East Anglian Dinner

After a tumultuous year and cancelled events, David Short (Murray 1951-55) and Russell Cowan (Weymouth 1958-63) take the opportunity to reflect on the history of this regional club event port. A characteristic of our dinners in Cambridge has been the opportunity to ask questions from the floor of the Head and the Chair of the Club, if he attends. This has created some lively discussions over the years, not least when Mr McAlpine was Headmaster (1992-1995) at the time of the School starting its transition to becoming co-educational.

The East Anglia Dinner was the brainchild of the much missed and notably energetic, Tony Bell (Collinson 1948-1952), who launched the dinner in 1967 and organised every aspect of it until his untimely death in 2007. To begin with it was a peripatetic event, taking place in various upmarket venues around East Anglia, for example Hintlesham Hall near Ipswich, until settling down in Cambridge, initially at Corpus Christi College in the Parker Room. That room held up to 25 guests and was notable for the adjoining bedroom for the President of the Old Milhillians Club to stay in overnight.

Following the death of Tony Bell (Collinson 1948-1952), the organisation of the event was shared between Jim Roberts (Collinson 1945-1950) and David Short with Jim responsible for the mailing list, invitations to guests, place-seating and so on, while David liaised with the College about menus, wines and dates. In 2016, Jim stepped down and Russell Cowan took over his responsibilities. As many of you know, we received the sad news of Jim’s death in early November 2020 and with his passing went many memories about the early East Anglia Dinners.

When numbers became too many to be accommodated in the Parker Room, the dinner moved to St John’s College for a few years. Some of you may remember the Wordsworth Room, holding up to 50. The opportunity to transfer to Trinity College in around 2010 came by invitation of Professor Michael Proctor who was then Vice Master of Trinity and also Chair of the Mill Hill Foundation Court of Governors. This has been a highly successful arrangement with the Reception held in the Old Combination Room followed by dinner in the Allhusen Room, enjoying the excellent College cuisine, capped off by the legendary Trinity College crème brûlée and then the College

In recent years, the appetite for black-tie dinners at these regional events has diminished, especially among younger Old Millhillians. It was decided to alter the format on at least two of every three years to a ‘cultural’ experience somewhere in Cambridge followed by a buffet supper in the Allhusen Room as usual. Our first experience of this was in 2019 when we were privileged to have a guided tour of the Wren Library at Trinity by the Librarian, after which we made our way to the Allhusen Room. Turn-out was high for that event, which encouraged us to arrange Evensong in the King’s College Chapel, sitting in the Choir, for the 2020 meeting. Alas, this was a victim of the pandemic but we hope for better luck in 2022.