Report on the Year of 1950

Horsman Awards The Somerville Senior

The Alice Horsman Scholarship was established in 1953. Members’ Fund Alice Horsman (1908, Classics) was a great traveller who wished to provide opportunities for former Somerville students to experience other countries and peoples, whether through travel, research or further study. The Alice Horsman Scholarship is open to all Somerville undergraduate and graduate alumni with the exception of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery students at other Oxford colleges. Applicants should be in need of financial support for a project involving travel, research or further study that is intended to enhance their career prospects. Applicants who have secured a place on the This Fund was established to provide small sums to help alumni with unforeseen expenses and hardship. We have also been able to use it to subsidize the cost of individuals attending College events which would otherwise have been unaffordable for them. We hope that people who find themselves in need will not hesitate to call upon the Fund. We are glad to hear from third parties who think that help would be appreciated. We are always grateful for donations to this Fund. Teach First, Police Now or Step Up to Social Work schemes Applications for grants should be addressed to will be looked on favourably. Priority will be given to elizabeth.cooke@some.ox.ac.uk or applicants who have not received previous awards. For lesley.brown@some.ox.ac.uk information about the application process please email academic.office@some.ox.ac.uk.

Applications are accepted each term.

Somerville London Group

The Somerville London Group has expanded its reach over the past year to a global audience with a series of online events that have been attended by Somervillians from as far afield as the US and New Zealand, as well as our existing cohort of supporters from the south-east of England. Numbers attending grew from 45 to almost 200 over the course of the year, demonstrating the huge enthusiasm of Somervillians for entertainment, knowledge and opportunities for online contact and conversation.

We began our programme of online events last autumn with two events about pioneering Somervillian journalists, Anne Scott James and Audrey Withers, the queens of Fleet Street in the mid-twentieth century. In September Clare Hastings and her daughter Calypso discussed Clare’s recent biography of her mother: Hold the Front Page! The Wit and Wisdom of Anne Scott James; and in November Julie Summers spoke about her biography of Audrey Withers, editor of Vogue for 20 years from 1940.

Baroness Ruth Hunt opened our 2021 programme with a fascinating talk about Working through Conflict: Social Change in the 21st Century, sharing many personal experiences and insights and stimulating some interesting questions.

In March Dr Clara Seeger spoke to us about Cultivating a Balanced Mind: An Art and a Science, describing the four functions of the mind and how to achieve a balance between these functions through meditation. In a first for us, the event was participatory with Clara leading a guided mini-meditation for 15 minutes. Our final two events looked at women hidden from history. In June journalist and writer Ian Dunt talked to us about Harriet Taylor and her intellectual and romantic relationship with John Stuart Mill. In Ian’s opinion their intellectual partnership laid the foundations for modern liberalism though Harriet’s contribution was either vilified or ignored. In July Professor Ann Oakley spoke about the forgotten wives of her latest book – women whose achievements have been written out of history and who were footnotes to their husbands’ biographies until she shone a long-needed spotlight on their lives.

In addition to our events, Committee member Ruth Crawford manages our Book Group, now meeting online every six weeks or so, and which has discussed an eclectic selection of books by Somervillian authors generating some passionate discussions about their merits.

We are very grateful to all those who participated in Somerville London Group events over the past year and hope to see many of you in the coming year.

CAROLINE TOTTERDILL, Chair of the Somerville London Group.

In addition to the SLG book club, several online book clubs have been established during the past year. If you might be interested in any of these, please contact Liz Cooke (elizabeth. cooke@some.ox.ac.uk) for details.

Life Before Somerville: Linda Appleby

As Linda Jones, I read PPE, mostly Philosophy, 1975-78. I come from Cambridge and went to the Perse Girls’ School. After Oxford, I took an MA at London with a dissertation on the philosophy of psychoanalysis and a PGCE in English in a multi-cultural society (with distinction) at Leeds. After a year of social work, I was a college lecturer in Warwickshire, teaching 16+ and adults English Literature. I was A Level Course Organiser and then ran the college language policy. I took my interest in psychoanalysis further with a course in the theory of Melanie Klein at Birmingham University and have kept a strong interest in psychotherapy. Since I retired from teaching I have been involved in various writing projects, including two novels, The Kingdom is Yours and The Value of Nothing and several poetry collections. I have an anthology of poems on mental health, Harvest, to be published later this year. I was married to Professor John Appleby, a health economist, and we have two sons, Jack and Harry. They all live in London.

I was doing well at school: a middle school prize, advanced grades in the piano and flute, hockey captain. Then something crashed mentally – I felt well, but so self-conscious that I couldn’t get dressed and go out. Everything was off. I had only been studying Latin for a year, but a term away from school saw the end of that. We tried various kinds of support: the child psychiatrist said that I was ‘in the top 2%’, the GP said I was ‘ambivalent’, the school sent a teacher to check on how I was and Anne Mackay (1976; Mrs Cowan) visited me with work. Someone mentioned schizophrenia. Someone else said agoraphobia. There was talk of hyperventilation. But nothing could get me out of my dressing gown and into school. I think subjects like Maths, which required continuous teaching, suffered most. At least I could still read.

One day I came across a maroon dress. I put it on and felt confident. It suited me. Mum took me to the Arts Theatre to celebrate and I returned to school, passed my O levels and entered the sixth form. It wasn’t plain sailing, but I managed to gain sixth form prizes and offers from Somerville and Wadham. I was back on track.

I wrote this poem for the school magazine when I was 16. A plea for an education that was holistic and not based on cramming. Thank goodness, my school never stopped giving me a chance. Machinations

Can I encompass seven years long of one? one place, one order, mortally clothed in blue the years were far too painful, far too slow to know of one effect as one mind grew the mental scars uncomfortably show and not to specify would not show true that children’s minds, as adults, only grow with time, by being, not by pushing through you bore these edicts peaceably in mind – in apposition to the normal grind – we were, and strove, the latter drew more force I only held the academic course now being and achieving rest as one allow time for those younger, striving on.

LINDA APPLEBY

Report on the Year of 1950

The previous report on the year 1950, published in 1999 with a supplement in 2000, was very comprehensive, for Christian Fitzherbert (Mrs Parham; read History; died 2017) assiduously pursued everybody concerned with remarkable success. Since then, almost every year has brought deaths, and we are now very depleted. With the help of Liz Cooke, attempts were made to contact everybody believed to be still alive, but not all replied. As Margaret Bragg (Lady Heath; read History) remarked, ‘Many of my contemporaries are now dead or dotty’. Nevertheless, given our age, it has been a successful enterprise. I had twenty responses, which will be circulated among our year and placed in the Somerville archives, and which varied from full reports from people who are obviously still in good mental and physical health, to an email from a daughter whose mother is in a care home.

One question not asked in 1999 was why and how we came to Somerville. In the 1950s, while there were notable academic girls’ schools which would encourage such ambitions – six of that year’s intake came from St Paul’s Girls’ School – it was still unusual for girls to continue to further education. Those who commented on this question mostly spoke of a knowledgeable teacher, often the headmistress, and parental backing, though in one case the choice of Somerville ran contrary to parental wishes and caused a family rumpus! I chose PPE because it looked interesting and was different from anything one did at school, and Somerville because of its intellectual reputation. Marie Thomas (Dr Surridge; read Modern Languages) wrote ‘Somerville was a clear winner because of the warm and welcoming atmosphere it had established for its interviewees’ (Warm?? I remember sleeping in all my clothes and still freezing when I came for my scholarship interviews!). Bridget Davies noted that ‘Somerville was an obvious choice for someone wishing to study medicine, where Dr Janet Vaughan, as she was then, was Principal.’ José Cummins (Mrs Jo Murphy; read Chemistry) considered it was lucky that she chose a science subject, ‘as it was one of the less popular faculties.’

In the 1999 report it was found that ‘we all have high praise for the teaching within the college and for many of the lectures we attended.’ Twenty years on, it is rather the quirks that are recalled. Jenny Hugh-Jones (Mrs Newman) was accepted to read sciences in spite of having done little at school, but it was too much, and she dropped out. Maureen Oliver (Mrs Scurlock) found the Zoology course disappointing. Renate Steinert (Mrs Olins) remembers her ‘complete ignorance of what a Modern Languages syllabus entailed’. Naomi Shepherd (Mrs Layish) wrote, ‘The English syllabus in