ALUMNI ASSOCIATION UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE 2023

Continuing a tradition begun three years ago during the pandemic, an online University Challenge quiz was held in March of this year. Four teams were whittled down to two in heats by means of something approaching a technological miracle, with Charlie Gunter coordinating the Zoom meeting and an electronic buzzer, Josh Mudie operating an electronic scoreboard from a separate location and Savannah Coombe cueing in the music and picture rounds from her own desk elsewhere. Contestants logged into the buzzer system on their mobile phones. For the final Charlie was on his own and had to juggle all of this on a desktop and two laptops. The quizmaster, reprising his “Bamber Paxman” role from the last two years, was former Warden Robert Vilain.

Wills was represented in both heats: The Wills on the Bus (Tom Rattner, Tom Cox, Robert Loughney and Imogen Bell) and Wills and Friends (Andrew Sulston, Eleanor Lam, Oliva Marks-Woldman, Helen Dunne, Rowan Humphreys). The Wills on the Bus were sadly defeated by Slow and Steady (260 to 115) but Wills and Friends knocked out University Hall Heroes to reach the final (180 to 105). Questions were unambiguously tough. They ranged from astrophysics to zoology, linguistics to physical chemistry, law to film studies, political history to microbiology, literary pseudonyms to teenage text-speak, boy bands to world leaders, maritime disasters to the music composed for the dramatizations of Miss Marple stories – and quite a lot else in between. Robert’s native instinct to insert questions on German literature was kept in check (he snuck one in as part of the maritime disasters bonus set) but he was grateful to his 80-year-old father-in-law Christopher for some timely bonus questions on pop culture and gay fiction, and to his 15-year-old son Nathaniel for a couple of starters on gaming. One round in the final (on Bristol history) was based on questions set by Martin Crossley Evans and sent to the quizmaster some years ago but not so far deployed.

The heats and the final were tense and exiting. In each round the margin between the teams was always recuperable until only a few questions before the end. Sometimes the contestants’ faces looked blank and intimidated – the quizmaster almost ran out of spare starter questions at one point and was contemplating the possibility of having to make some up on the hoof! – and only once did he have to resort to imitating the famous Paxman sneer when it was suggested that Roald Dahl was a 19th-century novelist. Nonetheless, the range of solid knowledge and the remarkably elastic capacity of student and alumni brains to twist hidden memories and faint echoes of facts into correct answers proved immensely impressive. Wills and Friends were beaten by Slow and Steady (190 to 125) but can hold their heads high.

MUSIC IN THE DAME MONICA WILLS MEMORIAL CHAPEL – 2019-2022

David Dewar

This is a reflection based on my tenure as Director of Music in the chapel during those three academic years. The ‘elephant in the room’, of course, being the SARS-CoV2 pandemic striking us during the period. The pandemic affected us in several ways, not least the need, once the possibility of resuming chapel services after they were initially suspended, to ensure that music-making there was a safe as it reasonabl y could be.

In October, 2019, the term started with a very small choir (but, as the saying goes, it was ‘perfectly formed’). The sequence of services was as it had been, a mixture of (a) Choral Evensong (Friday, and fairly elaborate), (b) Compline (sung mostly in plainchant, and less elaborate), and (c) special services, for example, Remembrance, carol services (variably elaborate). The language is purely Book of Common Prayer.

The choir was a maximum of six singers, IIRC, mostly from the previous year (more on that matter later) – nevertheless we were able to make those services happen. The fact that members of ‘Anchorae’ (Dr Peter Relph’s chamber choir) were able to carry on was a great boon – and we all, I think, enjoyed in one of the services singing Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere mei – a good sing for everyone! I’m particularly grateful to my wife, Hilary, also a professional instrumentalist but also a good singer, who often assisted us in many ways. Our organ scholar, Nadia Nishizono-Miller, at that time in her second year of the scholarship, was a tower of strength and a splendid colleague with which to work.

(We were also able, during that time to start building up the choir’s library of printed music. It was useful that I had an A3 duplex printer. Much of the music, for reasons given below, was available being out of copyright – since the forms of Choral Evensong and Compline can both be adorned with music from late Mediaeval to 19th century sources, with a strong emphasis on the 16th century. For times when my printer would not be able to produce music booklets for special services, Andrew Abbey was able to have the material printed for us, based on an initial copy which I’d put together – we were truly fortunate in this.)

When lockdowns started, naturally the chapel services ceased. It was good, however, that the small group of organists who use the instrument for practice from time to time were able to continue. An organ suffers from not being played – and particularly from changes in temperature and humidity. (In general, a pipe organ, well-built, often played, and with predictable temperature and humidity conditions will last for around 100 years with minimal maintenance. The conditions in the chapel are not so congenial for the instrument, and so Hilary bought a couple of buckets to reside either side of the instrument. It is incumbent on those permitted to use the organ to ensure that the buckets are kept charged with water at all times. This does seem to have helped, though the organ does now again need some remedial attention.

The lockdowns wiped out the latter part of the 2019-2020 academic year for services singing. At the start of 2020-2021 we recruited a new organ scholar (as Nadia had graduated, and departed for a music role elsewhere). We selected a new organ scholar, Charlotte Mason –who set to work honing her musical skills. Though the pandemic continued to make matters ‘interesting’, Charlotte did have a few opportunities to put her musical prowess to the test but, I’m sad to say, not frequently.

It was not until 2021-2022, by which time Charlotte had departed to other matters, that we could properly contemplate restarting as (fairly) normal. As I’m sure everyone realises, we need principally soprano, alto, tenor and bass (SATB) voices and pretty adept ones at that. (Choral Evensong, for example, requires the singing of three, or so, sets of Responses, one or more psalms (from the Coverdale version), a set of Canticles (Magnificat and Nunc dimittis), an anthem, and a hymn – all of these change each week, and require various singing related skills.) Given that we have, generally, 30 minutes before singing the service, there is not enough time to rehearse everything – thus singers have be able to see the music and sing it whether or not they have seen it previously. As a result we seek ‘sight-singers’ as the jargon goes, and audition prospective members. After putting invitations to audition around the university and beyond, I think we had around 50 people whittled down from the original applications – whom I then auditioned en masse. Ultimately we were able to begin the year’s services with around ten singers and a couple of extras. I was stunned at how quickly this group of utterly delightful people were able to form an ensemble. Services, whether or not attended by any audience, were a delight to conduct. As a further boon was that our new organ scholar, Katie Fulford (one of several medics that year) was keen and immensely able to acquire the skills needed very rapidly. Working with this group of people was a constant delight.

A particular highlight of this year was Remembrance Day – when one of the choir, who is also an adept trumpeter, was able to signal the beginning and end of the Act of Remembrance with The Last Post and Reveille. By the time of that service, I had become so impressed with the choir, that I felt it would be good to have a concert for Remembrance in the evening of the same day. Accordingly, I invited members of the University Chamber Orchestra to provide a volunteer orchestra to work with the choir in the second half of the concert. I was glad I had done this – they were well up to scratch with other orchestras I had conducted in the past, some of which are professional. The work, for choir and orchestra was the Requiem (Op.49) by Gabriel Fauré. I have not yet met anyone who does not love this work – I certainly do, and the choir picked it up in one rehearsal. We had one rehearsal for choir with orchestra in the afternoon of the day. A concern for me, though, was that Katie had told me she had never played the work before and was somewhat nervous. Among other things, there is always the problem when the organ is at the west end, but the choir and orchestra are at the east end! The conductor, of course, faces east, in front of the players and singers. In the event, I unearthed some CCTV equipment I happened to possess and rigged it up to a 7” screen place on a music stand next to the organ console – with the camera at the extreme south side of the gallery rail. This ‘Heath Robinson’ rig enabled Katie to see my right arm as I conducted – so she could stay in touch. The final piece in the Requiem is the In paradisum, scored for quiet strings and harp, playing arpeggio figuration almost all the way through the movement. It is often played on the organ, with a suitable registration – which stands out, also making the event challenging for Katie. In the event everything went superbly – and the choir gave a magnificent performance. The two soloists (soprano and baritone) were members of the choir. When I thought about this concert, and given the often lack of an audience for services, I thought we might have perhaps 15 or 20 sitting and listening. In the event, the chapel was packed – which was wonderful for the singers and players.

From that point we went on singing the usual services – and a carol service (also packed) and also made possible again by Andrew Abbey’s good office in getting printing of the booklet done.

Near Easter 2022, we were able again (two of our soprani were capable of hitting repeated high Cs – and the Allegri is a feat of musicality and endurance in this respect) to sing the Miserere mei.

At the end of the year the choir disbanded – and in due course I started advertising, even more widely spread than the previous year, for singers to make up the choir for 2022-2023. I had hopes of a good response as before. Sadly, in the event, we had about eight, if that, volunteers all soprani, except one bass-baritone. Though we tried one service (as the choir is generally reformed anew each year, the first service is in the nature of a ‘try-out’) and then moved to try to attract more takers, the potential few additional people were also soprano. As I mentioned earlier, we need SATB. Reluctantly we had to abandon the idea of a choir this academic year.

During the course of the year, the A350/M4/M5/A4018 to get from home to the chapel on a Friday afternoon for a rehearsal at 6pm was becoming more and more unreliable. It came to the point where, to have any reasonable chance of getting there on time, Hilary and I would have to leave our house somewhere between 2pm and 2.30pm. Just not sustainable, especially on a voluntary basis. As a result, I have relinquished the role. I have felt immensely privileged to have made music with these musical and caring choir members and very much hope that in their future they will find time for music – and enjoy its beneficial effects.

Finally, I must express very heartfelt thanks to the WHA (especially Robert and Charles) and to Resilife (in particular, Andrew and Tracey who have always been there for guidance, advice, and help).

STUDENT LIFE IN WILLS HALL IN THE ’60s Christopher E Embrey

Picture captions follow

Life in Wills Hall in the late 1960s has been well documented by Andrew Sulston and the late Martin Crossley Evans in their book “History of Wills Hall”, where details of hall life during the ‘reign’ of each of the wardens from 1929 to 2017 can be found. The chapter relating to J F Sloane encapsulates my own period in hall perfectly, as do the Wills Hall yearbooks for 1967, 1968, 1969-70 and 1970-71, giving a vivid description of life in hall in those years. The University’s centenary publication ‘Bristol 100 1’, containing as it does the accounts of several notable alumni, has some interesting reflections on university life outside hall, but reflects in many ways the university experience of all of us in that period.

The student population in the late ’60s was rapidly expanding throughout the UK, following the ‘Robbins Report 2’ with many more young men and women from a broader range of backgrounds, which influenced the intake of universities such as Bristol, and Wills Hall in particular. Even in my time, student population of Wills was well represented by young men from independent schools, including the most prestigious ones. Coming as I did from a small, insignificant boys’ grammar school in north Shropshire, being a very young, naïve ‘Shropshire Lad’ had its challenges!

Looking back, it seems sometimes as though I lived in a parallel universe. Moving from a single sex school into a hall of residence of young men only seemed quite normal. Given the very ‘paternalistic’ attitudes prevailing at the time, it was not unusual to find the oversight of the hall warden similar to that of a typical boarding school house master. Even the ViceChancellor, Professor John E Harris, in his introduction to ‘freshers’ on our first day, described himself as our ‘Headmaster’. It was not surprising then to see Bristol students organizing a ‘sit-in’, occupying Senate House for several days, over who could and could not be offered access to the new Union facilities, which ultimately boiled over into a

1 “Bristol 100”: A collection of words and images to mark the centenary of the University of Bristol, published 2009 by the university general gripe about not having enough say in how the Union should be run. The university, as might be expected, retained the final decision on all such matters!

2 Robbins Report: the Report of the Committee appointed by the Prime Minister under the Chairmanship of Lord Robbins to review the pattern of full-time higher education in Great Britain.

Without a shadow of doubt, the single most significant difference in life then and now was the absence of the internet and the mobile phone. Communicating with anyone involved sitting down and writing a letter, or, if urgent, finding a phone, of which there were two (or possibly three!) for over 250 fellow students! Study was done by reading books, most often in libraries, which required some organisation! Even the things you needed were bought in £ s d!

Hall was populated by undergraduates in all three years, with roughly half in their first year, a third in their second, and the remaining sixth in their third year. In such a community, hall societies flourished, as can be seen in the photographs and articles in the yearbooks. The ‘Freshers’ Smoker, the annual Hall Ball, the visit by the Lord Mayor, the summer croquet match and cream tea being just a few I can recall. The Junior Common Room was represented by a JCR committee, with representatives from each year. (The team for 1967-68 can be seen on the right.)

On my arrival at the porter’s lodge my heart sank when I was told I was to be billeted in an annex to the main part of hall (in what is now the Savile House Care Home). Down House, as it was known, then housed some 35 of us, in mostly shared rooms, along with a tutor, a member of the university staff, to keep a watchful eye and offer support when needed. I was even more crest-fallen to discover that I was, effectively, to share a pair of inter-connected rooms with three others. Little did I realise at the time, however, I was one of the luckiest of the new intake. Not only had I three new friends within minutes of my arrival, but as the days progressed, and each of us brought a new friend to our shared sitting room, our circle of friends widened extensively. Showers hadn’t been invented when Down House was designed! A couple of toilets could be found on each floor, together with a bathroom, each with a bath big enough to take a hippopotamus, and which took so long to fill even a modest level of water, there was time to write home whilst it filled! Most times, a ‘stand-up-wash’ in the wash rooms sufficed; the basins being of similar dimensions to the bath, they also served well when laundry needed to be done. Thus, bumping daily into your fellow students, you became very familiar (sometimes intimately!). Within a matter of weeks, you couldn’t fail to have become part of a vibrant, friendly community of like-minded young people. Down House was family, a ‘microcosm’ of the entire hall community, as witnessed by the reports and photographs in the hall magazines of those years.

Breakfast and dinner (as well as lunch on weekends) were provided in the main dining hall; evening dinners were of course formal, and everyone wore the standard undergraduate gown. For those who needed sustenance outside of these meals, a daily ration of a 1/3 pint of milk and two slices of bread plus a weekly 4 oz of butter could be found in the ‘house pantries’.

As might be expected in a community of several hundred young people, pranks were not uncommon! Breakfast plates being laid out on the grass of the quad to form the letters HAPPY XMAS JOCK concluded one Christmas term! I was not alone in finding my car in the quad under the archway beneath K5 and K6 on the morning of my 21st birthday! The ‘pub-crawl’ to Manor Hall following the Lord Mayor’s dinner sadly often resulted in events somewhat out of control, and served to give a ‘less than positive image’ of us in the wider community.

The Union of course provided a parallel community with debates, social events and opportunities to get involved in the student management. My ‘Union’ diary for 1966-67 shows none other than Sue Lawley as president of the student Union, later to become a familiar face on BBC television, which goes to show the progress of some of our number.

Annually, Wills offered a travel scholarship, which I was fortunate to be awarded, and this enabled me to travel to East Berlin in the summer of 1968, to join a work camp with some twenty fellow students of St Paul’s Church in Bristol. There we were joined by a similar number of students from Marburg University, then in West Germany. My first trip outside the UK, it was sometimes scary, militia bristling with arms being all over the city of Berlin in the eastern sector especially, following the Russian Army invasion of Czechoslovakia that summer. The photographs below show just how dramatically Berlin has changed since the fall of the wall in 1989.

Ostensibly a week of events intended to raise money for a chosen charity, ‘Rag Week’ was a week of great fun, including the memorable pedal car race which took place on Whitchurch Aerodrome. With over 40 pedal cars, built by budding engineers from all over the university taking part, teams pedalled away for some 36 hours continuously. The week culminated in a grand procession of Rag floats organised by the many union and hall societies.

Graduation then, as now, was a wonderful celebration and was accompanied by cream teas for graduands and parents on the lawns of Royal Fort House, followed by a ball in the student union.

These were for me then, and have remained ever since, some of the best years of my life.

Pictures:

1. ‘Living the life of Riley’ - The author enjoying a year in Down 8 (note the provision of the aluminum kettle)

2. Annual croquet match: The author advising his partner on the next move

3. The JCR Committee 1967-68 (author back row, 2nd from right)

4. Rag week 1968: Vet Soc float

5. Rag week 1968: Medics float!

GRADUATION – THEN AND NOW

Laura Scarlett (née Owen), Wills Hall 1988-89

I graduated from the University of Bristol in 1991, in the Summer that I had taken my Finals. I returned to an unseasonably warm and sunny Bristol in November 2022 for my son’s graduation, five months after Harry completed his Finals. Harry’s exams didn’t take place in the Great Hall of the Wills Memorial Building as mine had done, but were a series of essays, researched, written, and submitted over consecutive periods of five days. This exam format was a Covid-19 induced change, and also a fitting assessment of 21st Century skills - analysis and synthesis, and critical thinking - rather than testing recall.

Harry and his peers studied hard, as for most of their University experience there was little else to do. The first two terms of First Year went swimmingly, with in-person lectures and tutorials, sports, social, and other extra-curricular societies, and all the joys and japes of First Year undergraduate life. Then in March 2020 the students were sent home, and Wills Hall, Goldney Hall (where Harry was living), and Woodland Road were eerily empty. Harry returned to Bristol in the Autumn. Although lockdown and online teaching continued throughout his Second Year, Harry naturally preferred to be holed up in a student house with five friends rather than stay in his childhood home. It was an intense experience for these young people, who couldn’t mingle with other groups, and it’s a testament to them that they remain good friends.

Of course graduation ceremonies also ceased during Covid. The University played catch-up in 2022, hosting ceremonies for 2020, 2021, and 2022 graduands, including 18 ceremonies in November alone at the rate of three a day. An impressive achievement, especially if all ran as smoothly as Harry’s ceremony. I enjoyed the organ music at the start, remembering when my student flatmates had performed in Duruflé’s Requiem in the Great Hall. And I enjoyed the contemporary portraits of notable women adorning the panelled walls, delighted to see Lady Hale’s face beaming down. There were differences from my 1991 ceremony (besides the portraits and the time of year). When I graduated, I processed across the stage and presented my clasped hands to the presiding officer, who covered my hands with his. Covid had introduced a no touch approach, with each student bowing and receiving a bow in return. Female graduands in 1991 were instructed to wear a black skirt and white blouse. Not so the class of 2022, and it was joyous to see the girls in their jewel-coloured dresses and shoes. I myself was wearing a magenta scarf, channelling my Mum, who had worn a bright pink dress to my graduation. And then there were the mortarboards, reintroduced last year as part of the University’s graduation dress for the first time since the 1960s. It was a moving moment when the presiding officer invited the room full of young people to don their mortarboards once they had all had their degrees conferred.

The ceremony was a lively event, with parents and other supporters, including fellow students, whooping and cheering throughout. Hand on heart, I cannot now remember if my 1991 ceremony was such a sound sensation but I suspect not.

All in all it was a happy, memorable occasion. Congratulations to all recent graduates of the University of Bristol and all the University staff who have worked so diligently to make sure their graduandsturned-graduates had such fulsome opportunity to celebrate their achievements.