Tom edition 42

The Old Mancunian

September 2013 EDITION 42

Keeping old boys in touch with MGS throughout the world

• A Welcome from Dr Martin Boulton • Planning for 2015 • Old Mancunian News and Letters • Forthcoming Events

Planning for 2015 2015, the School’s 500th anniversary, is rapidly approaching. It has already been decided that the celebratory year will straddle two academic years, running from January to December and we are now able to share some of our initial plans with the Old Mancunian Community.

One of the main Old Mancunian events will be the Old Boys’ Dinner which will take place on the evening of Saturday 21 November at The Point, Lancashire County Cricket Ground. It is hoped that this will be the largest ever gathering of Old Mancunians with the capacity for dinner being 1000 guests. There will also be the traditional London dinner earlier in the year.

There are three main musical events during the year. The biennial London concert will be held once again at the Royal Overseas League on Friday 13 March, with the Easter Concert being held at a venue in Manchester.

Chairman’s report

A group of donors have commissioned a piece of music to commemorate the anniversary. The work, composed by Tarik O’Regan, will be performed by the Hallé Orchestra at the Bridgewater Hall during November 2015, although the final date has yet to be set.

The annual Hugh Oldham commemorative service at Exeter Cathedral will take place on Sunday 12 July. There are embryonic plans to have a group of pupils trekking from the School, via the Welsh borders, to join the Exeter service.

The Founders’ Day service will take place as usual at Manchester Cathedral on Friday 16 October. There will be more than one service on this day so that we can accommodate all of our pupils as well as Old Mancunians and friends of the School.

A new history book, MGS: A History at 500 is now available for pre-order. Please see the form enclosed with this edition of TOM or contact the Development Office for more details. A small range of commemorative souvenirs will also be available from early 2014, with more details being published in the spring.

Finally, plans for a Royal Visit are at a very early stage. Further details about this event will follow via www. mgsglobal.org

On behalf of the OMA I would like to welcome Dr Martin Boulton back to the School as he takes up the reins as its 43rd High Master.

We are very pleased to see an OM at the helm as we approach our 500th anniversary in 2015.

Dr Boulton will of course be joining us at many of our national and regional events in the coming months and we look forward to getting to know him.

I am also delighted to welcome the 2013 leavers to the Old Mancunians’ Association.

The OMA aims to support all OMs once they have left School. Please do come and join us at the regular pub events held in Manchester and London and log on to www.mgsglobal.org to ensure that you keep up to date with the latest news from the School.

David Walton 67-74 & Chairman of the OMA

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Saturday 18 May 2013

1950s Reunion Dinner There was a splendid response to the call to boys who had entered the School during the 1950s to attend a reunion event in May 2013.

The writer was particularly pleased to meet up with 4 long-lost colleagues from the 14 in his science-maths sixth-form of 1961-3.

We were treated to fascinating tours of the old and new facilities, expertly guided by current pupils. Pre-dinner drinks in the Memorial Hall were accompanied by photos and videos that stimulated nostalgia, excitement and a great deal of animated conversation.

After a thoughtful ‘Prologue’ (which was not a traditional Grace) from Roger Fletcher, we were welcomed by Maurice Watkins, one of our cohort and current Chairman of the Governors. The main address, a toast to the Staff, Past and Present, was given by Geoffrey Tattersall and this was followed by a response from the High Master, Dr Christopher Ray. We all wished Dr Ray and his wife bon voyage and good luck as they were about to leave MGS to meet fresh challenges in Abu Dhabi.

Musical entertainment was provided by a wonderful close-harmony quartet of boys led by Rees Webster. The School’s fine catering department produced a most excellent meal – probably the item that demonstrated the starkest contrast to its equivalent of 50 years ago!

Robert Shields 56-64

1980s & 90s Double Decade Reunion Following on from the great success of recent reunions we have now begun to make plans for next year’s event which is for Old Mancunians who joined the school in the 1980s and 1990s. This will take place at school on Saturday 10 May 2014.

Top bottom: From L to R John Schofield 57-64; John Leech 59-64; Robert Shields 56-64; Richard Hargreaves 57-64 and Mike Walker 57-64 Bottom left: Pre-dinner drinks in the Memorial Hall

The committee will begin to get in touch with you early in 2014 so, should you be interested in joining us, please make sure your contact details are up to date with the Development Office and rally your old class mates to do the same.

To do this or for further information on the event please contact Jane Graham on 0161 224 7201 ext 243 or j.graham@ mgs.org

OLD BOYS’ DINNER

The din ner this year will be held at school on Sat urday 23 November.

We welcome Dr Mar tin Ste phen (HM 94 – 04) as the Sen Steward and Steven Wh ior itehead (91 - 98) as Junior Ste Steven is a for mer Sch ward.

Captain and is Com mer ool Director at The Hut Grocial up.

For fur ther details con tact Jane Gra ham.

Top right: Postcard from Keir Hardie, 1906 Below: Original foundation deeds, 1515

Manchester Archives Material November 2012 saw the return to the school of c. 50 boxes of archive material which had been held by Manchester Archives since the 1980s.

With the resources to care for these records in-house, we decided to withdraw the records permanently and reunite them with the archive already in situ at school. Most of the early documentation is legal in nature with the many deeds giving a sense of the extent of the land owned by the school around Long Millgate. We now hold the original foundation deeds from 1515.

The archive has also acquired a run of school admissions registers from 1730 – 1837, complementing the series we originally held from 1862 onwards. One of the most interesting additions is a card from Keir Hardie to George Benson following a mock election held in 1906 where Benson stood as a Socialist candidate.

Hardie writes: ‘Bravo! 38 votes for Socialism is a very good record. And each year the number will increase.’ With the collections under one roof, we will be able to help a greater number of researchers and enquirers, and the ‘new’ records have already been used by Nigel Watson in writing ‘MGS: A History at 500’.

Rachel Kneale Please contact Rachel Kneale for further information.

0161 224 7201 ext 361 or archives@mgs.org

From the Director of Development

We have a growing number of boys looking for engineering type placements and help in this area would be much appreciated.

Helen Jones has become the new Head of Careers Education at the School.

A recent highlight was a talk from Jim Howling 81-88, CFO UK Operations at Astra Zeneca. Jim gave an overview of the pharmaceutical industry, outlined the differing career paths at AstraZeneca and explained the rationale behind the industry changes taking place at Alderley Park.

Having joined the School in 2007 to head up the introduction of Economics at MGS, Helen will now lead our careers programme in the coming years. If you would like to support the boys at the School as they consider their options in the world of work please do contact Helen at h.l.jones@mgs.org We are looking for OMs to speak, and take Q & A from our boys, about their field of work during lunchtimes at the School, as well as people to act as mentors and to offer work experience placements.

School Cap Sa m Calmontain son ‘Professor packed out Colm an - the lect the theatre debate th a ure sparked in Biologyt continued Philosophy and for weeks!’ lessons

Professor Alan Colman 60-67, Research Director in the A*STAR Institute of Medical Biology and also Executive Director of the Singapore Stem Cell Consortium, inspired the boys with his presentation about the legacy of Dolly the Sheep.

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The School Today For more stories like these visit mgs.org

Christian’s a World Winner Christian Owen in the Lower School is celebrating after being crowned the UK winner in a global literacy event, arranged

by UNICEF, Spellodrome and the World Education Games.

He battled through five rounds of spelling and was ranked 18th in the world and the only pupil in the UK to reach the top 20.

Kai Sails Home Victorious Kai Wolgram from the Junior School is celebrating after winning his first ever sailing trophy, one of the youngest boys in his category to scoop the award.

He picked up the award at the Optimist National Inland Championships held at Grafham Water, battling it out against 250 other sailors and going on to win the 9-11 year old category.

Accenture Appoint Gap Year Students A Golden First for Femi and MGS

Sixth Formers John Pyrah and Ali Qasim have earned places on a prestigious gap year programme with global management consultancy Accenture.

Sixth Former Femi Nylander has become the first ever Manchester Grammar School pupil to gain the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) Gold award for acting.

John and Ali will defer their university places for a year in order to relocate to London in September, where they will each take up a placement in Accenture’s Consulting Group.

Femi not only passed the challenging grade eight examination, but he also gained a distinction – something no other MGS student has ever achieved.

Record offers from World’s Leading Universities

Offers this year include 28 from Oxford and Cambridge, 13 from Imperial, 34 from UCL, 15 from King’s College, London and 10 from LSE. The number of students applying to international universities increased hugely this year with seven boys receiving offers from American universities, including Princeton and Stanford, along with a further offer from McGill in Canada.

‘My place at the School was made possible through the Assisted Places Scheme; and whilst this was abolished soon after I left MGS, the foresight of the Governors and the MGS Trust has ensured that access to the School is still very much based on merit and not ability to pay the fees.’

From the High Master Returning to MGS It is nearly thirty years since I walked down the drive for my first day at MGS and whilst much has changed in the intervening years one thing that has not is MGS’s reputation as one of the leading schools in the United Kingdom. One has only to look at the catchment area of MGS, with boys travelling from as far away as Sheffield, to realise that in the minds of its pupils and their parents this is still somewhere very special.

Dr Martin Boulton 84-86 High Master

What made MGS special for me as a pupil was the chance to be educated with some of the brightest young men in the North West by highly qualified teachers with an unbridled passion for their subject; this mix allowed lessons to progress into areas generally reserved only for those studying for degrees and even then only at the best universities.

I can clearly remember being told in my first Physics lesson that we would not be following the syllabus; that was something for us to do in our own time; the aim of these lessons would be to educate us in the more challenging aspects of the subject.

Unsurprisingly to me and I suspect to all of those who received their education at MGS the results were remarkable.

A form of fourteen – fourteen A grades; of that form eleven headed off to Cambridge at the end of their final year, a total that most Schools would be boasting about today.

In the time that has passed since I left MGS there has been much change in the education sector. A-level examinations have moved away from terminal exams to modular courses, with exams taken at four distinct points in the year, although this is about to change again, yes you guessed it, back to terminal exams. The introduction of League Tables has done much to focus schools on their academic results although this focus is often narrowly targeted on the measures that are used to formulate the rankings. One would expect that all of this would have been to the detriment of what happens outside of the classroom, but this has not been the case at MGS, where sport and the expeditions programme are stronger than ever.

My place at the School was made possible through the Assisted Places Scheme; and whilst this was abolished soon after I left MGS, the foresight of the Governors and the MGS Trust has ensured that access to the School is still very much based on merit and not ability to pay the fees. We are however still some way from being needs-blind despite the fact that we offer two hundred and forty bursaries. I hope that with

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Bottom: Dr Boulton as a Sixth Form student, shown sixth from the left

the generosity of our alumni we will reach a point in the not too distant future where no boy who passes our entrance examination is turned away; the 2015 campaign that I am sure you are all aware of is working towards this very goal.

There will no doubt be challenging times ahead, the difficulties of a troubled economy, the challenges of frequent educational reform driven by politics rather than pedagogy are nothing new to a school that has been around for half a millennium. But there will be new challenges, some of these will no doubt come from the international stage; in the coming years MGS will not only be competing with schools in the UK, but as the education market becomes ever more international pupils will increasingly be compared with those from the Asia Pacific and the United States, particularly when seeking places at the world’s most prestigious universities.

What is certain though is that the School is well placed to meet the challenges ahead; the Common Room is still populated with outstanding academics who see their role as being more than just delivering a syllabus in the classroom, and of course the brightest pupils in the North West are still making their way down the drive for a truly outstanding education.

Top right: London & South East Section Golf Day

OM Sections London & South East Faisal Islam (87-94), the economics editor for Channel 4, was the guest speaker at the 2013 London Dinner held at the Oxford & Cambridge Club in April.

He gave a fascinating insight into the Eurozone crisis, the ‘Madchester’ scene of the 1990s and aimed a few jibes at Manchester City along the way.

The Old Mancunians’ Golf Day took place at Woking Golf Club on Tuesday 25 June. The event brought about a 59 year reunion between the opening bowlers, Tony Gibbon and Mike Richardson, of the 1954 Manchester Grammar School cricket team, who between them took 64 wickets during that side’s unbeaten season.

The winner of the ‘Owl’ trophy was Alec Elmer.

Next year’s Golf Day will take place at Woking Golf Club on Tuesday 24 June, teeing off at 1:00 pm.

The next event will be the Annual Supper at the Cheshire Cheese from 7:30 pm on Monday 4 November. The High Master, Dr Martin Boulton, will be in attendance on the night.

There will also be preChristmas drinks at the New Moon Public Bar, Leadenhall Market, on Thursday 28 November from 6:00 pm.

For further details about OM events please contact Jane Graham j.graham@mgs.org or contact the Chairman, Lee Gabbie at lee.gabbie@ bracherrawlins.co.uk

Midlands Section The summer event took place on Saturday 20 July at the Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings in Worcestershire.

The Development Office helped to publicise the event to a wider audience with responses from a decent number of OM’s unknown to the Section.

The AGM and lunch in Dorridge, Solihull on Saturday 16 November is our next event, with the new High Master, Dr Boulton, due to attend. Any Midlands based OM who is interested in attending, should contact Michael Kennedy michaelkennedy@talk21. com , telephone 0121 605 4048 or John Wilson on 0121 475 3700.

South West The 47th annual Commemoration Service in pious memory of Hugh Oldham took place in Exeter Cathedral on Sunday 23 June.

After the Cathedral’s Sung Eucharist Service we joined the congregation for refreshments in the Chapter House before gathering for the short commemoration service at the Oldham Chantry Chapel, led by the Dean of Exeter.

After lunch, Dr Ray and Michael Li spoke about the challenges facing the School and its pupils, and looked back over the changes that had been implemented over the High Master’s nine years in office. Tributes were paid to John Smith, who was standing down from the

post of Section secretary after seven years.

mgsglobal.org select Events.

Our autumn event, on Saturday 19 October, at Buckfastleigh, features a trip on the South Devon Railway and lunch at Riverford Organics Field Kitchen.

Chess players are traditionally creative not just at the board, but in their excuses when they lose. There is no doubt that, had the match been played a day later so as to enable Saul Richman to play for the Old Mancunians on board 3, and had Jonathan Mestel not worn his hat, the School team would have been psyched out by four shining heads on the top half of the Old Mancunians’ team, and would have crashed to defeat. Grist to the mill for those urging me to cut my hair short again ...

The next Commemoration Service will provisionally be on Sunday 22 June 2014.

Old Mancunians are always very welcome to join us at these events. Please contact Secretary, Paul Gelling, p.gelling@btinternet.com, 01291 62695, for details.

Football Section The OM Football Section enjoyed one of their most successful seasons in their history last year with the first team winning the Lancashire Amateur League Cup for the first time in over 100 years. Preparations are well underway for the new season and we welcome any new players of any standard to come down and join us.

Training is held at MGS on Tuesdays from 6:30 pm and on Wednesdays from 8:00 pm at Manchester Academy (M14 4PX).

For further details contact dave.p.richards@btinternet. com or oldmancs@ hotmail.co.uk

Chess Section The wonders of modern technology mean that all of you reading this can play through all 8 games from the recent School versus Old Boys match on your computer: go to

and

Please get back in touch if you have played chess for the School!

Peter Webster peter@thea.ltd.uk

20/30 Club We usually meet on the 3rd Friday of the month for lunch at the Freemasons Hall, Bridge Street, off Deansgate in Manchester. We would like to meet you, so check the date first with Alex Wells alex_wells@tiscali.co.uk 0129 881 2886 or Jane Graham. We will make you most welcome, and you might meet a long-lost friend!

Remaining 2013 meetings: 20 September Speaker – Michael Goodman 18 October Ladies Luncheon at Stanneylands, Wilmslow 15 November Annual General Meeting 6 December Speakers – School Captain & Vice-Captain

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Owl drop ins Ginger nuts and bourbon biscuits, that is what we tempt Old Boys with. In this regard the Development Office view is endorsed

by David Rowland 04-11 who revisited the school in March along with former class mate Joe Blackburn and said ‘Thanks for all. Loved the chat. Enjoyed the biscuits.

Great to be back.’ His words, not just on the edibles front, are echoed by all who take that particular nostalgia trip down Old Hall Lane.

Below: From L to R Brian Taylor 45-50; Russell Jones 43.49; Gerard Clarke and Patrick Pope

Though not essential, advanced notice of visits would be appreciated so we have the kettle boiling and help you make the most of your visit. Please contact Jane Graham on 0161 224 7201 ext 243 or j.graham@mgs.org

Surprisingly, there were no remarks from pupils to the effect that the visit of Tariq Drabu 76-82 and Simon Taylor 77-83 was like pulling teeth when they came to talk to boys about pursuing a career in Dentistry. ‘Fantastic visit to the school. Great memories. Thank you to Jane & Julie for this opportunity’ and perhaps more importantly ‘Great lunch.’ was Simon’s view on his day.

Peter Webster 79-85 also commented positively on his dining experience, the high standard of the artwork by current pupils and the upcoming challenge of the chess match against the school later in the day. For Ken Gorman 45-52 this chess match represented his first chance to play at school as he first didn’t start playing until sometime after he left. Andy Trevelyan 78-84 & Chris Izod 91-98 were also involved and Chris made the most of his return, also enjoying a tour of the junior school and a chance to play the school organ again.

Another returning former school organist, Ray Lester 53-60, availed himself of the knowledge of archivist, Rachel Kneale, when he came back at the turn of the year.

We continue to welcome many Old Mancunians back to the school and some also bring their friends and family along to allow them to see what they missed out on. Russell Jones 43-49 brought two guests with him, Gerald Clarke and Patrick Pope, all three are pictured here. Gerald commented ‘An excellent visit to this one of the most prestigious schools in the UK’. Russell himself commented on what an amazing opportunity it had been to see how MGS had changed since his time there.

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Manchester night It wasn’t all comparing tattoos and seeing who could spit the furthest when former pupils of MHSG and Old Mancunians met up for an evening in the Albert Square Chop House in March.

Indeed, both schools were well represented by current staff and former pupils and all enjoyed a well attended and convivial atmosphere in a tastefully decorated area of the Chop House.

The night proved to be a great success with around seventy Old Mancunians

with a range of ages and a similar number from the High School in attendance.

It was a great opportunity to meet new and old faces alike and enjoy the chance to share ideas and to network with others in different spheres of Manchester business.

There will be a ‘next time’ as a further event is planned for Thursday 3 October at the same venue. Please watch out for further news or contact Simon Jones s.jones@ mgs.org or myself John Whitfield 76-83 johnny. whit@hotmail.com

OM Letters Ian Thorpe writes: Martin Allinson (44-46 in the Prep. Dept and 46-52 in the Main School) emailed from his home in Thailand to suggest an initiative for our Quincentenary in 2015.

‘On the school badge, situated just beneath the owl, it would be better to have something like Gain the wisdom to dare or Be wise: dare.

As a lad, Sapere Aude or Dare to be wise never inspired me – in fact it seemed plain daft. It didn’t take courage to get information, put it together in a world view, and be wise.

Also, what was the point of becoming wise, unless you did something with the wisdom? And by the middle of the 20th century we had left Victorian pretensions well behind – so why still a motto in Latin?’

Martin (and I) would welcome OMs’ views about the school motto. Should we keep it, change it or abandon it?

Ian Thorpe 62-69 Development Adviser & current editor of the OM Letters page

The Question of the Apostrophe Adrian Dobson 62-70 and Teacher of German since 1980 writes: Recently I received a memo encouraging us to check our reports for mistakes in spelling and punctuation.

Whilst I generally value such helpful advice, one example of supposedly exemplary punctuation simply looked wrong: Owls’ Nest.

Having attended MGS as a pupil during the 1960s, I had become accustomed to seeing the apostrophe placed slightly earlier: Owl’s Nest, implying that the rather dingy hut I can recall at Higher Disley, was the Nest of the Owl, that bird which somehow symbolises the school.

But no, I was firmly told, the Owls are the pupils of MGS, and the Owls’ Nest in its renovated state is a fine wooden chalet providing them with comfortable accommodation on the edge of the Peak District. Furthermore, I was assured, early Ululas would indeed confirm that the apostrophe is in the right place at the end of the word Owl. On investigation, I established, somewhat to my surprise, that the first mention of the camp at Disley in 1921 indeed described the hut as The Owls’ Nest. Subsequent reports in the 1920s and photos of the building taken in 1939 were captioned in the same way.

The first instance of the Owl’s Nest with the earlier apostrophe comes in 1941 with the sentence: ‘The Owl’s Nest at Disley was completely demolished by a bomb’. I should add that the hut was almost certainly not being targeted by the Luftwaffe, and that in any case nobody was inside at the time.

The hut had apparently been a Sergeants’ Mess during the First World War, and had been transported to the site after hostilities had ceased. Early photos suggest that renovation was needed, though it is unlikely that total demolition was required.

The first references in 1949 to the newly rebuilt hut call it ‘Owl’s Nest’, and this new label then stubbornly persists for several decades, leading one to assume that we might be talking about two wholly different buildings, as indeed we are.

The fact that the new Owl’s Nest looked remarkably like the older Owls’ Nest from both inside and outside is completely misleading. The legacy of the bomb was that the apostrophe moved. Apart from a few craters in the field, the shifted apostrophe is now all that remains of this catastrophic event.

That seemed to be the end of the story, until I recently spotted a couple of pages of photos from a family album being auctioned on eBay, and dated April 1922. The images looked familiar: the rickety hut with Black Hill in the background, the kitchen with dixies perched precariously on a cast-iron range, the solitary boy leaning on a table-tennis table. The caption perhaps predictably read: ‘Owl’s Nest’. The good news is that these images have now been acquired for the school archive, whilst the moral of the tale is that in 1922 there was probably no more clarity about the use of the apostrophe in Owl’s Nest than there is today. It may indeed have been far less important to MGS staff and boys in those days than the art of making ‘stodge’, twenty mile tramps and the opportunity to escape from the unclean air of the city.

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Geoff Colton 42-49 writes:

I remember ‘Simmie’ with affection; he took some trouble to make education enjoyable for all of us.

Barry Posner’s letter in Edition 40 reminded me of my time in II Alpha almost ten years later, when I also got to know Mr Simkins. The things I remember were that when we entered the classroom in the morning the blackboard would be covered with minute, elegant, Greek script, presumably prepared for Classical VI. If Mr Simkins travelled to school at the same time as the pupils, he must have stayed very late to prepare it. My own brief encounter with Greek was with Mr R T Moore, I think.

‘Simmie’ sometimes used to organise a Latin grammar quiz with us queuing in a line round the room, and moving up the line if we got the answer right, and down if we got it wrong.

A boy who offered the non-existent ‘censitum’ as a past participle was subjected to a laboured school masterly joke accusing him of culpable familiarity with ‘Kensitas’ cigarettes (do we remember them?). He would also read to us on a Friday afternoon from a collection of humorous American stories.

The Biographical Register does not give any information about his family background. As I remember him he spoke with a slight German accent, he always said ‘tausend’ rather than ‘thousand’, and once said that in World War I he had more relatives on the other side than on ours.

Do you remember the School Song?

The annual rendition of ‘When August Suns are Shining’ never fails to amuse OMs gathered at the Old Boys’ Dinner each year.

It would appear that there are few in the room that know the melody or words. Indeed many newcomers at the event are totally unaware that they attended a school which had an official song. The fact that my father can’t remember the old tune makes me believe that only OMs in their 70s have memories of singing ‘Hurrah for the Brave Old Owl’!

Dr Thompson, the Academic Deputy Head, has recently adapted the lyrics and our Director of Music, Robert Carey, has rearranged the music. The 2013 version was performed for the first time at Speech Day at the Bridgewater Hall in early July. The new lyrics will be published in the next edition for you all to learn in preparation for 2015!

Simon Jones 88-95 Teacher of Geography from 2004, Director of Development from 2010.

In memoriam Since the last TOM we have been advised of the recent deaths of the following OMs: We would welcome offers to supply brief obituaries or memories for Ulula.

Derek N Andrew 44-51 Ara L Arschavir 29-34 Geoffrey S Bailey 40-42 Alan T Baker 45-51 Edmund W R Beckett 35-39 Ian E P Bethune 48-52 Ernest Bourne 53-58 Richard I Brotherton 32-36 George W Buckley 41-47 Martin C Butterworth 65-72 Neal H Butterworth 69-76

Denys W Chapman 30-37 John D Cooper 49-54 John M Dawson 44-52 Peter Dawson 39-47 Robert B Deacon 32-38 Arthur L Egmore 44-50 Robert D Faulkner 36-41 Peter W Goldstone 37-42 Harry P Guiton 23-29 David A Henstock 53-60 John C Hillmer 43-48 Roy F Holland 34-41 Richard Isherwood 54-61 Ivor J B Jenkins 31-34 Derek B Jepson 39-44 Eric Kime 30-35 Peter Kirman 45-50

Frederick A Leather 36-40 Peter G Medcalf 33-37 Peter A A Pepper 40-43 Neville Platt 49-55 Maurice B Priestley 44-51 Albert S Ridge 37-41 Michael H Sheard 40-45 Peter S Sheard 63-70 Geoffrey R Stone 29-36 Christopher A Thompson 60-67 Ian C Thornton 44-51 Peter D Vincent 46-49 Bernard L Williams 36-42 John Wright 44-48 Staff George Cooke 47-51 Robert I Mackay 82-00

Events Founders’ Day Service.

Friday 14 February at Manchester Cathedral, 11:00 am.

Philip Wade Memorial: Old Mancunians Rugby Match and Dinner. Friday 4 April at MGS. For details contact g.heagerty@mgs.org Stuart Dale Memorial: Old Mancunian Football Match. Friday 2 May at MGS. For details contact s.jones@mgs.org

Music events 14 November Senior Recital Class. Memorial Hall, 6:30 pm.

10 December Junior School Christmas Concert.

Memorial Hall, 6:00 pm.

12 December School Carol Service. Holy Trinity, Platt Church, Platt Lane, Manchester, M14 5NF, 7:00 pm.

16 December Christmas Concert. Memorial Hall, 6:30 pm.

9 February Britten’s War Requiem Performance for CLIC Sargent. Memorial Hall, 7:30 pm.

18 March Junior School Concert. Memorial Hall, 6:00 pm.

Drama events

Amazon.co.uk

9, 10, 11 & 12 October Sweeney Todd. The Demon Barber of Fleet Street by Stephen Sondheim, 7:00 pm.

Many of us are regular shoppers on the internet, and by accessing the Amazon. co.uk website through the icon link on the School’s own website (mgs.org ) up to 10% of the value of any purchase made is automatically given for the direct benefit of the Bursary Fund.

4 & 5 December Junior School production tbc.

12 & 13 December Beta.

A magic show performed

by Ryan Harris and James Pollard, 7:00 pm.

16, 17 & 18 January Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,

by Tom Stoppard. Drama Studio, 7:00 pm.

5 & 6 February Junior School Year 3 & 4 production tbc.

27, 28 & 29 March Senior School Show tbc.

9, 10, 11, 12 and 16, 19 June Year 8 Shakespeare Festival.

Drama Studio, 6:00 pm.

17 & 18 June Junior School leavers production, 6:00 pm.

Dates and times of events are subject to change.

For confirmation and ticket reservations please see mgs.org

Noteworthy Old Mancunian Ties

Correspondence to Julie Wright at MGS, Old Hall Lane, Manchester, M13 0XT or 0161 224 7201.

Gift Aid We are grateful to the significant number of Old Boys who donate regularly to the Bursary Fund. We are obliged to remind you that Gift Aid regulations require you to let us know if you no longer pay sufficient tax on income and/or capital gains.

Please notify any changes to the Development Office.

OM publication Emeritus Professor Brian Palmer, 43-50, has produced an unexpected publication – not an article for a learned journal, but a book of funnies about football referees!

Football Referees? You must be joking!

Stop Press Old Boys’ Dinner, Saturday 23 November

2 April Easter Concert.

Memorial Hall, 6:30 pm.

Get in touch ...

Top: Julie Wright, j.wright@mgs.org Tel ext 241 Left: Jane Graham, j.graham@mgs.org Tel ext 243 Right: Laura Rooney, l.l.rooney@mgs.org Tel ext 571 A full list of contact details for the OMA and Sections can be found at mgsglobal.org

The Director of Development

This will be the first Old Boys’ Dinner to be attended by the new High Master, Dr Martin Boulton.

24 April Guitar Concert.

The Theatre, 6:30 pm.

30 April Summer Concert, Memorial Hall, 6:30 pm.

Old Mancunian silk ties are available at the cost of £20 in the UK or £22 overseas including p&p.

Please contact Julie Wright.

Simon Jones 88-95 Teacher of Geography from 2004, Director of Development from 2010. 0161 224 7201 ext 240 or s.jones@mgs.org