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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