DialOGue 2019

The RGS Old Guildfordian Magazine

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The RGS Old Guildfordian Magazine Issue #4 2019

OG Events

THE CITY FUNDRAISER LUNCH THE THIRD SECTOR The Big Interview

PETER HAYNES Predicting the Butterfly Effect

BARNABY BLACKBURN How I Got Here...

ALAN CASSIDY A Sport You Can Do Sitting Down

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DIALOGUE Issue #4 2019

FROM THE EDITOR

Philippa Green Editor

It has been a year of ‘firsts’ for the Development and Alumni Relations Office as we continue to create new challenges and opportunities. We are aware of the need to continue to evolve our offering to OGs and the wider RGS community. So we asked for your opinions.

Results of our recent OG survey showed that you really enjoy events at the School and the opportunity to meet socially with other OGs. Professional networking is on our radar and we aim to start a series of events around this – suggestions for topics and offers of venues are very welcome. We were pleased to note that you enjoy DialOGue and the variety of news shared digitally throughout the year. The most significant response, however, was about giving back to the School, either through your time or financially, or both. It is abundantly clear that many OGs feel pride and gratitude to the School, and are really keen to share their experience and advice, be it through RGS Connect, our careers programme or to pass it on more informally. It has been great to see so many of you back here over the last year and engaged with the School. Thank you.

Highlights of the year include our first ever Giving Day and Fundraising City Lunch, both of which generated outstanding support for our Bursary Campaign. The first overseas OG event took place in Singapore and we look forward to others around the world. The party for a wonderful group of recently retired staff brought OGs of all ages back to celebrate with them.

Not to forget the Golden Garden Party, four decade Reunions, sport and undergraduate events… Something for everyone throughout the year.

As always, we are here to connect you to the School and each other. We’ve seen an increasing number of OGs involved with the RGS – supporting careers, visiting, giving talks, attending reunions or simply connected to us and enjoying our news and communications. Our twin purposes of fundraising and bringing the OG community closer together through events and shared interests will continue to shape our work and we look forward to sharing this with you over the coming year.

Editorial team and acknowledgements Editor Philippa Green Deputy Editor Helen Dixon Communications should be addressed to the Editor: og@rgsg.co.uk or RGS Guildford, High Street, Guildford GU1 3BB. Sincere thanks to all those who contributed to this edition of the OG magazine and helped in its production.

We would particularly like to thank those not credited elsewhere: Mary Buylla Peter Dunscombe Georgie Grant Haworth AJ Moore Jimmy Pressley Jenny Rothwell Ash Shakeri

Kathryn Sweet Alan Thorn Denise Walsh Jeremy Whittaker Phill Griffiths (photography)

and to all those staff who share OG news with us and support our events.

Our grateful thanks also to the Catering Team, Estates Team and the IT Department who give us tremendous support throughout the year.

This magazine was designed by Haime & Butler and printed by Lavenham Press. It is produced annually by the Development & Alumni Office, RGS Guildford.

Front cover: Will Carling, Chris Alder OG 1992 and John Inverdale.

Registered Charity Number: 312028. © Royal Grammar School Guildford 2019.

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CONTENTS

04 SCHOOL NEWS

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Welcome to the Class of 2019

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University Destinations

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A snapshot of the 2019 leavers

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The Headmaster’s Address

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Twenty for 2020: The RGS Bursary Campaign

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Community Survey Results

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The RGS Partnership Programme: Reaching Out

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RGS Sport

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The Ashburton Shield

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Changing of the Guard

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30 FEATURES The Big Interview

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Wale Song: from Guildford to Hollywood

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Predicting the Butterfly Effect: Peter Haynes

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A Sport you can do Sitting Down: Alan Cassidy

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46 OG COMMUNITY RGS Connect

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Breakfast Club

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OG Events

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OGs Back to School

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OG News from around the Globe

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OG Memories

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OG Sporting News

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Obituaries

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The Games Room

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The Tudor Collection

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The Games Room Solutions

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Leave your Legacy

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Contact us

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2020 Events

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DIALOGUE Issue #4 2019

SchoolNews

The RGS Old Guildfordian Magazine

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DIALOGUE Issue #4 2019

Welcome to the Class of 2019 On behalf of OGs everywhere, congratulations on your results and all the best for the next chapter of your lives.

Celebrating their results in August

2019 A LEVEL RESULTS Changes to the current A level system and a move to linear courses challenged students across the country and in this light, the RGS results were all the more impressive.

138 299 55 22 candidates

A*/A grades

boys secured a clean set of A* and A grades

boys recorded a perfect set of A* grades

TOP 12 DEGREE COURSES SUBJECT

NUMBER OF RGS STUDENTS

Economics

17

Engineering

14

Politics/PPE/HSPS/Philosophy

14

Sciences

14

Mathematics/Computer Science

11

Law

9

Business and Management

8

Medicine/Veterinary Science/Dentistry

8

Geography

7

History

7

Classics/Ancient History/Archaeology

5

Modern Languages

5

University data includes those who made a direct application for entry in 2019 (or for a deferred place in 2020) and also those 2018 leavers who made post A level applications for entry in 2019.

COCK HOUSE CUP WINNERS The Cock House Cup is awarded to the RGS House which has received the most house points throughout the year.

These are awarded for everything from sport to music, chess to drama, robotics to debating, and reading to baking.

2019 winners – Austen

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UNIVERSITY DESTINATIONS

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The Class of 2019 Bursary Hearty congratulations to the Class of 2019 on raising nearly £70,000 to create an incredible 47% bursary! A huge thank you to the 52 families who joined to support the bursary this year. This is the highest participation since we launched Seven for Seven in 2017 – nearly 40% of this year group.

Seven for Seven is a simple way for the boys and families of the Class of 2019 to hold open the door for another RGS boy, with a gift of £7 a month for seven years. In seven years’ time, we will ask the boys of the Class of 2019 to take over their family gifts to allow the Class of 2019 Bursary to help another bright local boy.

You can find out more about our ‘Class of… Bursaries’ and our Twenty for 2020 campaign on p16 and rgs-pass-it-on.co.uk

Durham 13

Leeds 3

Nottingham 12 Loughborough 6

Birmingham 4 Warwick 5

Cambridge 17

Oxford 10 Bristol 8 Bath 10 Southampton 4 Exeter 12

The top 12 institutions account for three quarters of all destinations.

Three students are going to study overseas and the remaining 29 offer holders are attending 21 separate universities.

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DIALOGUE Issue #4 2019

Class of 2019 at their sixth form photo

... and enjoying their Leavers’ Ball

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A SNAPSHOT OF 2019 LEAVERS ABHAY GONELLA

JAKE WILLSHIRE

A level subjects: Maths, Economics and History Extra-curricular interests: I currently play cricket for Hampshire CCC in their 2nd XI. What are you doing this year? I’m spending 6 months in Sydney, Australia to play grade cricket in the NSW premier league. Then I hope to continue playing for Hampshire summer 2020, before I head off to University at LSE. I will be studying Economic History with Economics.

Future ambitions: I will try to pursue a (highly unlikely) career in professional cricket.

A level Subjects: Maths, Biology and Economics Extra-curricular interests: I play hockey for Haslemere Men’s 1st XI in my spare time and I am also working on my own project car as a hobby.

What are you doing this year? I have joined Sainsbury’s PLC management scheme and this year I will be training to be a Customer and Trading Services Manager. It involves a 6-month programme and training in a variety of convenience stores in the local area.

Future ambitions: These would include reaching the South Regional Management position or even further, who knows! I would also love to track race my car some day and definitely build a few more.

MILES HORTON-BAKER

ALFIE JOHNSON

PHIL BOWLER

A level subjects: Geography, Economics and Art Extra-curricular interests: Outside of academia my main interest and passion is Rifle Shooting, having competed at county (Yorkshire), country (Wales) and International level for GBU25’s. I also enjoy photography, having just returned from a breath-taking photographic expedition around the Norwegian fjords and hope to carry both these on into the future. I am also a keen artist and look forward to keeping my creative juices flowing at university in both the visual and musical arts by also playing my clarinet.

What are you doing this year? I am in my first year at Durham University reading Geography.

Future ambitions: I am not yet sure of my post university ambitions; hopefully as I progress further into my degree I will hone my skills and find interests that I will be able to pursue into the future.

A level Subjects: Economics, Geography and Maths Extra-curricular interests: Pretty much any sport. Five a Side football, kicking about a rugby ball or just going to the gym. Having also moved recently, I’ve started really getting into cooking and learning new techniques and recipes.

What are you doing this year? I have been lucky enough to be given a contract to play Rugby Sevens full time for England this coming year which should keep me busy.

On my days off I’m coming back to RGS to help out with coaching.

Future ambitions: This year I hope to be able to get on the pitch and win my first cap for England on the HSBC world sevens series.

In the longer term, depending on how the year goes, I will do everything I can to make rugby into my full career or look to go to university next year.

A level subjects: Maths, Physics and Philosophy and Theology (Pre-U) Extra-curricular interests: I plan to continue doing as much music as possible alongside studies, predominantly singing. I am still a member of the Rodolfus Choir which I have been in since September 2017 and continue to sing at various services and concerts with them.

What are you doing this year? I am taking the Foundation Course in Acting at the Guildford School of Acting which I will be studying for the rest of the academic year.

Future ambitions: At the end of this year I am leaving my options open but my current plan is to probably apply to study Philosophy at the University of York; however, this is in no way certain at the moment and post-university my goal is very much still in performance.

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DIALOGUE Issue #4 2019

The Headmaster’s Address On the occasion of senior prize-giving, Holy Trinity Church, Guildford, June 2019.

I started the school year with an emphasis to students and staff on the importance of kindness within our school community.

The RGS school year is always comfortably cyclical. Commemoration, Senior Prizegiving and the Carol Service in the Michaelmas Term, ‘mocks’, the Entrance Examination and the Admissions season in the Lent Term, A-Level and GCSE Exams and the Leavers’ Ceremony in the Trinity Term. So it feels rather unsettling to be holding Prizegiving in the Trinity Term for the first time for many years.

This school boasts a proud history of 500 years of education and elderly institutions don’t always take to change very readily.

So what upheaval of school life has shaken our usual routine? It is simple – as a school we have embraced a new philosophy of scholarship, and of celebrating achievement of all kinds. We felt that our old Prizegiving ceremony was out of date.

We wanted an event which involved more students, particularly those from the Upper Sixth. We also wanted a summative, celebratory end-of-year event because there is so much to celebrate at the RGS. We wanted an event which chimed more

closely with the current RGS ethos – Scholarship for All, and a celebration of our Learning Habits, rather than one which was focused so exclusively on examination performance. Finally, we wanted a more rounded and balanced way of celebrating and acknowledging the breadth of life at the RGS which is why many of our prizes have, with the permission of the generous donors who endowed them, been refocused to recognise greater balance and diversity. So, welcome to a new Prizegiving experience.

It has been another extraordinary year at the RGS. It would take many hours to describe the accomplishments of the school community over the past year – you will be pleased to hear that now is not the time.

I would like, however, to spend a few minutes reflecting on those moments which have given me particular pleasure.

In September, I started the school year with an emphasis to students and staff on the importance of kindness within our school community. I consider myself

very fortunate to receive regular communications from people to express gratitude at the kindness of our community.

From parents of First Formers to thank a Sixth Former for helping their son when he first joined the School, from members of the public who, generally, recognise our boys’ good manners in Guildford, from the staff and parents of our sports opponents, from prospective parents who are visiting the School for the first time and for whom first impressions are so important, from local care homes and charities after visits from RGS students. I am also pleased that staff are making use of our new Appreciation Box to recognise the help and support that we give each other.

Sometimes they thank others for going above and beyond in their support; sometimes it’s just a ‘thank you’ for being upbeat and happy, or for just being there for people. Either way – it is good to appreciate each other and good to verbalise that appreciation. You can never have enough kindness in a school.

The RGS Old Guildfordian Magazine

I always feel privileged to watch our boys perform, whether that be music or drama or in the sports arena. They always engage with such enthusiasm and skill that I leave events genuinely in awe of the talent exhibited. It is no mean feat to get up in front of an audience, to execute that skilful move, or to deliver that crucial oration. It takes skill, practice and courage. A member of the Upper Sixth, having just delivered a Thought for the Day, said that it was the scariest thing he had done at the RGS since admitting to Mrs Booth in the First Form that he had forgotten his homework!

There have been so many memorable performances: the Concerto Concert, the Musician of the Year competition won by singer Phil Bowler, our school musical RENT, the Modern Languages play, Don Quijote de la Mancha – it’s always a challenge to get up on stage in front of an audience, but to perform in Spanish makes the challenge even more of an achievement, the junior play Emil and the Detectives, the production of Sophocles’ Antigone, wonderfully performed but

not a barrel of laughs, and most recently, Lockefest, our contemporary music evening – which was very enjoyable, if a little loud for my sensitive hearing.

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From left to right – Boys perform in Rent, Don Quijote de la Mancha, and Emil and the Detectives

Concerto Concert

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DIALOGUE Issue #4 2019

I was privileged to watch one of our most successful rugby seasons for many years, indeed a trophy-winning season as we won the Under 18 Surrey Schools Sevens Competition, our Under-16 hockey team got to the National Finals, only losing in the Final by the narrowest of margins on penalty flicks, RGS fencing teams became Surrey Champions and, a few weeks later, went one better to become National

team, Alastair Bulman for representing Canada in their Under-20 rugby squad and Alfie Johnson who, after extraordinary performances in the Rugby 7s season has been offered a contract with the England 7s International squad. Finally, I would like to recognise Nathan Janmohamed who has been, without doubt, the most helpful RGS student we have ever had at the School.

The skills acquired in the classroom and, perhaps more importantly, outside the classroom will stand our boys in good stead for the future.

Champions. There are so many individual achievements of which our boys can be proud that it is almost invidious to select just a handful, but I would like to congratulate Harry Grieve on becoming an International Chess Champion, Theo Collins for representing Great Britain in speed skating, Sam Jones and Roshan Patel on their Cambridge Organ and Choral Scholarships, Charlie Hubbard and Will Vaughan on winning Army Scholarships, Arvid Lindblad on winning the British Karting Championship (won, in the past by none other than Lewis Hamilton), Miles Horton-Baker and Luca O’Flynn on their selection for the Great Britain Cadet Rifle

British karting success

I have emphasised many times the importance to me of partnership. We do huge amounts of outreach and partnership work. We do it because we are passionate about sharing our expertise, about widening access and about educating young people both locally and internationally, irrespective of their circumstances. A number of activities have given me great pleasure over the past year.

A rugby masterclass delivered by Harlequins coaches where RGS boys joined with boys from George Abbot, Howard of Effingham and St Peter’s School; we started a new Sixth Form cooking initiative with Tormead – not before time,

I hear you say! A few years ago Upper Sixth Former, Will Pinhey, won the New Views Playwriting Competition, with his play being performed at the National Theatre. This year the plays of four RGS boys were long-listed in this competition and Olly Pinhey, Will’s brother, has made the short-list – it must run in the family.

What is also exciting is that, for the first time, the RGS mentored and supported students from Fullbrook School in West Byfleet to enter the competition, and one of their entries also made it through to the long-list. We have also enjoyed supporting Fullbrook this year by providing weekly revision lessons to their Upper Sixth pupils in Physics, Chemistry and Biology.

As part of our Enquiring Teachers Programme we have been working in partnership with staff from the Guildford Education Partnership (our local Multi Academy Trust) and St John’s, Leatherhead to engage in educational research which will benefit the students in our respective schools. I was privileged to attend a presentation evening a few weeks ago where the research findings were shared.

It is an exceptional example of independent and state schools, and secondary and primary schools, working together to share good practice, and I was delighted when the RGS was recognised for its innovation in this field by the award of an

First XV Hockey winning against Churchers

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I would like to thank the boys for their endeavour, energy and enthusiasm, and for doing things the right way – in the spirit of the RGS.

accreditation kite mark from the National Federation for Educational Research as an ‘established’ research school.

Our international partnership in Qatar is going from strength to strength. Opening just three years ago with 34 pupils it has just passed its first inspection from the Council of British International Schools with flying colours and we will start the forthcoming Michaelmas term with over 500 pupils. Our reputation in the Middle East is growing. The reasons for our international expansion have been stated on numerous occasions: partnership, engagement in global cultures, enhanced reputation for this school and an income which can be used to ensure that we achieve my vision for open access to the RGS for any bright pupil, irrespective of financial circumstances. At this very moment, students at the RGS are being funded by way of the income received from our school in Qatar.

The financial challenges which are facing independent schools now and in the future will make such international ventures even more important and we are currently exploring new opportunities in the UAE and China to further support our ambitions for the next stage in RGS’s history. I was fortunate to visit the Dubai equivalent of our Department of Education, the Knowledge and Human Development Agency, in September. It is an extraordinary place and as far removed from our Department for Education as it could possibly be. You enter the building through two arched doorways, one for happy people, one for sad people, the ground floor has parrots and budgerigars flying around, the first floor has a mini athletics track, the second floor has a boxing ring and the third floor has a little

room for you to have a sleep. As they say, ‘how can you inspire young people if you don’t have a sense of fun yourself’ – a sentiment which echoes our own philosophy at RGS, where we want learning to be fun and inspiring. We want to share our philosophy with other countries and other cultures and we hope, very much, to be able to announce a new international venture in the next few weeks.

Our established partnerships with schools in Cambodia and Nepal are also thriving.

For the first time this year we sent a group of RGS and Tormead students to visit our two schools in Beshisahar, Nepal and we were very pleased to welcome students from Nepal back to the RGS in March.

They were a delight to host and were unbelievably enthusiastic in everything they did. It is wonderful to be at a stage in our international partnerships where tangible benefits and opportunities are now available to pupils from the schools involved and this should be the goal for every international partnership in the future.

I spoke earlier of the challenges facing all independent schools and these are very real. Some independent schools are facing a very uncertain future. The political uncertainty, the threat of further financial demands on schools like ours, the journalistic bias against us, not helped by unwise statements from school leaders who should, perhaps, know better, means that we need to plan carefully to ensure a secure future for the RGS. Some will be aware of the decisions taken by a number of prep-schools in the local area to change their business model, and indeed, their educational provision in response to this threat. It is important for us, too, to ensure

that the RGS has a bright future ahead of it in spite of the challenges, and an income from further international expansion will go some way in allowing us to absorb the financial pressures which all independent schools are and will be facing in the next few years. This extraordinary school has survived many existential challenges during its 500-year history and we will do so again. It will need careful management

by Governors and the leadership team to ensure that we continue to provide an exceptional education for the next 500 years.

Ours is an ambitious school – our twelve development aims during the past three years are evidence of that. A review of those aims confirms that a huge amount of innovation and development has taken place during those three years. We often refer to the RGS as a ‘restless school’.

That is not a pejorative term to imply an unsettled atmosphere and dissatisfaction with our lot. It is a simply a way to describe our desire to make those little, incremental changes which, on their own, make a small difference but which, together, make us a much better school. A few weeks ago myself and my Senior Team sat down to discuss the School’s aims for the next three years. We consulted staff and came up with just four aims for the next three years: Sustainability, Academic Opportunity, Wellbeing and Widening Access.

Sustainability is not just about economic sustainability for the RGS in challenging times. It is also about doing what we can as a school in educating everyone to ensure a sustainable environment for the RGS and for our planet. Last term’s King’s Lecture was on exactly this subject and the interest shown on that occasion, and more generally by our students, confirms that

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DIALOGUE Issue #4 2019

The Egg Race

there is a real desire to address the environmental wrongs which we are committing against the animals and plants who share our world.

RGS boys visit Besisahar in Nepal

unknowable future. We need to ensure that our educational provision continues to be successful in doing this.

As a school we have embraced a new philosophy of scholarship, and of celebrating achievement of all kinds.

Academic opportunity is about exploring our curriculum and our co-curricular provision to ensure that it continues to prepare our boys adequately for the tests of life, not just for a life of tests. We cannot predict the future, but we do know that our boys will, hopefully, live longer, will work longer, and will need to be extremely adaptable in the future. The skills acquired in the classroom and, perhaps more importantly, outside the classroom will stand our boys in good stead for the future.

As I often say, A*s will get our students a job interview, but they won’t get them the job. I passionately believe that the focus on our core values (integrity, service and tenacity) and our Learning Habits (engagement with learning, critical thinking, learning with others, taking responsibility) means that we are sending creative, articulate, intellectually curious and resilient young men out into the world, capable of most things. That is the best way that we can prepare them for an

Our third aim is to enhance the wellbeing of everyone in the RGS community, students and staff alike. The inexorable rise of social media has meant that we as a global population are more connected than we have ever been. Our reliance on social media, however, can have a detrimental effect on our mental health, especially that of the young people who use it the most.

The pressures of social media affect self-esteem, human connection, memory, sleep patterns and attention span. The genie of social media is now inexorably out of the bottle – it is a part of human existence and so we, as a school, have to manage the issues which arise from it.

Well-being is about far more than social media though, it’s about informing young people so that they can make the right choices in life, it’s about improving our daily experience at the RGS, it’s about ensuring student participation, it’s about managing students and staff to get the very best out of them.

Wellbeing may be a fashionable ‘buzzword’, but it has never been more important that we make it a focus. The RGS community has experienced recently the tragic loss of a member of the Upper Sixth. We need to reflect on this sad event to ensure that we continue to provide the necessary pastoral support to all members of our school community. This has been a desperately sad and, indeed, unfathomable few weeks but I would like to take this opportunity to thank the members of my pastoral team and all other members of staff who supported that young man throughout his seven years at the RGS, and who have continued to support the bereaved family, our students and each other through this terrible time.

Our final aim, widening access, is one which I have spoken at length publicly over the past 18 months. Our commitment is to continue the essential work we have started, to ensure that an RGS education is available to all who deserve it.

As we approach the end of another school year I would like to express my sincere thanks to everyone who has contributed to the success of the RGS this year. To the parents, who have entrusted us with their sons and have allowed us the space to nurture and develop them. To our Governors, who work so hard to steer the School in its exciting development and who are the very best kind of critical friends that all Heads need. To our wonderful staff, both teaching and support staff, who do so much. The end of this term sees the

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Rugby training with the Harlequins

retirement of two long-serving members of staff. Mr Whittaker leaves the English Department after 25 years here, and Mr Seymour also leaves the RGS in just a few weeks’ time. He joined the RGS in 1972, was Head of Geography for 21 years and leaves us after an extraordinary 47 years of service to the School. One of the beams in Big School has the name of John Graile who is recognised for his 53 years as Headmaster. After educating RGS boys for 47 years, there is perhaps a case to argue for Richard Edmund John Seymour’s name to be painted on the beams as well.

Finally, I would like to thank the boys for their endeavour, energy and enthusiasm, and for doing things the right way – in the spirit of the RGS. There is no better way of encapsulating that spirit than by quoting our Head of Rugby from his end of season assembly report in which he summed up what made the RGS special for him.

He said “For me, winning is about far more than who scores the most points. I have witnessed many different types of win this season: gestures of great sportsmanship, senior boys devoting time to coaching other year groups, younger boys staying on to support the 1st XV, boys tidying the changing rooms, putting into practice plays learned in training, changing family plans at the last minute to be available for selection, rallying around injured teammates, congratulating a boy selected ahead of them, playing out of position if needed.

In isolation, these wins are often overlooked, taken for granted or viewed as insignificant, but collectively these have far greater impact than any scoreboard win. We find our deepest inspiration when we are motivated by something other than just winning This, in turn, makes us more successful.”

Investing time in our peers and colleagues, being kind to one another, looking beyond results and acknowledging the many other small, daily victories of RGS life is what makes the RGS such a special school and is what makes RGS boys themselves very special.

We do huge amounts of outreach and partnership work.

We do it because we are passionate about sharing our expertise, about widening access and about educating young people both locally and internationally, irrespective of their circumstances.

As my son leaves the RGS having enjoyed every minute of his seven years here (his words not mine), I reflected on why I took a risk in sending him to the School which I have the good fortune to lead. I took that risk because I wanted him to receive the very best education – the very best education in this area and, possibly, anywhere in this country. This is an extraordinary school, academically extraordinary yes (indeed, we were ranked the top boys school in the country for A-Level results last summer), but it is also extraordinary for all the other reasons I have talked about this evening. I wanted my son to become the type of young man that leaves this school and goes on to do great things in the future. Our boys are bright, intelligent young people, but their intelligence is tempered with humility.

They are not arrogant; they don’t believe the world owes them a living. They understand their good fortune and they know they have a responsibility to use their education for the very best purposes in the future.

We are privileged at the RGS because we are surrounded by young men of the very highest quality who will go on to do great things in the future. At a time where everything in the country looks rather bleak and depressing, I take enormous comfort from the fact that it is the young people of today, young people of the quality of our boys, who will make things right in the future. They give us hope.

At the Headmasters’ Conference back in October the presenter and journalist, Michael Buerk, gave a lecture on the dangers of social media, of fake news and of putting trust in our political masters.

At the end of his lecture he was asked – in the midst of all this depression, what gave him hope? He answered, ‘my two sons give me the greatest hope for the future’. Michael Buerk’s sons are both Old Guildfordians.

We are educating boys for the future – a future that will desperately need their ideas, energy, skills and passion. As I reflect on the qualities we are celebrating this afternoon, I echo Michael Buerk’s view that our young men will make a bright future – for themselves, and for others.

There is hope.

Dr Jon Cox Headmaster

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DIALOGUE Issue #4 2019

TWENTY FOR 2020 The RGS Bursary Campaign Our Twenty for 2020 Bursary Campaign seeks to create 20 transformational bursary places for 2020. It is the first step on our journey to full merit-based open access. Responding to our belief that an RGS education should be available to the brightest boys, whatever their background or financial situation, the last twelve months has seen an incredible uplift in support right across the community and over 450 OGs, parents and friends of the School are now supporting 17 transformational bursary places.

Beckingham Legacy Society Lunch & Presentation

In addition to these, in 2019/20 the School is supporting a further 48 bursary places for bright local boys. Altogether, nearly two thirds of these 65 places are transformational – ie offering 80% fee support or higher and, year on year, our financial commitment to widening access through means-tested bursaries continues to grow.

The first RGS Giving Day

OG City Lunch with Will Carling On 1 March 2019, over 100 OGs joined us for our first fundraising event in many years – at the OG City Lunch in London with special guest, Will Carling. Jim Pearce OG 1991 and Chris Alder OG 1992 led the charge. The day raised nearly £76,000 – creating an inflation-proofed 50% bursary for seven years.

This included profits from an auction compered by sporting commentator John Inverdale, and pledges from 20 OGs for regular monthly gifts over the coming years. See OG events p.53 for more details.

On 17 September 2019, existing members of the Beckingham Society were joined by ten OGs and parents of OGs to hear Tim Adams OG 1976 and Partner at Barlow Robbins give a presentation on tax efficiency, will-making and philanthropic giving. Lunch in Big School followed, where current and future members of the Society heard from the Headmaster and the Development Director on the School’s progress and future plans and developments within the Twenty for 2020 Campaign.

On 17/18 October 2019, the RGS hosted its first ever Giving Day. Over 36 hours, 434 OGs, parents, staff, pupils and friends donated an incredible £132,271 for the Twenty for 2020 Bursary Campaign, from all around the globe. This included 301 new donors. The first £20,000 was matched by a generous member of the RGS community and eight members of the community sponsored participation challenges. Every single year group in the School was represented via parent giving, as well as every decade of OGs going back to the 1940s and every decade of OG parents back to the 1980s. We are one of the first schools in the UK to have hosted a Giving Day and we are already looking forward to future events.

To all our incredible supporters – thank you.

Classes of 2018 and 2019 Our Seven for Seven initiative is a simple way for the boys and families of each graduating year to hold open the door for another RGS boy. Pledging gifts of £7pcm or more for seven years, their collective endeavour creates a new bursary, named for their class. In seven years’ time, we will ask the boys of each class to take over their family gifts to help another bright local boy. Following on from the success of the Class of 2017 bursary, 42 families from the Class of 2018 and 52 families from the Class of 2019 have created an incredible 100% bursary between them. Bursaries for the Classes of 2020 and 2021 have already been launched.

Would you like to join us on our journey?

Transform lives today by becoming a Friend of the RGS with a regular gift, pass it on in perpetuity with a legacy or find out more about our Twenty for 2020 Campaign and our work to widen access to our school, via rgs-pass-it-on.co.uk – and look out for our forthcoming Supporters Review in early 2020 to see the impact of your giving.

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Thank you to everyone who supported the first RGS Giving Day. You raised an incredible

ÂŁ 1 3 2,2 7 1.6 4 Thank you

Opening doors to opportunity

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COMMUNITY SURVEY RESULTS In 2019, we asked you what you would pass on. Our aim? To understand how to make tangible what is already in the RGS DNA. That is: how best to pass on our experience, opportunity and good fortune to the next generation of OGs and to our wider communities. Here are the headlines and our learning and next steps.

Responses

1249

people / 13% of the RGS community responded

62% OGs

38% parents & other

RGS impact 95% of respondents recognised the impact of an RGS education.

95%

53% of respondents recognised it to be a considerable influence.

53%

42% of respondents recognised it to be a factor.

42%

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Passing on opportunity & good fortune

Passing on opportunity & experience

91%

60%

63%

54%

felt proud or interested when asked about our aspiration to create bursary places for all those who need them.

are interested in our bursary programme & 15% of those plan to support in the future.

want to pass on their experience.

of respondents had not heard of RGS Connect & 27% are still to sign up.

50%

But only half of respondents knew that 7% of current pupils receive bursary support.

Communication

What we learnt & action plan

82% of respondents felt the level of communication from the Development Office was about right.

1/3 respondents want more information on how to give and over a third plan to join RGS Connect – we will work with them to allow them to support the RGS in the way that suits them best.

14% want more.

Only 4% want less.

33%

One third of OGs are reading DialOGue thoroughly, half are only skim-reading it.

21%

of respondents read The Register and Events Highlights, half skim-read it and one quarter of respondents are not aware they are receiving it.

We need to promote more widely the reach of the Bursary Programme and the number of current pupils receiving means-tested support. ver half of respondents had not heard O of rgsconnect.com – we need to promote it more widely.

We want to increase engagement with DialOGue and will, in 2020, be sharing it digitally with pupils and parents as well as OGs and exploring how to increase readers amongst OGs. We have refocused our communications to be clearer and more tailored to our community.

If you have views you’d like to share about any of these results or your own thoughts, please email us at rgsfoundation@rgsg.co.uk.

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REACHING OUT The RGS partnership programme The last 18 months has seen exciting developments for our international partnerships: pupil exchange visits with Nepal, a new partnership in Cambodia, our existing Cambodian partner achieving its goal of primary education for all, and plans for our first expedition to Mozambique and Swaziland in 2020. These partnerships are a vital part of the School’s commitment to service and offer an unparalleled opportunity to learn about the lives and culture of others for the pupils from RGS, Tormead and the young people we work with overseas.

Ash Shakeri International Links Coordinator

Cambodia In 2010, RGS partnered with United World Schools (UWS) – a charity then in its infancy – to help raise funds for and build Tiem Kram School in the north-east of Cambodia, near the border with Laos. The school’s aim was free primary education for all. Ten years later this has been achieved, alongside a kindergarten and the opportunity for older children to board in the nearby town of Veun Sai to attend the secondary school there. It is a remarkable success story and mirrors the growth of UWS – now working in Nepal, Cambodia, Myanmar, running over 130 schools and raising over £2.6 million a year from hundreds of corporate donors and school partners.

In 2019, 31 RGS students and four members of staff made what will be our final visit to Tiem Kram.

Our relationship with Cambodia will continue with Better Lives for Children (betterlives.org), a small UK/USA-based foundation who work with families in central Cambodia to provide reliable access to food and work towards placing the poorest Cambodians on a stronger and more stable economic footing.

RGS and Tormead students will be fundraising to support agricultural projects in Battambang and Siem Reap, where they will then be able to work alongside Cambodian families, in the summer expedition of 2021. We are hugely excited for the future and look forward to the opportunities the next chapter of RGS’ links to Cambodia will bring.

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Nepal October 2018 saw the first ever student trip to Nepal, with pupils from RGS and Tormead travelling to Besisahar for a two-week long visit. Each of the 30 students from Guildford was partnered with a student from Bhu Pu Sanik School or Janabikkas Chandi School, the two schools that Alexander Ewart OG 2003 worked in during his gap year. They would work alongside their partner for the next eight days in Besisahar, undertaking redecorating work in the two schools and an arduous trek to Ghale Gaun, the Gurung village 1,400 metres above Besisahar.

RGS student Harry Foster stated “despite the differences between us, it was astonishing how much we actually had in common and how quickly we were able to make friends. I’ve already been in touch with my partner since I got home and we’re looking forward to organising the return leg of the trip to the UK.” The Guildford students worked hard to raise over £8,000 before they left for Nepal. This covered the cost of the building materials they used in the projects and the cost of the Nepalese students’ participation in the trek. The excess was used for the next exciting development in our Nepal partnership.

In March/April 2019, Tormead and the RGS hosted students from Bhu Pu School and their Headteacher. None of the four students had been to the UK before and they were fascinated

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to see the similarities and differences between a British school and their own school in Nepal. They spoke warmly about the welcome they received from everyone they met and of the memorable, fun and educational experiences they shared.

Binod, the Headteacher, has explained how the visit has excited, enthused and further motivated the entire school community in Nepal. They now feel even more involved in our GuildfordBesisahar partnership and younger students are working hard with the ambition of being selected to participate in future visits.

In 2018, Ben Morse and Michael Downes OGs 2013 went to Nepal and taught in Besisahar. Hearing their experiences was invaluable for our pupils. A good number of OGs continue to generously volunteer their time in this way, which both schools are greatly appreciative of. If anyone would like to investigate opportunities to spend some time in Besisahar, they are very welcome to get in touch with us.

See our ‘Reaching Out’ page on rgs-pass-it-on.co.uk for more information on our Cambodian & Nepal partnerships. If you would like to find out more about OG opportunities in Nepal, please contact OG@rgsg.co.uk and we will put you in touch with Mr Shakeri.

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RGS SPORT

The boys continue to excel at an extraordinary range of sports, and specialist coaching at the School and beyond enables them to reach regional, national and international success. Here are some individual and team highlights:

ATHLETICS RGS Junior Athletics team came third in the regional round of the English Schools Track and Field Cup, and Ollie Billingham came fourth in the Surrey Schools’ Combined Events Championships.

Well done Jack Paulson, Asim Beere and Mrs Perrett RGS Maths teacher for completing the Southampton Marathon.

Jack and Asim raised over £2000 for our partner schools in Nepal.

BADMINTON The 1st team reached the finals of the National Schools Badminton Championship. Christopher Chong made his Senior County team debut for Surrey. A phenomenal achievement for such a young man.

CHESS The A team won the Eton College Team Rapidplay tournament for the third year in succession. The team finished second in the Millfield International Chess tournament; Harry Grieve won the Stephen Joseph Award for best play in the tournament, Best U18 and Best Board 1.

CRICKET RGS Guildford has once again been recognised as a leading cricketing school, listed in both Wisden’s top 100 cricketing schools and The Cricketer Schools Guide 2020. We were U15 NatWest County Champions for the first time in 18 years! Success across all age groups with the U12A, U14A and U15As all reaching the Twenty20 Cup semi-finals.

CROSS COUNTRY The RGS ‘A’ team of Charlie Kershaw, Will Barnicoat, Sam Martin and Tom Jones proved their quality by winning the Haskell Cup for only the 2nd time in its history, the last time being in 1954.

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RGS SPORTS RESULTS 2018-19 SEASON Sport Matches Won Lost Drawn

1st XI Cricket

16

9

6

Points/ goals for

Points/ goals against

Points/ goal difference

1 abandoned

1st XI Football

30

12

14

4

74

74

0

1st XI Hockey

17

9

6

2

45

35

10

1st XI Rugby

13

7

5

1

268

271

-3

This cross-country relay on Merrow Downs is one of the major crosscountry events in the SE. The U13 and U15 Cross Country teams also finished third and second in the English Schools Cup regional round. Will Barnicoat (L6) ran for Great Britain in the under 20s European Cross Country Championships, coming 22nd, an amazing result.

FENCING Incredible success at British Schools Team Fencing Championship with all five RGS teams winning medals or plates! RGS has won back-to-back national team titles (U18s in 2018 and U15s in 2019) and have now finished on the podium in this event for the ninth consecutive year.

FOOTBALL Nicholas Scott was selected for one of the regional representative sides which competed in the Gothia World Youth Football Cup. Over 70 boys represented five RGS teams and the reputation of football at the RGS continues to impress on a competitive circuit.

HOCKEY Edward Ferguson was selected for the England Blue hockey team in the UK School Games, a multi-sport event for the best young athletes in the country.

U18s reached indoor England Hockey South Finals and U16As competed in the England Tier 2 National Finals.

ICE HOCKEY Michael Goncharuk played for Guildford Junior Ice Hockey Club in the 60th International Pee-Wee Ice Hockey Tournament in Quebec, the only team to represent the UK. KARTING Arvid Lindblad had his first win on the European Tour at South Garda Karting in Italy. Facing 80 international drivers he won from P9 on the grid in the final.

RUGBY Alfie Johnson was selected for the 24-man elite England 7s squad. Ali Bulman was selected for Canada’s RFU U20 team. Charlie Hubbard U178/18, Sebastian Burrage and Charlie Woodfine U15 were selected for Surrey. Victories were enjoyed at tournaments by U12, U13 and U14 teams and the 1st 7s team were crowned champions at the Surrey School Sevens Plate Competition. RGS hosted the U12 Surrey Schools rugby tournament at Bradstone Brook.

SAILING Ben Mueller took part in the annual Optimist GBR Team Selection regatta and finished second out of 220 competitors at the Optispring International regatta in Holland. In the Lake Garda Optimist Meeting he achieved 30th place out of 1,000 competitors. The School Sailing Team were crowned winners of the Schools Match Racing 2018 and placed third at the Papercourt Easter regatta.

SHOOTING An outstanding year included coming second in the Open competition, retaining the trophy at the Clayton Challenge, winning the East Surrey Bi-Centenary Bowl at the Imperial meeting, winning the Garry Cup for schools competing against the Canadian National U18 team and the Kinder Cup for the best score at 300

yards. The highlight was winning the Ashburton Shield for only the second time in 100 years. This is the oldest and most prestigious competition for cadets, dating back to 1861. The combined scores also resulted in securing the Lucas Trophy, dating back to 1859, for the very first time. Read more about the nailbiting competition overleaf.

SKIING The ski team represented England in the British Finals in Edinburgh and were placed as fourth English School and tenth in the Three Nations, our best performance since records began.

SPEED SKATING Theo Collins was selected by the British Olympic Association to compete for Team GB in Speed Skating at the European Youth Olympic Winter Festival in Sarajevo.

SWIMMING U13A swimming team won both their events and the 15As claimed freestyle relay silver at the Surrey Team Championships. Both teams qualified for the National Finals of the 2018 ESSA Team Relay Championships at the London Aquatic Centre.

TAE KWON DO November. Dimitri Perricos won bronze in the sparring category of the Tae Kwon Do British Open.

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The Ashburton Shield a nail-biting final After 33 years, the most prestigious full-bore Schools shooting competition in the UK – the Ashburton Shield – was won by the RGS Shooting Team in 2019. Martin ‘Archie’ Whicher OG 1984 and shooting coach, reflects on his own experiences, changes in the competition and how RGS won the trophy this year.

The RGS shooting team

I have extremely fond memories of my time in the shooting team at RGS Guildford. We were a rowdy bunch who wanted to win and went about it in a fairly organised manner with boys teaching each other, happy socialising and pretty big success over the years.

One of the few trophies that eluded my years at school was also the most prestigious. The Schools full-bore competition known as the Ashburton Shield.

These days the competition is shot at 300, 500, and 600 yards with the L82 Cadet Target Rifle, but in my day it was 200 and 500 yards only with the trusty Lee Enfield Number 4 .303 rifle of WW2 vintage! The Ashburton requires a team of eight with all coaching performed within the team.

Some years ago an email arrived inviting me to discuss a situation at school. The existing shooting coach was leaving and with no-one with experience to take over, the continuation of shooting at the school was under threat. RGS Guildford has many years of successful target shooting behind it, as witnessed by many pictures of past teams and trophies hanging on the range walls.

It was unthinkable to let this happen.

Shortly after, I found myself, together with Jon Underwood OG 1988 (GM, SM2, GC2, CGM, CSC, WC and most importantly, a member of the winning Ashburton eight in 1986), in the Headmaster’s study. The school had a more than capable ‘master in charge’ in the legendary David Woolcott to organise the boys but they needed someone with coaching expertise.

The meeting ended with myself and Jon being persuaded to help out on various days for a year or two, until such time that suitable school staff could be found and trained up. So began the two-year period that continues today some 15 years later.

In the early days we coached using .22 rim-fire rifles, including the muchmissed Lee Enfield Number 8, at 25 yards during the winter and spring terms, and 7.62 Cadet Target Rifle during the summer term.

I’m sure we made plenty of mistakes in the early years but eventually honed our coaching to concentrate on the basic principles, namely: Position – firm, supportive and consistent Alignment – naturally pointing at the target Aiming – breathing and pointing it in the middle Shot release – trigger squeeze and follow through

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RGS Guildford Shooting Teams 1928 Winners of the Public Schools’ Small Bore Championship; Country Life Challenge Cup B; The Surrey Advertiser Challenge Cup; The Lee Challenge Cup (Bisley): The Boys of Surrey Challenge Shield (Imperial Trophy); The Elles Challenge Shield; The Harvey Hadden Challenge Cup; and the Caird Challenge Cup (Junior Summer Competition).

Back row, l-r: Sergt.-Major AL Stent. Lieut. AF Buckley.

Cdt JC Townsend. Sergt. SH Mumford. L/Cpl. LMV Richards. L/Cpl. LA Powell. Cpl. E. Walton. L/Cpl. WJ Clemson. Capt JW Bowey, OC. Front row, l-r: AF Harper (Vice-Capt.). C.S.M. EH Rice (Capt.) C.Q.M.S. CA Smith. Cpl. HR Philpot.

There are various challenges related to teaching these principles, not least the fact that boys tend to come in various heights and sizes. A 13-year-old may be 3 1/2 feet tall, lightweight with arms that reach their knees. Others may be six-foottall and would give a gorilla a run for its money. They also change said dimensions very quickly, so one position does not match all.

Over the first five years we made gradual progress. David Woolcott introduced a shooting option for 1st and 2nd Years so they started developing skills earlier. However, Cadet Target Rifle results were still disappointing and busy School life made it difficult to get the entire team together.

What changed? The saying ‘Success breeds Success’ does indeed seem to be true. Once we started to win, the team became more ‘tight’, they wanted to win more, and they tried harder. This success also attracted others who wanted to share that success. Small-bore shooting became better and better and soon we were competing with the best, and winning a lot.

Full-bore still lagged behind, due to the demands on pupils with exam study leave at the start of the season. This meant that over 50% of the team would have hardly any practice other than in matches... hardly ideal when using a rifle requiring the strength of a gibbon on steroids with an especially strong finger to let it off.

The next step was to add a pre-season Easter Camp to boost the skillset of the boys. Within a couple of years boys were being selected for the Maple Taste

UKCRT and Athelings training sessions in March which further enhanced their skills.

Before long they were Channel Islands or Canada bound.

This was a critical point in the development of the learning process for the whole team. Expertise began to pass from boy to boy. The team started to bond. All of a sudden I saw a team like the one I had been in so many years ago – a happy (usually), cohesive (most of the time), organised (not always) supportive (sharing skills) team, in a social environment.

Expertise began to pass from boy to boy.

A final focus on coaching skills and team drills gave us the tools and the skills to take the shield. However, the Ashburton is 100% up to the boys – the coaches and masters simply hand out the ammo and then watch it all happen, with the occasional wise and supportive word between ranges.

By 2017 we were really ready to be winners but come the main event we were found lacking. 2018 a few more refinements, a few different faces, same good team, but same result. What were we doing wrong? The answer was simply a question on holding your nerve, and the only change in 2019 was a focus on removing any ‘flustering’ by drilling the team.

Come the day, the first shooters started well at 300 yards, and it carried

We banked 250… had we done enough to hold our lead? on in the same vein, and on and on – RGS had a score of 263 out of 280, 10 points ahead of the nearest team, Sedbergh. We lost some ground at the fall back to 600 yards but after a spot of lunch we moved forward again to 500 yards. Gresham’s School proceeded to put in 261, but after six shooters things were not going to plan for us. But we still had a chance.... a fine 34 out of 35 put us back on track, but the last shoot was a nervy one from a new cap and it looked likely to be down to the last shot or two... We banked 250… had we done enough to hold our lead?

The scores rolled in and finally, with a massive sigh of relief, we realised that after 33 years we had done it – a win by three points. Phew! As staff we felt like proud fathers seeing their sons achieve their ambition, but also nervous wrecks!

This was the boys’ victory, shot by the boys, and wind coached by the boys.

However, it should be pointed out that, without the silent dedication of the permanent members of staff, Stephen Black, Ed Bush, and especially David Woolcott (who spends countless hours both in the range, driving, and organising) we would have never got anywhere near reaching this goal.

Martin ‘Archie’ Whicher OG 1984

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CHANGING OF THE GUARD Time and again, at reunions and through correspondence from OGs, we are reminded of the profound and lasting impact that staff have on the students who have been under their guidance for so many years. The wonderful atmosphere at the Retired Staff Party in May 2019, where OGs from across the generations caught up with their former teachers, showed once again that the staff are truly at the heart of the School and that OGs treasure many memories of them. Photos of the party can be found in OG events p56.

Jeremy Whittaker, English and Dick Seymour, Geography

This year saw the retirement of three long-serving members of staff who have given an amazing 98 years teaching at the RGS between them: Andrew Curtis, Head of Art (joined in 1993), Dick Seymour, former Head of Geography and Housemaster of Austen (1971) and Jeremy Whittaker, English (1994). In 2015, Dick was awarded the Chief Scout’s Service Award in recognition of the fact that he has given 40 years of service to Scouting at the RGS. The RGS is delighted to welcome four young OGs back to the School as part of the teaching staff this year: Matt Cornwell OG 2016 (Economics), Dewi Eburne OG 2014 (Chemistry), Tim Foster OG 2015 (Religion & Philosophy) and Henry Xuan OG 2016 (Economics). We wish them every success and enjoyment in joining the Senior Common Room.

Left to right: Tim Foster, Matt Cornwell, Dewi Eburne, Henry Xuan

The RGS Old Guildfordian Magazine

SAVE THE DATE

Peter White: Celebrating 36 years at the RGS – Friday 19 June 2020 Peter White, RGS Director of Music, is retiring in July 2020 after 36 years teaching here at the School. A concert is being organised to celebrate his outstanding contribution to music at the School on Friday 19 June 2020, 7.00pm at Holy Trinity Church, Guildford.

Interested in singing or playing in the concert? Let us know at og@rgsg.co.uk. Save the date now as audience tickets will go quickly too. More information and ticket booking details will be available shortly.

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Features

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The Big Interview

BIOGRAPHIES

THE THIRD SECTOR – HOW TO MAKE A LIFE NOT JUST A LIVING In this issue’s Big Interview, we sat down with five members of our community – four OGs and a current parent – who have all built their careers by making the world a better place. We asked their thoughts on the changing profile of the third sector, what they do within it and what motivates them to make a difference.

The ‘third sector’ refers to organisations whose primary purpose is to create social impact rather than profit. It is often called the voluntary sector, civil society or the not-for-profit sector. You might ask, what has it to do with me? Citizens Advice and the Consumers’ Association, the RNLI and Mountain Rescue, St John’s Ambulance, many local housing associations and RGS Guildford – all institutions in the voluntary sector, alongside the more than 168,000 other charities in the UK. The likelihood is that you have come into contact with at least one of these recently. Nine in ten UK households have accessed services provided by voluntary organisations at some point and in 2016/17, according to the NCVO, the voluntary sector contributed £17.1bn to the UK economy with the value of volunteering estimated at £23.9bn.

Rabbi Alex Goldberg (AG) OG 1993 Alex is a barrister, chaplain, human rights activist and committed football fan. He is the Dean of College of Chaplains at the University of Surrey’s Office of Religious Life and Belief, leading a team of 11 Chaplains and advisors from eight faiths and belief traditions. Alex contributes to BBC Radio 2’s Pause for Thought and was a member of the BBC’s Religion and Ethics Conference. Through the Carob Tree Project he has developed international community development and community relations projects.

He chairs the English Football Association’s Faith Network and founded the human rights group René Cassin. alexgoldberg.eu

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Alex McCallion (AM) OG 2012

Mark Norbury (MN) Current parent

David Pain (DP) OG 1984

Chris Whitehead (CW) OG 2012

The Independent newspaper named Alex in their 2018 Happy List: a list of 50 extraordinary Britons undertaking charitable endeavours with no thought of personal gain. In response to Oxford’s homelessness crisis and an increasingly cashless society, Alex used crowdfunding to build Greater Change – a cashless, secure donation app and website that enables the public to contribute towards a homeless person’s savings goal. So far, 87.5% of people supported through the platform have left homelessness behind. Alex has featured on multiple media stations, including the BBC, The Guardian and TEDx. greaterchange.co.uk

Mark’s eldest son is an OG from the Class of 2019 and his youngest joined the sixth form last September. Mark has 20 years’ experience in charities and social enterprise and has continually championed the third sector. He started his career at INSEAD, growing their Executive MBA to become a top five internationally ranked programme and co-founding the business school’s Social Innovation Centre. He then moved to become Partner at Leaders’ Quest, developing a global community of purposedriven leaders, before becoming the CEO of CW+, the charity for Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Mark is now the CEO of UnLtd, an organisation that finds, funds and supports social entrepreneurs with strong vision on how to make a difference. Mark has an MBA with distinction from INSEAD and studied Psychology and Philosophy at Oxford University. unltd.org.uk

After leaving the RGS, David studied Modern History at Durham University before doing a second degree in Political Theology and Development at Leeds.

Following time in India and South Africa, he joined Christian Aid. Leading the work in Africa was inspiring and life changing and in his final role as one of the Directors he led fundraising and communications across the UK. Working through a time of change in the charity sector, he has always sought to pioneer new approaches within organisations and in their external impact. David continues to lead work in community engagement as Chief Executive for Salisbury Diocese. salisbury.anglican.org

Founder of Seek, a social enterprise that supports refugees into employment in the UK. Chris studied Economics & Management at Bristol University. Starting his working life in tech, he then spent two years working for HM Treasury before founding Seek. seekuk.org

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What motivated you to work in the third sector?

MN

DP

I’ve been in non-profits for 20 years now. There was nothing at school or university to encourage me towards the voluntary sector, so I started volunteering for the Red Cross and a variety of UK charities. However, I felt frustrated by a sense of mission drift and the tolerance of mediocracy that I encountered, so I went to business school where I stayed for seven years, eventually co-founding a social entrepreneur initiative within the school. This fired a passion within me that you can combine the best of public sector non-profit and commercial leadership and I’ve worked in social enterprise ever since.

I think I was inspired by my time at the RGS. When we were at school we had a number of people return from gap years who gave a window into a world that was quite different from Guildford in the 1980s and Thatcher’s Britain. Because of their stories I went to India for a year and volunteered with an organisation called Project Trust, living and working with people who had leprosy. I was working alongside Mother Teresa’s sisters and I think even now, thirty years later, going back to that experience is still really foundational. For the first time I experienced what it meant to be marginalised and what it meant to be made poor and that changed my perspective on what it means to be excluded socially, or live in poverty. I’ve always carried with me a sense that we are all equal. But for people I’ve met in disadvantaged communities, I’ve asked myself the question “what needs to happen for their life to change and what part might I play in that?”

AM I run Greater Change, a social enterprise focussed on helping the homeless move forward. This came out of doing voluntary work with homelessness charities at university. I witnessed a lot of people overcome non-financial barriers such as mental or physical health issues. Often people would work really hard at these particular hurdles and make great progress and then encounter a financial barrier they could not overcome. Not being able to provide rent deposit or ID or being unable to learn new skills meant they could not move forward. At the same time, I realised there are many people who want to offer financial support and want to give in a personalised and transparent way, so I founded Greater Change. It’s a fresh approach because donors can give straight to an individual’s saving goal, and they see exactly what it is they are funding.

Also every candidate who is on the platform has a support worker helping them to overcome the non-financial side so it’s a very comprehensive kind of approach.

CW I run Seek, a social enterprise which seeks to move refugees into employment, and really, I kind of fell into it. I was working for the government for a while, then by chance bumped into a homeless guy called Sharif, on the street. He was asking for change because he had been kicked out of his social housing just after being granted the right to work, and now, with no fixed address, could not apply for jobs. He was a really personable guy who obviously didn’t belong on the street.

Having been an electrician back in Syria, and speaking perfect English, it seemed ridiculous that he couldn’t help himself.

I took his number, gave him a call the next day, wrote down his skills, qualifications and experience and put a CV together for him. I contacted some electricians and found one that would meet him. He interviewed and got the job. Just incredible. He texted me to say thank you and that he was back on his feet.

Things had really turned around for him. I told a couple of friends about it and we thought “let’s keep doing that”. For a while we volunteered but quickly realised there were many employers wanting to hire refugees but there was no one place to access them. So we decided to build a job platform to bring together refugees with opportunity. I worked on it outside my full time job for a year and then got funding – from UnLtd coincidentally – to be able to go full time with Seek a couple of months ago.

IT’S OUR PASSION AND PURPOSE AND INSPIRATION THAT LEADS US TO DO EXTRAORDINARY THINGS. AG I worked most of my life in community development and I think that probably started back at the RGS. Back in the late 80’s / early 90s, a group of us sixth formers started to engage with interfaith dialogue, led by an amazing RGS Governor standing in as our RE teacher, Kenneth Stevenson. He was also the local vicar and went on to be the Bishop of Portsmouth.

We shared a lifelong friendship and it was because of his prodding a young Jewish guy that I went to study Theology as well as Politics at university and really went into community work from there. More recently I’ve become an orthodox rabbi. I am now the Lead Chaplain for Surrey University where we want to take on 300 global ambassadors and train them in community development, social entrepreneurship and how to combat faith, race and sexual-orientation based hatred.

It’s interesting to note that all of you started with volunteering in some way and that you have had to find or even create your own paths. How do you feel the sector and attitudes to social enterprise and philanthropy are changing within the UK? MN I think there’s considerably less trust in civil society as well as in business and government, than there has been. I think this trust has been substantially eroded over the last three to four years, and I don’t think our sector’s done nearly enough to step forward. We need to own the issue and bang a drum about the impact the third sector generates and its ethicality and legitimacy in business.

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AG There is an issue with younger donors. Their giving is really different from the older donors. Older donors will attach themselves to a charity and may even volunteer. If we are talking about change over the last 20 years – many of our charities in the UK were run by volunteers and the staff and professionals were more or less secretariats. I think some of the gaps mentioned before in terms of recent dissatisfaction arose from the movement away from that volunteering model… but not having systems in place to check the new organisational model.

DP Society is moving away from institutional loyalty and digital disruption is at the heart of this move. It’s a good challenge for us. Information is accessible and immediate and if donors then don’t want to stay with us, then we should accept that. We should create low-cost opportunities for people to make the contribution they can, whilst they can.

AG But then it’s also about matching donor to need. After the tsunami that hit Asia in 2004 the JDC (Joint Distribution Committee) received almost limitless donations because many people were moved by the tragedy they saw on TV… But there may be some really worthy social need just down our street which is not on anyone’s radar and because it’s low-key it’s harder to crowdsource for it.

CW I may not have as much experience, but one of the things I get is that growing up you read about social enterprises in the papers and they tend to be community based, regional or local, and on a smaller scale. The feeling I get now is that new social enterprises can be successful world-beating tech companies such as chatterboxuk.co.uk. Where social enterprises were viewed as being less efficient than for-profit companies, business is now realising they can be as efficient as a for-profit company, but with social goals. We’re seeing real movement towards really big companies such as B-corps (bcorporation.net) stating it’s okay to be big, you can still be social.

Without the obvious profit and loss measure of the for-profit sector, how does the third sector measure impact and success and how do we share it in a content-hungry society?

MN I’m wary of the movement to analyse and measure things wholesale. If you take this room as an example, what fired us was not an impact analysis of something but it was very experiential. It was a felt thing, and we lose that at our peril.

It’s our passion and purpose and inspiration that leads us to do extraordinary things. We need to celebrate that whilst being supportive of systems that build accountability and transparency.

DP There is a real challenge in measuring impact. There was an age where people just trusted charities or other organisations to get on with it. And I think in the digital age our ability to see the evidence of and feel connected with the difference charities have made is a brilliant change. But what is the change we are measuring? I did some work with a foundation last year. A really interesting massive scale foundation with huge resources, but are they just telling the easy stories?

Those that are simple to measure… but are they actually achieving long-term change? Having studied politics, history and theology, I think you need time for long-term change.

You look back at big social movements that have formed the society we live in and changes that have happened – sometimes over several generations – and while I think we live in a fascinating time with a lot of space for innovation… the tension is, do we make it quick and easy versus engaging with hard to measure programmes that lead to long term change?

My fear is we all rush to demonstrate we are making a difference, rather than addressing long term aims.

AG I lead the FA’s Faith in Football Committee, they do a lot of social programmes bringing single faith schools together.

There’s nothing better than bringing 500 kids from every faith, every ethnicity to Upton Park. But it’s very hard to measure the impact of that. There are some people I meet today who say “It was a day that changed my life” and that’s amazing.

But I want the FA to increase its longitudinal programmes so people come and meet each other again and again and again.

MN I think good organisations who go after impact recognise their limitations in claiming they can accomplish everything. The best organisations use the analysis process to understand the value of what they do to learn and to get better. So they are continuously improving. If you are honest on what you can and what you cannot achieve, all your supporters – whether they be establishment donors, institutional donors, or millennial mobile phone donors – will understand.

Transparency and not over-claiming is so important. Being

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MN open about learning lessons, making mistakes and trying to get better is how you play a part in a collaborative endeavour.

And how do we encourage more young people to collaborate in these endeavours, to join this third sector / play a bigger role in civil society?

CW Young people are really engaged in social issues and we read and care about them. In some cases, it’s not so easy to get involved. I worked in a soup kitchen at Uni and when I first came to London I wanted to volunteer, but it was hard. You’re trying to give time and help and you can’t get a foot in the door and it’s difficult to know where to go. I never saw myself doing something like this, but actually there are so many ways you can get involved. Either developing your own idea or supporting other peoples’ ideas. Then there are platforms online like do-it.org, which is another avenue to getting involved.

AG We know that for people in their mid-20’s now, they will experience seven careers. That’s the prediction. I think we need to work more fluidly within schools and business, and like big American tech companies offer employees 10% of their time to work on their own projects and social innovation.

If you go out and meet real people, do real projects and hear about real challenges to people today, you can go back to big business and innovate and make this country a really successful place. In our RGS days we had an old boy who was a member of Monty Python or a member of a band or Captain of the England cricket team. All these were great role models, don’t get me wrong (we met some of them) they were brilliant ... But I don’t recall there being a role model for the social sector.

The leadership qualities that gain places within third sector organisations, are around empathy, courage, generosity, humility; these are the things that endure. And they can be developed, they are partly innate characteristics, but they get nurtured and experience and education takes you a lot further.

I think schools and universities play an important role. With me it was school, through volunteering and then pursuing where I landed. I think there is an absolutely vital role that a school like the RGS can play in the cultivation of purposeful entrepreneurial leadership – whether it’s in business or government or civil society. This is what will make a difference to anyone in their career; they will get ahead and they will make a positive impact. I think social entrepreneurships are fantastic, not only because I would, but because it does combine the best of business, government and civil society.

I think that’s exciting for people because you can do something intellectually stimulating, be entrepreneurial, express your mastery of stuff, achieve purpose and make a living. When you bring all this together, it’s pretty compelling.

Do we think that the current climate – the erosion of the perceptions of the benefits of capitalism, a mistrust of established institutions, the information age – points to a change in how work is viewed and the potential growth in the third sector as a valid industry to work in?

CW I feel there is this huge shift where people want to find meaningful work, something their values are aligned with.

A lot of friends did leave Uni thinking “Well I have to get a finance job now” and they’ve got four years into that career and suddenly realised that they don’t actually care about finance. Now there’s a real shift where people are looking to do things with added value.

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NO-ONE WAS TALKING ABOUT VALUES WHEN I LEFT SCHOOL AND NOW EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT.

and is values-led’. No one was talking about values when I left School and now everyone is talking about it. Which is encouraging, but doesn’t lead to a simple answer… it leads to a set of other questions.

MN This absolutely reflects my concern with corporate social responsibility (CSR)… that it was always peripheral. Assuaging the guilt when, as you say, what people want is the integrity of CSR being at the core of a business. You can absolutely generate purpose at scale alongside profit at scale. That is a sustainable model for the planet and for the people and that’s what we want. Social entrepreneurship is about start-ups to early growth outfits trying to get there, and this stuff is happening now.

AM A lot of people that I know have gone into traditional graduate jobs and then got a year into their internship and felt… not entirely meaningless, but concerned that they can’t see much of an impact.

In the case of RGS, it’s not the School teaching or enabling it, it’s the School being it. What’s really exciting about Pass It On and other initiatives is how the School is engaging students, alumni and the staff in improving education in Surrey. Now that’s how the RGS achieves purpose, as in – this is the core of who we are and what gives us validity as an organisation. Any organisation, whether it’s business, government or civil society is simply a complex collection of humans and their motivations and drivers. Purpose is absolutely the fundamental way to speak to people’s souls and search for meaning.

DP So friends of mine who are in their late 40’s and 50’s are definitely making that change. People who’ve built a successful career in business are now saying they are at the end of that road and want to change direction and go to the things that are important and that they really care about.

I think Mark’s point about the necessary leadership qualities is so important because for the School and anyone going into this area, those are the transferable talents that will open those doors.

I think, more broadly, we are now asking the core question, ‘what is the impact of this business?’ There is a shift away from products and profit into values and added value. For my children’s generation and for students leaving the RGS now, it is normal to say ‘I want to work in a business that adds value

THERE IS A VITAL ROLE THAT THE RGS CAN PLAY IN THE CULTIVATION OF PURPOSEFUL ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERSHIP.

We’d like to thank Mark Norbury for hosting us and all our contributors for giving up their time to take part.

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WALE SONG

FROM GUILDFORD TO HOLLYWOOD 10 minutes with Barnaby Blackburn

Barnaby Blackburn OG 2006 is a multi-award winning writer/director.

For the last seven years he has worked as a copywriter and Creative Director in the advertising industry. At the age of 26 he was awarded a BAFTA for his 2014 Winter Olympics promo for the BBC before moving to Los Angeles to be Creative Director for brands including NBA 2K, Call Of Duty and Google. In 2017 he shot his first short film and directorial debut, Wale. Since its completion, Wale has been shown at film festivals all over the world, shortlisted for the Academy Awards and nominated for a BAFTA. He recently completed his second short film ‘Dad Was’ and is currently developing his first feature film project.

You always wanted to be a film-maker, but took a detour via Politics at Leeds University and an award-winning advertising career. What triggered that moment of honesty with yourself that this is really what you wanted to do?

My ambitions to be a filmmaker were always there, though probably a bit latent. I’d started filming stuff with a camcorder when I was about 13; mainly friends skateboarding. But being a professional filmmaker never felt like something achievable or that I knew much about. When I started working in advertising, writing TV ads, being on set and overseeing the entire production of these commercials, suddenly that world seemed much closer. In many ways I used advertising as my film school, trying to get as many TV ads made as possible so that I could be on set and learning about the technical aspects of film-making.

You’ve been working with your creative partner, Gustavo Kopit, for 10 years.

That kind of collaboration is common in the advertising industry and a great skill for film directing – what is the key thing that makes that partnership work?

Gus and I met on a post-grad advertising course in Watford. He’d come all the way from Brazil to do the course, so it was clear to me that he had the drive needed for the ad industry which can be quite harsh and unforgiving at times. He’s also an incredible craftsman and visual thinker. In creative teams, usually one of you is a more visual person and the other one is the wordsmith. I’m the latter in our partnership. Our skills complement each

other well and over the ten years of working together we’ve found our rhythm of getting to good ideas quickly.

You learnt your film-making craft writing and directing commercials.

What’s it been like moving into a world without briefs and tight deadlines?

I don’t think it’s changed much. It’s just that I impose my own briefs and deadlines now. I have a constant feeling of guilt if I’m not using my free time to get work done. Unfortunately, that feeling wasn’t something I’d developed when I was at school!

Your commercials and debut film, Wale, have an incredibly strong sense of place – where does that come from, why is it important?

That’s hard to answer. Obviously I take that as a compliment but I’m not sure I can pinpoint the reason why. It may be to do with having moved around a few times as a child. I originally grew up in Leeds and then moved to Guildford when I was 12. I always felt fortunate to have had half of my childhood in the north and half of it in the south. I think it gives you a greater perspective on the country and an understanding of how environment contributes to the nuances of peoples’ personalities and perhaps, as you say, a strong sense of place.

How did you meet your Dark Glass Films partner, Ed Speelers (perhaps best known as the actor who played Jimmy Kent in Downton Abbey?)

Ed and I met through mutual friends when I was at university in Leeds. He

wasn’t at the uni but he came up every now and again for the weekend and we had a similar appetite for films and particular music events. It became clear pretty quickly that we shared similar tastes and had the same ambition to make films of a certain kind. So we set up our production company Dark Glass Films and got to work making our first film, ‘Wale’.

How useful are your English accents in LA?!

Not as useful as you might imagine.

There’s so many British people in the city that I don’t think people think of our accents as that unusual. In fact, most people assume I’m Australian, much to my chagrin.

What are you most proud of to date?

I wrote a TV promo for the BBC’s coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics which included a poem I’d written as the voiceover; a challenge to the athletes posed by the voice of nature. After the campaign launched, I arrived at my desk one day to find a big envelope waiting for me that had been sent from a teacher at a primary school in Salford. The envelope contained 30 different poems that the pupils had written themselves, in a similar vein to the poem I’d written for the promo. The fact that my work had inspired these kids to go off and write their own poetry gave me a greater feeling of pride than when the campaign won a BAFTA a few months later.

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When will ‘Dad Was’ be released and what other projects are you working on?

Dad Was is my new short film which we shot in Glasgow earlier this year. We’ve just finished the post-production on it and will be showing it at film festivals over the coming year. Aside from that, I’ve just finished the script for my first feature film, which I’m tremendously excited about. So I’ll be trying to get that off the ground post-haste.

What advice would you pass on to the next generation of OGs? Right now, you might not know what you want to be. That’s fine. It wasn’t until I’d left RGS that I really discovered what I wanted to do with my life. The important thing is to try things out. As many as you can. There’s so much on offer at the School and, if I’m honest, I probably didn’t take full advantage of it when I was there. Perhaps if I had, I’d have realised my ambitions to become a filmmaker earlier. At the time, I was preoccupied with playing sport and meeting girls. Sometimes when you’re a teenager, it’s hard to see beyond those things. But the more you experiment, the more you give things a go, your calling in life will become clearer. So, try something you’ve never tried. Risk it. Join the photography club. Take on the chess master. Cycle to Brighton. Make a film over a weekend. Start your own society.

Try debating. Try anything. You have nothing to lose and everything, everything, everything to gain.

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The RGS, through the excellent teaching of Alan Thorn and others, and the companionship of and competition with my fellow students... gave me a good start in my mathematical life.

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Professor Peter Haynes OG 1976 is Professor of Applied Mathematics in the Department of Applied Mathematics & Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge. He was Head of the Department from 2005-2015. He has been a Fellow of Queens’ College since 1986 and was Director of Studies in Mathematics there for many years. In April 2019 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, an accolade given to eminent scientists in recognition of outstanding contributions to the field in which they work.

Predicting the Butterfly Effect Here he outlines his journey from studying maths at the RGS to becoming a Professor at Queens’ College Cambridge and his theory of applied mathematics in predicting climate change.

As must be the case for many RGS students who go on to study mathematics at university I liked the subject in part because I was good at it and in part from the satisfaction of learning new material and then applying it to solve problems, particularly problems that seemed hard, or even impossible, at first sight. The RGS, through the excellent teaching of Alan Thorn and others, and through the companionship of and competition with my fellow students in the enthusiastic double mathematics class, gave me a good start in my mathematical life.

spread of disease, propagation of radio waves), but operating in an abstract mathematical world where the original ‘real world’ problem is temporarily put aside. One of the important aspects of the development of mathematics is that areas that might at some time have been regarded as ‘pure’ may eventually be used in ‘applied’. Therefore, it is very important not to draw too rigid a boundary between the two branches.

Indeed, some of the most interesting areas of mathematics are those which are evolving from the domain of pure mathematicians into the domain of applied mathematics. Some of this evolution is enabled by increase in computational power. Most applied mathematics requires calculation and there are some mathematical structures within which calculation has become possible only in the last 50 years, or indeed only in the last 10 years.

University mathematics

Personal route into climate science

As a university student, one’s view of the subject changes. In some areas (pure) there was an ongoing sequence of introducing a new mathematical structure and establishing its properties and then building on that to generate new structures, and so on. In other areas (applied maths) there is interplay between considering recognisable ‘real-world’ problems (planetary motion,

In early 1980s Cambridge, one of the subjects on offer to a research student in applied mathematics was geophysical fluid dynamics; the study of flows with physical ingredients that are relevant to the atmosphere or ocean. One approach might be to study a simple system in the laboratory. However I embarked on a more mathematical approach – essentially to reduce a physical problem

Starting at the RGS

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to a minimal (but interesting) mathematical model, explore its properties and then on that basis draw conclusions about the physical system.

This not only gave the opportunity for interesting mathematics, but also offered a fascinating context to that. My interest was reinforced by a summer spent at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Cape Cod, where I and students in other sciences, as well as mathematics, were given a range of lectures on oceanography, completed project work (mine was on acoustic propagation in the ocean) and enjoyed many other adventures one might expect of students spending a summer together in a new place. (During the summer I went on an oceanographic cruise for a week which gave me the grounding insight that I was probably better doing calculations than trying to operate complicated measuring equipment).

After finishing my PhD in Cambridge I spent two years at the University of Washington in Seattle, in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. This gave me valuable exposure to the science of the real atmosphere, as distinct from the very idealised mathematical and laboratory models of the atmosphere that were studied in great detail in Cambridge. One of the big events in atmospheric science during this period was the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole. I remember Dr Susan Solomon, a young scientist who two or three years later led observational campaigns to the Antarctic (and then to the Arctic to try to understand whether an ozone hole was likely there too), announcing to a fairly stunned audience, that some British Antarctic Survey scientists had published a paper in Nature reporting unexpected and very large decreases in ozone, and that no one had much idea how to explain this. The story of the ozone hole, including the international agreements to limit the emission of the chemicals that lead to ozone destruction is now well known. (Very recently Nature celebrated its 150th anniversary and chose the discovery of the ozone hole as one of ten highlighted papers from their archives.)

Following my time in Seattle I returned to Cambridge, where I have spent the rest

There are some mathematical structures within which calculation has become possible only in the last 50 years, or indeed only in the last 10 years.

of my career (so far), teaching and carrying out research, usually with some ingredient of mathematics, into different parts of the climate system.

Mathematics in climate science There is a long tradition of the role of mathematics in the physical sciences.

Phenomena such as the orbits of planets and ocean tides have been studied by deriving and solving equations which represent physical laws and then interpreting the solutions. This is not simply ‘mathematics in the service of physical science’ – often the development of completely new areas of mathematics has been stimulated by this process.

An important part of the development of climate science has been to exploit this approach, applying it to the study of atmospheric radiation, to the behaviour of weather systems, to the flow of air over mountains, to the coupling of atmosphere and ocean in the tropics that leads to phenomena such as El Nino, and so on. The arrival of computers has meant the size and complexity of the systems that can be studied in this way has increased enormously. The importance of weather prediction has meant that over the last 70 years, climate science has been one of the scientific areas leading the way in the application of increasingly powerful computers, to the solution and exploitation of the equations of physics. Some of this application has in itself required new mathematics.

Alongside this traditional role for mathematics in climate science, other roles are becoming increasingly important. One, the mathematics of uncertainty, arises from the probabilistic nature of weather and climate. Most readers will have heard of the ‘butterfly effect’ – the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil creates a hurricane arriving in Florida. This is a wider example of the phenomenon that in many physical systems, the evolution over some period of time is very sensitive to small changes in the initial configuration of the system.

It follows that an accurate forecast can be made only over a limited time and on longer times the behaviour of the system appears to be random. (The term chaotic is sometimes used.)

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In the context of weather forecasting, this aspect of the behaviour requires a distinction between deterministic forecasting and probabilistic forecasting.

The question of ‘will it rain at 10am on the day after tomorrow?’ can reasonably be considered a problem in deterministic forecasting. Whether or not a useful forecast can be made will depend on the amount of data available on the present state of the atmosphere and on the accuracy of the model that is used to convert that information into a forecast.

If the quality of the forecast is not very good there is the realistic possibility that it can be improved in future through improvements in the data and the model.

However, it seems very unlikely that the data and the models can ever be improved to the extent required for the same approach to be applied to answering the question ‘will it rain at 10am four weeks from today?’ But the apparently random behaviour can be acknowledged in a probabilistic forecasting approach to answer the question of ‘what is the probability that it will rain four weeks from today’. As the time over which a forecast applies increases it must become more probabilistic. Climate is the probability distribution of weather and a forecast of climate change is a forecast that the probability distribution of weather will change.

This introduces some important subtleties. First, how can we tell, from our experience of weather events, if climate is changing? It does not make any logical sense to deduce that climate change is happening on the basis of a single weather event: a month of flooding in Northwest England, a super-typhoon hitting Japan during the Rugby World Cup. These weather events might have taken place (as one of the many outcomes described by the probability distribution) in an unchanged climate.

Of course, if these events were more usual over, say a decade or two, relative to 100 years ago, then one might start to conclude that the probability distribution, i.e. the climate had changed. But what can one say from an individual event?

What is now possible is to discuss, and indeed estimate, whether the probability

of this type of event has changed relative to the pre-industrial climate. This requires the use of models that simulate first the pre-industrial climate and second the current climate, in which greenhouse gases have increased substantially over their pre-industrial values. Each of these simulations generates a ‘probability distribution’ for the relevant climate. Then the actual probability of the observed weather event according to each of these distributions can be estimated. Using this kind of technique, it has been estimated that under the present climate compared to the pre-industrial climate, the 2003 heatwave in continental Europe, for example, was twice as likely, and the flooding in NW England and SW Scotland in late 2015 was 60% more likely.

A second subtlety is how to take account of the probabilistic nature of climate in adaptation to climate change. Design of flood defences will take account of the estimated ‘return period’ for floods of different magnitudes. A climate model prediction for an increased probability of flooding at a particular level, i.e. a shorter return period, will (in affluent and well-organised societies) be taken into account in the design of new defences.

But consider the example of a dice that is loaded against throwing sixes. If the dice is thrown a ‘few’ times, say ten, then there may be several sixes. If the dice is thrown ‘many’ times, say a thousand, then the proportion of sixes will almost certainly less than 1/6. Correspondingly, if there was increased probability of flooding in a future climate then over ‘many’ years more flooding would be very likely. But over a ‘few’ years there might be drought.

The key question is how many years is ‘many’ (and how many is ‘few’). Recent climate model studies suggest that in some geographical regions (the western half of the US), even twenty or thirty years may be ‘few’. Now it might be that this is an artificial property of certain climate models and determining whether or not this is the case is a very tricky problem. But if the real climate system behaves in the same way, then the implication is that for some (not all) geographical regions, whether or not the next 30 years are significantly drier than

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previously or significantly wetter than previously is something that cannot be predicted – each possibility is simply a possible random outcome. This makes planning difficult – in such regions does one invest in new flood defences, or new water storage and distributions systems?

There are many other areas at the interface of mathematics and climate change that are currently being investigated. One is the need for radically new algorithms for computation and modelling. To a large extent the same algorithms are being used now as when computational approaches to weather and climate prediction began about 70 years ago. The massive increase in computational power over that time has been exploited by clever adjustments to algorithms rather than radical change.

But future increases in computational power are likely to have a very different form, and radically different algorithms will be needed to exploit it. Another is the potential use of machine learning and related techniques. If a computer can learn (or taught to learn) the rules and strategy of chess and then apply that learning to beat the best players in the world, then why should it not learn to interpret the rapidly increasing amount of data on the climate system and make forecasts?

There are many reasons why this might be difficult, but past experience suggests that investigating questions like these will give much valuable insight, even if the question itself is never answered.

Professor Peter Haynes OG 1976

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A SPORT YOU CAN DO SITTING DOWN

Alan Cassidy MBE, OG 1967, is one of Britain’s best-known sport aerobatic pilots, being crowned National Unlimited Champion five times.

With over 6,000 flying hours in specialist aerobatic aircraft types, Alan represented the UK in numerous European and World Championships between 1994 and 2012, winning one gold, four silver and four bronze medals. Here he talks about his journey towards ‘a sport you can do sitting down’.

ORIGINS My time at the RGS coincided with the musical revolution of the 1960s, but was overlaid with the physical challenges of the rugby pitch and the military discipline of the CCF. Then, of course, there were “O” and “A Levels”, but somehow they always seemed to take second place to the less academic activities.

One of the more popular uniform badges was for completing the “Naval Aviation” course, and this presented an opportunity to actually fly in an aeroplane at a time when holiday travels were never by air. I saw both ends of the Isle of Wight in a few minutes and was delighted. This was before Google Earth!! Little did I know then how influential that short flight would prove.

Shortly before leaving the School I had some good news concerning my further education. I asked for a chat with the Headmaster and was pleased to go into his office and tell him that I had been offered a place at Trinity College. His immediate response was “Dublin?”, to which I smilingly replied: “No; Cambridge” before turning my back and walking out of his office, for once without corporal punishment.

By the third year of my Mechanical Sciences degree, I had RAF sponsorship as a University Cadet, had flown close to 60 hours in the CUAS Chipmunks and been selected to represent Cambridge against Oxford, Birmingham and London in a flying competition.

I am sure it is thanks to the RGS that I was able to have two such wonderful experiences; studying at a prestigious university and starting my adult life with nearly 20 years of service as an engineering officer in the RAF.

SPORT STANDING UP My Dad had been in the 8th Army in Egypt during WWII, and was a round-ball football player. Imagine my surprise, then, when I arrived at the RGS and discovered that the ball we played with on sports afternoons was a different shape!

SCHOLARSHIP Concerned that I might not actually get a place at university, my parents inevitably questioned my future plans. My hero of the time was a fighter pilot named Paddy Payne; a comic character rather than a real hero but still an inspiration. My non-academic future just had to be in the Royal Air Force, so I went through their selection and somehow did enough to be offered a “Flying Scholarship”. Thus, I left the RGS at Easter of my Third Year Sixth and learned to fly.

As it happens, my genetic ancestry dictated that I would never be a “big” chap. So, I worked hard in the gym and played as a ferocious half back. Learning to tackle properly was sine qua non and it didn’t take me long to develop a capability for bringing down bigger boys.

Thus, I got to play in the First XV and got a trial for Surrey.

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There was a lot of rugby at Cambridge, of course, and then in the RAF. I ran out at Twickenham against the other services, and scored several tries for both Town and County when I had an RAF job near Marlow.

Time passed on, of course, and retirement from rugby started to become inevitable. I was by now a Wing Commander with a lot of engineering and management experience. The Ministry of Defence loomed! Rugby became impossible and I faced a seemingly endless, desk-bound military career. Something had to change.

FLYING UPSIDE DOWN I had reached a stage in my RAF career where I managed 60 tradesmen and the maintenance of 16 Harrier aircraft. However, I discovered, not for the first time, that RAF pilots are reluctant to talk to, and treat, their engineering colleagues as of equal status.

Having not flown since leaving Cambridge, a bit of paperwork and refresher training was needed, but I got myself back up to speed flying a CAP10 aerobatic aircraft at RAF Cranwell. I was then able to take a few of my Harrier pilot colleagues flying, and share with them the enjoyment of flying upside down. This, surprisingly at the time, led to a complete change of lifestyle for me.

SPORT SITTING DOWN? I came to hear about the British Aerobatic Association; a sporting body that sent teams to international competitions. I left the RAF at age 39 and started my second career. This time as an aerobatic pilot, in an aeroplane I bought and maintained myself and, after more training, as an aerobatic flying instructor!

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Motorsport now; let the engine do the work. Like Formula 1, but much more complex. Amazingly demanding because it is sport in the air and requires the brain to cope with problems in three dimensions, not just turning left or right on a flat earth racetrack. I learned to withstand forces on the body that would make an astronaut struggle, eight or nine times normal gravity, both squashing me into the seat and then, immediately after, stretching your spine as you go round the loop inverted and your blood tries hard to blow up your brain‌ and you can do this for your country!!

My living room now is festooned with medals of all colours from aerobatic flying competitions on four continents, all since my late 30s and into my 50s.

I have team shirts and a jacket with GBR on the back!

All because of the RGS and the CCF. Alan Cassidy MBE, OG 1967

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OGCommunity

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OUR ONLINE COMMUNITY

rgsconnect.com CONNECT

SHARE

PASS IT ON

Find new business, discover exclusive jobs, internship and work experience from a global network of OGs and the RGS community

Your skills, experience and knowledge with the next generation of Old Guildfordians.

Give back to the RGS community through knowledge or support the RGS bursary programme.

1/3 of the RGS network is already online.

When are you joining us?

‘‘

RGS Connect is a great way to stay in touch with the school and give something back.

Henry Whorwood OG 2010, Head of Research & Consultancy, Beauhurst

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Speakers Programme:

THE BREAKFAST CLUB The future of digital warfare Making a mid-career change – how to survive What does a special advisor do?

Interested? Would you come and listen to an OG expert talk on one of these subjects and many others?

We are exploring opportunities for our community to learn from each other and pass on knowledge and experience through a series of professional discussions. In 2020, we are going to trial a series of business breakfasts… we are thinking 20 to 40 people, weekdays, 8am to 9am, central London…

Look out for our forthcoming Survey Monkey.

Or if you are not on digital, we want to know:

1. What do you want to say?

Do you have experience and knowledge that you would like to pass on?

2. What do you want to hear?

Is there a business, political or social topic you would like to learn about?

3. Can you host?

We are looking for London and Guildford locations to start but we’re open to everywhere!

Help shape the future of the RGS community. Email us today marked ‘Breakfast Club’ to: rgsfoundation@rgsg.co.uk

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OGEVENTS

REMEMBRANCE SERVICE November 2018 The whole community, including a number of decorated OGs, joined together in an act of remembrance of all those who have lost their lives from the First World War to the present day. The service was particularly poignant as 2018 marked the centenary of the end of the WWI. As the Headmaster said: “On the War Memorial in Big School are listed the names of all 58 Old Boys of this school who died in the Great War: RGS students who walked the same corridors as you; had the same dreams and aspirations as you; and whose loss of life was a source of devastation for their friends, families and the School alike.� The name and age of each OG was read out: many of them the same age as the senior boys.

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OXBRIDGE DINNERS February 2019 The Cambridge OG Undergraduate Dinner was held in February 2019 at Queens’ College attended by 43 OG undergraduates and 15 staff.

March 2019 The Oxford OG Undergraduate Evening took place in March 2019 in St Aldates Tavern, Oxford, with 21 OG undergraduates and 13 staff attending.

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CITY LUNCH March 2019 On 1 March 2019, over 100 OGs assembled at Brasserie Blanc on London’s South Bank.

Hosted by John Inverdale, with guest speaker Will Carling, the lunch gave OGs the opportunity to gather their friends together to celebrate their time at the RGS, all in aid of the RGS Bursary Programme.

The afternoon was a sell-out, with OG leavers represented from 1958 to 2004 and over two thirds of OGs from the 1990s. With silent and live auctions, a game of Heads & Tails and 20 regular gifts pledged to the Twenty for 2020 campaign, the afternoon raised over £75,000, creating a 50% inflation-proofed bursary to take a bright local boy through his whole RGS education.

Thank you to everyone who attended and made the event such a success, in particular Jim Pearce OG 1991 and Chris Alder OG 1992 without whom this event would never have taken place. We are already planning the next event with a non-sporting OG speaker…

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DINNER WITH JACK CLIFFORD April 2019 A feature of the City Lunch in March was a charity auction featuring exclusive lots to raise money for bursaries. One of these was dinner with Harlequins and England player Jack Clifford OG 2011 at Brasserie Blanc. Tony White OG 1996 made the successful bid, and took Dominic Masters and Richard Metcalfe also OGs 1996 to dine with Jack in London in April.

CHAINED LIBRARY DINNER July 2019 As part of the City Lunch in March we held a charity auction featuring exclusive lots. One of these was a dinner in the Headmaster’s Chained Library. Thank you to Oliver Newbury OG 2004 who successfully bid for the dinner and invited his classmates from his year group. As one of the last surviving chained libraries in the world, the evening was truly unique.

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RETIRED STAFF PARTY May 2019 Our celebration for long-serving and retired staff is always a happy occasion reuniting staff and OGs. We welcomed over 100 guests to Big School, with OGs from 1975 to 2014. It was an honour to formally recognise teachers who have dedicated their careers to our school, especially nine special guests: Ted Badham, Mary Booth, Cliff Grace, Pete Hosier, Mick Jennings, Max Knight, John Saxton, Alan Thorn and Steve Thornhill.

Their combined service to the RGS numbers 317 years. Counting all 33 former and current staff, there were over 700 teaching years in the room! Thank you to everyone involved in making it such a happy occasion.

The RGS Old Guildfordian Magazine

Back row left to right: Cliff Grace, Mick Jennings, Pete Hosier, Steve Thornhill, John Saxton.

Front row left to right: Max Knight, Ted Badham, Dr Jon Cox, Mary Booth, Alan Thorn.

OUR FIRST INTERNATIONAL REUNION Singapore May 2019 It’s said your school years always stay with you no matter how far you travel. A sentiment verified in May last year. We held our very first international reunion 6,770 miles from our home town of Guildford in Singapore. We know that OGs get together all the time all over the world, but it was great to be able to support this event and although he couldn’t be there in person, Headmaster Dr Jon Cox was delighted to send a video message.

A huge thank you to Luke Jones OG 1988 for hosting and sponsoring the event at the exquisite 1880. Plans are already underway for another international RGS social in Hong Kong in 2020.

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GOLDEN GARDEN PARTY June 2019 Celebrating OGs who left the RGS 50 years ago or more, we welcomed over 100 Old Guildfordians and their guests back to the Golden Garden Party. Guests enjoyed Pimms on the Headmaster’s Lawn, afternoon tea in Big School and jazz played by current students. They were then able to rediscover the Old Building, visit the Chained Library and share memories with friends and classmates, some of whom had not seen each other since their days at RGS. OGs came from all over the country and the Headmaster was proud to raise a toast to the more than 5,000 years of life experience assembled amongst our OGs‌

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GOLDEN GARDEN PARTY continued

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Classes of the 1930s and 1940s

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Classes of the 1950s

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Classes of the 1960s

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HEADMASTER’S CRICKET June 2019 The annual Headmaster’s XI v OGs XI Cricket Match took place at Bradstone Brook in glorious sunshine. The OGs celebrated their second consecutive win against the Headmaster’s team with a resounding 7-wicket victory. It was wonderful to see so many familiar faces among the parents, OGs, staff and families enjoying the atmosphere.

As always, it was a lovely, sociable day with great cricket, entertaining conversation and delicious food. Many thanks to Ant Drake OG 2007 for organising and captaining the team once again.

The OG Team Back Row left to right: Tim Drake 1975 (umpire) Neville Marsh 2013, Charlie Warren 2013, Ben Shaw 2017, Jonathan Andrews 2018, Benji Thomas 2018, James Chaumeton 2015.

Front Row left to right: Duncan Ashworth 2016, Zac Burrage 2016, Alexander Sweet 2016, Ant Drake (capt) 2007, Yusuf Hafiz 2018, Jonathan French 2015, George Eves 2018

If you would like to take part in future OG cricket events, do let us know via og@rgsg.co.uk

The RGS Old Guildfordian Magazine

UNDERGRADUATE DRINKS July 2019 Each year we invite our current OG undergraduates back for a pint and a catch up with some current staff at The Albany on Sydenham Road. This time they were also able to celebrate their OG hockey win over the RGS 1st IX, played beforehand.

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CLASS OF 2019: THE NEXT GENERATION OF OLD GUILDFORDIANS September 2019 Over 100 OGs from the Class of 2019 returned to collect their yearbook, OG tie and come together for the first time as our newest Old Guildfordians.

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DEDICATION OF THE RGS MEMORIAL PLAQUE AT ST GEORGE’S CHURCH, YPRES September 2019 In Ypres there are two historic memorials to the fallen of the First World War. The best known is perhaps the Menin Gate; St George’s Memorial Church, however, can be viewed with equal importance with regard to perpetual remembrance.

In 1919 the church was built to serve as a permanent memorial to the dead and a meeting place for the visiting relatives.

Every item in the church – the plaques on the walls and the chairs, the windows, the banners and the church furniture – are all there in memory of someone who gave their life for freedom. Many of the walls are dominated by dedicatory plaques from schools throughout the UK, illustrating on a very personal level and on a human scale the cost of war.

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On Sunday 22 September, a new brass plaque was dedicated to those Old Guildfordians who gave the ultimate sacrifice in the First World War, including those who died on the Ypres salient.

As part of the Evensong, a very moving service included readings from the School Captain and from the Headmaster, Dr Jon Cox, as well as the singing of the School Hymn, ‘To be a Pilgrim’.

1994-2004, laid a wreath on behalf of the School.

The Evensong concluded with the dedication and blessing of the plaque which was made all the more poignant as the Deputy School Captain read out the names and ages of those who had died on the Ypres salient: the youngest being just 19. Robert Strick OG 1949 and Governor

James Strugnell OG 1994 attends the Remembrance Parade in Ypres every year with the Ceremonial Association of Surrey Police ‘CASPER’. On 11 November 2019 he laid a wreath at the new RGS plaque in St George’s Memorial Church in memory of those OGs who fell.

Following the dedication service Gil Carter OG 1963 and his wife Carol undertook an emotional cycle ride around the Ypres Salient along the 45km Peace Route passing many of the locations which would have been so familiar to the young OGs who fell there.

OGs Robert Strick and Gil Carter with their wives, RGS pupils and staff at St George’s Church, Ypres

OG James Strugnell (right) with CASPER colleagues at Ypres on Remembrance Sunday

Robert Strick OG with Dr Jon Cox, Headmaster

RGS pupils at the service

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CHAMBER CHOIR September 2019 To celebrate 10 years since the creation of the combined RGS and GHS Chamber Choir, many OGs and GHS former pupils returned to participate in an Anniversary concert at Holy Trinity Church. They joined the current choir who performed pieces from their summer tour to Tuscany as well as some old favourites from the last few years.

CLASS OF 1999 REUNION September 2019 20 years flies past and it was great to see the Class of 1999 travelling from far and wide to come back to the RGS for a reunion dinner and visit round the School. Lots to catch up on, reminisce over and look forward to, both at the School and beyond.

CLASSES OF 1988 AND 1989 REUNION October 2019 Postponed by snow last year, the Class of 1988 returned with OGs from 1989 to share a joint reunion dinner. They had a great time exploring the School, old and new, once more and enjoyed catching up with former staff Ted Badham and Max Knight.

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CLASSES OF 1968 AND 1969 REUNION November 2019 Always a close group throughout the years since leaving the RGS, the Class of 1969 (and friends from 1967/68 and 1970) celebrated 50 years as OGs with a lunch in Big School, followed by speeches and music. They enjoyed a visit to the Chained Library and a tour of the School. Many thanks to David Makepeace OG 1969 for his hard work in helping to organise the day.

“ Except for family, we have known each other longer than anyone else and I thought that showed in the interest everyone had in each other, the good humour and warmth of the event.” “ Many thanks for organising a really enjoyable occasion.

It brought back many memories despite never having set foot in the school since 1965 and it was particularly pleasing that I found my recollection of time, place and people was so distinct and so positive.”

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OGs BACK TO SCHOOL

Thank you to all those OGs and parents who come into the RGS to share their skills and experience and take part in a range of activities from lectures and debates to careers seminars, society talks and field days.

Here is a selection.

Jack Matthias OG 2007 visited the RGS music department. Now a successful composer Jack took time to discuss composition, particularly the inclusion of electronic elements within his work.

The Right Honourable Lord Justice Sales OG 1979 gave a talk to sixth formers from RGS and other local schools on starting out in the legal profession and an insight into some of his most interesting cases.

Michael Kielstra OG 2018 delivered a well-received talk entitled Applying to Harvard: an Old Guildfordian’s experience and perspective.

Our Law seminar saw several familiar faces return to the school to share their knowledge and experience. (L-R Peter Dunscombe, Tom Lingard OG 1995, James Wareing OG 2014, Nick Bond OG 2004, Michael Mullin OG 2003.)

Nick Edwards OG 1969 returned to meet

Paul Kerensa OG 1997 is always a welcome

the Headmaster and senior prefects and share memories of his time at RGS. A keen sportsman Nick enjoyed lunch with the sports staff.

(Pictured centre with RGS senior pupils.)

guest. This year he has given a talk on ‘Can we Trust the Bible?’ to the Christian Union, given a lower school assembly on the Ghost of Christmas Past and once again hosted the popular stand-up comedy night for the school’s charities.

Jack Emberton OG 2016 gave a talk to the Sceptics’ Society about his personal experience working in corporate jobs. Jack founded the Society when a pupil at RGS.

OGs Max Beech and Tom Phipps 2015 presented at Young Enterprise Finals about how their experience of YE in 2014 has impacted on their lives and careers to date.

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Guy Westwood OG 2004 Lecturer in Classical Literature at Oxford and Lecturer in Classics at St Hugh’s College, presented at the RGS Scholarship Conference. Pictured centre with RGS boys.

Alex McCallion OG 2012 spoke at the innovation-themed TEDx Guildford this spring.

Alex spoke about innovations in giving, in particular, Greater Change, a social enterprise he founded which helps people who are homeless to move on through financial and non-financial support.

Derek Thornton OG returned

James van Oppen OG 2008 and Ciaran O’Toole OG 2018 spoke about their experiences

OGs Tony White 1996, Rob Waterhouse 2004, Alex Osborne 2016 and Oliver Woolcott 2014 held a very insightful Q&A

Dewi Eburne OG 2014 spoke at the Christian

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to take a look around the school.

Union last December on ‘The Miracle of Christmas’.

of working in medicine at the Careers in Medicine Seminar.

at the Careers in Finance Seminar.

David Reep OG 1998 with Roger Meadowcroft

Keith and Derek Hayes OGs 1953 and 1945

Alex Scott Fairley OG 1996 was treated to the

for a reminisce from Australia .

sat in the Usher’s Chairs in Big School.

house drama rehearsals on his return visit to perform with the Guildford Shakespeare Company.

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OGNEWS

Catch up with OGs from across the generations and around the globe.

Richard Kemp (left) with Sir John Allison

IAN NICHOLAS OG 1947 celebrated his 90th birthday at the Ivy in Guildford.

OGs RICHARD KEMP AND SIR JOHN ALLISON (1954-1961) met at Headcorn Aerodrome, Kent* on 15 July 2019, together with Richard’s wife, Ann. John flew from his local airfield in Gloucestershire in his Beechcraft Bonanza aircraft. They chatted over photos showing school days and contemporaries, including prefect members and the lst XV 1961, captained by Terry GP Jones, who was also School Captain. Old friends, no longer with us, were remembered. John is keen to meet as many of his old contemporaries as possible and hopes to visit one of the Stoke Park rugby lunches next season. *Headcorn Aerodrome, 9 miles south of Maidstone, was opened in 1943, named RAF Lashenden and used during WW2 by RAF, RCAF and US Army AF. It is now a private grass airfield.

ALAN LOVELAND OG 1965 supported the RGS in the Public Schools’ Fencing Championships. Pictured here with two silver medallists and the winner of the national U13 team foil plate.

Alan Loveland with the RGS Junior foilists

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LEON DORÉ OG 1965 took part in the Champion of Champions Golf Day at Santana golf club near Mijas, Costa del Sol. The 12 players had all won the monthly qualifier, and it was the first time in 12 years of trying that Leon qualified. He won his fiercely contested group with a long putt but just one hour later, another player beat him by one stroke. Second place was not a bad result, and although disappointed, his friends consoled him by reminding him that “nobody remembers who came second”.

Self-portrait by Leon Doré

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exceptional commitment to the charity.

During his career Roger was acknowledged and recognised for going beyond the call of duty for his clients. The Nicklin family felt this award would be a fitting tribute to Roger’s memory and will be presented each year at the charity’s AGM. For over 57 years Guildford Samaritans have been supporting people who are finding it hard to cope, offering emotional support any time of the night or day. The very generous donation made by the Nicklin family will support Guildford Samaritans in being there for everyone into the future.

ROGER NICKLIN OG 1966 A Walk near Guildford has been named in honour of Roger Nicklin, former chairman of the Old Guildfordians’ Association who sadly died in May 2017. Woking Mind, a local mental health charity which offers long-term non-clinical support for people with mental health difficulties in Surrey, have a weekly walking group and have renamed their group ‘The Roger Nicklin Walk’. One of Roger’s sons, Edd, said “Depression is unique and different for each person and over the years he dealt with it the only way he knew, through his love for life and for always giving something back. Amongst all the things he enjoyed, he had a special affection for sport, and he loved walking. He was a regular walker in and around Guildford and along the North Downs”. Woking Mind have been working closely with the family to acknowledge Roger’s service to the local community, and to continue to raise awareness of depression and the strong link between physical exercise and mental well-being. The naming of the walk took place at Newlands Corner on 23 July 2019, and the family donated £8,21.93 to Woking Mind, raised from family, friends and colleagues in memory of Roger. Anyone wishing to follow the Walk can find out more information through www.wokingmind.org.uk.

Guildford Samaritans have created a volunteer award in Roger’s memory. The ‘Nicklin Award’ recognises a volunteer who has gone the extra mile. At the Guildford Samaritans AGM in September 2019 the inaugural award was presented by Roger’s son, Edd, to volunteer Nick Martin for his

ALAN BARTLETT OG 1976 has been appointed Clergy (Ministry) Development Advisor for the Diocese of Durham. He is also Cranmer Visiting Fellow in Anglicanism at St John’s College, Durham. In 2018 he published Looking through Jesus, a set of Lenten Reflections. Previous publications include Humane Christianity (2004), A Passionate Balance (2007), a study of Anglican spirituality in the DLT series Traditions of Christian Spirituality, and in 2019 a book entitled simply Vicar, published by SPCK.

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MARK BURLINSON OG 1979 and his wife Jane have the honour of coaching a squad of young men and women on The World Race, a faith-based humanitarian and cultural adventure for 21-35 year-olds. Mark and Jane recently travelled to Kathmandu, Nepal, to meet with their squad who had travelled through China and Tibet, visiting universities, temples, mosques and other cultural centres, befriending local people and learning from them. The time in Kathmandu helped the squad process lessons learned and encouraged them to grow in their faith through these experiences.

Mark and Jane have trips to Oman, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and China planned as their squad complete a year of such travels.

MARK ARNOLD OG 1985 has recently published two books: ‘Turning Japanese’ – a comedy/adventure novel. In this modern-day Don Quixote, suburban accountant Brendan Broadbent, convinced he’s possessed by the spirit of an ancient samurai warrior, makes it his mission to rescue a remote Japanese village in peril – only to find himself embroiled in a conflict between Yakuza gangsters and a former POW bent on revenge. But will his lofty fantasies culminate in triumph or calamity?

SIMON BLANCHFLOWER OG 1981 has been appointed the first ever Chief Executive of the East West Railway Company (EWR).

Simon was most recently Programme Director of Network Rail’s £7bn Thameslink project. He is leading EWR in its mission to deliver a new railway between Oxford and Cambridge. Simon was also given a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2019 for services to the Rail Industry.

ROBERT MARSON OG 1985 is a bass who also sings as a bass-baritone. He performs regularly in opera and oratorio and in song recitals. In Autumn 2019 he took the role of Wotan in Das Rheingold by Wagner, performing with Tarnhelm Opera in the magnificent cathedrals of Gloucester, Worcester and Llandaff as well as churches in Bristol and Bathwick. An imaginative and impressive semi-staged production using the full power of the organ accompanied by percussion.

‘Tales of the Forgotten’– a collection of darkly comedic, award-winning, interwoven tales that are thought-provoking, humorous and at times downright disturbing. Both are available on Amazon.

IAN LAMONT OG 1992 was in Guildford town centre, taking part in the Global Climate Strike in September 2019.

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Further Maths Class of 1992 with Alan Thorn at Queens’ College, Cambridge Dinner

JIM PEARCE OG 1991 with ALEX CRANE OG 2008, both rugby fans at a wedding in Yorkshire.

MATHS CLASS OF 1992 REUNION DINNER Alan Thorn’s ‘Further Maths Class’ of 1992 organised a celebratory dinner to mark Alan’s retirement after almost five decades of teaching at the school. The dinner took place in March 2019 at his university college, Queens’ in Cambridge, where two of the class also studied, albeit a few decades later!

Two of Alan’s former RGS pupils from earlier years also attended the dinner. Professor Peter Haynes OG 1976, now Head of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of the Royal Society, and David Moore OG 1982 who was on a short trip back from New York.

OGs of 1992 in attendance were Chris Alder, Steve Hampton, Andrew Towers, Robert Kealey, Ed Williams, David Horrocks, Chris Watts, Ed Coles, Ben Coppin and James Lindsay.

In many ways, the event illustrated the many generations of RGS pupils who truly benefited from his mathematical guidance.

A man known for his passion for cricket, Alan had his career fittingly described as an “innings quite remarkable”. Thank you and enjoy your retirement!

In the exceptional setting of the Munro Room at Queens’, Alan was presented with a signed copy of The Royal Grammar School Guildford by Dr Williamson, published in 1929. Touchingly, he was also presented with an album of old photos and a collection of stories from former students. As James Lindsay OG 1992 states, “he had such influence and was an inspiration in so many different ways to all of us. You don’t realise this until many years later.”

By James Lindsay and Ben Coppin OGs 1992.

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JONATHAN WHITE OG 2001 was appointed the new Director of Religious Music at Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal in June 2019.

HUSSEIN HASSANALI OG 2002 was invited to speak at a major dentistry conference at Olympia, London in September 2019. He has also been nominated as a finalist in the Best Young Dentist category in the Dentistry Awards 2019, the industry’s flagship celebration of excellence. Hussein has been published over 20 times since graduating from the University of Liverpool in 2009 and has been commissioned for at least eight more articles over the next few months.

FORMER RGS STAFF JOHN SIMPSON, Director of Studies and Biology, TED BADHAM, Head of Biology and DAI JONES, Head of Chemistry at a wedding.

PAUL DARROCH GRODEN OG 1994 writing as Paul Darroch, published his second book, Jersey: Secrets of the Sea (Seaflower) in August 2019. Paul’s wife is from Jersey and they find it an ideal haven to raise their young family. The story of the island is shaped by the sea and the ocean’s call inspired some famous adventurers.

Secrets of the Sea narrates the story of many of these voyagers, from Jersey’s fallen Governor, Sir Walter Raleigh, on his fatal quest to El Dorado, to the Jersey Quartermaster of RMS Titanic, to the lone boatman in 1941 slipping away from the shadow of German Occupation. This book is a companion to Paul’s previous book Jersey: The Hidden Histories.

PAUL YOUNG OG 1997 (stage name Paul Kerensa) is a regular on the stand-up comedy circuit. He also writes for Lee Mack’s sitcom Not Going Out and Miranda Hart’s BBC1 Christmas show. Paul is a regular on the ‘Pause for Thoughts’ slot on the Radio 2 Breakfast Show and presents shows for BBC Sussex and Surrey, and new podcast on the history of Christmas. His seventh book has just been published: Joe’s Bros and the Bus That Goes, a children’s book based on the biblical story of Joseph. Currently working on a novel and short story collection to be published this year, Paul regularly returns to the RGS to host the annual Stand Up Comedy evening.

MARK LAMBERT OG 2003 is celebrating his Testimonial year this year after a long and successful career with Harlequins Rugby Club. Events so far have included a Rugby World Cup Golf Day and a Gala Dinner with notable rugby players and guests.

Ian Wilkes, RGS former Director of Sport (now Head of 1st Form) with Mark Lambert (right) at Mark’s Testimonial Gala Dinner

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ROBERT EVANS OG 2008 is now the Revd Dr Robert Evans and has recently taken over as Chaplain at Christ’s College Cambridge, where he combines his ministry with responsibility for theology students.

Robert graduated from Peterhouse, Cambridge in 2011, with a First in History and followed it with an MPhil in Early Medieval History. In 2015 he was Ordained within the Church of England at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, taking a First in the Theology Tripos. He is continuing his research in early medieval history and won the early-career prize for 2019 from the Ecclesiastical History Society. In 2013, he married Alice, who is also a professional historian based in Cambridge.

Becky and Tom with Binod Gurung, Headteacher of Bhu Pu (2nd from right) and local guide

TOM MOTCHMAN OG 2006 was trekking in the Besisahar area of Nepal in November and met with the Headmaster at Bhu Pu School where Alex Ewart OG 2003 taught and is part of our outreach programme following our first student trip in 2018.

Tom writes “it was a great opportunity to make a special visit to the school that Alex taught at on his gap year 15 years ago.

It was clear his legacy still lives on today, with continued links with the RGS and the student exchange programme. His photo in the Principal’s office takes pride of place next to Prince Charles who had also visited the school previously!”

WILL WILKINSON OG 2007 has recently been accepted into the Army Reserves as a Professionally Qualified Officer in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps. Will gained an Honours degree in Bioveterinary Science at Liverpool before qualifying from the Royal Veterinary College in 2015. He works as a vet in Farnborough, where he lives with his wife and two daughters. Alongside clinical work, Will runs a smallholding where he keeps sheep, hens and bees, selling the lamb and hand produced sheepskin rugs locally. He also still regularly volunteers as a watersports instructor at Christian Youth Enterprises Sailing Centre, where he worked during his gap year.

Joe Morwood (second left) competing in the London Marathon 2019

MIKE MACFARLANE OG 2007 has joined the increasing cohort of OG pilots. Currently First Officer with easyJet, he flies the Airbus A319 & A320. The flights are normally split 50:50 with the Captain flying the more challenging legs. When not flying, Mike operates the radios and actively monitors and assists the flying pilot. easyJet is a point-to-point airline so 99% of the time they end up at their home base every day – good for maintaining a normal life outside work.

JOE MORWOOD OG 2009 long distance runner and junior doctor, achieved an extraordinary 6th place among the non-elite field in the 2019 London Marathon with a time of 2:20:52. An extraordinary feat at his first London Marathon. One of several cross country runners from his OG generation who are active at a high club/national level, Joe works hard to fit training around his full time job at Frimley Park Hospital, mostly running to and from work, and he competes and excels in competitions across the country. He enjoys the challenges of running a marathon, which tests all aspects of human endurance, both physiological and psychological, and there is real satisfaction reached in over-coming these obstacles.

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Paratroopers at the 75th year Arnhem Commemoration

Rob Griffiths OG 1969 with son Tom OG 2009

TOM GRIFFITHS OG 2009 is a Captain in the Parachute Regiment and went to Arnhem in September 2019 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Operation Market Garden. He took part in a mass airborne display to recreate the parachute landings of September 1944 at Arnhem, the largest airborne operation up to that point in World War II involving 35,000 soldiers.

Tom was one of 1,500 in the parachute drop this year, a spectacular and moving commemoration.

OGS AND FRIENDS BEN ALLCHURCH, HARRY LITTLE, MAX BURGIN AND ALEX MAKOWSKI ran the Richmond Half Marathon in September 2019 to raise money for MIND, the mental health charity. They raised nearly £6000 in memory of their friend and classmate George Crisp who tragically took his own life in April 2019.

Tom also set up and organised Mentor’s Day for the Officers of his battalion (3 Para). The guests, mainly family members were treated to a hands-on overview of battle field kit and a demonstration of parachute training before enjoying formal dining in the Officer’s Mess. Tom is standing with father Rob Griffiths OG 1969 beside the World War II Dakota aircraft, lovingly restored by staff at Colchester and which was used to carry paratroopers at Arnhem and the D Day landings, prior to the formal Mess dinner.

They are continuing their fundraising, this time joined by fellow OG Will Elbourne, by running the London Marathon in April this year. If you would like to read more about their cause or donate then please visit their page at https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/ AlexBenHarryWillMind.

FREDDIE MONEY OG 2013 (left) with DAN SUTTON OG 2015 at Harvard and with ROB HICKMAN OG 2013 in New York below.

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JACK MORRIS OG 2014 (stage name Jack Bardoe) graduated from RADA in 2019 and was immediately cast in a major role in the National Theatre’s production of Translations by Brian Friel. The play ran from October to December 2019 in the Olivier Theatre and Jack made an impressive stage debut as Yolland. He has also recently finished filming a new Julian Fellowes drama, Belgravia, which will be screened in early 2020 on ITV. Highlights at RADA included Agamemnon in Iphigenia in Aulis, Gloucester in Richard III, Brainsick in Limberham and Oberon/Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Also The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Philistines and Woman and Scarecrow; he was previously a member of the National Youth Theatre.

Jack Morris (left) and Fra Fee in Translations

GUY SOLAN 2017 nearing the end of his gap-year travels bumped into Steve Yetman, RGS Assistant Head (Co-Curricular) and Contingent Commander CCF while skiing at Treblecone in New Zealand.

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JAMES CASHMAN OG 2016 and RGS Music Department Assistant 2016-17, is appearing on the 2019/20 series of University Challenge, representing Jesus College, Oxford.

ROB LILLIE OG 2017 ran in the London Marathon 2019, raising over £2,500 for Princess Alice Hospice, a cause close to his family. He completed the run in 4:12, on a heavily strapped ankle as he’d twisted it six days previously, and a knee injury which knocked out three weeks training and was therefore thrilled to finish in this time.

Guy Solan (left) with Steve Yetman

STÉPHANIE DELFAU and OMAR SOTO CARRILLO RGS Modern Languages Assistants (French and Spanish) from 2015-2016, celebrated their wedding in Mexico in August 2019.

Rob Lillie running for the Princess Alice hospital

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ALEX SWEET OG 2016, JAMES FERGUSON OG 2015 and MATT CORNWELL OG 2016, successful winners of the BUCS Gold Championship with Exeter University 1st XI Men’s Hockey team.

SEBASTIAN CHAUMETON OG 2015 graduated from Chelsea College of Arts in 2019 with a BA in Fine Art and held his first solo art exhibition, Fuzzy Features, at the Maddox Gallery in London in the autumn of 2019.

Seb pictured with RGS staff Andrew Curtis, Karen Price and Alastair Rozier

OGs JAMES FERGUSON 2015, ALEX SWEET 2016 and MATT CORNWELL 2016 (left to right) met up with former RGS Hockey coach and Geography teacher RUPERT SHIPPERLEY (2nd left) after Exeter University Hockey team played against Hampstead and Westminster Hockey Club in the National Premier Division.

Influenced by Keith Haring and Philip Guston, the themes of Seb’s work vary from pop culture and politics to the mundane and magical, experimenting with a variety of textures and techniques. Primarily a sculptor, his large-scale wall murals are often made up of a sea of characters – some drawn from pop culture, some drawn from his own imagination. “Doodling has always been a habit for me, and it’s taken me a while to fully accept and appreciate it in its own right as art.”

THOMAS HOLLAND OG 2017 kicked off the 2018/19 Varsity season by playing prop for Cambridge in the Colleges XV Rugby Match at Iffley Road in November 2018.

Oxford won 27-16. He also took part in the university 2nd XV tour to France in the autumn of 2019.

MATTHEW SARGENT 2018 performed the role of King Gama in ‘Princess Ida’. Directed

by Gwen Davis and presented by the Cambridge University Gilbert & Sullivan Society at the beautiful Minack Theatre on the cliffs of Cornwall. Staged in September 2019 the play encompassed daring sword fights, enchanting costumes, cross-dressing, comical warlords, exciting music and a fantastical setting where the outcome could have only been all out war or a royal wedding. Matthew’s role as King Gama was very much a trickster, who delights in causing havoc and has a deliciously irreverent sense of humour!

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OGs AT THE CU VARSITY MATCH 2019 This fixture is played between the two old schools of the Oxford and Cambridge 1st XI Hockey captains and this time, the Cambridge captain was MATT COCKERILL OG 2015.

L-R. Edward Pearson (RGS Staff), Edward Ferguson (RGS 1st XI Captain 2019, holding the Bogden Trophy), Harry Atkins (RGS 1st XI 2018), Matt Cockerill (RGS 1st XI 2015 and captain of the Cambridge Hockey team), Hantian Wang (RGS 1st XI 2018) and Craig Mullon (RGS Hockey Coach)

RGS RETIRED STAFF held a lunch party in June 2019 (see below).

On the left from front to back: Steve Shore, John Simpson, Pam Brown, Peter Clark, Alan Evans, Frank Bell, Mary Booth, John Saxton, Mick Jennings, Mandy Thomas. On the right from front to back: Peter Hosier, Andy Evans, Ken Grimmer, Andy Kittow, Pam Palmer, Julie Beattie, Alan Thorn, Tony Morden, Sally Lingard, Martin Goodman

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DIALOGUE Issue #4 2019

OGMEMORIES

OGs share memories and stories with us from across the generations.

The French master was Mr Buckley who, at the end of term, read A J Allen stories to us.

I particularly liked the way Mr Mallison taught us. All the masters wore gowns and, I believe, mortar boards.

My brother Bernard Smith was also an RGS pupil, three years ahead of me, and was an accomplished cricketer.

RONALD SMITH OG 1937 I feel honoured to have been asked to provide some recollections of my time at the school in the 1930’s. In December 2019 I celebrated my 100th birthday but my memories of the RGS are as clear as ever.

It was a privilege to go to the school which had a good reputation and enabled pupils to build a strong foundation for their futures.

There was a high standard of teaching which provided an opportunity to get a foot on the ladder leading to a good career. The beauty and quality of the 16th century buildings were an inspiration and incentive for learning. I imagine and hope that this feeling is still experienced by today’s pupils.

I was very keen on sport and was in both the soccer and cricket 1st XIs. We played other grammar schools such as Woking, Reigate and Godalming going by coach to the away games. Home games were at the school playing fields, then in Boxgrove Road and we travelled independently by bus.

My best friend was the school goalkeeper, Ken Boyce. Mr Jones looked after the sport in addition to his duties as a Maths teacher.

I continue my interest in cricket and football through watching it on television.

In 1968 I moved to Brighton and now live in a wonderful care home where the staff are excellent. My family coincidentally moved to Brighton in 1989 so are close by. In fact, my son has helped me put together these

thoughts for the magazine. I consider myself fortunate in having such good care from the Home and family.

It has been good to be able to reflect on my time at school and I should like to take the opportunity to send all past and present students and staff my good wishes for the future.

MICHAEL GARDNER OG 1943 Recollection of A J B Green RGS Headmaster 1919-1947: “I left RGS in 1943, served in the RN, MN and RFA and came ashore at the end of 1950. From there I became a Civil Servant. It was in the course of my duties that I was coming home to Honiton with a change of buses at Ottery St Mary when a hand fell on my shoulder and a soft voice said to me “and what are you doing in this outpost of the Empire, Gardner?” When I got home I told my wife, saying I wasn’t at all clever at school and wasn’t it amazing that the Headmaster should remember me. Her kind reply was that I must have been so stupid that he couldn’t forget me!”

At the time I lived in Onslow Village and walked to school with my father who worked in the High Street. I went home for lunch using some pennies my father gave me for the bus fare. Speech Days were in Holy Trinity Church Hall sometimes accompanied by a service in the church.

I can recall most of my teachers and their names. My favourite subjects were English (Mr Mallison) and Geography (Mr Thomas).

The Cadet Corps was run by an ex Sgt Major (Mr Stent) and there were two female staff members teaching the younger boys elementary subjects such as nature studies.

Morning assemblies were taken by the Headmaster. We used to sing hymns and I remember the Latin master, Mr Lank, who was also a Methodist Lay Preacher, beating time on the piano lid to keep us together.

RGS Cross Country team circa 1963. Do you remember the others? Back row: 2nd from left M Lane, 3rd from left Dave DeRusset Front row: Left Mick Woolley, 3rd from left Anthony Colman

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RGS 1956 First X1 Football team. Back Row (Left toRight): ?, Stuart Kemp, Mike Perry, Martyn Moore, ?, Jeremy Spencer, Bryn Thomas. Front Row: (Left to Right): N. Goodman, Paul Butler, Martin Harms, Ken Farminer, Jeff Velde, Simon Pereira

BRYN THOMAS OG 1948 met John and Hilary Steynor, RGS parents in Western Canada in the summer of 2019.

Hilary writes: “Our amazing encounter on holiday in Western Canada was in Jasper, Alberta.

We visited the tiny Anglican church with the equally tiny, elderly, congregation. Over coffee (a lot of things are the same in the Anglican church worldwide) we met a Scots lady who said ‘My husband’s from Guildford’. We though she meant Guildford, Canada, but when we were introduced, he really was English. He was called Bryn Thomas and had been a pupil at RGS from 1940-1948 and taught PE there from 1953 for three years. His father, William Thomas, had also taught Geography at the RGS from 1919-1948.” Bryn related how during the war there had been an air-raid alert at the School. They just got the 300 boys onto the playground, ready to go into the shelter, when a Messerschmidt, guns blazing, flew west along the line of the High Street, eventually scoring a few hits on the County School.

After leaving the RGS Bryn went to St Bees School in Cumberland, where he met his wife, Sheena. They then emigrated to Canada. Following six years of teaching Phys. Ed. at Rocky Mountain House in Western Alberta, they moved to the Canadian Arctic – teaching at a one room school near Inuvik before moving on to administering the Inuit school at Coppermine (Kugluktuk.) They had good friends at Jasper in Alberta and loved the area. When the opportunity arose, their final destination was Jasper where Bryn administered the Jasper Elementary School for seventeen years until retirement in 1985. A recent memorable incident was when he took his dog for a walk on his electric bike. They were chased by an overly protective mother elk and luckily got away by slip-streaming a van.

ALAN FAIRLIE OG 1956 came upon this inscription when visiting the Sir Don Bradman Museum at Bowral in NSW, Australia. He remembers being regularly reminded during his years at the RGS how the earliest recorded reference to cricket ‘kricket’ was in connection with our school. “And... lo and behold... there at the Bradman museum 10,000 miles away I was faced with the below!

The first certain reference is a court document dated 16 January 1598, when a John Derrick attested that “when he was a scholar in the free school of Guildford, he and several of his fellows did runne and play there at Kricket and other plaies”.

PAUL CURRY OG 1970 sent us these photos of the 5th-year school trip to Paris in 1969.

Boys included Jeff Haynes, Andrew Tickner, Neville Reason, Peter Wesley, Andrew Boreham, Graham Moss and David Smith.

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DIALOGUE Issue #4 2019

OG SPORTING NEWS HOCKEY

OG GOLFING SOCIETY

RGS 1st XI v OGs Hockey 10 January 2019

This was the second year of John Slater’s captaincy and an enjoyable one it was too. As normal, there are four events in the year, and for 2019 it was a return to courses that we have liked in earlier visits.

In a closely contested match the final score was 3-2 to the RGS 1st XI. The OG team comprised representatives from the last 5 years of OGs and goal scorers were Eddie Way and Zac Burrage. A second fixture took place just before the OG Undergraduate drinks on 2 July 2019, with a victory for the OG team who joined in to celebrate at the Albany pub afterwards. More fixtures are planned throughout 2020, so let us know at og@rgsg.co.uk if you’d like to play.

OG v RGS Hockey 10 January 2019

FOOTBALL RGS 1st XI v Old Guildfordians 7 January 2019 RGS were victorious in a 2-1 win with goals from sixth formers Ben Cox and Ollie Taylor. OG players included Alan Dodd 1999, Mike Goodchild 2010, Phil Smalley 1996 and Andy Elkerton 1998. Throughout the year, the RGS football teams play several fixtures against recent OG leavers as well, and these are proving very popular.

The Old Guildfordians Football Club is based at Stoke Park and is currently playing in Division 3 South. If you would like to get involved in any OG football, please contact og@rgsg.co.uk for more information.

The magnificent solid silver Hart Cup (almost 100 years old) was presented to Brian Herbert (who is not quite so old!) for his 35 stableford points round at the challenging Betchworth Park course on April Fool’s Day. Captain’s Day in June was held at John’s home course of West Surrey (another challenge for us older members), with Martin Blackmore trumping (sorry!) everyone else with 35 points, and scooping the major liquid prize. And our Autumn Meeting was held on a very fine October day at Farnham with Adam Cole being the winner.

We average about 20 like-minded souls to the first three events of the year, enjoying a light lunch, 18 holes of variable golf, and a fine dinner afterwards. Our Christmas meeting is always the most popular event of the year. This year, was held at West Hill Golf Club on December 6 2019 – a full breakfast preceding a 4-ball competition for the Pavia Plate, and then a fine Christmas Dinner.

We are keen to attract more Old Boys of the School of all ages, and would be pleased to hear from any of you who may be interested in attending one of our days, and/or who would like to join the Society. So, please contact: Peter Langford OG 1964, Chairman langfordp53@gmail.com John Allen OG 1971, Secretary allenjp@talk21.com

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CROSS COUNTRY ANNUAL ALUMNI RACE This popular ‘Alumni race’ organised by Thames Hare and Hounds has been held since 1953 and runners compete over 5 miles for the glory of their old school. In December 2019 OG Alumni won not one but three trophies. The winning team with 14 points, a potential record for the event, comprised of Joe Morwood OG 2009 1st,

Gus Cockle OG 2015 2nd, Richard Ollington OG 2012 5th and Jonny Morris OG 2010 6th. Other team members include James Maloney OG 2016 12th and M55 Simon Blanchflower OG 1981 129th. In addition to winning both the team and individual trophy, Joe Morwood also won the age adjusted time race trophy.

This event takes place every December on Wimbledon Common and OGs will again be racing next year. We welcome anyone looking to take part (as well as join them in the pub afterwards) to email og@rgsg.co.uk for details, and join the school’s Strava group for motivation.

Cross Country continues to thrive at the RGS and we look forward to increasing OG involvement in the sport through the Alumni race and beyond.

From left: James Maloney, Jonny Morris, Richard Ollington, Joe Morwood and Gus Cockle

OG SAILING REUNION James Witts RGS Head of Middle School and Fifth Form, in charge of sailing comments.

Over the last four years a number of OGs have come back to coach sailing at the RGS after previously being part of the 1st Team or Team captain.

On Friday night, 24 April 2019, we finally met up for our first official reunion!

Apparently coordinating university degrees, medical school, sailing commitments, holidays, expeditions, gap years and school (for me) is quite tricky! It was a fantastic evening of telling stories about RGS sailing from the last five years, catching up on recent exploits, on and off the water, and generally hearing how everyone was doing.

Hopefully it won’t take another three years before we all get together again.

James Witts – still working at the RGS. Max Male OG 2018 – about to leave for his second season at one of the prime beach resorts in Greece working as a dinghy and windsurf instructor.

Thomas Goodbourn OG 2015 – having been captain of Durham Sailing team in 2017/18 (2nd in student Yachting Worlds, 1st in student Yachting Nationals) he is now working and studying at Durham as an ‘elite performance manager’ (overseeing a number of minor sports including sailing) while working on his masters.

James Dickinson OG 2018 – having coached sailing at the RGS over the Michaelmas term 2018 (helping the team to win the National Match Racing Championship), James is about to leave for New Zealand with Max Dobinson OG 2018.

Nick Forbes OG 2018 – sailing for Durham 2nd Team (in his first year) and has just been made captain of sailing for next year (2019/20).

Patrick Croghan OG 2017 – currently at Medical School at UEA and runs the Team Racing at UEA. From left: Patrick Croghan, James Witts, Max Male, Thomas Goodbourn, James Dickinson and Nick Forbes

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DIALOGUE Issue #4 2019

OLD GUILDFORDIANS RIFLE CLUB Let’s be honest, 2019 was a stellar year for shooting for both the School and for the Old Guildfordians. The School won the Ashburton for the first time in 33 years and the OGs backed this up with some impressive performances both at Bisley and around the world.

GB Palma Team in New Zealand with U25 James Watson

V IS FOR VICTORY

NEW ZEALAND

For the non-shooters I need to explain ‘V’ bulls as they play a part in the story this year. A full bore target consists of five scoring rings, scoring from 1 to 5 (a bullseye is 5). Within the bullseye there is a dotted circle which is termed the ‘V’ bull ring and if a shot clips or falls inside this ring then you have not just a bullseye, but also a ‘V Bull’. The V bull is used as a tiebreaker – if two individuals or teams have scored the same then the number of V Bulls scored is included to resolve the tie.

Obviously if you have the same number of V bulls (VERY unusual in team shoots) then a tie shoot or ‘countback’ is required

At the beginning of the year seven OGs travelled to New Zealand to compete in the world long range championships culminating in the Palma match, shot between international sides.In the ‘senior’ GB team we had Derek ‘Del Boy’ Lowe OG 1991, Matt ‘Cheeky’ Charlton OG 1989, Matt (Matty) Ensor OG 1997, Jon (Kaks) Underwood OG 1988 and David ‘Milko’ Armstrong OG 1986. The under 25s featured Will Livesey OG 2013 and the under 19s included last year’s RGS Shooting Captain Alfie Hellings OG 2018.

Under extremely tricky wind conditions the boys fought valiantly both individually

and in their teams; however, victory slipped through their hands and they ended up with silver medals, coming second to the Aussies (who had been practising on the range solidly for the past four years!).

One of the reasons for second place may have been the alarming report of a severe shortage of Gin & Tonic refreshments available to the Palma team when they came off the firing point! This may have detrimentally impacted the achievements of high performance athletes such as our boys, given the fact that quinine and ethanol are key ingredients for a healthy

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body and accuracy of shot (or so I am assured by some OGs). Graham ‘Gin Wallah’ Atkinson OG 1988 has proposed we get specific exemption in the future for G&T behind the firing point to undertake a proper randomised control trial amongst OGs over 2020. Naturally such research would need to be age adjusted over a full range of ‘volunteer’ cohorts from the mid-1980s Archie, through Milko, Gin Wallah, Rooster, Wheelybin, Robster, etc etc, up to today’s 21st century heroes such as Luca O’Flynn OG 2019 and Miles Horton-Baker OG 2019 (yet to have silly nicknames assigned).

KNOCKOUT BLOW Sadly, we are still not shooting small bore (.22) as a club, so the season kicked off in April with a Knockout competition organised by the Surrey Rifle Association.

This year we fielded two OG teams and, for the first time, a School team as well.

OG ‘B’s and the School team won their first round matches but fell in the second whilst OG ‘A’s got through both rounds to shoot in the final. Of the three teams in the final Old Guildfordians and Old Epsomians (our traditional rivals) both scored 104 out of 105, with Wandsworth a distant third with 99. Winners were decided by the V bull count, with Old Epsomians having 11 but Old Guildfordians led the way with 17 out of a possible 21 ... so a win!

Next came the first round of the Surrey League shot over 300 and 500 yards. The format of this match takes the best four scores from a team of six which allows for some beginner/”can’t remember what I’m doing” shooters to be included. 10 points are awarded to the top team, 9 for second, 8 for third, etc. OGs destroyed the field in this match with three of the team scoring the maximum 100 points, with Oli Russell OG 2003 leading the way with 17 out of 20 V bulls. There were also a couple of scores

OG Rifle Team with trophies at Bisley

of 99, one of which we had to drop, to result in the ‘best 4’ scoring 399 with 61 V bulls, 4 whole points clear of the next best team.

Next came the second round of the League and the ‘Sir Edmund Elles’ both shot at long range. This proved to be a disappointment for the team, mainly due to the fact that we were missing our best coaches who were taking a break following their exertions in New Zealand.

OGs managed a 4th place in the League match and 3rd in the ‘Sir Edmund Elles’.

The result of all this was that, after two league matches, there were three teams on the same league points but with the OGs lagging behind on ‘gun’ points (overall scores) which are taken into account in event of two teams having the same league points. So we had to win the third round in September, more about that later.

SURREY CLUBS CIVILIAN & ASTOR HEAT Next on the calendar were the Civilian and Astor heat matches. The Astor heat is the competition that determines the top Surrey club who will then compete for the title of top UK club in the July finals.

The Civilian is shot in the morning and traditionally treated as the ‘selection’ match for the Astor in the afternoon as this match requires at least two of the shooters from the ‘O’ handicap class. This is not one we necessarily expect to win, and we didn’t, coming third.

However, we then knew who was the best team for the Astor, our main aim of the day! This proved its worth with the team leading after 300 yards, extending the lead at 500 and then sealing it at 600 to win by 7 solid points, with Ellie Charlton (wife of coach Matt Charlton) showing the way with 104 and 10 v’s out of 105.21.

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DIALOGUE Issue #4 2019

Jon Underwood being chaired from the range in Canada

PS VETERANS The PS Veterans is the club’s most heavily attended match of the season and is shot by as many past shooters that can turn up to ‘give it a go’. It is also the most social and this year was no exception with in excess of 20 shooters and quite a few that made the trip to say hello!

The match starts after the Ashburton and this year there was the added pressure that, with the School winning, we needed to shoot well to ensure a win overall.

Team selection is a nightmare. It is not always possible to know who is on form and also whether everyone will actually turn up when they say they will. This year the captain got it wrong for the ‘A’ team, but right for all the rest of teams. The B and C teams won their respective classes but the A team dropped five points.

Thankfully, even this was enough to win a) the ‘Lucas’ trophy which is awarded for the best combined School and Veterans score, and b) the ‘Pixley’ for the best Veterans aggregate score across three teams – a trophy that OGRC has started to make their own. The Veterans shoot goes on well into the evening after which those that have the stamina retire to ‘Jabba’ – the

OGs’ and School’s club house (it’s really a semi-detached prefab Victorian hut) – for the club AGM, barbeque, a little bit of Gin, and the traditional ‘Pavlova-ing’ of Graham Atkinson.

UK ASTOR CLUBS CHAMPIONSHIP Cruelly the first shot down the range for the final of the Astor is at 8am the day after the AGM. So, with sore heads and weary bones, we found ourselves on the range at 7:30am ready to compete against the best clubs in the country... business as usual for many of us!

This year we had two world class coaches and a strong team. Early scores were promising but Newcastle led the way after 300 yards dropping just 2 points with OGs in pack with 4 points off. Back to 500 yards, and another 4 points dropped ... with Newcastle falling back but others picking up the pace, leaving OGs still 2 points behind the leaders. At 600 yards the wind started to pick up and our coaches came into play. There was a heart stopping moment thanks to some dubious target marking, thankfully resolved, and we finished up dropping just 1 further point, an awesome score at this range and a total of 621 with 88 V Bulls.

With no way of knowing what others have scored it was a nervous wait whilst all the score cards were submitted and collated before the announcement of the top teams was made. Third .... Jersey Rifle Club.... Second.... Exonia & Tiverton... First ....Old Guildfordians! Hurrah!

For the rest of July, the club members and nine school boys competed in the NRA Imperial meeting with varied success (partly due to some extremely dubious quality ammunition affecting all competitors!). I don’t have room to mention all the achievements but suffice to say there were plenty of silver pots and salvers won!

CANADA BOUND Following the Imperial, we had a week off prior to messrs Whicher (Archie), Wheeler (Wheelybin) and Underwood (Kaks) heading off to Canada with the England team where they were joined by Balazs Rigo and Sam Cherry from the lower sixth who were representing the GB cadets in the Athelings team.

A little known fact is that if you win certain major competitions ‘sponsored’ by the Queen then you have the right to put

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certain letters after your name (similar to honours such as MBE, CBE, etc).

Jon Underwood GM, SM2, GC2, CSC, WC is, as you can see, the expert at this game and whilst in Canada managed the significant achievement of winning the Governor General’s Prize (the Canadian equivalent of the Queen’s prize). Not only was he chaired from the range on an old Victorian sedan chair, he also gets to add an additional CGM (Canadian Gold Medal) to his already impressive set of credentials!

Archie (no letters!) managed to claw his way back onto the leader board during the final and the two schoolboys didn’t disappoint either, acquitting themselves admirably.

A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN

By September everyone is a little weary after their summer exertions. The final matches of the full bore season always seem to come up unexpectedly and it’s a struggle to raise a team. This year was no exception, with the Captain having to badger people to sign up. He was not helped by the promise of biblical rain and floods. Luckily some hardy old boys and a couple of very recent leavers made themselves available for the morning shoot which was the Westcott cup.

It was evident that the Old Epsomians were taking this seriously so, in true OG

style, we rocked up late, missing the early morning rain, horsed around a bit then got down to the business in hand... finished before everyone else (and the rain reappeared) and went and sat in cars waiting for the others to come back to 500 yards. That sort of behaviour shouldn’t be mistaken for flippancy or even ‘don’t care’ – we are extremely professional on the range, we just like to have fun and not hang around!

After 300 yards it was tight and all to play for with 500 yards to go. A solid performance left us 10 points off from six shooters but the OEs were putting in a tidy score themselves. It was only when the teams had all finished and done their addition that we found we had managed to win by a very slender margin of 4 V bulls!

Lunch was spent watching the heavens open during which the captain somehow managed to persuade two other OGs to come play for the afternoon in the last league match, which we had to win to top the League.

The rain mercifully stopped for 300 yards where we proceeded to record a very good score, only to find that the OEs had gone better! As seems to be normal now, we headed back to 600 yards knowing we had to do better. Under threatening skies, we blatted away as fast as we could, trying

Oli Russell and Alana O’Kane with OGs at their wedding

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to get it all done before the rain (and wind) came back. Once again, the scores were amazingly high, but the OEs were also slotting them in the centre. The last shot went down the range and the teams retired to the relative safety of the Surrey RA bar to do their sums and watch the rain deluge down. It was here that we discovered that we had beaten the OEs into second place again ... with matching scores but with OGs having seven more V bulls. So the OGs were top of the league, an enormously satisfying way to end the season!

Well done to Oli ‘Ace’ Russell OG 2003 and Chloe Evans who both scored the maximum of 100, with Oli having 17 out of 20 V bulls and Chloe top gun with 18 V Bulls – amazing scores!

THE FUTURE Thanks to the regular addition of school leavers, our club continues to grow, but we are struggling to include others who have shot in the past and now want to take it back up again. This is mainly thanks to the Home Office and police rules on non-shooters ‘having a go’ and the requirements for probationary membership and the paperwork and rules associated with this. However, although I am not promising anything, we do hope to arrange some sort of event in the future for all past shooting team members (and maybe others).

The Christmas shoot this year was on 14 December at the School range. If you are not a regular but would like to come along, please contact Archie Whicher via the RGS Alumni office. (og@rgsg.co.uk) Best wishes to Oliver Russell who married Alana O’Kane on 12 October; we look forward to welcoming some new members into the club under rule 4d in due course!

Finally.... congratulations to James Shepherd OG 2010 and Jon Underwood on their places in the GB squad to Canada in 2020. As John Crathorne, RGS former Master i/c Shooting and Commanding Officer RGS CCF, used to say, “Shoot well!”

Martin “Archie” Whicher OG 1984 Captain, Old Guildfordians Rifle Club

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DIALOGUE Issue #4 2019

OBITUARIES It is with great sadness that we acknowledge the passing of OGs and staff from the RGS community over the past year. We rely on information coming to us from the OG and RGS community and every possible endeavour is made to ensure accuracy. Wherever possible we have included valete information from our School records.

RGS Staff Ian Ford RGS 1985-1997, Physics teacher and Housemaster of Austen. He died peacefully on 8 January 2019. Here is an appreciation from his wife, Ruby.

Ian was the third child of Charlie and Ruby Ford. His sister, Ruby, was 12 and his brother, Douglas, was 8. (Was Ian brainwashed into hooking up with yet another Ruby?). Ian was born in Glasgow, but spent his early years in Newport, Fife.

The family moved to Kilburn, NW London, and Ian attended Marylebone Grammar School, then did a sandwich degree in Physics at Borough Polytechnic, now the University of the South Bank.

Ian was a very good badminton player, and almost made the Middlesex Junior team. We then moved to Barnet in early 1964, as his mum moved back to Scotland.

Ian’s first proper job was at Osram in the R&D department, developing lamps for colour TV studios. I remember him coming home and telling me about all the explosions that had happened in his laboratory!

His brother was a Physics teacher, and a visit from a cousin who was teaching at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda fired Ian’s enthusiasm for travel, so he decided to try for a teaching post so that he could work overseas. He was ‘snapped up’ by the headmaster of Orange Hill Boys’ Grammar School in Edgware and after working there for a couple of years, applied for and was accepted for the government’s overseas aid scheme for teaching abroad.

We spent two years in a boys’ boarding school in Kakamega, Kenya’s Western Province, and made lots of friends in similar posts then, and more when we returned for a further two years to a co-educational boarding school in Ol Kalou, Central Province. With a Sikh friend driving, Ian navigated in the East African Safari Rally twice, in 1973 and 1974. However, brakes let them down, and they had quite a lot of hairy moments – as we did during the school holidays while we were there: always to the coast and several game parks in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

On our return from Kenya in early 1974, we moved to Surrey, as Ian was hired to teach Physics at Ottershaw School, near Chertsey, and we lived in a house in the Park. When Surrey County Council closed Ottershaw School we had to move, and that’s when we arrived in Heatherside, Camberley – just 40 years ago! We played badminton and were even on the Community Committee for a while. Ian then did a Masters degree in Physics and Education at Reading University, followed by a year in Luxembourg, where he was teaching in the American School. He also played a lot of badminton whilst we were there; nearly making the Luxembourg national team.

We then returned to Camberley and Ian took a variety of supply teaching jobs before being appointed to the staff of the Royal Grammar School, Guildford. In

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October 1988, at the age of 47, Ian played a hard game of badminton, staggered into the kitchen of the community centre and we realised he was very ill. A friend drove us to Frimley Park and he was whisked away to Intensive Care, where he suffered a cardiac arrest – what better place to have one?

They brought him round, and just after Christmas he had a triple bypass operation. No more heart trouble – although he had always had the feeling that he would die aged 47. Luckily, he only missed a term and a half and was able to carry on teaching for a further 8 years, retiring in 1997.

For the next five years we packed a lot of things in, travelling and working on our little Spanish house, which we had taken possession of six years before retirement.

Then the stroke struck, in December 2002, soon after our holiday in China and a long weekend in Prague. What a cruel blow it was, robbing him of his speech, ability to write or drive, and eventually his ability to walk. The years following that were a long period of mourning for me; I was on the edge of tears for a long time.

However, we managed quite a lot of travelling over the next 14 years, starting in the spring of 2003, coach trips to Cornwall and Ireland, several trips to Spain (we had to sell the Spanish house as it was too full of steps and stairs) and lots of cruises when we could get disabled

cabins. Arctic, Antarctic, N and S America, Caribbean, Baltic, the Mediterranean and Iceland.

In 2010 Ian was in and out of hospital, and was moved downstairs to sleep in a hospital bed in our living room, with care from Bluebird. All through this, he never made a fuss and was always cooperative. And our social life completely changed, as I was able to take him out most weekdays to stroke clubs.

He was a sort of Hon member of U3A, and was always made welcome at their coffee mornings and monthly meetings.

He could sing, even though he couldn’t say a word, and particularly liked the Scottish songs.

Although Ian’s speech was severely affected, his personality shone through.

He had a great sense of humour and former colleagues at the RGS noted that when Ian arrived at the School he was instantly great company – every lunchtime we would relax by playing a few hands of bridge. Ian was not only a great bridge player, but he was even better known for his non-stop chat and by the end of lunchtime he had hardly stopped making us laugh. He was well known for his (bad) puns on words and was very quick witted. He also shared some lovely days in the countryside on the Duke of Edinburgh hikes. Ian was never known to be anything other than cheerful and positive. He never, to our knowledge, failed to get on with anyone and he was loved by all his colleagues.

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I also remember how much he enjoyed his ‘aeromobility’ flying experience (with photos to prove it!) and how he was able to communicate to me that he would have loved to venture into space, given half a chance!

Finally, I would just like to say that Ian’s philosophy was: “You’ve got to start from where you are.” He certainly lived up to that, in spades.

To submit an obituary or notice of death, please contact Philippa Green on: +44 (0)1483 880665 / og@rgsg.co.uk

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DIALOGUE Issue #4 2019

Old Guildfordians Peter J Rothwell OG 1935. Hamonde 1929-35. Empire Marksman 1933-34.

House Colours: Football 1934; Boxing 1933; Fives 1934. Member House PT team.

Sadly, did not quite make his goal of reaching 100. Died 28 December 2018.

Eric J Knight OG 1943. Hamonde 1939-43.

House Colours: Football 1943; Athletics 1942; Fives 1942. Member House PT Team 1943. Died 8 June 2019.

Alan Dalman OG 1945. Nettles 1936-45.

Cert “A” 1943. JTC Sgt 1945. School Shooting VIII 1943-44-45. “Country Life” Cup Team 1944-45. King’s Silver Medal, Imperial Challenge Shield Competition 1944-45.

SMRC Silver Medal, JTC Competition 1943, Gold Medal 1944. School Colours: Shooting 1944-45. House Colours: Rugby 1943-44-45; Cricket 1945; Gymnastics 1943-44, Capt 1945. Member General Games Committee 1944-45. Member House PT Team 1942-43-44-45. Died 13 March 2019.

Brian Chudley OG 1946. Nettles 1941-46.

Gen School Cert 1946. Asst Scoutmaster 1946. 2nd Class Scout 1943. House Colours: 1945-46; Rugby 1946; Swimming 1944-45-46. Member House PT Team 1944. Died 5 December 2018.

John Mills OG 1946. Nettles 1937-46.

Higher School Cert 1946. King’s Scholarship 1942. “Magnus” Science Prize 1944. Cert “A” 1946. Classified Signaller 1945. JTC L/Cpl 1946. Empire Marksman 1944-45-46. Second Class Scout 1941.

House Colours: Swimming 1944-45.

Member House PT Team 1944-45. John’s lifelong enthusiasm for travel began when he left the RGS at 18 to undertake National Service as a wireless mechanic in Singapore, Burma and Ceylon. He then trained as a chemist, working for a variety of institutions including Laboratorios Syntex SA in Mexico and the National Gallery in London. He combined this scientific knowledge with a passion for culture, music and art and he immersed himself in the Soho artistic community of the 1950s: a community which included Francis Bacon and

Henrietta Moraes as well as emerging artists from the Slade School such as Victor Willing OG 1945 and Paula Rego (see DialOGue issue 3 p62 for Victor’s portrait of John). John was fortunate to be able to unite his twin passions, science and the arts, becoming a prominent figure and pioneer at the National Gallery in the Scientific Department, exploring techniques for the restoration of paintings, among many other innovations, and he was a connoisseur of antique carpets.

John contributed to exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery with his academic work and curated an exhibition of his own at the National Gallery. He was a loyal supporter and friend of the RGS for many years. Died 18 October 2019.

Peter Williams OG 1949. Nettles 1942-49.

School Prefect 1949. Matric 1947. Cert “A” 1948. Cert “T” 1949. CCF L/Cpl 1948.

Empire 1st Class Shot 1948. Classified Signaller 1949. Scout Patrol Leader 1945.

1st Class Scout 1946. School Colours: Cross Country 1948, Capt 1949. House Colours: Rugby 1948; Swimming 1948-49. Member of General Games Committee 1949 and Natural Science Society 1949. Member House PT Team 1947-48. He contributed fully to life at the School and participated in lots of different clubs and activities, as well as being a prefect. Died 9 March 2018.

John Garnham OG 1949. Nettles 1940-49.

School Prefect 1947-49. Matric 1946.

Higher School Cert 1948. County Major Scholarship 1948. £50 Open Exhibition (Oxford) 1949. “Martin Williamson” Travelling Exhibition 1947. School Prizes: Junior “Powell” Eng Lit 1946; “Powell” French 1946; “Magnus” Latin 1946; “Hugh Bishop Memorial” Latin 1948; “Broadbent” French 1948; Senior “Knight Memorial” History 1948; joint winner “RO Griffiths Memorial”1948; “Powell” Music 1948.

Cert “A” 1947. JTC L/Cpl 1947. Classified Signaller 1948. Empire 1st Class Shot 1946-47. Empire Marksman 1948. Member of following Committees: Music Soc (Hon Sec) 1947-48-49; Debating Soc (Hon Sec) 1947-48-49. Asst Librarian 1947-48-49.

Died 16 April 2019.

Frederick B Lucas OG 1950. Nettles 1942-50. Matric 1950. Cert “A” Pt1 1949.

Empire 1st Class Shot 1948-50. Died 3 September 2018.

Donald Bradbury OG 1952. Hamonde 1947-52. Cert “A” 1951. 1st Class Shot 1950-52. House Colours: Rugby 1950-51; Football 1952. He was loyal member of the ‘Old Codgers’ and will be greatly missed.

Died June 2019.

Derek Debell OG 1955. Austen 1947-55.

Remembered as a great sportsman.

Died August 2019.

James M Gore OG 1957. Beckingham. Jim was a proud Old Guildfordian who was an enthusiastic supporter of the School and alumni events. He was a regular on many touchlines over the years watching his son Michael (Beckingham, 1988) at School and old boys matches in rugby and cricket. Jim was always keen to catch up with other OGs at social events and relished such occasions. Jim leaves his wife Tricia, 3 children (Christian, Michael and Holly), 6 grandchildren (Tom, Will, Ben, Amelia, Madi and Bea) and many good friends. We will all miss him and cherish the great memories, many of which involved the RGS, of which he was always so proud. Born on 18 November 1941, he died on 17 November 2018.

Nigel Traylen OG 1959. Nettles 1953-59.

1st Class Scout 1957; Patrol Leader 1957-58; Senior Scout 1959. House Colours: Chess 1957-59; Athletics 1958. Nigel lived on the Isle of Wight with his family and loved Ventnor, where he ran a book shop in the town for over 25 years. He is greatly missed by his family and friends.

Died 24 September 2018.

Robert W Masterton OG 1966. We were informed of his death in July 2019.

Oliver Pereira OG 1999. Died suddenly 3 years ago from a very aggressive cancer.

George Crisp OG 2012. Died 19 April 2019.

The RGS Old Guildfordian Magazine

Andrew Hall OG 1972. Andrew began his professional life as an actor/director at the Yvonne Arnaud as a casual stagehand whilst still at the RGS. Determined to pursue a career in acting, he left school just before sitting his A Levels and became a full-time Technical ASM at the theatre. He worked in production management, becoming Assistant Director at the Royal Court, before applying to LAMDA. His first role on graduating was as Russell in the hit BBC TV series Butterflies (1978-1983), playing the son of Wendy Craig and Geoffrey Palmer and the brother of Only Fools and Horses actor Nicholas Lyndhurst. He later went on to play

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Marc Selby, the cross-dressing love interest for Audrey Roberts in Coronation Street and appeared in many other television programmes including Hollyoaks, Holby City and Two Point Four Children. Most recently he appeared as The Gentleman in the SyFy series Blood Drive. He also worked extensively on stage including the RSC and a run as Bill in the West End production of Mamma Mia! Later, he worked as a successful director and producer with productions including Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? and Kindertransport, which toured the UK.” Died 20 May 2019 aged 65 after a short illness.

Late Announcements

Terry Jones OG 1961. Co-director, co-writer and star of Monty Python and former School Captain. As a writer, poet, librettist, film director, comedian, actor and historian, he enjoyed the diversification of his work saying that he was lucky not have to choose just the one thing. His RGS career was just as colourful as his subsequent career as he immersed himself in so many aspects of school life. Died 22 January 2020 after a long illness. A full feature about Terry’s life will be published in the next issue of DialOGue.

RGS Guildford Cricket 1st XI, 1965. Back row: Mr JD Wallace (Master-in-Charge), HMC Bates, PD Murphy, GM Turner, RG Willis, RN Plews, JP Denning, PA Banister (Scorer). Seated: AW Taylor, CJ Ayerst (Vice-Capt.), IC Martindale (Capt.), R Bleson, I Howard

Bob Willis OG 1968. Former England Cricket Captain and legendary fast bowler.

Died 4 December 2019. A full appreciation about Bob’s life and cricketing achievements will be published in the next issue of DialOGue. Please share your recollections about Terry and Bob with us as we will be writing about both of them in the next magazine. The deadline for publication in this magazine was too short but we would love to give them a proper feature in the next edition. Email us at og@rgsg.co.uk or write to us at Royal Grammar School, High Street, Guildford, Surrey GU1 3BB. Thank you.

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DIALOGUE Issue #4 2019

THE GAMES ROOM Chess Puzzle by Harry Grieve Harry Grieve OG 2019 was UK Junior Chess Champion in 2017 and won an international chess competition in Budapest in the summer of 2018 to become FM (FIDE Master). He recently took part in the European Youth Team Championships in the Czech Republic where England finished 4th=.

This position is taken from a game Harry played at the Terafinal 2019.

White to play and win.

Answers on p97

Corker by Mash Letters used in clues represent the integers 1-22 in an order to be determined.

Normal rules of algebra apply, there are no leading zeros and entries are distinct.

Solvers should use their equivalences first to deduce the intended theme of the puzzle in three central cells of the completed grid.

Then to complete the picture, the two unclued entries and all their surrounding cells (including those touching diagonally) must be coloured appropriately.

Down right

Down left

1 CERISE 2 TAN 4 VI+RI+D+I–A+N 6 Y–E+L+L+O–W 7 ME–L–O+N 8 SC+ARL–E–T 9 PUCE = EB+O–N–Y + W+OO–D 10 LEM+ON 11 A+M–E+T–H+YS–T 12 CRI+M+SO–N 13 TEAL 18 GOL–D 19 L+I+L–A+C = P+I+N–K 20 PEAR+L 21 E+A–U + D–E – N+IL = F+UC+H–SI–A

1 BEI+G–E = H+EL–I+O–T–R–O–PE 5 DA–Y–G+LO + O+R–A+NG+E 6 C+HOCO+L+A+TE 8 RED 12 GR+EE+N 14 TITIAN 16 CORAL 17 M+A+GE–NT+A = ROSE 22 SEP+I+A

Answers on p97

The RGS Old Guildfordian Magazine

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Crossword by Jeremy Whittaker, retired English teacher

Across 8 Tradition of hermit’s dwelling having no initial monetary input (8) 9 More fiction about ideal world (6) 10 Having no business going to bed (10) 11 Green, festering lake (4) 12 Prone to losing energy quickly (6) 14 Spanish leather vehicle brought to my party (8) 15 Fir cone developed from this tree (7) 17 Yes, acts strangely, perhaps under the influence of this? (7) 20 Pet attack (8) 22 Rear Admiral returns, furious, to a fleet (6) 24 Man from Argentina (4) 25 Angry man finds lintel (10)

27 Missing bees – bioscience baffled – hugely significant (6) 28 Promise to marry a very noisy Scotsman brought to church (8)

Down 1 Disintegrating remote heavenly body (6) 2 Greeting friends indulgently at first is a sound system (2-2) 3 Pay attention: steal some money (4,4) 4 Protection from harm for lawyer (7) 5 Foodstuff for ram (6) 6 Diamond geezer from Athens in dire straits (4,6) 7 Voice coach succeeded in identifying

former Take That star (8) 13 Breathtaking, extraordinary giant blini (4-6) 16 Poulenc composed with energy, leading to conspicuous wealth (8) 18 Keep secret from group if unknown (8) 19 German man produces stool (7) 21 Big Bird has around a hundred rings, highly ornamental (6) 23 Boil for two months (6) 26 One mother’s spiritual guide (4)

Answers on p97

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DIALOGUE Issue #4 2019

RGS MERCHANDISE

THE TUDOR COLLECTION The Tudor Collection is the School’s bespoke selection of merchandise. Timeless gifts and accessories designed to appeal to anyone who has a connection with the Royal Grammar School or the town of Guildford, and to all ages.

Our catalogue includes traditional totems such as RGS cufflinks, OG silk tie and bow tie, rugby and footballs, golf and folding umbrellas and specially commissioned artwork prints and postcards of the School.

We also list some fun alternative gifts including, OG winter scarves, RGS branded notecards and playing cards, tote bags, a power pack to recharge your devices on-the-go and the Monopoly Guildford edition which features both RGS Guildford and Lanesborough.

You can also buy copies of the Illustrated history of The Royal Grammar School by Nigel Watson . In this lavishly illustrated, hardback book, Nigel Watson retraces the sometimes turbulent history of the RGS through key events and personalities that have shaped the School.

To see the full collection, please visit our online shop at www.rgs-guildford.co.uk/our-community/ rgs-merchandise Or contact merchandise@rgsg.co.uk / +44 (0)1483 880665 to place your order

The RGS Old Guildfordian Magazine

THE GAMES ROOM SOLUTIONS Chess answer

Crossword answers

Here are Harry’s winning moves from the game he played at the Terafinal 2019.

Across: 8 Heritage, 9 Utopia, 10 Retirement, 11 Kale, 12 Pronto, 14 Cordovan, 15 Conifer, 17 Ecstasy, 20 Outburst, 22 Armada, 24 Gent, 25 Crosspiece, 27 Iconic, 28 Affiance.

1 Qxd8+ Kxd8 2 Ne6+ Ke7 3 Nxc5 wins the exchange and the game

Corker by Mash answer Letter equivalences in numerical order are: T,I,E,C,O,L,B,A,R,S,G,N,U,P,M,D,W,K,H,F,V,Y Using these equivalences, the two unclued entries spell CLARET and BOTTLE. Colouring all the touching cells with the appropriate colours produces a section of the school TIE (three central vertical cells) as hinted by the first ten equivalences above.

Logical solution path 7, 9 and 1 left force E = 3, B = 7.

4 and 21 give I = 2 or one or other will be too large. Then 14 means T has to be 1.

1 left is now 683+G from the first part, so L = 6 from the second.

4 starts no larger than 5, 17 must be at least 1100 and 18 starts no larger than 3, hence G = 11.

For 16 to remain four-digit, all of 4, 5 and 8 must be in the product, with either 9 or 10, making 8640 or 9600. O is 5 from 5, and C, A and R are all 10 or under.

So now 19 ends 0 from the equation 14 – A + C, which can only be done by A = 8, C = 4. Then 2 makes N = 12.

Comparing 10 and 12 left leaves only the option of M = 15 and R = 9, and the two halves of 17 force S = 10.

8 left has central digit 3, so D = 16. 6 left now equates to 100H + 21, so 9 starts 2. Therefore P and U are 13 and 14 in some order.

But 20 ending 0 forces P = 14, U = 13. And then comparing halves of 19 makes K = 18.

11 ends 1, so whatever the value of Y, H must be 19. Y then has to be 22. And comparing halves of 21 gives F = 20.

Down: 1 Meteor, 2 Hi-fi, 3 Take note, 4 Defence, 5 Butter, 6 Rock bottom, 7 Williams, 13 Nail-biting, 16 Opulence, 18 Classify, 19 Ottoman, 21 Rococo, 23 Decoct, 26 Imam

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DIALOGUE Issue #4 2019

LEAVE YOUR LEGACY “ As one of the old grammar school boys, I was lucky enough to receive an entirely free education at the RGS. I want all local boys to have that opportunity, regardless of their family circumstances: it’s really important to me that academic potential is the key criterion for entry, not parental income.

So I’m delighted that the Headmaster has set out a vision for needs-blind access and I’ve left the RGS a legacy to help that ambition become a reality.”

Richard Tilbrook OG 1979

The RGS was founded with a legacy from Robert Beckingham and, for over 500 years, legacy gifts have been used to support every aspect of School life.

This year we launched what will be the first of future presentations on estate planning, inheritance tax and how philanthropic giving can fit into your portfolio.

A gift in your Will can be a tax-efficient way of giving and will cost you nothing during your lifetime. Unrestricted legacies – the application of which is left to the discretion of the School – are exceptionally valuable, as they can be used wherever the need is greatest when the time comes. Alternatively, you might wish to direct your bequest towards a key area of the School’s work that you particularly cherish and we would be very happy to discuss this with you.

If you choose to remember the RGS in your Will and inform us of your intention, you will be included in our Beckingham Society, a small but growing group of dedicated supporters who have chosen to remember our School.

If you would like to talk confidentially about leaving a legacy to The Royal Grammar School or making an In Memoriam donation, please contact Georgie Grant Haworth on +44 (0)1483 880665 / ggh@rgsg.co.uk

In Memoriam Gifts A particularly eloquent and enduring way of commemorating the life of a relation, friend or colleague for whom The Royal Grammar School was a special place, is to consider making a gift in their memory.

Alternatively, you can also read more about how to make a legacy gift in the ‘Ways to Support/Remember Us’ section of the ‘Support-the-RGS’ pages of rgs-guildford.co.uk

An In Memoriam gift is a lasting tribute that can play a valuable role in helping to secure our future. The gift may be an individual benefaction or the proceeds from a collection made in someone’s memory. You may prefer to request that donations be made to the School in lieu of funeral flowers, or to make a donation each year to remember someone’s birthday.

The RGS Old Guildfordian Magazine

YOUR DEVELOPMENT & ALUMNI TEAM With over 5,000 OGs in over 40 countries, the OG community is a strong and growing international network. Keep in touch to receive the latest OG and School news and events updates.

Georgie Grant Haworth

Philippa Green

Jenny Rothwell

Helen Dixon

Development Director

Alumni Relations

Development Executive and Governors’ Secretary

Marketing and Communications

If you are interested in supporting our bursary programme (intellectual or financial) please contact Georgie.

A former parent, Philippa is responsible for our relationship with you beyond your RGS years, organising many reunions and events.

Also a former parent, Jenny is our data expert as well as managing our Tudor Merchandise range, and supporting the RGS Governors.

Helen is responsible for all our communications with you and manages the online community site, rgsconnect.com.

 ggh@rgsg.co.uk

 pmg@rgsg.co.uk

 jrr@rgsg.co.uk

 hsd@rgsg.co.uk

 +44 (0)1483 887143

 +44 (0)1483 887144

 +44 (0)1483 880665

 +44 (0)1483 880665

Development & Alumni Relations Office Royal Grammar School High Street Guildford Surrey GU1 3BB

 +44 (0)1483 880665  og@rgsg.co.uk  @RGSGuildford  rgs.guildford

rgs-guildford.co.uk

rgsconnect.com

#RGSPassItOn

rgs-pass-it-on.co.uk

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2020 EVENTS OG EVENTS

SCHOOL EVENTS

Cambridge Undergraduate Dinner Saturday 29 February 7pm The Brew House.

Open to current undergraduates and postgraduates at Cambridge.

RGS soloists at Guildford Market Day Concert First Tuesday every month during Term.

1.15pm Holy Trinity Church Guildford.

Class of 2000 Reunion Saturday 16 May at RGS. Supporters Reception (by invitation) Thursday 4 June 6.30pm Big School.

Classes of 1980/81 Reunion Saturday 6 June at RGS. Celebration Concert for Peter White Friday 19 June 7pm Holy Trinity Church, Guildford.

Tickets and further information to follow.

OG Family Afternoon Saturday 20 June 2-5pm Old Building.

Details to be posted soon.

Headmaster’s XI v OG XI Cricket Match Sunday 21 June 11am Bradstone Brook.

Undergraduate Drinks Tuesday 30 June 6pm Albany Pub, Guildford.

Welcome to the Class of 2020 Wednesday 2 September 5pm Big School.

Welcome event for our newest OGs. Class of 1990 Reunion Saturday 12 September at RGS. Beckingham Legacy Society Lunch Thursday 24 September 12pm Big School.

A lunch held for those members of our community who have committed to leaving a legacy.

Classes of 2009/10 Reunion Saturday 10 October at RGS. Thames Alumni Race December 2020 A 5-mile cross-country event. Runners compete for their old school on Wimbledon Common. Let us know via og@rgsg.co.uk if you’d like to join in. All welcome.

OG Christmas Shoot (provisional date 10.00am, Saturday 12 December).

At the RGS Rifle Range. If you’ve not been before and would like to come along, please contact og@rgsg.co.uk.

Chamber Choir Evensong at St Alban’s Cathedral Monday 2 March 5pm St Alban’s Cathedral.

Chamber Choirs of RGS & GHS perform evensong.

Senior Piano Concert Tuesday 3 March 7.30pm Recital Room.

Showcase of the finest RGS pianists.

Orchestral & Choral Concert, with Parents’ Choir Wednesday 18 March 7.30pm GLive Guildford.

Tickets available at www.glive.co.uk. Including Mozart’s Requiem and Orff’s Carmina Burana.

Ensembles Concert Tuesday 24 March 7.30pm Auditorium.

Light music from RGS ensembles.

Senior Scholarship Conference Wednesday 25 March 4.30-7.30pm Auditorium.

Four notable academics address the theme of Control from their respective disciplines. Followed by a light supper before the evening concludes with a panel discussion.

Charity Cross Country Run (approx. 4 miles) Sunday 26 April 10am Pewley Down.

Raising money for the three nominated RGS Charities.

Entry fee £10. Contact Becky Rathmell: rjr@rgsg.co.uk to register.

Concerto Concert Wednesday 6 May 7.30pm Holy Trinity Church Guildford.

RGS soloists with Southern Pro Musica.

Charity Bike Ride along Downs Link supported

by Evans Cycles Monday 27 May, time and meet location tbc.

Noye’s Fludde Monday 6 July. Guildford Cathedral.

School musicians from across Guildford perform a one-act Opera by Benjamin Britten. Directed by the RGS, accompanied by Southern Pro Musica.

Heritage Day September. Details tbc.

As part of the nationwide Heritage Day, the Chained Library and Big School will be open to visitors.

Events are updated regularly and more details can be found under Our Community on our website rgs-guildford.co.uk Contact Philippa Green or Jenny Rothwell in the Development & Alumni Office, +44 (0)1483 880665 og@rgsg.co.uk for information or to book tickets