabled me to think a little further about my career. My first placement was in the Cabinet Office Ministerial Support Team, in an office with a fine view over Horse Guards Parade. However, following the whiff of a modest promotion, I soon moved to another temping placement back in the DTI, where I learned the valuable experience of how not to roll out a national public scheme!

Following a trip to Australia and a brief but poorly-paid role in publishing (through contacts mischievously made whilst writing spoof complaint letters), I was still relatively penniless and returned to searching for temping jobs in Whitehall. It was at this time that I eventually ended up temping in PMDU. Despite starting off in an administrative role supporting the review teams, I worked my way to negotiating a permanent post in the Unit and soon found myself as a prominent member in the review teams themselves.

I spent over three years working in the Unit and have never worked anywhere that is so enjoyable. The work was tough, being very intellectually and diplomatically challenging, but with the capable and friendly culture which the Unit fostered, it was always rewarding – reminding me greatly of the closeknit family feeling at Mansfield. In addition, the Unit itself

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was only about 50 people strong, similar to my year at the College.

I have found my time at Mansfield very valuable in many ways; the skills I learnt have given me the direction in PMDU to see hard work transformed into real differences and improvements in the public services. I’m certain that without the confidence I gained and challenges I received from the Oxford tutorial system, I would have found my role in PMDU quite overwhelming.

Interviewing across the public service, from the frontline to the chief executives, is a crucial part of all reviews carried out by the Delivery Unit. Two weeks spent travelling the length and breadth of the country interviewing dozens of people is certainly the most rewarding, but also tiring, part of the job.

Whilst often (helpfully) hearing the same thing over and again, we sometimes hear of something quite remarkable that may have the potential to improve the delivery of public services to people like us and to those less fortunate. The challenge for us, then, lies in relaying the information back to Whitehall, convincing the department’s Directors and Ministers to accept the recommendations and take them forward.

In my time at the Unit I worked on numerous reviews which looked at a range of public sector targets. To name but a few: increasing the number of offences brought to justice; increasing attainment at 19 years; achieving the A&E fourhour waiting time; and ensuring no one waits more than 6 months for an operation. People are often critical of the work we do and ask whether it makes any difference and, if so, at what price. In an informed debate these are very proper questions, but it is not right to answer them here1.

1 For those interested, Sir Michael Barber’s book Instruction to Deliver is a fantastic and passionate insight into his setting up of the Unit and building its worldwide reputation. It also deals with the much debated issue of the successes and pitfalls of the targets set and achieved under the Blair Government.

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I will, however, say that I am most proud of my work on the Health Inequalities Review which was aimed principally at reducing the gap in life expectancy of the most deprived parts of the country and also that of the national average.

Our analysis showed that at the time (2004), there was a staggering 13-year difference in the life expectancy between different parts of England. The Department for Health (DH) had been struggling with this target for several years and indicators suggested that while things were improving in the poorest areas in the country, this was not as fast as the national average, so the gap was widening further. With only five years left to turn this around and achieve the target, I was included in a new review team along with four members from the Department of Health and two further members from PMDU. Following the eight-week review and extensive lobbying of key departmental senior officials and Ministers, our recommendations were finally taken on board and

implemented. After two years, initial figures suggest that the Department is, for the first time, on track to achieve its target and I hope that this remains the case for the coming years.

I’m proud that people in situations less fortunate than mine are living longer and healthier lives, due in some small part to the work I was involved in.

Until November, I was on loan from PMDU to the Home Office working on the Bill Team for the latest immigration bill (UK Borders Bill) which has been a very different challenge, involving me in the strange world of the Palace of Westminster.

For anyone from Oxford (or indeed Cambridge), it is difficult not to feel at home in such a gothic labyrinthine warren of wood-panelled corridors with its strangely dressed Sergeants at Arms and bewildering traditions, rules and rituals. And much like the end of my time at Mansfield, it will be difficult to move on to the next challenge.

Morgan, Morgon and Organ: Gregory Houston Bowden, Modern History 1967 my last winter term, and after meeting him at the Motor Show and explaining that I was about to take my history degree, he agreed to let me undertake the project. I was delighted but also rather surprised that he took such a big decision so quickly, and a year or so later, I asked him how this had happened.

“It’s simple”, he said. “You were the twentieth person to ask me about writing a history of Morgan. The others took one look at the mountains of archive material and fled.”

Morgan: First and Last of the Real Sports Cars was published both in England and America, ran to several editions and was eventually declared a best seller….all of which was rather cheering. This was followed by More Morgan in 1976 and a completely revised version of the first book in 1986. Today, as I write this article, I am well advanced with another book on the same marque: Morgan 100 Years. I am writing this with Charles Morgan as my co-author and it is to be the official book to celebrate Morgan’s 100th anniversary in 2009. Their achievement is remarkable – no other car maker of that age is still 100% owned by the founding family.

IT’S MONDAY MORNING,

perhaps one of those cold grey ones in the depth of winter, and as I banish the last vestiges of sleep, the thought sinks in. Another Monday morning….and that means lots of interesting things to do! Seriously, I know I am very lucky. I do not suffer from Monday Morning Feeling.

I do three things and I love them all.

I left Mansfield on a Friday morning in June 1970 and on the Monday morning following, I arrived in Malvern Link in Worcestershire to begin work on the first ever history of the Morgan sports car. I had been in touch with Peter Morgan in

Having acquired a taste for writing I realised that I could not spend my whole life – delightful though it might have been – writing about one kind of car, so I looked at other subjects.

I wrote about British Gastronomy in 1975, tracing the history of cuisine in Britain from Roman times right up to the mid-1970s. This was followed by two books on cycling: a history of the Raleigh Cycle and a biography of the great Reg Harris. He was five times World Cycle Sprint champion and returned to fame as the British Champion at the age of 54 when he defeated our finest riders, all of whom were in their early 20s! He was a most delightful person to work with: he remembered every lap of every race he had been in and served the most wonderful food and wine whenever I visited him.

I am using Morgon – the great Beaujolais Cru – as the generic heading to cover all my activities in wine. During a gap in my

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Oxfordshire, I used to play at least once a month in church.

At Christmas and Easter I would put on my Oxford hood and gown, and when it came to the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Service, I played louder than ever in my life because I was being drowned by the hearty singing of Bucknell’s biggestever congregation. Today, I have hung up my organ-playing shoes, but I still love organ music and now that we live in London, we have almost unlimited access to it.

Gregory Houston Bowden (left) with his 1959 Morgan Plus-4 fourseater at Mansfield in 1970

writing, I thought I should have a second string to my bow.

I searched my mind for things into which I could throw myself with real passion and it did not take me long to realise that in wine, I could combine work with one of my greatest joys.

I therefore joined an excellent wine merchant in Beaconsfield called Henry Townsend and put myself through the various wine exams up to Diploma. At that point I had a bit of luck.

As a result of my Diploma exam, I won the Grandes Maisons d’Alsace scholarship and had a most wonderful time in the region. On my return, the Wine and Spirit Education Trust contacted me and said that their Diploma lecturer for Alsace had just retired and as I had won the scholarship, would I like to take over. It took all of two nanoseconds to tell them how delighted I would be to do this!

As the years went by, the Trust added to my lecture schedule and I now teach not only Alsace but also Burgundy, The Rhone, The South of France and occasionally Champagne.

This I combine with my regular work as a wine merchant.

After learning the trade at Henry Townsend, I set myself up as a one-man band in association first with Philip Eyres and then with a nineteenth-century wine merchant in Banbury called S.H. Jones.

You might wonder where the roots of these three main strands of my life come from and the answer is largely Mansfield.

In my time at the college, I read history and drove an elderly Morgan. That qualified me for the first of these. I co-founded the Mansfield dining club, The John Marsh Society, which, I understand, sadly ceased to exist about five years ago. Also, for two of my thee years in the college I was the food member of the JCR. This involved me in twice daily visits to Harry Barrett in the kitchens and endless discussions with Wally Buckingham about the wine cellar. All that started me off in the right direction to spend much of my life working in the wine world and in my spare time, I am also unofficial wine advisor to the St James’s branch of the International Wine and Food Society and a Compagnon du Beaujolais. The latter is an excellent fraternity because unlike other groups we do not toast our guests by saying ‘let us drain our glasses’ or even ‘let us drain our bottles’. Our toast is ‘vuidons les tonneaux’ – let us drain the casks!

Finally organ: I had learned to play and to love the organ during my school-days and was therefore delighted that Carolyn Brock, our fabulous college organist, occasionally allowed me to play for services in Chapel when she could not be there. I also used to practice at all hours of day and night – using only the softer stops if it was very late!

So….Morgan, Morgon and Organ have been the three themes of my life and I would heartily recommend them to anyone.

Indeed, there is no finer cure for Monday Morning feeling!

The last item in the title is organ. Yes, I adore playing the organ, and during the twenty years I lived in Bucknell in

Sporting Times: James Dingemans, Jurisprudence 1983, Patron of Mansfield MY ABIDING RECOLLECTION of freshers’ week, back in 1983, was a feeling of relief that everyone seemed perfectly normal and not frighteningly intelligent (I later discovered some of the others were immensely intelligent but still pretty normal!).

Law students were privileged enough to be taught by Richard Buckley (now a Professor at Reading University) who was an expert in both tort and constitutional law and it is no coincidence that these remain my favourite areas of law. As a College we shared tutorials with St Peter’s and so were taught by their law tutors for land law and trusts.

I had been told at school that there would be time at university to cover 3 areas of life properly. One area had to be work, one of the other areas ought to be a social life and for my third, I chose rugby. I was lucky enough to play some University rugby for the Whippets (then the 3rd XV) in my first term

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and was then made secretary of the Greyhounds. This meant booking the coaches for away trips and Vincent’s for meals for home matches. I also had to put up the team sheets in Turl Street. In fact I ended up having to captain them on the pitch (in my second and fourth terms in 1984) because the Captain was always in the Blues. After that, I played in the Blues in the Easter term of 1985, and was on the edge of the Blues/ Greyhounds in Michaelmas 1985. In the end I managed to secure a place as prop (no one else wanted to play there) and got a blue. At Twickenham we played a Cambridge team captained by Gavin Hastings (then captain of Scotland B), which also had Mark Bailey, Fran Clough and Kevin Simms (England players) and Andrew Harriman (future England player). We had no one (or no internationals anyway), but managed to drag them down to our level and won 7-6. It was an amazing day. I did play College rugby in my first term and the Mansfield/Merton team (which featured 8 Mansfield players) secured promotion to the first division. Thereafter I was only allowed to play in Cuppers (we never did too well in that) or social games of rugby – which were always great fun.

I managed a bit of college cricket and rowed for the College in eights week. I also played some University rugby league, with some others from college (including Paul Goodson and Jonny Dewar). This certainly improved my tackling and running skills. I got half blues in 1984, 1985 and 1986 and played at Craven Cottage (where the then professional London rugby league team played on Sundays) and in Leeds. I am now a ‘judiciary panel member’ for the RFL (effectively the disciplinary body for rugby league).

I lived in College for my first year (in a room which I think is now the library office – half way up the stone stairs to the library) and my third year. In the second year I lived out with some friends, next to the College house in Rectory Road. The rent for the house was £28 per week each.

I remember finals being a bit of pressured time. Ours was the first year that they had introduced the split between 2:1s and 2:2s. This rather put paid to my plan of getting a second and saying that my second would have been a 2:1 if only they had

divisions! In the end the marking was sufficiently generous to allow most of the lawyers to get 2:1s.

I had always wanted to be a barrister (mainly because I had been told by everyone that I was mad to think about going to the bar) and went to Bar School in London. At the time there were no other Bar Vocational Course providers. I was fortunate and got pupillage (training for new barristers), and after a first six-month pupillage in a libel set I joined 1 Crown Office Row, which has now moved to 3 Hare Court. I was taken on as a tenant after my second six-month pupillage and have been practising as a barrister ever since. I married in 1991 and we have 3 children.

By 2002 I had managed to become grey and bald enough to be made a QC! My areas of practice include constitutional law (including work for and against Commonwealth Governments with written Constitutions), international arbitrations and general commercial and civil work.

I made great friends at Mansfield and university and still see many of them regularly.

James Dingemans’s practice is strongly focused on Constitutional, Human Rights and Public Law, including claims involving written constitutions and cases raising issues of freedom of expression; property rights; rights to life and religious rights; and rights of statutory bodies.

He regularly appears in the Privy Council in a wide range of cases, including those involving constitutional and administrative law, commercial law, common law and criminal cases. A particular feature of his practice is his expertise in and experience of cases which involve a mix of public law and civil liberties and human rights issues.

In his commercial practice, James is regularly instructed in claims both for and against insurers, banks, liquidators and receivers. He undertakes international commercial arbitration. His common law practice includes personal injury actions (claimant and defendant), travel litigation and claims against local authorities.

James was appointed Senior Counsel to the Hutton Inquiry into the death of the Government Scientist Dr David Kelly. He sits as a Recorder and is a Bencher of the Inner Temple. He is recommended in the directories as a Leading Silk in his main practice areas. www.3harecourt.com

A Medic at Mansfield: Hugh Dorrell, Medicine 1966 Mansfield in October 1966 as the second (after Ray Harper) and, so far, the last medical undergraduate. In the 60s, the Oxford colleges were arranged, for the purposes of admission, in three groups and candidates applied to colleges in one group only. Mansfield was not included and, as a result, one had the option, if unsuccessful elsewhere, to apply to Mansfield.

I ARRIVED AT

However, Mansfield was not unfamiliar to me. My maternal grandfather, Joseph Jones, read theology, obtaining a firstclass degree at Mansfield between 1904 and 1907. During his tenure as President of the JCR, a motion was passed requesting that the cook should refrain from using alcoholic flavouring in the food! He subsequently became Principal of Mansfield’s sister Congregational Ordination College, the now defunct Memorial College, Brecon, and at the time of his death in

1950, was Moderator of the Free Churches of England and Wales. Three at the time of his death, I had but few glimpses of this august man, although he is alleged to have observed his young grandson and announced “that boy will come to no good” – some reference!

My parents, when ‘up at Oxford’, worshipped at Mansfield, and later, when living locally, brought me to services in chapel.

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In the mid 1960s, Mansfield was a small friendly community for ordinands and non-ordinands alike. It was guided by a combination of John Marsh as Principal and Wally Buckingham as Steward. Standards have changed – the appearance of a car in the quad usually produced the staunch figure of “JM” advancing with his unique gait towards the offending miscreant. In general, however, it was a liberal atmosphere in the 60s in a college with no gates and no lockup times traditional in other colleges.

We had the advantage of a small community, with most partaking in College activities (acting, rowing, hockey, and cricket) whether talented or not – usually with enthusiasm but sometimes of necessity. We had the luxury of three years in College compared with the tradition in other colleges of “one year in – two years out”. Games of croquet brought forth a mass of advice or criticism from opened windows.

Mansfield was moving rapidly from a small Theological College of repute (George Caird’s lectures were packed out weekly) to becoming an integral part of the University.

College dances and balls here were well-attended and there emerged comments on modes of behaviour being “typical of a Mansfield man”, although the definition of a “Mansfield man” remains obscure.

On the sporting front, Mansfield was wielding influence. The Boat Club achieved great success under the guidance of JM and Wally Buckingham, and in 1967 the Sailing club under the guidance of Tony Lunch won Cuppers. In one academic year, 1969-1970, Mansfield provided the University with both the Captain and the Secretary of Rugby (Peter Carroll and Peter Johnson) as well as the Captain of Cricket (Michael Burton – the first Rhodes Scholar) and the Vice Commodore of Sailing (John Cooper).

My lesser contribution was to be the catalyst of the Mansfield – Merton liaison in rugby. A chance invitation to turn out in a ‘friendly’ by a Merton medical friend led to a regular place in the Merton league team. The University authorities agreed that, in the absence of a Mansfield team, Mansfield men could play for the combined College side.

Academically, those reading Science subjects were aggrieved at the long hours spent in the labs for which Mansfield, however, was ideally sited. My room in College rapidly became a place of repute and resuscitation for coffee breaks during long practical and dissection sessions for many medical friends.

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Perhaps the only disadvantage of Mansfield was the lack of other medical students against whom to place oneself. This, combined with the other distractions of University life, contributed to a poor academic period in my second year.

These failings were successfully corrected in later years. I completed my pre-clinical studies in 1970 and moved to St Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London for my clinical studies. This was a fortuitous choice, for St Mary’s mimicked Mansfield – small, friendly, full of lively and active students and capable of inducing intense loyalty.

I qualified in December 1972 and the following month started work as a Houseman at St Mary’s. Those were the days of poor pay and long hours (over 100 hours per week) but many of us feel that the camaraderie and level of experience gained probably compensated for the better pay and shorter hours of the present Junior Doctors.

A four-year period in training posts and nine months as a Lecturer in Anatomy at King’s College, London led to success in the FRCS general surgical exams and reversion of title from Doctor to Mister. I then proceeded to specialist training in Orthopaedics as a Senior Registrar at St Mary’s and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in London. Completion of this some twelve years after qualification allowed me to apply for Consultant posts. I was appointed as consultant in Orthopaedics and Trauma to the Lister Hospital, Stevenage, in Hertfordshire, where I remain today. In the ensuing years, Orthopaedics has dramatically changed. In the mid 1980s, only hip joints were replaced in large number. Arthroscopic (“keyhole”) surgery was in its infancy and few had heard of the Anterior Cruciate Ligament. Most fractures were treated conservatively, either in plaster or, for fractured femurs, on skeletal traction in bed for three months. Now, knees, shoulders, elbows and ankles are regularly replaced and most fractures are fixed with metalware allowing early mobilisation and rapid discharge from hospital.

The perception of Orthopaedic Surgeons has as a result changed. No longer are Orthopaedic Surgeons regarded as “amiable, simple-minded sawbones” – rather, Orthopaedics has become perhaps the most scientific surgical speciality, combining bioscience (bone healing, tissue regeneration and osteoporosis for example) with bioengineering. It has become the most popular surgical speciality for trainees, and for the last 15 years at the Lister Hospital, we have had four trainees each year.

I still work full time for the NHS but find time to do private practice (pays the school fees) and maintain a sporting interest.

For many years I have been Orthopaedic advisor to Luton Town FC (when I started, they were in the equivalent of the Premier Division!) and am regularly seen in the pavilion at Lord’s as an MCC doctor providing orthopaedic cover for the players during Test matches.

Of my five children, only one daughter wishes to follow the family tradition of medicine (much stronger on the maternal side, where she will be a fourth generation female doctor) and hopes to go to Oxford, unfortunately not to Mansfield.

Perhaps medical students will be able to enjoy the privilege of a Mansfield education again now that we have a medical Principal – the third “medic” at Mansfield.

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Mansfield Values at Work: Paul Palmarozza, Education Diploma 1980, Member of the Mansfield 500 at Mansfield as a mature student in 1980-81 marked a turning point in my life, from an international MBA business executive living in Brussels to a curious student exploring the principles of education among the hallowed halls of Oxford University; the experiences of that period were formative. My chosen field was the application of computers in education. Believing that a better understanding of the principles of education was necessary for me to be more effective in my field, I applied and was accepted into a programme at the Education Studies Dept with Professor John Wilson, a Fellow of Mansfield College, as my tutor. As part of the programme I worked with a number of Headmasters, Deputy Heads and educational researchers on a stimulating, year-long exploration.

In addition to the course work, we met to discuss issues relating to the appropriate use of technology in education. One of the most valuable aspects of my Mansfield experience were the conversations that developed; not with an aim to convince the other person of your view, but to explore an issue jointly. It was a marvellous example of learning and teaching.

MY YEAR SPENT

Between sessions I spent time at the College imbibing the spirit of the institution and its people. It was clear that the excellent spiritual principles at the heart of the College in its formation helped to create a superb atmosphere for study and reflection which was still evident. While at Mansfield I was also able to nurture my growing interest in philosophy. I attended lectures on Plato and spent two terms studying the Sanskrit language, which helped me better appreciate the fine philosophic traditions of India.

My next major decision was to forego the security of returning to my previous employer in favour of setting out on my own here in the UK, as a consultant on the use of computers in training – another step into the unknown. It was a return to the world of business but on different terms. After working as a self-employed consultant for seven years, the time came to put the theory into practice. So I then took another step into the unknown and started a company to provide a computer-based financial training product. The business grew and eventually went public in 2001 on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange. The company, now called the ILX Group, is still operating successfully. I am no longer the CEO but have continued in a supporting role, developing new markets like China and India.

In parallel with the development of the business I continued my studies of philosophy as part of the School of Economic Science, an educational charity founded in 1937 to promote economic and philosophic education. The practical application of philosophic principles in the running of my business was another case of putting theory into practice. In the late 1990s a business colleague/fellow philosophy student and I began to offer lectures and courses on philosophy in business. In 2005 the MD of a UK publishing company, upon hearing a lecture, asked us to write a book on the subject – which we did. From Principles to Profit: the Art of Moral Management was released in 2006. The interest in the subject seems to be growing in the business world

as courses on business ethics and corporate social responsibility have become an integral part of the education of business managers.

The key question I have asked myself and which is asked today by many people in business, especially young people, is whether it is possible to follow ethical principles in business and yet still succeed.

Business creates wealth but it needs to be directed at satisfying not only one’s personal needs but also the needs of the community which gives it licence to operate. Success is measured, on a company level at least, by profit. However, it is also the natural and necessary outcome of providing a useful service that benefits the customer and employees, suppliers, investors and the community as well. The key is the right measure. Excessive profits mean that someone in the cycle is suffering. Personal success can be measured by money, fame or happiness; most people, when asked, select happiness as the key indicator of personal success. In fact, short-term financial gain, a primary driver for many in business today, does not actually satisfy many of the true criteria for success, on either an individual or a company basis.

What has engaged me for some time has been an exploration of how the principles of truth, love, justice and freedom, common to all religions and philosophies, might be practically applied in business and what guidelines might be offered to others in business. This exploration leads to following practical guidelines: 1. Speak the truth, be totally honest with yourself and others inside and outside the company and maintain your personal integrity and that of the company in all situations. 2. Show care, service and goodwill to all, which includes employees, suppliers, customers, business colleagues, shareholders, members of the community, society and nation and, importantly, your family.

3. Justice relates to the allocation of rewards and punishments as well as fairness. Fairness needs to work both ways; e.g. management needs to compensate employees fairly, who in turn must serve fully; companies must treat suppliers fairly who in turn must deliver on their commitments, etc. 4. Act in such a way as to be free from fear, pride, selfishness, arrogance, dependence on the opinion of others, weakness and negative criticism. Overcoming these negative qualities requires that you work in the present moment more frequently, free from past conditioning and future expectations. The essence of these lessons is that if you do work from true principles for the common good, you will be more effective in whatever you do, you will earn the respect of those who work with you and most importantly you will be happy – which is true success.

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Adult Essay Crisis: Stephen Pollard, History 1985, Member of the Mansfield 500 MANSFIELD IS WITH

me every day of my life.

No, I don’t sit back and smile, wistfully recalling the quad or my room in Staircase D. I don’t think about Queen of Puddings in hall (was it really yesterday’s leftovers, or did it just seem like it?). And I try not to remember the sight of my staircase neighbour plucking a chicken in the bath (which happened in my first week in college).

Mansfield is with me not because of specific memories but because of the life I now lead, and the fact that I was given the tools to be able to lead it. I am a freelance writer. I write for The Times about more or less whatever interests me, and for other newspapers when they are willing to let me loose. I write books. I’ve written my first play. I run a think tank. And I write policy papers which have a circulation of about 3 people.

And I love every minute of it.

Where’s the Mansfield link? My life is now – isn’t everyone’s?

– an ongoing, adult form of essay crisis. At College, where I read History under the inspirational Mike Mahony, I would – again, didn’t everyone? – wait until the deadline loomed, and leave my essay until the night before the morning after.

I would read it out, and then discard it and move on to the next task.

Today, I do more or less the same thing. Given a deadline, I use it. I scribble away, hand my essay – I call it a column now – in, let other people read it, and then move on to the next one. The only difference – it’s a big one, because it means I can afford to eat – is that now I get paid to produce my essay.

And it’s a lot shorter.

I write this in the middle of a year-long essay crisis. My latest book – The Ten Days That Changed Britain – is due out this autumn. At the moment it’s mainly in my head. But after 6 months of research, I’m about to start writing it, ready for delivery this spring and publication a few months later.

I find it hard to believe that anyone cares what I think about anything, let alone that newspapers are willing to pay me for my thoughts, or readers willing to fork out hard cash for my books. When I get called by one of the news channels to be asked if I might possibly spare the time to proffer my views on the latest political story, my first reaction is to giggle. It’s my own version of a conversation I’ve had often with my contemporaries: when are we going to get found out? When are the adults going to lose their patience with us and take control again? But until they do, I’ll keep taking the money, ta very much.

It’s a salutary thought that we are the adults now. And a generation below us, our successors are no doubt having the same thoughts.

It still feels odd when college friends end up on the front bench in the Commons, or as household-name writers. When you’ve known people since their days of being a student with all that entails, how do you take them as seriously as, objectively, they really should be taken? I suppose it’s always been thus, and the Healey/Jenkins/Heath generation had the same rather

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odd feeling. Roy Jenkins once said that he was more upset at having twice lost the vote to become President of the Oxford Union than at any other defeat in his career.

We were all lucky beyond measure to have gone to Oxford; and to have been to so outgoing and open a college as Mansfield. We historians were farmed out to some wonderful tutors, and some wonderful eccentrics. My special subject tutor would take tutorials in a full suit and tie, but in bare feet. And he would break off in the middle of a sentence when something caught his eye in the quad outside, disappear for ten minutes, and then resume the sentence where he left off. I still read his books with awe.

I first realised the impact of an Oxford education in 1990, when I was working as a lowly researcher in the House of Commons. For months there had been speculation that the Conservative Party was about to get rid of Baroness Thatcher – a crescendo of speculation which reached fortissimo that autumn. Wandering through the corridors of the Palace of Westminster, I saw Tory MPs closeted, whispering to each other conspiratorially. I knew instantly where I had seen the same behaviour before: at the Oxford Union, in the run-up to termly elections. All the clichés were true: Oxford politics was Westminster politics writ small.

So there was little about politics which surprised me, and when I started working on a wider canvas, having left Westminster think tanks to start writing about politics for my first fulltime journalistic employer, the Independent, and then the Express, there was very little new. All that had changed was that the results mattered – a change of Oxford personnel had no resonance beyond the few obsessives of Oxford politics; but at Westminster, of course, a new minister or a new policy would impact on the entire country.

I spend much less time around Westminster itself now, having had my office there for over ten years. Most of my writing is now done at home or – praise be to the Eurostar – in Brussels, where I work some of the time. But as I wrote at the start, wherever I may be physically, much of me remains in the same place I was when I first arrived at Mansfield in October 1985 – curious to know what is really going on, and trying to understand it.

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Tricks of the International Trade: Jonathan Steinberg, Visiting Student, History 1988, Patron of Mansfield two decades since I was at Oxford, I have lived and worked in a range of countries, interacting with a broad array of persons from a variety of backgrounds. While I have learned, and continue to learn, new ways to interact positively and effectively with my international colleagues and friends, I find increasingly that many of these lessons began and/or were reinforced during my time in Oxford. Being a southern American reading in the United Kingdom was an eye- and mind-opening experience. This experience, my first significant amount of time abroad from the country of my birth, provided a launching pad for my lifelong learning in living and working as an expatriate, which I continue today as the Senior Strategy Director for a multinational network and managed services company headquartered in London.

OVER THE PAST

Having present and past business dealings in all six inhabited continents, and residences in three of them, I have developed a few useful learnings in international living and business.

Three key ones, which I live by day-to-day, are the following: 1. Ignore the Golden Rule, and Make It a Platinum Rule.

Doing unto others as you would like done to yourself is hardly a way to succeed in international business. Being an American, should I expect that other countries and cultures would appreciate a good back-slap, disciplinary tongue-lashing or even a cold, watered-down beer for refreshment? Of course not. Therefore I follow the so-called Platinum Rule: do unto others as they would like done unto themselves. In all of my ports of call, I have worked to understand – even at a minimal level – the basics of local social and business etiquette: pouring tea for others and not myself in China, properly presenting myself formally when working with new colleagues in Japan, using good, old-fashioned formal letter-writing techniques for conducting business in Luxembourg, and so on. When others recognise your efforts to follow their customs, it is appreciated; if they do not recognise it directly, one still benefits from improved communications and understanding.

At Oxford, I had to adjust my practices from the techniques and attitudes I had used at my US university. My approach to gathering insights from the College’s and University’s resources was rather different from those I applied at Brown University. In turn, to interact with others – especially my tutors – I had to flex my style more towards the local custom.

Doing so helped me achieve much more than had I applied a US-centric approach to my education

national such as COLT, my present employer. Therefore, it is critical to interact with the local offices – their management and staff – before setting any plans for the business as a whole. What works in Spain does not necessarily work in Italy. The products that sell themselves in Australia may be “dogs” in India. Plus, what a sales person or customer care representative may appreciate and succeed in doing in one country often does not translate to others. Therefore, strategies must be not only clear and directive, but they also need to be flexible and appreciate that someone actually has to implement whatever recipe the centre concocts.

At Oxford I learned this lesson via the tutorial system, more in process than in content. I recognised that my tutors often employed different techniques to challenge and enhance the thinking of my colleagues than the approaches they used with me. Particularly in tutorials where it was ‘2 on 1’ I noted how my fellow student and I had individual challenges and triumphs that engendered different approaches from our lone tutor, even during the same session. I also learned that I benefited from hearing first hand the points of view and success factors of my colleagues, which applies equally strongly in the business world via the action of sharing ‘best practices’, especially across international boundaries.

2. One Person’s Plan Is Another One’s Headache. Throughout my career, I have worked primarily in head offices: I currently lead Business Development and Strategy functions for a multinational network and IT-managed services company with offices around Europe and many other parts of the globe. However, I have learned over and over that whatever plans we cook up in the centre are not necessarily what is best or even implementable in the field. While this lesson would be true for a national company, it is even more so for a multi-

3. Take Advantage of Your Surroundings and Enjoy. For the most part, people are proud of their home cities and countries even if they grumble about day-to-day life in that location (especially here in London). Spending time to travel in and around the sites of the country not only increases one’s knowledge of the place, it also positively exhibits one’s interest and enthusiasm for the location. The hosts recognise this and appreciate it, in fact they may be envious that the so-called visitor has visited more places in their country than they have. More

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important of course, travel is usually enjoyable and rewarding in its own right: I did not visit the Scottish Highlands, the Dyfi Valley, Cornwall or even Stoke-on-Trent so that I could improve my business relationships in the UK, but it does help.

This was true during my time at Oxford, when I made side trips to London (frequently), Stratford-upon-Avon, Dover, Wales and even, ahem, Cambridge. These trips increased my connections to the UK – its history and culture – and therefore to many of my fellow Oxonians.

There were, of course, many other lessons I learned from Oxford that I still apply today, ranging from modes of thought and analysis to appreciating different types of port.

And though I am now a British resident and citizen, I may yet get the passport stamped with a new residency permit for a country other than the ones I have had in the past. If and when I do, I certainly will continue to practice and enhance the above key learnings. That said, I am always open to new ones, too. Any ideas out there?

It Reads Better than it Lived: Lord Alexander Stockton, father of Louisa Macmillan, Oriental Studies 2001, Patrons of Mansfield I CAN REMEMBER the precise moment when I decided that I wanted to become a newspaperman. It was July 8th 1955 at about 10.30am. I was at my prep school, in my last year, and in common with most such schools, there was a school magazine; and in common with many, there were boys’ gardens, in which the diligent and hungry grew flowers or vegetables. I was to preparatory school horticulture what the Sahara is to Africa. So, in the best of traditions of the critic, what I couldn’t do, I wrote about.

I shook hands with the headmaster and was handed my copy of the magazine. I stood on the brick steps, the Virginia creeper encroaching from the sides, and saw, for the first time, my name over a piece I had written in proper justified type. I was hooked: and within two years I was at public school with a world map above my bed and a collection of home-made pins with the names of my heroes – the Foreign Correspondents: Ed Murrow, Sam White, Safton Delmar, Noel Barber, Jimmy Cameron. I loved the way that the pins, scattered across the globe when they were at home, would, as if by magic, coalesce at a point on the map: Beirut, Dien Bien Phu, Aden, Berlin. All I wanted was to be there, and have my pin on the map alongside theirs.

Twelve years later I got my chance. I had done three years on the Glasgow Herald and after only 6 months in Fleet Street on the Daily Telegraph, one of the staff correspondents in Delhi was taken ill, and then No 2 in the Paris office was seconded to India, pro tem. That left a gap in the Paris bureau and, claiming a fluency in French that I didn’t have and that I had met General de Gaulle, which I had, I got the job, pro tem.

I soon discovered that there were a number of unwritten rules for a young correspondent. These included that you got all the shit stories and assignments. Most of my colleagues were older, married men and as a bachelor I soon realised that I was expendable and perforce became a war correspondent, pro tem. If a war became glamorous, then a senior journalist would arrive and install himself in the headquarters, and the junior would have to go out to boring places like the front line, report back and have his stuff “incorporated into the bigger picture”. Boring little wars he could keep for himself.

During my time as a correspondent I covered five wars, small, medium and large. All of them were frightening and

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unnecessary and in each one I was sent to cover the losing side.

So my advice to other people is simple, if you are in a war and I turn up – change sides!

Biafra (the Nigerian Civil War) was horrible. As you drove out from Port Harcourt towards the front, the roads were lined with the wretched, the sick, the injured and the starving. You knew that by the time you drove back to write and send your story to London that same evening up to 10 percent would be dead. The only people who got fat in that war were the Federal Government in Lagos and the crocodiles in the swamp.

The Six-Day War saw me attached to the Jordanians and was technically interesting. I discovered that being staffed from the air was more noisy than dangerous. The trucks suffered, but if you got off the road and hid behind the largest rock you could find, you were pretty safe. But I found that the Israeli Defence Forces were even better at attack, and boy, do they shoot straight. The Yom Kippur was essentially the second leg and I was with the Syrians when they were driven off the Golan Heights.

For most journalists covering the Middle East at that time, Nicosia, in Cyprus, was our base. You could fly to all the countries in the region and the Ledra Palace Hotel had been the headquarters of the international Press Corps since the

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days of EOICA, a decade earlier. One evening I was having a drink with Clare Hollingsworth, a veteran war correspondent who had first done the job in the Spanish Civil War and covered pretty well every war and most violent revolutions subsequently. I was on my way to South-East Asia and Clare was going to join me thereafter, when our plans were interrupted by a young reporter from the Chicago Tribune who had just returned from North Israel. He had been under fire for the first time, which is a deeply moving experience, so Clare and I listened with world-weary tolerance, until he said “Gee Miss Hollingsworth, it sure was terrible, I was in this little bitty slit trench and these shells were comin’ and goin’ WAH BAM WAH BAM, all round us”. Clare suddenly focused: “Are you sure it was a WAH BAM, not KERRUMP?” “No Ma’am, that sure was a WAH BAM”. Claire turned to me and said: “I knew it; the Russians have given the Syrians that 155mm recoilless rifle”. Now, there’s a pro!

Round Two, or it might have been Round Three, of India v.

Pakistan war the most amusing war I covered. To start with, the two commanding Generals had been at Sandhurst together and after dark would radio each other with wonderful remarks like “I make that 40-30 to me, Bubbles old chap, but your cavalry played a blinder in the South”. I used to do some broadcasting for the BBC and one day I was in my tent (on the Pakistani side of course – they lost) during the heat of the day when very little happened and a jeep arrived with a BBC camera crew. “You Mr MacMillan? It says ‘ere you’re goin’ to do a piece to camera, OK?” I said it was fine, but nothing noteworthy would happen for at least three hours. “Cor, that’s a bit of a problem, we’ve got to get this on the plane to London tonight. It’s for Panorama tomorrow!” (Of course, no satellites in those days). So I went to see the Brigadier who asked me what I suggested as a suitable bit of action. “You’ve got a battery of 25 pounders over there, sir. Five rounds rapid would do the trick”. He was happy: “Oh, very good, have a word with the Sergeant-Major”. So all was set up: “Sound OK, Harry? Camera OK , George? Carry on Sergeant-Major”.

He snapped to attention, saluted “Very good sahib!” Boom, Boom in the background, me in the foreground delivering my piece. You all think it’s for real when you see Kate Adie doing it on television, don’t you?

Finally, Vietnam. I was there twice, briefly before the peace talks in Paris, to where I returned, only to walk into the Events of May/June, when a student-led revolution nearly brought down the declining General de Gaulle. (But that’s another story and another dateline). And I returned for the last few months. It was surreal sometimes I wonder if I didn’t dream the whole thing right up to the end, which was nearly my end.

I was in a huey (a helicopter) over the Mekong Delta, when we suddenly came under fire from the Viet Cong below. The first couple of bursts knocked out our engine, killed the co-pilot and one of the waist gunners, and we were going down fast.

The pilot was superb and we crash-landed on the edge of a paddyfield. The Viet Cong were still shooting at us and there was a dreadful smell of kerosene, so I grabbed the other waist gunner, who had been wounded, and baled out into the paddy field. Incidentally, paddy fields are quite good places to be if you are being shot at; you get down in the mud behind the earth wall and they can drop quite big bits of high explosive and it just goes “gloop!” Anyway, some other helicopters came and drove the bad men away, and picked us up. It was only when I tried to stand up that I realised I’d been hit by shrapnel or bits of helicopter. The Americans took me to base camp hospital in Kam Rau Bay and they did awful things to me with bottle-brushes as I had about thirty holes in me that God had not intended me to have, ranging from pin-pricks to the size of a 50p bit. They wanted to evacuate me to the US but I stood on my rights as a British citizen and insisted on going to Hong Kong.

During the wait I was lying on my front encased in bandages from the waist to the knee (if you are sitting in a helicopter and they are shooting up you get hit in the behind and under the thighs – don’t worry, that’s why we always flew with our helmets between our legs) when a General marched into the ward and started to hand out medals. He got to my bed, looked down at my back and said: “Where you hit, soldier!”

Ah, the insights of the military mind. Had I replied “in the butt sire” I would have a nice American medal. But I pushed myself up on one elbow and said in world weary tones: “to put no finer point on it, General, some bastard shot me in the arse!” To which he replied: “say, you’re not an American, well you don’t get the frigging medal!”

As I said, it reads better than it lived.

New Boy at the Old Bailey: Paul Worsley, Jurisprudence 1966, Member of the Mansfield 500 arrived confirming my appointment to the Circuit Bench on the South Eastern Circuit, I read it with a mixture of satisfaction tinged with regret and realised how lucky I have been in my career.

WHEN THE LETTER

I felt regret because it closed a chapter on 36 years at the Bar: 20 as a junior and 16 in Silk in Leeds and London Chambers.

I had joined the Middle Temple when I was a first-year student at Mansfield in 1967. I came from Yorkshire and had no legal background or connections so it was a gamble, probably a bigger one than I realised at the time. Armed with a 2:1 in

Law and the ubiquitous 3rd in Bar Exams I was awarded an Astbury Scholarship at my Inn, where I had eaten my quota of 24 dinners in Hall. At my Scholarship interview, the only question I recall having been asked by the distinguished elderly Benchers was ‘Do you still row for your College?’ to which I replied that I did. ‘That will be all thank you’.

But the Inn did one better than that. It arranged for me to go out on the North Eastern Circuit work-shadowing a High Court Judge as his marshal. Mr Justice Cantley imposed three conditions upon his taking me: first, to grow no facial hair;

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as Leeds, Chambers where a diet of serious crime awaited, from money-laundering and drug-dealing to corporate manslaughter and murder.

Then the opportunity to go on the Bench as an Itinerant Murder Judge arose, which was too good an offer to ignore, and hence my move to London. I sat initially at the Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court where I experienced in my first case the daunting sight of 10 counsel filling the barristers’ benches, 5 defendants, a jury and piles of boxes of ring binders of statements and exhibits. Then there was the Long Fraud Seminar, the Serious Sex Seminar and the Murder Seminar, all of which entitle you to try cases in those different areas of crime.

Then after travelling out to Cambridge and Maidstone Crown Courts to try murders, I was given a spell at the Old Bailey where you lunch fully robed with entertaining guests and seasoned fellow judges. After a year on the Bench I was a appointed a Senior Circuit Judge at the Old Bailey with its diet of high profile murder and terrorist cases.

The move across the court to the Bench has been invigorating and stimulating. No doubt the Court of Appeal Criminal Division will be kept busy considering appeals against my rulings and summings-up, which will doubtless keep me humble.

Lord Chief Justice swears in Paul Worsley

second, to wear a stiff collar; third, to let Lady Cantley win at croquet at the Lodgings. I had no difficulty in complying with any of the conditions, especially the last.

It was on Assize at York that I first encountered Gilbert Gray QC who was to become my pupil master and whose advocacy skills are legendary. The Judge persuaded him to take me on for my 12-month pupillage for which privilege I paid 100 guineas.

We travelled the Circuit doing murders and rapes and it was with trepidation and sadness that I ended my pupillage and began my career rather lower on the legal ladder, with careless driving and undefended divorces.

Over the next 20 years I built up a practice in heavy crime in the North Eastern Circuit where I have had the pleasure of seeing a son and daughter join the great Circuit. I was appointed as a part-time judge, an Assistant Recorder, after 13 years and then as a Recorder at 39. I took Silk at 42 and joined London, as well

Leaving Chambers after 36 years of prosecuting and codefending with colleagues at the Bar was a wrench but the Bench has proved a new challenge. In 1999 I was appointed a Bencher of my own Inn so that I now sit on Scholarship interview panels asking searching questions of my applicants!

May I commend to any Mansfield lawyer a career at the Bar? I will be pleased to offer advice or have you sit in with me at the Bailey for a day or two. Mansfield got me on the first rung of the legal ladder and I would now like to repay something of my debt by helping others here in College who feel that the Bar offers an exciting challenge. You will need to be tenacious, have a strong constitution and be lucky.

I keep very much in mind counsel’s riposte to the new Judge who had listened bad-temperedly to his submissions: when the Judge observed ‘but Mr Smith I’m no Wiser’, counsel replied ‘No, my Lord, but better informed’. In my case, only time will tell which applies to me!

Mansfield Association Dinner – Saturday 15th March 2008 The Annual Dinner is one of the Association’s most popular events and our 2008 Dinner promises to maintain and enhance its reputation for being both a gastronomic and an intellectual delight.

Our 2008 Guest Speaker will be Mancunian and Mansfield Alumnus Peter Moth, one-time Director of Broadcasting for Tyne Tees Television.

Peter came to Mansfield to read Theology and take the ordination course having read History at St John’s. It was from here that he took his first ministry came at a Congregational Church in Ilkley (baht ‘at). He also taught Religious Education and so it was that, whilst on strike as a member of the National Union of Teachers and, using his own words, he “inadvertently fell into the family of journalism” when he stood in as a temporary newsroom assistant at the newly opened Yorkshire Television. Remembered as “a sharp, witty and incisive student” at Mansfield, the inadvertent opportunity was clearly a most fortuitous one. Peter progressed to being a presenter and reporter on “Calendar”, a regional news programme, where he worked with Richard Whiteley and Jonathan Aitken. Taking the post of Head of News and Current Affairs and other senior posts, Peter ended up as Director of Broadcasting. In the process, he produced films such as The Famous Five, The Girl, The Tide of Life, Gambling Man, The Glass Virgin and Finney.

Peter retired from television but rather than to a life of leisure, he returned to the ministry at St Andrew’s URC, Newcastle and thence to a number of senior roles with the URC. Now “properly retired”, Peter continues to be enormously active on the boards of several local charities and community organisations and still has the time and energy to “take an interest in China” which he visits regularly (he is currently learning Mandarin).

Sharp wit, respected current affairs broadcaster and producer, leading theologian interested in China and Mandarin…. Miss the next Association Dinner and you will not only miss out on a fantastic dinner and great company, but you will also miss out on what promises to be great after-dinner entertainment.

Put the date in your diary NOW – Saturday 15 March 2008 A booking form is enclosed with this issue

Book now by telephoning the Development Office: 01865 270998

Mansfield College Law Society Annual Dinner We are delighted to be holding the first Annual Law Dinner on 9th February. The event will be of great importance to our current lawyers as they look towards their legal careers.

Stella Mitchell, Prashant Popat, Richard Stones, Steven Paull, James Dingemans and Ian Howard are the speakers for the evening

Stella Mitchell, Patron of Mansfield Stella Mitchell read Jurisprudence at Mansfield and graduated in 1985. From Oxford she went on to the College of Law in Guildford and then did articles at Linklaters. She remained with Linklaters for 17 years, becoming a partner in 1998.

he has specialised in financial services and market regulation and in the establishment of investment funds. His main current project involves exchanges and clearing houses – the “plumbing” of the financial markets. Richard’s daughter, Olivia, studied Philosophy & Theology at Mansfield between 2004 and 2007.

After taking a year out for study, travel and freelance work, Stella joined Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP in 2005. She is currently a partner in BLP’s Engineering, Construction and Procurement group.

Steven Paull, Patron of Mansfield Steven graduated in 1977 and joined Holman Fenwick & Willan – an international law firm and one of the world’s leading specialists in maritime transportation, international trade and commodities, insurance and reinsurance, energy, construction and technology, banking and insolvency – the following year.

He qualified in 1980 and became a partner of the firm in 1986. Steven specialises in commercial and marine litigation, including property, insolvency, shipbuilding and shipping and international trade issues.

Stella’s specialism in construction involves structuring, drafting and negotiating contracts in a broad commercial context encompassing property development, power stations, transport infrastructure and facilities management. Well-known landmarks for which Stella has prepared development contracts include the Swiss Reinsurance “Gherkin” building and BBC Broadcasting House.

Stella has a particular interest in training and development. She has specific mentoring and people-related responsibilities at BLP and during her time at Linklaters was extensively involved in the recruitment and development of trainees.

Stella combines her role as a lawyer with working as a Reader in the Church of England, based at St Mildred’s Church, London SE12.

Prashant Popat Prashant is a Barrister practicing from Henderson Chambers. He is a leading specialist in the areas of product liability, health and safety and public inquiries. He combines his work in these areas with a broad commercial and common law litigation practice.

For more than a decade Prashant has been retained in the largest and most significant cases in the field of product liability.

Richard Stones Richard read classics at Balliol and was a lecturer in Ancient History at Exeter four years before becoming a lawyer. He joined what is now Lovells as a trainee in 1977, became a partner in 1987 and was head of the firm’s financial institutions group when he retired from the partnership in 2006. He remains at Lovells as a (theoretically) part-time consultant. Over his career

James Dingemans, Patron of Mansfield James is a QC practicing from 3 Hare Court Chambers. His practice is strongly focused on Constitutional, Human Rights and Public Law. He regularly appears in the Privy Council in a wide range of cases, including those involving constitutional and administrative law, commercial, common law and criminal cases. James was appointed Senior Counsel to the Hutton Inquiry into the death of the Government Scientist Dr David Kelly. He sits as a Recorder and is a Bencher of the Inner Temple.

He is recommended in the directories as a Leading Silk in his main practice areas.

Ian Howard, Patron of Mansfield Ian is the Director of Pensions and Mergers & Acquisitions at Siemens. His career began with a solicitor’s qualification in 1980 and, since joining Siemens in 1981, he became Company Secretary in 1985. During his time at Siemens, Ian has taken posts as Director of Siemens Group Services, Senior Director of Mergers & Acquisitions, and Finance Director, Siemens Business Services. Following his role as Director of Corporate Development, Ian moved into his current role where he is based in Frimley and heads up Siemens M&A team and is responsible for the Siemens pensions portfolio and for setting up the Siemens Legal Department in the UK.

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Alumni News Albert Alspach 1965, Theology I continue to enjoy retirement. Many treasured memories of Mansfield, Drs Marsh, Caird, Sykes etc. The Mansfield Magazine is exceptionally fine!

Philip Avery 1997, Geography Further to the note in our summer edition, Phil has been preparing for the big experiment – Science on Ice – when the Fuchs Foundation Antarctic Expedition goes to the Ellsworth Mountains 80 degrees South in November.

Phil is one of 4 teachers taking part in the experiment. Preparation has included a trip to Norway which, like the UK, was wet. Phil described the trip to Norway as ‘the start line for our Antarctic Expedition’. The group of four teachers left on 3rd November for their long journey South, flying via Chile to the Patriot Hills and then onto their base camp at the Ellsworth Mountains, Antarctica. They will travel with a film crew from Teachers TV who are producing two documentaries and a series of resource programmes on their experiences for broadcast in early 2008.

John H Bennett 1942, History I have the happiest memories of my association with Mansfield from 1942-50, which included 3 years in the army at home and overseas.

Special appreciation of friendship of Nat Micklem and Erik Routley who took part in my wedding to Dorothy at St Mary’s in 1952.

After 4 years as a Congregational Minister in Colchester, I emigrated with my Australian wife and two children to Australia, where two more children and ten grandchildren were born. First Chairman of Canberra Presbytery of the Uniting Church in Australia which was formed by Congregationalists, Methodists and Presbyterians in 1977.

Sidney Blankenship 1967, Theology Sidney visited us from Texas during 2007 and writes: The “Meeting Minds” alumni weekend inaugurated this past September by the Oxford University Society was a great success.

The Annual General Meeting at Convocation House, a reception with the Vice Chancellor at the Divinity School, dinner on Friday evening at the University Museum of Natural History; on Saturday a symposium on the Golden Age of Oxford philosophy at the Sheldonian, the Glover Society Luncheon at Mansfield, chamber music at Holywell Music Rooms and dinner at Rhodes House; a

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reception at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin on Monday evening, an initial conference of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics on Tuesday. How can one resist the allure of Oxford’s intellectual reciprocity on such a scale? My thanks to Principal Walford and Mansfield’s hospitality for a wonderful occasion.

we have carefully aggregated. We work with companies such as Diageo, L’Oreal, KPMG, Aveda, Yves Saint Laurent, Shiseido, Ocado. com and Heineken. Our aim is to reduce their marketing spend on such items whilst saving them time by being able to outsource the buying and project management. We are based in central London.

Deborah Cozens 1997, PPE I am pleased to announce that I became engaged to Timothy Edwards (Durham) on Reformation Day 2007 and will be getting married in London on April 5 2008.

Frances I Henry (nee Aylen) 1989, English Literature I recently got married (April 2007) to Innes Henry and have moved to Battersea from North London. I have also moved my practice from Paddington to Belgravia. I am a Faculty Lecturer at the British School of Osteopathy and appear on LBC with Anna Raeburn occasionally to talk about Cranial Osteopathy.

Paul Crow 1967, Visiting Student Jean-Marie Tillard, Professor of Ecumenical Theology, The University of St Thomas Aquina, Spring Semester 2007.

David V Davies 1938, Theology My wife (93) and I (92) still lead extremely active lives. Despite having had careers as teachers (I was also ordained), taking posts in Nassau and the Bahamas, it wasn’t all work.

We were both made keen members of flying clubs and, for twenty years we had exciting and adventurous trips in two-seater aircraft exploring New England, Britain and France.

We celebrated our Diamond wedding anniversary in Germany during 2004 and still travel fairly frequently. We have had twelve short breaks this year, with six by car to see our daughter, a Consultant Psychiatrist, in Scotland. Last summer we came up to Mansfield for a Gaudy celebration for all those who matriculated in and before 1965 and I am currently taking two church services a week to help out whilst we have no vicar.

Elaine Dunn 1990, Theology Life has been very exciting since leaving Mansfield. I have been a minister at churches in Putney, Slough and Bournemouth for an enjoyable seven-year spell. I have recently been inducted to Crossway URC/Methodist and Chyngton Methodist Church in Seaford near Brighton.

Stephen Gibbons 1994, Geography I am the Director of Maxipos, set up in January 2001 by myself and Henry Lane Fox (Wadham 93-96). We assist large corporates source all their marketing items (includes printed material, Point of Sale, Packaging & Promotional items) through a global supply base of manufacturers which

Brian A Hunt 1978, Theology Brian, Minister of St Paul’s United Reformed Church, Harrogate, has recently been appointed a Deputy Lieutenant for the County of North Yorkshire in recognition of his work in the local community. The function of a Deputy Lieutenant is to assist in any public duty performed by the Lord Lieutenant, whose prime duty, as Her Majesty’s personal representative, is to uphold the dignity of the Crown. It is virtually unknown for a member of the clergy to receive this appointment, particularly a non-Anglican, so it is a great honour not only for Brian, but also for the URC. John Lipsey 1986, International Relations & PPE I recently joined my company’s (CDM International, Inc.) international services group, arranging international development projects in the environmental sector in Africa, the Middle East, and South-east Asia.

Robert Lock 1963, English Living in Suffolk, happily married to second wife, Liz. Retired as deputy head of Ixworth Middle School in 2001. Have since worked for West Suffolk Mind as caretaker then Programmes Manager. Now non-resident warden for local Quaker Meeting House, leaving time to masquerade as man of letters; hoping to graduate as man of words and sentences before final full stop.

Roy Long 1967, Theology Retired 31st July 2007. Worked from 1984 to 2005 for OFSTED as one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools with special

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responsibility for the inspection of Jewish and Evangelical Christian independent schools.

From 2005 to 2007, I was Chief Inspector of Schools related to the Focus Learning Trust.

I am continuing to work as a Minister in the Lutheran Church in Great Britain. Recently, I translated into English the Liturgy and Occasional Services of the Church of Iceland, published in Reykjavik 2005.

Arvi Luoma 2001, Materials, Economics & Management I left immediately after graduation to spend a year completing National Service as an Officer in the Finnish Navy. There, I was also elected Chairman of the Reserve Officer School “Student Body”, a prized (and respected) position as a conscript, - it gave me carte blanche to take leave for important things like wine-tasting for the Officers’ Ball. Upon return I joined American investment firm W.P. Carey & Co. LLC in London where I have been working since. As a former captain of the OUDC Blues Team, I am trying to upkeep my spare time by arranging events such as The Ticklers @ The Lansdowne Club ball in London this October. I also often attend Alumni drinks in London.

Johann Maree 1968, PPE After leaving Mansfield, I did an MA in Development Economics at Sussex University. I started working at the University of Cape Town in 1972 as a Junior Lecturer in Economics. In 1980, I moved into the Sociology Department specialising in Industrial Sociology. In 1982 I married Helen Zille who is presently the Executive Mayor of Cape Town and Leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA), the major opposition party in South Africa. We have 2 sons.

Christine McCulloch 1999, Geography Christine McCulloch (D Phil, Geography) is the winner of the Wiley-Blackwell Area Prize for new Research in Geography for 2006. Her winning paper is entitled ‘Transparency: aid or obstacle to effective defence of vulnerable environments from reservoir construction?

Dam decsions and democracy in North East England’, published in Area 38 (1), pp.24-33.

John Miles 1994, English I am currently working as a flight surgeon with the 13th Bomb Squadron at Whiteman Air Force Base.

Tony Moore 1982, PPE I’m an active member of the Christadelphian Church and I have a satisfying job in book publishing.

Matthew James Paterson 2003, Geography Matthew went up to Oxford in 2003 from Tonbridge School following his Gap Year in Australia at a school near Melbourne.

Matthew read Geography and enjoyed his three years with Tony Lemon and Michael Freeman ending up with a 2:1 His dissertation, supported by the Army, was entitled “Ethnic Minority Recruitment into the British Army”. After his second year, he completed an internship as a commercial analyst for BP. From Oxford, Matthew joined the Army and went to Sandhurst for a year, passing out in August, 2007, and winning the Trust Medal for the best academic cadet of his intake.

He was selected to join the Queen’s Royal Hussars, a cavalry regiment, where he’ll become a Troup Commander (of three Challenger II main battle tanks).

He’ll complete his training next summer.

Matthew graduated with a group of friends from Oxford this year in full military uniform complete with sword & spurs. The picture shows him in his Blues. (David Paterson, Father of Matthew and Member of Mansfield 500 )

Dhruti Shah 2000, English Literature I am now working at a documentary film company called Insight News Television in Clapham, which is behind award-winning features including Cry Freetown and Blood on a Stone, and I’m really enjoying myself. On October 23, I won the EDF Energy/Hold the Front Page London and South East Weekly Print Journalist of the Year Award. This was in recognition of the high-quality body of work I produced while Chief Reporter at the Harrow and Wembley Observer.

Hannah Pilkington (nee Davey) 2001, Law I finally qualified as a solicitor in September 2007, and am practising in defendant clinical negligence law. It has been a busy year, as I got married to Scott Pilkington (Somerville, 1999), whom I met at Mansfield through his brother, Grant Pilkington (Mansfield, 1999) on 19th May 2007.

Brian Wren 1960, Theology I took medical leave from July thru December 2006 following successive strokes in May and June. I completed my final semester at Columbia Theological Seminary in May 2007, having recovered sufficiently to return and teach a light load. I have now retired, though I hope to remain active, write and travel as energy permits. I have been named Emeritus Professor of Worship of Columbia Theological Seminary.

My Partner in Marriage and Ministry, Rev. Susan M. Heafield (“Hayfield”), D.Min, serves the United Methodist Church Cooperative Parish of Martha’s Vineyard.

Christopher Rivington 1970, English I received an OBE in the New Year’s Honours List. I was both surprised and delighted to receive this honour, which I also see as a wider recognition of the key importance of learning and skills.

Damian Thompson 1980, History We have just been informed that Damian, now a journalist and writer, appeared on Radio 4’s “Start the Week” with Andrew Marr on 7th January arguing that we’re facing a pandemic of counterknowledge as, helped by the internet, spurious claims and unproven theories are blurring the distinction between truth and fiction to dangerous effect.

Counterknowledge: How we surrendered to conspiracy theories, quack medicine, bogus science and fake history is published by Atlantic Books.

Peter Thorn 2000, Modern History I am currently working internationally as a lawyer in Sydney, Australia. My email address is peter1872@yahoo.com – it would be great to hear from you.

I took voluntary early retirement at the end of December 2007 having first worked for the Department of Employment in London. I moved to Sheffield with the then Manpower Services Commission and now live in Rotherham.

Peter Rogers 1983, History I migrated to Perth, Western Australia in 1995 and am married with a daughter (10) and a son (8). I am Director of Studies at one of Perth’s largest English language schools.

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The President of the Mansfield Association Mansfield Association seeks new President THE MANSFIELD ASSOCIATION is a vital aspect of our alumni body and goes from strength to strength. The three-year term of our current President, Geoffrey Roper (Theology 1962), comes to an end this June and we are therefore looking for a new President to follow in Geoffrey’s footsteps.

Geoffrey, right, has carried out his duties as President of the Association with dedication, flair and panache and will be a hard act to follow. But followed he must be, for his term of office comes to an end at the next Association’s AGM, in June 2008. You will observe that, as well as being President, Geoffrey is tall, slim, male, handsome and (sorry, Geoffrey!!) old. The hunt is on to find a new President for the Association who will carry out the duties – but not necessarily with all Geoffrey’s attributes!

The President of the Association chairs Committee meetings approximately 3 times a year, chairs the AGM and co-presides (together with the Principal) at the Association’s Annual Dinner.

He (or she) also represents the Association at other official functions such as the College Summer Garden Party and, on such occasions, may be called upon to say a few (literally) words of wisdom and gravitas. The toughest part of the job is keeping the Association’s Committee under control; they can at times (though not in living

memory) be a somewhat raucous and unruly bunch. Despite this, the rewards for the President’s role are commensurately high – a guaranteed place on top table at the Association’s Dinner, a personal invitation to other College functions (such as the annual Hands Lecture) and the gratitude of the Association and Committee.

Geoffrey Roper

The Association’s Secretary (Brian Seaton, Chemistry 1963) would be delighted to receive suggestions and nominations with and, if you wish, in confidence. The latter may be of particular relevance if you would like to nominate yourself – an act of benevolence to the Association which is encouraged not only by the Committee but by the very Constitution of the Association itself.

The Committee looks forward to being inundated with nominations, which can be made either in writing to The Mansfield Association Secretary, c/o Mansfield College, or by e-mail to Brian@andart.org

Revd Dr Geoffrey Fillingham Nuttall, 8 November 1911 – 24 July 2007 Dr Geoffrey Nuttall was one of the finest historians of Early Modern Dissent. He pushed the study of radical Dissent into the mainstream of Church History, without ever depriving it of its disconcerting, even subversive, edge.

He was regarded by F. J. Powicke as the Elisha to his Elijah.

Nuttall’s warm and critical friendship gave encouragement to a wide range of scholars, librarians and church ministers.

He read Greats at Balliol. His otherwise inexplicable third was attributed to the time spent helping P S Allen’s project publishing the annotated complete letters of Erasmus in Latin. After ordination training at Mansfield and a year at Marburg, he was ordained at Warminster in 1938. In 1943 he became a Fellow at Woodbrooke College, Selly Oak where he married Mary Powley (nee Preston), a widow and a Quaker. They were a devoted pair; each encouraging the other’s sense of humour which, regrettably, does not translate into obituary style. She died in 1982.

In 1945 he gained the Oxford DD, then only the second Nonconformist minister to do so (the first was Principal Selbie).

The DD was published as The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience(1947). His major books included: Visible Saints:

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the Congregational Way 1640-1660 (1957) and Howel Harris 1714-1773: the last enthusiast (1965), Calendar of the correspondence of Philip Doddridge (1979) and (with Neil Keeble) the Calendar of the correspondence of Richard Baxter (1991). Between 1931 and 2004, he published over 500 articles and reviews.

From 1945 to retirement in 1977, he was Lecturer in Church History at New College London, supervising doctoral students and preparing students for the Congregational ministry. In 1945 his pacifist views were unsuccessfully challenged by a demobbed student body fresh from service in Europe and the Far East. Some were put off by his ascetic manner but lifelong friendships blossomed with those who recognised the pastoral heart below the critical eyes.

Patrick Collinson spoke appreciatively for many when he wrote ‘What a dreadful thing it is for our slipshod scholarship to fall into the hands of the living Nuttall’. In truth, Dr Nuttall exercised a wide and genuine ‘ministry of encouragement’. His post-retirement correspondence proved a lasting vehicle for his friendships and, it is hoped, will soon be collected. Moving in 1977 Queen Mother Court, Selly Oak, he continued to write and entertain.

A professorship (visiting) only came his way with retirement. It has to be regretted that Mansfield had not made far more use of the talents of a great alumnus who was honoured as a Fellow of the British Academy in 1991. There was some reparation when, on becoming Principalship in 1970, Dr Caird in a gracious gesture invited Dr Nuttall to preach the 1971 Commemoration sermon.

In 1977 Principal Sykes hosted the dinner to celebrate his festschrift (ed. R. Buick Knox), Reformation Conformity and Dissent.

As New College’s librarian, Dr Nuttall catalogued its 12,000 pre-1850 books. The Library gained national recognition. When New College closed in 1977, Nuttall organised the redistribution of the College’s collection, 15,000 volumes going to Dr Williams’s

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Library (DWL). A DWL trustee since 1948, his immense devotion to the Library included its transformation from a lending to a research library. In 1982 the Congregational Library (CL), established in 1831, was relocated at DWL. In 2001, we invited Dr Nuttall to be the first President of CL’s Friends. Aged 90, he felt he could not accept. The Council members unanimously agreed that if he could

not take office, no other candidate should be sought until his death.

It is a mark of the respect in which his admirers held him.

Revd Dr Peter C. Jupp (Theology 1966; Council Member & Trustee 1980-1995), Golders Green Foundation Research Fellow, University of Durham.

Events Calendar 2008 9th February Law Society Dinner Mansfield College 3rd March Adam von Trott Lecture Professor David Marquand ‘Verdun, Auschwitz and the Future of Europe’.

Mansfield College 15th March Mansfield Association Dinner Guest Speaker: Mansfield College 4th & 5th April North American Reunion, New York Friday 4th April – Cocktail Reception, Waldorf=Astoria th Saturday 5 April – Patrons & Supporters Dinner, Yale Club of New York Please contact us for more information

21st June Gaudy for Matriculation Years 1990-1999 Mansfield College 22nd June Midsummer Reunion For all current and former students, parents, tutors, staff, former staff and their families.

The afternoon will include a drinks reception, lunch, music, exhibition, a cultural lecture.

The Commemoration of Benefactors Service and the Mansfield Association Annual General Meeting will also be held during the day.

Mansfield College 19th September Second Annual Glover Society Lunch The event to thank our generous legators Mansfield College 20th September Eleventh Parents’ Dinner Mansfield College December Lehman Brothers Varsity Match Twickenham

17thApril Eight London Drinks Central London Venue TBC

Forthcoming Gaudies June 2008: 1990 – 1999

June 2009: 2000 – 2005

June 2010: pre-1970

June 2011: 1970 – 1979

June 2012:

1980 – 1989

Please make a note of these events For more information and bookings telephone: 01865 270998

Gala Dinner, June 2007 Photos: Thomas Simchak and Carrie Fehr

The Development Office Mansfield College Oxford OX1 3TF Tel: 01865 270998 Fax: 01865 270970 Email: development@mansfield.ox.ac.uk Web: www.mansfield.ox.ac.uk