Atrium, Old Pauline News, Spring/Summer 2021

SPRING / SUMMER 2021

ATRIUM THE ST PAUL’S SCHOOL ALUMNI MAGAZINE

George Amponsah is one of the creative Paulines ‘In Conversation’ with Jon Blair Need for a Reset

An Unconventional Pauline

Pauline Perspective

Ed Vaizey discusses how to fund the Arts

Michael Simmons reveals Martin Bradley

Tim Hardy on a Life in Theatre

Editorial French horn players rarely reach the star status of a violinist, pianist, cellist or conductor, but by the time of his tragically early death in a car accident at the age of thirty-six, Dennis Brain (1934-36) had established himself as one of the greatest French horn players and musicians of the twentieth century. It is his centenary this year.

Paulines should celebrate him.

S

t Paul’s is often viewed as an academic hot house that through weight of numbers and facilities produces some excellent sports players, teams and crews.

It is more than that and Dennis Brain is only one example of the exceptional creative talent nurtured at School.

This magazine is unashamedly creative heavy and includes articles on war and Bloomsbury Set artists Paul Nash (1903-06) and Duncan Grant (1899-1902), as well as jazz musician Chris Barber (1946-47) and artist Martin Bradley (1946-47). Jon Blair’s (1967-69) cover article focuses on 10 Paulines who currently bestride the creative world.

The Old Pauline Club’s next President Ed Vaizey (1981-85) also lifts the lid on his time as Culture Secretary to share his thoughts on Arts funding after a truly disastrous twelve months for the industry.

keep our community together by taking the events programme online. My highlight has been the only ever online Feast Service.

School Chaplain, The Rev. Matthew Knox led the service that included the OPC President, the High Master, the Captain of School, the Chairman of Governors and OP clergy. It truly fulfilled the aspiration of the Pauline Community working together.

I must add with much gratitude my appreciation of the work of all Atrium’s contributors (listed on Page 02) and the support I have again received from Kate East, Jessica Silvester, Hilary Cummings, Ginny Dawe-Woodings and Viera Ghods.

Jeremy Withers Green (1975-80) jeremy.withersgreen@gmail.com

Bringing the Pauline Community together is our aspiration. So you can imagine my delight when late last year an email came in from Tim Hardy (1954-59), “I was the 'Scalchi' mentioned in Robin Hirsch's (1956-61) article in Atrium. I say 'was', because when finishing my training at RADA I was advised to adopt an English name. We were not so multi-cultural then.”

Robin and Tim are back in touch after 60 years. Tim has written ‘A Life with The Bard’ alongside Robin’s ‘Leading Cadet Hirsch’; both richly colourful contributions.

The School’s Development and Engagement team has done a wonderful job helping to

Cover photo: George Amponsah: photo by Paul Marc Mitchell Design: haime-butler.com Print: Lavenham Press

CONTENTS

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28

26

03 Letters OPs comment on Sid Pask, Tom Howarth and Atrium

06 Pauline Letter Patrick Neate writes from Zimbabwe

08 Briefings Including Pauline Pews, Protestor and Poetry

18 ‘In Conversation’ with Creative Paulines: Jon Blair interviews

26 Martin Bradley Michael Simmons profiles an Unconventional Pauline

28 Paul Nash and Duncan Grant David Roodyn portrays the Pauline artists

30 Chris Barber Simon Bishop profiles the jazz and blues musician who loved motor racing

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32 The Founding of the National Youth Theatre Michael Oliver describes his contribution

34 On The Hunt for Purpose-driven Unicorns Tommy Stadlen and Cameron McLain talk to Simon Lovick

36 Arts Funding Ed Vaizey suggests a post COVID reset

38 Shakespeare Has It Covered Tim Hardy describes a theatrical life

42 Et Cetera Robin Hirsch’s take on Monty Inspecting the Cadet Force

44 A Pauline About Town

52 Old Pauline Club News Brian Jones on Governance, the Archives and the Feast

54 Obituaries Including Basil Moss, former Old Pauline Club President

57 Old Pauline Club OP sport is set to resume this summer

58 Old Pauline Sport Old Pauline Football: A successful season cut short

60 Past Times Pauline Board 5 beats Grandmaster

61 Pauline Relatives The Elder Neates

63 Crossword

Rohan McWilliam on London’s West End

Lorie Church sets the puzzle

46 Bursary and Development Update

64 Last Word Ralph Varcoe on lessons learnt after leaving

Ellie Sleeman and Ali Summers report 01

ATRIUM CONTRIBUTORS

Listed below are those who contributed to the magazine.

Ellie Sleeman is Director of Development and Communications at St Paul’s. She has worked in fundraising, marketing and crisis management since graduating from UCL, joining St Paul’s from Wellington College following an eight year stint as a Director at London’s Roundhouse.

Michael Oliver (1946-47) first practised in London as a solicitor. He helped Michael Croft to found the Youth Theatre – later The National Youth Theatre – becoming its chairman. He was elected to the board of The National Theatre and assisted with the development of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and was a founder of it in the USA where he practised State and Federal law. After ten years in the USA he returned to London before retiring to live permanently in Italy.

Michael Simmons (1946-52) read Classics and Law at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

He qualified as a solicitor and after two years as an officer in the RAF practised Law in the City and Central London for fifty years. Since retiring, he has pursued a new career as a writer. Michael is in touch regularly with seven other members of the Upper VIII of 1952.

Robin Wootton (1951-55) read zoology at University College London and continued there to a PhD in palaeoentomology. He taught for four decades at the University of Exeter and pioneered an engineering approach to insect wing design, now a hot topic in the development of tiny drones.

He is still an honorary research fellow with continuing interests in insect flight mechanics, all kinds of folding structures, and C19th Devonians.

Tim Hardy (1954-59) has had a stage career that has taken him from Peter Brook’s Marat/Sade for the RSC in London and New York, to the West End and Royal Court, to theatres all over the UK, and on extensive tours here and abroad of the one-man Trials of Galileo. He has played in Shakespeare all over the USA, in Vaclav Havel for the Hong Kong Festival, and in Peter Hall’s Lysistrata in Athens and London. He played Perchik in Fiddler on the Roof and all the lead bass operatic roles for Music Theatre London. His television work has ranged from Michael Gambon’s Oscar Wilde to Eastenders to Casualty 1909, while on film he has played Jesus (for US TV) and a fellow officer in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.

He has directed in Vienna, in Frankfurt, at many American universities, and regularly at RADA, specialising in Shakespeare. He also serves on RADA’s Admissions panel.

Robin Hirsch (1956-61) is an Oxford, Fulbright and English-Speaking Union 02

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Scholar, who has taught, published, acted, directed and produced theatre on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1977 together with two other starving artists, he founded the Cornelia Street Cafe in New York’s Greenwich Village. In 1987 the City of New York proclaimed it “a culinary as well as a cultural landmark.” Cornelia Street Cafe is now ‘in exile’ having been forced to close by vile landlords.

Alistair Summers (1978-83) was a Governor at St Paul’s from 2007 until 2019 and Deputy Chair from 2014 until he retired from the Governing Body.

Throughout his tenure he sat on the Governors’ Finance Committee. After St Paul’s, he went to LSE and then qualified as a Chartered Accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers. Since 1992, he has been in private practice.

Simon Bishop (1962-65) is a former editor of Atrium. He has worked in publishing for most of his professional life including as art editor for Time Out magazine and for BBC Wildlife magazine.

Ed Vaizey (1981-85) read Modern History at Merton College Oxford. He was Member of Parliament for Wantage 2005-19 and served as Minister for Culture 2010-2016.

He became Lord Vaizey of Didcot in 2020. In July this year he will take over as President of the Old Pauline Club.

Jon Blair CBE (1967-1969) was born in South Africa and was drafted into the South African army in 1966 but chose instead to flee to England entering St Paul's in January 1967. He has worked across the creative world winning four of the premier awards in his field: an Oscar, an Emmy (twice), a Grammy and a Bafta. He was appointed CBE in 2015 for services to film. Jon has also been awarded an honorary doctorate

by Stockton University in the USA for his contribution to human rights awareness through his film-making work. In 1999 he endowed the Blair Prize at St Paul’s to be given to a student who has shown “outstanding cross curricular creativity” in his work or any other activity during the year.

David Roodyn (1967-1971) after retirement moved to Brighton but spends time in the South Of France. His 65th birthday celebration at the Colombe d’Or, St Paul de Vence was attended by his Pauline friends Peter Fineman (1966-71) and David Soskin (1967-71). Sir Lloyd Dorfman (1965-70) expressed apologies for his absence.

Luke Hughes (1969-74) was awarded an open history scholarship to Peterhouse, Cambridge and studied History of Architecture for Part II. He has since specialised in designing for public buildings.

Clients include Harvard, Yale, more than 85% of Oxbridge colleges and 24 cathedrals.

He also designed the library and court furniture for the UK Supreme Court, and the clergy furniture for Westminster Abbey, first used for the Papal visit in 2010 and the Royal Wedding in 2011.

Rohan McWilliam (1973-78) is Professor of History at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. He read History at the University of Sussex and is a former President of the British Association for Victorian Studies. His new book, London's West End, is the first ever history of the pleasure district that has been written.

He has written on Victorian popular politics and the modern Labour Party.

In addition, he contributes to the press on current affairs.

Patrick Neate (1984-1989) is an author and screenwriter. His latest novel is called Small Town Hero, published by Andersen. It is about football and quantum mechanics.

He would like to take this opportunity to apologise to numerous Old Paulines for the unacknowledged appropriation of names, noses, complexions, haircuts, disco dancing skills and more in his fiction.

Ralph Varcoe (1984-89) studied music at the Guildhall but got distracted by life, winding up with an accidental career in IT and telecoms, and an MBA. He has led sales and marketing teams at companies such as Orange, Tata Communications, and Virgin Media, and now runs his own business helping tech company founders deliver sales growth objectives for investors. Ralph is an NLP practitioner, has authored a couple of books on accelerating performance, hosts a podcast dedicated to helping people achieve results, and writes and records music.

Jehan Sherjan (1989-94) is a Director for SRM Europe, a consulting firm focused on using data insight to improve customer experience and operational performance.

He is current Chairman of Old Pauline AFC, having been involved with the club since 1997. He studied Social Policy at The London School of Economics and University of Kent.

Lorie Church (1992-97) away from the workplace, Lorie encourages people to put letters in little squares. He has had puzzles published in various titles internationally.

As well as contributions to the Listener series, Mind Sports Olympiad and Times Daily, he sets Atrium’s crossword.

Simon Lovick (2008-13) is a writer and journalist in London, writing for BusinessBecause, an online publication focused around business education, and Maddyness, a UK tech and startup news website. He studied Politics at the University of Edinburgh.

Letters

Sid Pask remembered

Dear Jeremy, What a pleasure to read Barry Cox (1945-50) on Sid Pask (Master 1928-66) in Atrium.

I was five years junior to Barry and two below the Miller/Korn/Sacks generation, but remember the young Jonathan Miller (1947-53) horsing about in the playground doing Danny Kaye impressions, and his wonderfully surreal contributions to the Colet Club’s Review with Eric Korn (1946-52) and later John Minton (1948-53). ‘A knoblick is a long stick, heavily weighted at one end with antimony, and used for hitting squirrels’. Did he ever use this line? – I remember him trying it out on us in the tuckshop.

I was another of Sid’s students, and vividly recall the thrill of meeting for the first time the amazing littoral and sublittoral plants and animals at Millport, and the traditional haggis-hunt on the final day of the course, with Sid and senior students identifying haggis-nests (sheep hollows) “still warm”, and half convincing the first-timers that it was for real.

I have sometimes wondered whether our generation was unusual in its habit of composing songs and verses about the masters. Probably not; but two relating to Sid perhaps merit recording.

First, to the tune of ‘John Brown’s Body’: There’ll be no more cricket, rugby, boxing at St Paul’s There’ll be no more cricket, rugby, boxing at St Paul’s There’ll be no more cricket, rugby, boxing at St Paul’s When Sidney becomes High Man. They’ll do away with blazers, and we’ll all wear battered tweeds Etc. The concept of the unconforming, atheistic, sport-deriding Sid as High Master was gloriously absurd. And, to the tune of ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’: There is an aged schoolmaster, And starry are his eyes A bush beneath his nose he grows And stuttering through this growth he shows The right way to tell lies, The right way to tell lies.

Alas, poor man, he little knows How little we believe him For how can we who hear his song Of catfish half a furlong long With s-seriousness receive him?

With s-seriousness receive him?

Sid, who stammered, had taken part as a student in an expedition to Lake Tanganyika, and would frequently regale us with accounts of the giant catfish to be found there.

With best wishes, Robin Wootton (1950-55) Honorary Fellow (Insect Biomechanics) University of Exeter

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LETTERS

Pretentious and Ostentatious

Dear Jeremy,

I wonder if I am alone in finding the magazine Atrium as being both pretentious and ostentatious. The very name Atrium (an inner courtyard) seems wholly unnecessary whereas the previous title Old Pauline News was I suggest perfectly sufficient. Moreover, I find the posed full-sized image of the new High Master on the front cover unnecessarily flashy and the contents a combination of both samey-style and just plain showy-offy.

A degree of quiet reserved humility – for want of a better choice of words – would be far more appropriate (especially for a school founded in the Christian tradition – albeit quite rightly wholly open to all creeds and multi-cultural backgrounds).

But then of course I am an old fogey who intensely dislikes the ‘Look at me how important I am’ attitude of today.

Yours sincerely, Martin French (1952-57)

Dear Jeremy,

Monty inspects the Cadet Force

I was in the Cadets in 1959 and I was lucky enough to be chosen to be in the Guard of Honour for both HM The Queen and Monty’s visits.

All I remember of the Queen as she walked in front of me was seeing her hat go by. We had to look straight ahead.

I remember Monty arriving in his armoured car, with its reversed angle front windshield. He cost me some credibility and the School rather a lot of money. During the rehearsal for the inspection of the whole cadet force there were a number of boys that fainted in the heat. I think that it was about twenty or so. Some of us opened a “book” on how many boys would faint when Monty came and inspected us.

No money was to be exchanged, just the pleasure of being correct. I put down twenty as my guess. But clever Monty had us turn round so that we had less sun on us, and consequently fewer boys fainted proving that he really did care for the wellbeing of the soldiers that he was inspecting.

But the big problem for the School came when he addressed us. He stood on the exterior Chapel steps and he had us all sit down on the asphalt parade ground while he talked. The problem was that due to the heat, the tar in the asphalt melted and most of us cadets got tar on our uniforms. We all had to bring our uniforms into school to be cleaned. That must have cost a pretty penny.

With best wishes, Andrew Silbiger (1956-59)

Dear Jeremy,

I was interested in reading Bob Phillips’ (1964-68) benign appreciation of Tom Howarth (High Master 1962-73) in Atrium. In terms of his leadership of the School during a period of considerable cultural and educational change, I recognise unreservedly his undoubted achievement in leading the School and its community from West Kensington into the ‘promised land’ of Barnes despite the major problems posed by the then Government and GLC regarding the future of the old school site in W14.

However, unlike Bob, for me and many others who were at the School in the 1960s, Howarth was a remote figure, primarily interested in the ‘high flyers’ of the time, with only limited interest in the average Pauline. In one brief meeting with him during his time as Senior Tutor at Magdalene, I probably had a longer conversation with him than in all my five years at the School.

Although never a member of any of the three sections myself, I would certainly criticise Howarth for his entirely unjustified abolition of the CCF and for his failing to recognise the architectural, historical and wider cultural value and significance of many of the very fine features left behind in the West Kensington building – such as the excellent stained glass, colourful mosaics and beautifully carved oak fittings from the Chapel and the Walker Library that were subsequently sold off to dealers or otherwise disposed of, rather than being intelligently and sensitively incorporated into the new, Clasp Mark IV buildings at Barnes, providing continuity thereby.

I am also surprised by Bob’s comments about Folio for which I wrote occasionally. Folio was certainly not ‘the official school magazine’ as Bob suggests in his article; it was produced by Paulines for Paulines unlike the official The Pauline magazine.

Yours ever, Paul Velluet (1962-67)

Dear Jeremy,

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Don Pirkis – Rock Thrower

My choice of “A” levels gave me two years of the inspirational Don Pirkis (Master 1955-86).

Geomorphology was his forte, rather than Human, Economic or Regional Geography. He showed us lots of landscape slides on ancient epidiascope. If we dozed off in the darkness, he had a supply of tennis ball sized bits of granite to throw at us. (Is that allowed now?)

On a family trip to the Lake District, I remember the joy of seeing my first “U-shaped” glaciated valley in real life (Langdale) and some striations on a roche moutonnée, and thinking “Pirkis was telling the truth.”

There were no residential field trips in those days, but we did have a day’s fossil hunting in a chalk quarry near Box Hill.

I subsequently had a very happy working life – as a Geography Master – at St Clement Danes School.

All best wishes, Tim Venner (1954-59)

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Tom Howarth – a Different Perspective

Dear Jeremy,

Sid Pask’s teaching career book-ended

by Ecology Professors

I read Barry Cox's (1945-50) article about Sid Pask (Master 1926-66) and found one thing particularly notable – Sid's tremendous concentration on an ecological context for all he taught. This is very surprising, really, for a London school in which the main biological concentration would naturally be on medicine or some other ‘townie’ sort of biology.

Sid had so much influence on the subsequent development of his pupils’ studies of ecology. Several very significant professors and directors in this subject started with Sid at St Paul's. Of particular note are Professors David Goodall (1927-32) and Paul Dowding (1957-62). The first of these, was, until his death in 2018 (in that Zurich clinic) the most influential mathematical plant ecologist of the last century.

And it is a very curious thing that both Sid's very first year at St Paul's, and his last, produced a professor of ecology. Both of these (the first being Goodall) changed from other subjects to Biology as a result of Sid's inspiration. I was the second of these, though I would hardly put myself in the same category of influence as David Goodall.

Best wishes, Mark Anderson (1961-65)

Dear Jeremy,

“Oh, were you in Dad’s Army?”

Last week I received the latest edition of Atrium at my home in Connecticut, USA. When I was an editor at Fine Woodworking magazine the publisher once said magazines had three types of readers: those who swam through the issue glancing briefly at articles; those who snorkelled and read perhaps one or two articles; and finally those who dived and read the whole issue in depth. I read every page of Atrium and learnt that rabbis could be Masons, and that the birds that eat out of my hand each morning have passerine feet.

The article about Tom Howarth (High Master 1962-73) and the move to Barnes reminded me of a couple of stories.

When Tom came to lunch at our house one day he was recounting his days on Montgomery’s staff during WW2.

My sister Charlotte (1980), then aged 6 or 7, brightly asked, “Oh, were you in Dad's Army?” Luckily Tom took it well!

You might also recall that the playing fields at Barnes were not originally prepared properly so that chunks of concrete and rubble kept coming to the surface, to the detriment of rugger players. So for the first several years the fields were repeatedly ploughed and harrowed prompting the granddaughter of Henry Collis to say to Mrs Collis, “Granny, I didn't know you lived on a farm.”

My very best wishes, Mark Schofield (1973-77)

Dear Jeremy,

Michael Manning – a Pauline Life Cut Short

A recent virtual tour of the new buildings prompted me to enquire about the library, which the parents of Michael Manning (1962-66) founded in his memory. Michael was a brilliant student in the History Eighth and an enthusiastic cox in the Boat Club and scrum half on the rugby field and had many other interests. He left St Paul’s in December 1966 prior to taking up his award of a History Scholarship at Magdalen College Oxford the following October, but on 25 June 1967, aged 18, he was tragically drowned in the Thames at Goring whilst participating as a cox for the London Rowing Club in the Henley Regatta. Neither the School nor Magdalen nor the LRC have any record of a memorial library, or indeed any record now of Michael himself apart from the attached 4th XV photograph taken in 1965. He seems set to be forgotten forever but deserves to be remembered.

As was written in some tributes at the time, “Michael’s scholarship was exceptional even by Pauline standards, but it was his distinctive personality which will be remembered by those fortunate to have known him. The variety and explosiveness of his non-academic interests made him a delightful and engaging person to talk to. Few people have ever tried to excel in so many fields and managed to make their mark.”

If any alumni have information about the memorial library or recollections of Michael himself I would be pleased to know. He was the only son of the family and it has not been possible to trace any relatives. There is probably little more that can be done to commemorate him but in the absence of anything else perhaps this can serve as a brief obituary, memorial and epitaph for this Pauline born 71 years ago who would undoubtedly have risen to fame and fortune, and to golden years, had Isis not claimed him for her own.

“So wise so young, they say, do never live long”.

With best wishes, Rupert Birtles (1963-66)

 Michael Ian Manning: 1965 4th XV Rugby Team

05

PAULINE LETTER

Patrick Neate (1984-89) writes from Zimbabwe Before our daughter was born in 2010, my Zimbabwean partner declared her intention to move home. She had never much liked London, loathing the weather, cult of the sandwich, and embedded sarcasm. “Brilliant” I said.

I didn’t take her announcement too seriously. I considered it a manifesto promise, a half-baked idea that could later be kicked into the long grass; like, say, a referendum on UK membership of the EU. It was a surprise, therefore, when I found myself house hunting in Harare within six months. I have come and gone ever since, living the fabled jet set lifestyle of the moderately successful novelist. Initially, I was mostly coming, latterly mostly going. For the last year, I have been gone, thanks to the coronavirus.

You may have heard of Zimbabwe. Greatest hits include Robert Mugabe, land reform (retitled “the land grab” in some territories), a three-decade HIV epidemic, deep-seated institutional corruption, hyperinflation, and “the coup that wasn’t a coup” (but was definitely a coup); to say nothing of two England cricket coaches, Makosi from Big Brother Six, and Waitrose mangetout (check the label).

I won’t comment in detail on the thornier issues above; partly because I imagine the powers that be are avid readers of Atrium and prone to touchiness, and partly because everything you already think you know about Zimbabwe is probably both completely true and utterly wrong at the same time. It is a “both/and” kind of place – the more contradictory the better.

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Land reform, for example, is both an overdue attempt to rectify the structural inequities of a racist, colonial history, and a free-for-all for greedy kleptocrats. Likewise, Robert Mugabe was both an erudite, progressive, hero of African liberation, and a tin pot dictator who would sacrifice almost anything (and anyone) to retain power. Perhaps more pertinently (and contrary to the prevailing, western narrative), he was always both those things. He was both when knighted by HM the Queen in 1994 and remained so when stripped of that knighthood after refusing to accept election defeat in 2008. Mugabe didn’t change, we did.

The place that Zimbabwe occupies in the western imagination has always fascinated me; likewise the place that the west occupies vice-versa.

Although never quite achieving membership of George W. Bush’s “axis of evil”, Zimbabwe did make it onto the second tier “outposts of tyranny” in 2005, alongside North Korea. Heady stuff. Believe it or not, American diplomats are granted extra leave for the hardship of their posting.

I have laughed about this while drinking gin and tonics prepared by local staff in the lush gardens of said diplomats’ opulent mansions.

When I return to the UK and tell people I have a house in Zimbabwe, they look at me like I must be quite mad: “It sounds so awful.” Sometimes, I wonder what they’re picturing. Sometimes, unforgivably, I indulge their imaginations with stories of awfulness, which make my life

“ You may have heard of Zimbabwe.

Greatest hits include Robert Mugabe, land reform (retitled “the land grab” in some territories), a three-decade HIV epidemic, deep-seated institutional corruption, hyperinflation”

sound edgy and interesting. Zimbabwe can of course be awful but tends to be much less awful, less often, for a relatively wealthy white man. Who’d have thought?

The Zimbabwean view of the west is little less puzzling; particularly the idea that we are profoundly interested in Zimbabwean affairs. Fuelled no doubt by a state media that bangs on about ongoing sanctions (only targeted at the elite) and neo-colonial ambition (indisputably a problem but one that’s largely Chinese these days), this belief is as entrenched as it is misplaced. Zimbabweans often think that their economy was first broken by the IMF’s brutal Structural Adjustment Programme in the 1990s and they are broadly (but not completely) right.

However, I believe they are broadly (but not completely) wrong to consider this some fiendish plot to undermine national sovereignty. In fact, it speaks not to care and planning but the very opposite.

A friend has suggested that the UK regards Zimbabwe as its “prodigal son”. But, to me, Zimbabwe is more like a girl we once snogged who subsequently made questionable life choices and has lately taken to contacting us on Facebook.

Sure, we reply sporadically from a mixture of guilt, nostalgia and schadenfreude, but we’re mostly preoccupied with the conflagrating consequences of our own mistakes.

And at this moment more than ever. After all, if the UK doesn’t have bigger fish to fry right now, it certainly has a surplus of smaller fish – herring, mackerel and the like …

I have noticed attitudes towards the west begin to change over the last few years. And, what began with shock at Brexit, Trump and such, has only accelerated with the galloping pandemic.

Here, the government has responded to the challenges much as elsewhere. Like the rest of the world, we have

been in some form of lockdown for a year. But, in this environment, the balance of risk and reward is an even knottier conundrum. If you resent being furloughed in a two bedroom flat in Hammersmith, try being locked down, six to a room, with no running water or state support (honestly, I have no intention of trying either). This, in a place where there is no public health service worth speaking of to protect. This, in a nation with less than 2,000 (official) Coronavirus deaths, which 20 years ago was losing that number to HIV/AIDS every week. The rules are arbitrary and incomprehensible – you can fly 700km to stay in a five star hotel in Victoria Falls but not drive seven to visit your parents. One might even suspect an unconscionable opportunism as those at the top break their own regulations and grant PPE contracts to their cronies. Imagine.

And yet, somehow (and always touching wood), Zimbabwe has thus far managed to avoid the worst ravages of the pandemic and watches the UK in horror.

Under-reporting? No doubt. Demographics? Probably.

After all, life expectancy here is just 61 – most people are dead before the virus could kill them. And the weather’s nice and people spend a lot of time outdoors and aren’t generally obese. But perhaps Zimbabweans have also achieved a certain spiritual immunity, built up over years burying their dead beneath a tyranny of self-serving, mendacious, incompetent crooks; both local and international. Pity those poor Brits with their quaint, outdated faith in accountable government and the rule of law …

Lately, when I told someone I hoped to return to the UK as soon as possible, he looked at me like I was quite mad.

“It sounds so awful,” he said. Perhaps I’ll stay put for a bit.

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Briefings Pauline Trainspotting From London Review of Books Vol. 43 No. 1 · 7 January 2021 The Railway Hobby by Ian Jack

On a wet and windy Saturday in October 2020 a few regulars of the Ian Allan (1935-39) Book and Model Shop gathered inside the premises for the last time. The shop – on Lower Marsh, behind Waterloo Station – would soon be a memory, like many things to do with the railway hobby. Stocked with books as well as models, Lower Marsh offered both forms of railway worship – textual and idolatrous – and in the most fitting location, within the squeal and scrape of the trains arriving and departing at Waterloo. It was at that station in 1942 that Ian Allan, then a young clerk in the offices of the Southern Railway, invented – or, more accurately, enabled – the hobby that became known as trainspotting. It made him a fortune, and popularised an affectionate interest in railways matched by no other country.

Allan was sent to St Paul’s in London, where as a 15-year-old recruit to the Officers’ Training Corps he lost a leg in a camping accident. His subsequent failure to pass the School Certificate exams ended his hopes of taking up a traffic apprenticeship with the Southern Railway, the first step on the road to higher management, so he became a clerk in the publicity department instead.

By 1955, the Ian Allan Locospotters’ Club had 230,000 members, and Allan was publishing lists of almost every mechanical moving object (I’m not sure about tractors) that could be seen on land, sea and air, devoting ABC booklets to British Liners, British Tugs, British Warships, British Airliners, British Buses and Trolleybuses, sometimes narrowing the field to sub-groups such as London Transport, Clyde Pleasure Steamers and the Battleships of World War One. There were specialist magazines – Trains Illustrated was one – as well as more ambitious books that had narratives rather than lists. Ian Allan died in 2015, a day before his 93rd birthday.  08

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Allan was sent to St Paul’s in London, where as a 15-year-old recruit to the Officers’ Training Corps he lost a leg in a camping accident.

Pauline Pair

Peter Judge (1930-33) was one of the best bowlers to have played for St Paul’s taking 84 wickets in the 1933 season.

He also headed the school batting averages that year. He was good enough to play for Middlesex and Glamorgan over 14 years but he was no batsman, at least at first class level.

He holds the record for the fastest pair (two noughts – a pair of spectacles) in cricket history. Coming in at a Number 11 against the touring Indians at Cardiff Arms Park in 1946 he was out first ball to complete Glamorgan’s first innings. The Indians enforced the follow on and, with little time remaining in the game, Judge stayed in the middle to open with his captain Johnny Clay. The usual ten-minute break between innings was even ignored and then Judge was instantly out first ball again. 

Pauline Pews Luke Hughes (1969-74) describes the furniture in the new School Chapel Architecture, apart from that of monuments, has little function until there is a table to sit at or a chair to sit on. An unfurnished interior is just an empty space. Furniture articulates and, with luck, embellishes that space; it gives it meaning and enables it to be capable of being inhabited. Conversely, inappropriate furniture can dramatically diminish a building, not only aesthetically, but also for those that use or manage it.

Individual pieces also convey stories – about people, places, buildings, events. As well as being symbolic, they are the tactile elements of a building that directly connect across time and space to other hands, other bodies. St Paul’s has, with its numerous previous buildings, rather lost many of those connections.

p The Mercers’ motto, ‘Honor Deo’ is carved across the front of the altar. Photos from Kate East.

The new chapel is part of a multipurpose area for large assemblies presenting an adjoining dedicated sanctuary area, capable of being re-arranged for different types of ecumenical worship (collegiate or eucharistic, with or without choir).

The furniture designs are intended to be understated while still speaking of their purpose – namely to support appropriate liturgy and to offer some dignity to ritual. In the brief given to me by the Chaplain, Rev Matthew Knox, ‘the furniture should be a focal point, enabling both the drawing in and the raising upwards’. Quite so. A table for breaking bread in a chapel is not what you expect to find in a library or a dining hall, so there is a deliberate nod to the symbolism of a numinous space, using generous sections and shadows articulated by deep chamfers to bring out the character of the wood in a sculptural way.

The furniture, in European oak, comprises an altar or Holy table,

lectern, credence table, and a set of stacking pews picked out with enamelled crests of the school arms.

The altar carries on its front panel the three rings of the Trinity, from Colet’s family and the school crests but these are more closely entwined, as is common in Trinitarian interpretation.

The school motto, ‘fide et literis’ is carved on the lectern; the Mercers’ motto, ‘Honor Deo’ is carved across the front of the altar and the words ‘non ministrari, sed ministrare’ (not to be served but to serve), from Matthew 20:28, are carved on the credence table.

It also includes two handsome ‘presiding’ chairs from the rebuilding of the school in the City during the 1820s, two remarkable hundred year-old survivals from the third era of school buildings. It is surprising how little tactile fabric still remains of the school’s heritage over half a millennium (by comparison, say, to Eton, Westminster or Harrow) but these chairs tell their own story and it feels wholly appropriate they have found a new purpose and relevance. 

We are grateful to Alan Rind (1954-59) for his generous donation which funded the furnishing of the chapel.

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BRIEFINGS

Pauline Shutdown Chris Kraushar (1953-58) alerted Atrium to a term (or part of it) in the early 1950s when Colet Court was closed. He wrote, ‘the difficulties caused by school closures have reminded me of my time at Colet Court. One boy, Charles Foxworthy-Windsor (1953-55) had contracted polio, so the school was closed.

There were of course no computers or mobile devices, no email or other methods of communication that we take for granted today. Throughout the term the teachers posted out lessons and homework to each pupil.

The homework was posted back, marked and returned by post. There was simply no thought that education should suffer as a result of the closure, and it did not. Of course there were no school sports, and other social contact was discouraged for a time in case the infection had spread more widely.

Otherwise life went on as normal.

Adults were not considered to be at risk so went about their usual business, and the world at large was unaffected.’

Mike Drinkwater (1954-58) remembers that ‘Foxy’ had the bed next to him when boarding at Colet Court and he recalls them both being ill – Mike merely with flu but ‘Foxy’ with polio.

There was some disruption in the Summer term with the Swimming Sports Day cancelled, although Francis Neate (1953-58) remembers a full cricket season including a match against St Paul’s Girls’ School with his sister playing for the opposition.

It seems the Colet Court ‘closure’

In August we heard of the shocking disaster over Bulgaria, when a plane flying to Israel was shot down

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Pauline Prologue was during the autumn of 1952 – with the ‘Coletine’ magazine of spring 1953 having no record of rugby being played in the Autumn term and yet the Spring term football and boxing matches are given full coverage.

‘Foxy’ was a boarder in High House at St Paul’s. His terrible misfortune continued as he was killed in an air crash in 1955 with Alec Harbord (Master 1928-67) writing in The Pauline in 1955, ‘In August we heard of the shocking disaster over Bulgaria, when a plane flying to Israel was shot down. (Editor: Tim Cunis (1955-60) advises me that speculation at the time was that it was by the Russians fearing the plane was spying). Charles Foxworthy-Windsor was on board; he was flying out to spend some weeks in the sun, which it was hoped, would strengthen the muscles still impaired by the polio, which he contracted while at Colet Court. He was a cheerful and sociable member of the House and his death at the age of 15 is tragic’. 

 1955 plane crash over Bulgaria.

With thanks to Robin Wootton (1950-55) To Jack Strawson, (Chemistry Master 1947-75) and scoutmaster in charge of Troop 3 – in the manner of Chaucer’s Prologue.

And eke a Scoutere, worthy man, was there, That had atop a croppe of redde hair.

A hat of brown, that had a wyde brim That was to keep the wette rain off him.

A whistle had he to control his boyes With which he oftentimes made muchel noise And he was known to all the companie As he yclept was by his scouts – Jackie.

Pauline Protestor

Pauline Gallantry John Dunkin (1964-69) has alerted Atrium to the gallantry of Tony Jones (1936-41).

The Battle of Arnhem in 1944 involved a number of Paulines. Among its commanders were Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery (1902-06) and Major General ‘Roy’ Urquhart (1914-19). Another was a sapper Lieutenant attached to the Guards Armoured Division, later Major General Anthony George Clifford ‘Tony’ Jones of the Royal Engineers. He was awarded an MC for preventing the demolition of the vital Nijmegen Bridge.

p Meenal Viz at Downing Street.

Nishant Joshi (2001-06) graduated in medicine in 2014. He works as a doctor, and early in the pandemic he and his wife, Meenal (also a doctor) launched a successful legal challenge to safeguard healthcare workers.

In his Daily Telegraph obituary in 1999 his Corps Commander, Lieutenant General Sir Brian Horrocks is quoted as writing: ‘Perhaps the bravest of all these brave men was Lieutenant Jones, a young sapper officer who ran on foot behind the leading tanks, cutting the wires and removing the demolition charges’.

The obituary also mentions that in his younger days he was a vigorous front row forward for the Old Paulines, the Army, and Combined Services and for Middlesex, winners of the County Championship in 1951. 

The BBC reported, “a couple working on the NHS front line say their legal action has led to major changes in how staff are advised to use personal protective equipment (PPE).

Doctors Nishant Joshi and Meenal Viz were concerned over the use of PPE as the coronavirus pandemic took hold. Their ‘landmark case’ sparked changes, such as doctors no longer being asked to reuse masks. Both parties brought the judicial review to a close before it reached court, with Dr Joshi and Dr Viz saying both sides were satisfied appropriate changes had been made.

The couple’s campaign was motivated by the death of pregnant nurse Mary Agyapong, who contracted COVID-19 and died at the Luton and Dunstable Hospital on 12 April.

Dr Viz, who at the time was expecting the couple's first child, protested outside Downing Street during the first national lockdown.

The couple said, “Once a detailed enquiry is completed it is likely that the PPE ‘omnishambles’ will be remembered as a national scandal.” 

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BRIEFINGS

Pauline Awards

Pauline Poetry Kintsugi: Jazz Poems for Musicians Alive and Dead

Sir Mene Pangalos

Kintsugi is the debut poetry collection from writer and musician Ammar Kalia (2007-12). A multi-sensory project, Kintsugi is 13 poems written for, about and in dialogue with jazz musicians both past and very much present, accompanied by an album of original drum compositions interwoven with Ammar’s own reading of his work.

“Instrumental music has always spoken to me,” Ammar says. “This project was borne from a decade of listening to and playing jazz music, and the more I began to write professionally, the more these words started bubbling up through me, speaking via the collective weight of all that beautiful, improvisatory work to make their own poetic statements.”

The result is a clutch of poems that sit in dialogue and in tension with each other, just as instrumentalists fluctuate between harmony and frictive movement in a musical setting. From the angular assertions of “Aromanticism”, a poem for Moses Sumney, to the forlorn aggression of “Someday my prince

will come”, for Miles Davis, and the biographical meandering of “Sphere”, for Thelonious Monk, the verses give a visual and visceral afterlife to these musicians’ work – one seen through the lens of Ammar’s own experiences.

Recorded at his family home in Hounslow, where Ammar first learned to play the drums at the age of 6, producer and engineer Matteo Galesi set up a portable studio, collaborating with Ammar over the course of a day to document 45 minutes of rhythmic language and texture on which to set his words.

You can find more information at: ammarkalia.bandcamp.com 

Sir Mene Pangalos (1980-85) has been awarded a knighthood for his services to UK science.

Mene is responsible for BioPharmaceutical R&D at AstraZeneca from discovery through to late-stage development covering Cardiovascular, Renal, Metabolism, Respiratory, Inflammation, Autoimmune, Microbial Science and Neuroscience areas.

He has led the partnership with Oxford University in developing the COVID-19 vaccine.

Since joining AstraZeneca in 2010, Mene has led the transformation of R&D productivity through the development and implementation of the “5R” framework resulting in a greater than four-fold increase in success rates compared to industry averages. In parallel, he has championed an open approach to working with academic and other external partners, changing the nature of academic-industry collaboration.

Mene holds honorary doctorates from Glasgow University and Imperial College, London, is a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal Society of Biology and Clare Hall, University of Cambridge.

He has sat on the Council of the MRC, co-chairs the UK Life Sciences Council Expert Group on Innovation, Clinical Research and Data and is a member of the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy Implementation Board. He is also on the Boards of The Francis

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Crick Institute, The Judge Business School, Cambridge University and Dizal Pharma. Mene was awarded the 2019 Prix Galien Medal, Greece for his scientific research and named Executive of the Year at the 2019 Scrip Awards. 

Sir Terence Etherton (1965-68) will sit as a cross-bencher in the House of Lords as the Lord Etherton of Marylebone.

Commenting on the announcement of the peerage, the current Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett of Maldon, said: 'Sir Terence has made an outstanding contribution to the nation as a judge, developing the law in critical areas and bringing about lasting improvements to the administration of justice. This will provide Sir Terence with the opportunity to continue to provide service to the public though his contribution to the House of Lords as he retires from the judiciary.' 

Sir Terence Etherton

Dean Godson (1975-79) has been made a life peer and will sit as the Lord Godson of Thorney Island.

He has been Director of Policy Exchange since 2013 where he has worked since 2005. He has also been the Leader Writer for The Daily Telegraph and Deputy Editor of The Spectator when Boris Johnson was Editor.

Broadcaster Iain Dale described Policy Exchange as “the pre-eminent think tank in the Westminster village”, noting that, “Dean Godson, who has

been the Director of Policy Exchange since 2013, has skilfully led Policy Exchange through three different Conservative administrations in a way that other think tanks can only marvel at. The softly-spoken Godson is often thought of as an ideological right winger, yet his pragmatism has enabled Policy Exchange to reach new heights of influence, with dozens of its alumni now sitting on the Conservative benches in Parliament.”  Dean Godson

John Clark (1959-63) has received The Cross of St Augustine for Services to the Anglican Communion for an outstanding and selfless contribution to the life and witness of churches of the Anglican Communion, especially in the Middle East and specifically Iran, over 50 years.

John’s citation included, “for over 50 years John Clark has supported the mission and ministry of Anglican churches in the Middle East – in the region as a missionary (1970s), as a desk officer (1979-87) and then Communications Director (1987-92) for the Church Missionary Society, as the Partnership for World Mission Secretary (1992-2000) and through decades of volunteering his time and talents as a trustee on the Board of several charities. He served on successive Anglican Communion Commissions for Mission (1989-2005), never seeking the limelight but skilfully navigating tensions to deliver the final report (often having drafted much of it). He was the Archbishops’ Council’s first Director for Mission and Public Affairs. In chairing the Friends of the

Diocese of Iran and the Diocese of Iran Trust Fund (both since 1994) and the Jerusalem & East Mission Trust (since 2008) as well on JMECA (since 1980) he has consistently demonstrated the tireless, level-headed, solutionorientated approach that has long characterised his outstanding contribution. John’s commitment to and support for Middle East Christians goes well beyond the Anglican Communion, making him an exceptional, if unofficial, ambassador for the positive contribution the Communion makes to the life of the Church.” 

p The Cross of St Augustine was founded by Archbishop Michael Ramsey and first awarded in February 1965. It is a circular medallion bearing a replica of the 9th century Cross of Canterbury, infilled with blue enamel.

Other awards: Alan Rind (1954-59) has received a CVO for his work as a trustee of the College of St George.

Jonty Claypole (1989-95) has been awarded a MBE for services to the Creation of Culture in Quarantine Virtual Festival of Arts during COVID-19.

Alan Maryon-Davis (1956-62) has been awarded an MBE for services to Public Health. 

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BRIEFINGS

Pauline Books

Jonty Claypole (1989-94) Words Fail Us – In Defence Of Disfluency

Mark Bailey (High Master 2011-20) After the Black Death

Jonty Claypole (1989-94) was bullied at school because of his stutter and spent fifteen years of his life in and out of extreme speech therapy. From sessions with child psychologists to lengthy stuttering boot camps and exposure therapies, he tried everything until finally being told the words he had always feared: 'We can't cure your stutter.' Those words started him on a journey towards not only making peace with his stammer but also learning to use it to his advantage.

He is now Head of Arts at the BBC. In Words Fail Us Jonty argues that our obsession with fluency could be hindering, rather than helping, our creativity, authenticity and persuasiveness. Exploring other speech conditions, such as aphasia and Tourette's, and telling the stories of the ‘creatively disfluent’ – from Lewis Carroll to Kendrick Lamar – he explains why it is time to stop making sense, get tongue tied and embrace the life-changing power of inarticulacy.

The Black Death of 1348-9 is the most catastrophic event and worst pandemic in recorded history. Mark Bailey’s (High Master 2011-20) After the Black Death offers a major reinterpretation of its immediate impact and longerterm consequences in England.

After the Black Death studies how the government reacted to the crisis, and how communities adapted in its wake. It places the pandemic within the wider context of extreme weather and epidemiological events, the institutional framework of markets and serfdom, and the role of law in reducing risks and conditioning behaviour, drawing upon recent research into climate and disease and manorial and government sources.

The government’s response to the Black Death is reconsidered in order to cast new light on the Little Divergence (whereby economic performance in north western Europe began to move decisively ahead of the rest of the continent) and the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381.

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By 1400, the effect of plague had worked through the economy and society, having wide-ranging implications. After the Black Death rescues the end of the fourteenth century from a little-understood paradox between plague and revolt, and elevates it to a critical period of profound and irreversible change in English and global history.

Rohan McWilliam (1973-78) London’s West End, 1800-1914

Simon Carne (1969-73) I Learned to Write…and to Love Public Speaking

Luke Hughes (1969-74) Furniture In Architecture – The Work Of Luke Hughes

London’s West End, 1800-1914 is the first ever history of the area which has enthralled millions. The area from the Strand to Oxford Street came to stand for sensation and vulgarity but also the promotion of high culture.

The West End produced shows and fashions whose impact rippled outwards around the globe. During the nineteenth century, an area that serviced the needs of the aristocracy was opened up to a wider public whilst retaining the imprint of luxury and prestige. Rohan McWilliam (1973-78) explores the emergence of restaurants, grand hotels, concert halls, department stores, sites of curiosity and the sex industry. It is the first of a two-volume work. The second will cover the period from 1914 to COVID shutting down the West End for the first time in its history.

Simon Carne (1969-73) has published a web-book (free to access) called I Learned to Write … and to Love Public Speaking. It is a story about learning to write. Not as a 5-year-old, forming letters and words but as a twenty-fiveyear old business consultant, a thirtyfive year-old writing in the Financial Times and a fifty-five-year old teaching in business school.

Simon explains: “I had a lot of fun creating the website and I’ve done my level best to ensure that readers can have at least as much fun reading it.

The website is punctuated with links to many articles, news items and videos (not of me!) containing thoughts that reinforce the narrative. Videos on the site include content from Jerry Seinfeld, Greta Thunberg, Rachel from Friends, Tony Blair and a dance coach who prised his way onto the site through sheer force of personality.”

The site is not just for entertainment: it is also a helpful practical tool for people who want advice on writing or on public speaking.

Through an introduction to the studio and 25 case studies, Aidan Walker explores the Arts and Crafts tradition and examines the philosophy and work of Luke Hughes (1969-74).

The book sheds light on how to balance modern manufacturing technologies with abiding craft values, rendering the small furniture workshop a relevant and profitable proposition even when fulfilling large-scale commissions. This fascinating survey defines the elements of successful design and addresses the meaning of craft and craftsmanship in the digital age.

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BRIEFINGS

John Shneerson (1959-65) MCC: More than a Cricket Club. Real Tennis and other sports at Lord’s John Shneerson (1959-65) studied medicine and was a consultant respiratory physician at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge from 1980, later specialising in sleep medicine as well.

John has continued to play sport ever since leaving school and has written two books on real tennis.

His new book looks at how and why MCC, the world’s most famous cricket club, came to play and excel at so many other sports. Lawn tennis, lacrosse, hockey, and baseball are all “lost” sports at Lord’s but real tennis and squash are flourishing. Their story connects closely with cricket at Lord`s but the equilibrium between them and cricket constantly changes.

This account probes into the past, weighs up the present, and peers into the future.

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Christopher Gray (1979-83) Notes on the Piano Christopher Gray (1979-83) is a music teacher and has taught the piano in the Kew, Richmond area for the last twenty-seven years.

His book Notes on the Piano by Christopher Russell (his stage and pen name) has just been published in paperback as well as in e-book form on Amazon. Writing in Piano Professional, Murray McLachlan, head of keyboard at Chetham’s School of Music, described Christopher’s book as touching “on vital issues that are of constant relevance to all piano students, teachers and players”.

Richard Hamilton (1978-1983) Tangier – From the Romans to the Rolling Stones Richard Hamilton (1978-1983) is a broadcast journalist for the BBC World Service and an author. His first degree was in Greek and Philosophy at Bristol University.

He qualified as a commercial solicitor but had an early mid-life crisis and retrained as a journalist. He has a post-graduate degree in journalism from the London College of Printing and a Masters degree in African Studies from SOAS. He has worked for the BBC since 1995 and was their correspondent in Madagascar, Cape Town and Morocco. In 2011 his first book “The Last Storytellers: Tales from the Heart of Morocco” was published.

“Tangier: From the Romans to the Rolling Stones” is a quirky portrait of this Moroccan city as seen through the eyes of writers, musicians and artists including Samuel Pepys OP, Henri Matisse, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and the founder of the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones. Richard lives in Acton with his wife Caroline and their two children, plays golf for the Old Pauline golf society and is wondering what to write next.

John Matlin (1956-61) Smoking Gun

Bruce Howitt (1952-56) Terror Redux

The story of newspaperman, David Driscoll who was introduced in “Truth to Power” by John Matlin (1956-61) continues. In the late 1940s, Driscoll is tempted by an offer to save The Durham Monitor, a newspaper heading for bankruptcy. Vanity drives him to leave an important job in Washington DC and head to North Carolina. There he finds he has been lied to by the banker who tempted him with the challenge. He meets the great and good of the state, in particular tobacco baron, Jeremiah Burns. As Driscoll peels away an onion of power and corruption, he places himself and his family in danger but he is determined to bring the guilty to justice.

Bruce Howitt’s (1952-56) first novel The End of Terror was published in November 2019. His second novel Terror Redux is out. After school, Bruce emigrated to Canada attending McGill University. Following a successful business career, he semiretired in 2015 to focus on his writing and his family.

Terror Redux is the account of how Israel has destroyed the Middle Eastern arm of Hezbollah. It has regrouped in South America and allied with the drug cartels. Ari Lazarus in the course of his secret agency’s hunt for Hezbollah leaders uncovers a terrifying plot to bring carnage to the United States. Rogue elements in the Chinese Politburo enlist the aid of Hezbollah to carry out massive terror attacks in the heart of six US cities. Ari Lazarus and Israeli Special Forces join together with US Special Forces and SEAL Team 6 and thwart the Chinese plot. Their mission is to end the Hezbollah and cartel reign of terror.

Bernard O’Keeffe (Master 1994-2017) Terror Redux Bernard O’Keeffe worked in advertising before becoming a teacher. He taught at St Paul’s (Master 1994-2017). He has published two novels – No Regrets (2013) and 10 Things To Do Before You Leave School (2019). The Final Round, the first in the DI Garibaldi series, is to be published

by Muswell Press in 2021.

On the morning after Boat Race Day, a man’s body is found in a nature reserve beside the Thames. He has been viciously stabbed, his tongue cut out, and an Oxford college scarf stuffed in his mouth. The body is identified as that of Nick Bellamy, last seen at the charity quiz organised by his Oxford contemporary, the popular newsreader Melissa Matthews. Enter DI Garibaldi, whose first task is to look into Bellamy’s contemporaries from Balfour College. In particular, the surprise ‘final round’ of questions at this year’s charity quiz in which guests were invited to guess whether allegations about Melissa Matthews and her Oxford friends are true. These allegations range from plagiarism and shoplifting to sextortion and murder.

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It did not break us Jon Blair (1967-69) Zooms in on ten Pauline Creatives

I

t was the history that did it for me. Aged just 16, I applied on my own initiative to St Paul’s. I was escaping the apartheid era military in South Africa who had already conscripted me. All I knew about the gothic red brick building on the Hammersmith Road, gleaned from my father during a brief holiday in London 3 years previously, was that this impressive edifice was St Paul’s Grammar School but it was only for clever boys, thereby apparently automatically, at least in my father’s eyes, disqualifying me. In spite of this I rang the School asking how I could apply, and after a hastily written letter delivered by hand that same day, I was summoned to an interview, first with the austere even terrifying Surmaster, Frank Commings (1931-36, Master 1946-54 and Surmaster 1964-76), and then the rather more genial Tom Howarth (High Master 1962-73). I was in.

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Yes, it was the history that most stirred me: the busts lining the corridors, the Victorian grandeur of Alfred Waterhouse’s edifice, the foundation by Henry’s VIII’s personal priest a century and a half before the first white settlers arrived in my homeland, and the long list of celebrated alumni. To an anglophile boy from the colonies determined to make his own way in a new adopted country it was irresistible.

In the years since, with my school days now long distant, I have often wondered how, given its not entirely undeserved reputation as an exam factory, St Paul’s has yet managed to contribute what seems like a disproportionate number of truly distinguished creative men to the arts, whether in the worlds of music, literature, theatre, film or elsewhere. After all, from my own experience at least, while culture in all its various forms was certainly valued and promoted as something in which to be interested, the dominant ethos was that success would first be evaluated by one’s exam results in academic subjects, then by gaining entry to a distinguished university to study something academic, and then ultimately, by one’s career, whether winning a Nobel Prize in physics or chemistry, making a major contribution in medicine, getting to be a Field Marshal, being appointed a senior member of the judiciary, becoming a cabinet minister or perhaps simply becoming CEO of a global conglomerate.

While distinguished Old Pauline musicians, actors or writers were to be recalled with genuine affection and even pride, you were rarely encouraged to think that you may join their number.

So, what did some of the still living OPs of different generations who have made something of a reputation for themselves in what can broadly be called “the arts” make of their days at St Paul’s, and the degree, if at all, that those few years contributed to their distinguished careers.

It would have been lovely to have done this in person round a dinner table, and then perhaps, as in the classic parlour game, moved on to imagine the answers of long and not so long gone Paulines: John Milton, Samuel Pepys, G K Chesterton, Jonathan Miller, Paul Nash, the Shaffer brothers, and many more.

“Given its not entirely undeserved reputation as an exam factory, St Paul’s has yet managed to contribute what seems like a disproportionate number of truly distinguished creative men to the arts”

“How incredible at age 14 or 15 to be given a fully equipped studio and a budget to direct a play”

Max Webster (1996-2001)

But in these days communication with the living is hard enough, let alone the dead, so I restricted myself to Zoom chats with ten very much alive assorted men who have received substantial recognition in their respective fields: two film and television directors, two musicians, two theatre directors, an actor, a biographer, an historian and a designer and builder of eccentric amusement machines. What, if anything, did they have in common with respect to their school days’ contribution to their careers; had they loathed or loved their time at the School; and, most important of all, had those adolescent years made a difference?

If I pull one consistent theme from all my chats it is the recognition of privilege that comes from having spent time at St Paul’s. Not that everyone saw that privilege in the same set of experiences.

For some it was the quality of the teaching, for others who felt under-valued academically it was the range of the guest speakers who visited, and for yet others, particularly those involved with performance in one form or another, it was the accessibility of high quality space and equipment the like of which almost no state school, and very few public schools, could boast. As actor Rory Kinnear (1991-96) told me, “Over the years there has been something of an arms race between independent schools vying with each other to provide better and better facilities, and St Paul’s seems to have led the way”. Or, as theatre and opera director Max Webster (1996-2001), said: “How incredible at age 14 or 15 to be given a fully equipped studio and a budget to direct a play. What more could an aspiring director want than money and resources?”

My interviewees spanned the generations from the 1950’s to the ‘Noughties’, but all implied, or in some cases more explicitly stated, that a career in the arts was never projected by the school as something to aspire to. That certainly was my own experience too in the late 1960’s, and unless things have changed in the last few years, it seems that St Paul’s, while encouraging creativity in the arts, whether it is fine art, music, drama or writing, retains the expectation that Paulines will go on to “a good »

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university” and then a more traditional career of one sort or another. Max Webster again: “Drama was seen as fine to do for GCSE, but best not for an A Level if you wanted to go to a good university”, and of course the notion that a Pauline would not want to go to a “good university” was unthinkable.

Someone who did do the unthinkable was my oldest interviewee, Benjamin Zander (1954-55), the charismatic conductor and founder of the Boston Philarmonia, whose 2008 TED talk has been viewed over fourteen and a half million times to date. His St Paul’s career is almost the exact opposite of my own, but nonetheless a testament to how an imaginative teacher can change one’s life. Whereas in my case it was Tom Howarth’s willingness to take me into the school in spite of my highly unconventional application, in Zander’s it was the willingness of Anthony Gilkes (High Master 195362) to let him go that set him on his hugely distinguished career.

the summer holidays to study under the celebrated Spanish cello maestro, Gaspar Cassado at the Academia Musica Chigiano. However, when that short sojourn was due to end in late August Cassado could see no good reason why the 15-year-old Zander should ever want to go back to a conventional school education in London. So, Benjamin’s father went to see the High Master who, after listening carefully, asked: “How many times in his life will Ben get such an offer?” to which the reply from Zander senior, quite rightly, was “probably never again.” To his eternal credit Gilkes told the prodigy’s father to “give him a year” and if it did not work out the School would welcome him back. Suffice to say Ben never attended full time schooling again.

Whereas Zander’s stay at St Paul’s was just a single year, hardly qualifying the school to even claim him as a distinguished alumnus, film and television director George Amponsah (1982-87), twin brother of Ben who was featured in the last

Benjamin Zander (1954-55)

Zander had transferred to St Paul’s from Uppingham because Jane Cowan, his renowned cello instructor had left and he needed to return to London to study again with his previous teacher. Then, at the end of his first year he went off to Siena for

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edition of Atrium in the article about Black Paulines, spent rather longer at Lonsdale Road, as the beneficiary of a local authority assisted place at Colet Court and then the senior school.

He never felt the racial issue raised its head for him then but his route to a

“His [Zander’s] St Paul’s career is almost the exact opposite of my own, but nonetheless a testament to how an imaginative teacher can change one’s life.”

career in the arts was, how shall we say, anything but conventional: “I had never thought about doing art but one day I was walking past the art block and I peered in through the window in the door and saw a naked lady. I said to myself ‘I can be in there too’ and signed up for art A Level immediately.” For George, who went on to do a foundation year and then a degree in fine art with a speciality in film at North East London Polytechnic, “it was a relief to get away from Barnes to Plaistow. I wanted to be among real people and when I was 18 and on the train to Plaistow I would look at all the businessmen in their suits and feel contempt for them.”

But for George it was, like many of the others I spoke to, who vividly made the case for the significance of a particular teacher who, by having faith in a pupil, could totally change their destiny. George believed he was about to be expelled for general rebellion and lack of application, but Ben Taylor (Master 1974-2006), recently appointed housemaster of School House where George and his brother boarded, “saved me. Unlike most of the teachers he had faith in me, and from that faith I got the chance to do art A Level, and now I direct films and television programmes.” George’s highly acclaimed BAFTA nominated feature documentary, Hard Stop, about the 2011 riots that came in the aftermath of the shooting by police of Mark Duggan in a London street, is now to be followed on the BBC by his documentary on the Mangrove trial, executive produced by Steve McQueen; a gig just about any documentary director worth their salt would have given their eye teeth to be offered.

The biographer Adam Sisman (1967-71) was another rebel who recalls thinking that the School was “an awful fascist institution.” He told me how he remembered wishing that he could have gone to Holland Park Comprehensive.

His main effort at reform in his school days however was, by his own admittance, “largely around uniform and hair length” though this did not stop Tom Howarth accusing him of being a paid agent of the Communist Party. Sisman now thinks that the School in general, and Howarth in particular, had a genuine fear,

George Amponsah (1982-87)

“But for George it was, like many of the others I spoke to, who vividly made the case for the significance of a particular teacher who, by having faith in a pupil, could totally change their destiny.”

this being the late 1960’s, that it was cultivating a new generation of Philbys, and that the revolution was just round the corner. This squares with my own recollection that unlike my South African schools where the staff and the institutional ethos was generally far more liberal than the state, while my peers were generally pretty conservative, the senior staff and leadership at St Paul’s was at least a decade behind the times in its responses to “swinging London” and the politics of the time. I even recall one teacher, a retired brigadier, actively supporting the idea of a military coup against Harold Wilson who was in his opinion, based on “top sources in MI5”, undoubtedly a Soviet placeman.

But for all its labelling him as a subversive, Sisman is unstinting in his praise of individual staff members. “The School opened horizons on new worlds for me with stimulating teaching and by introducing and then encouraging conversation and debate.” Head of English, Patrick Hutton (Master 1965-69), encouraged him to write and “sustained me with a stubborn belief in what I could achieve which I would never have had without him. I recall, for example, him picking out a phrase I had used in an essay and reading it out in class, and the pride this instilled in me. In history I wasn’t taught what to think but how to think for myself. The teacher pupil relations were what made St Paul’s special.” I have to say that this chimes exactly with my own experience and I was certainly never as well taught at one of the UK’s top universities as I was by the Eighth Form »

Adam Sisman (1967-71)

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IN CONVERSATION

English and History departments.

Much of what I have taken into my career in terms of how to look at history along with a love of the rhythm of English language dates back to what I picked up from them.

Max Webster, too, spoke of how he used his education every day.

Engineer, cartoonist and creator of the most wonderfully eccentric arcade machines, Tim Hunkin (1964-68), my exact contemporary, could not have had a more opposite view. I find it almost impossible to do justice to his creations, but suffice to say his Under the Pier Show on Southwold Pier in Suffolk has provided thousands of visitors and residents with hours of fun and laughter. If you cannot get there or to his London Novelty Automation arcade, visit his websites.

Some of you may also be familiar with The Secret Life of Machines, his 18 episode Channel Four series from the 1980’s and 1990’s, and the spinoff gallery at the Science Museum, The Secret Life of the Home, which is still one of the most popular installations in the museum.

In my view Tim is one of the greatest creative geniuses St Paul’s has ever produced.

That said, Tim Hunkin did not like his time at St Paul’s and when I asked him whether there was anything in his academic life there which gave him any sort of encouragement to follow his talent and his creative instincts, the answer was short and to the point: “No. Though the basic science I learnt there is still useful. I don’t have fond memories of St Paul’s. I remember it more as an obstacle to doing anything creative – and still think Saturday rugby was a form of abuse.” Like me Tim found that the School “felt very old fashioned and out of touch. I had no respect for the place. My friends and I took drugs and made bombs in our back gardens, though not at the same time.”

And what of any teachers who made an impact? “The thing I was most proud of was keeping under the radar.

I did like my friends there though,

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Tim Hunkin (1964-68)

particularly Hekmuth, who lived in a vast crumbling mansion in Putney where we used to hang out. My friends were always getting into trouble but I generally managed to avoid it and I often think it's the most useful life skill I learnt there.”

Reluctantly Hunkin does grant that there was one benefit he got from the school: “It was probably easier getting into Cambridge from their “exam factory” and then I did get a lot out of my time there.” So, what would the 70-year-old Hunkin say to his 18-year-old self? “Have the confidence to follow your nose.

Cambridge woke me up and its privileged environment gave me that confidence. Then the responsibility of being so privileged made me try to make the most of my life and contribute to society in some way.”

Confidence and privilege. Those two words cropped up almost every time in my chats. As Max Webster said: “How many school boys can say they had lunch with Jonathan Miller, Richard Attenborough, Harold Pinter and more? It didn’t lead to contacts or jobs but it gave a kind of confidence.” Playwright and director

Charlie Fink (1999-2004)

John Retallack (1963-68) has a unique perspective on this as the son of a long serving St Paul’s master who was also in charge of a boarding house. But he was another who says that St Paul’s was “educationally terrible” for him. It made him feel stupid, and to make matters worse, his father also criticised him for not succeeding academically. “At one time I wondered if I should run away and become a journalist. I really didn’t get on with my teachers and remember thinking that there is nothing drabber than being taught by a man who wore the same tie day after day.” Now, more than 50 years on, John admits that another part of him can set that aside and see the school like his mother and father saw it. “I remember seeing my father in a corridor in the old school with Rowe (Master 1957-81) and Allport (1937-42 and Master 1953-87), drinking cups of tea, smoking and laughing. There was a strong collegiate atmosphere amongst them and they were characters who would have voted Tory but moved more left. They felt they were part of a tradition that worked educationally and socially. They had time for the boys.

They were ‘masters’, not just teachers.”

For John though, it was only when he himself became a teacher and was given charge of school drama at Frensham Heights that he discovered both a love of learning and a love of theatre. “That’s when I began to come into my own.

I was placed in a maverick position at St Paul’s so I have lived a maverick life.

In spite of, or perhaps because of my father’s criticism for not succeeding at the school I am now so grateful to have done so much. I have done everything I could have wanted creatively.”

If John Retallack only came into his own once he had left the school, musician Charlie Fink (1999-2004) was already well set on his career by the time he departed Lonsdale Road. Charlie is better known perhaps as the lead singer of the indie rock and folk band, Noah and the Whale which rocketed to worldwide fame in the late 2000’s before they split in 2015 but more recently he has composed for theatre productions for the Old Vic, the Regents Park Open Air Theatre and elsewhere. “The music school was amazing,

John Retallack (1963-68)

“I was placed in a maverick position at St Paul’s so I have lived a maverick life.”

the facilities extraordinary. To have practice rooms with pianos where you could tuck yourself away at lunch time was such a privilege.” Fink was in a jazz band with George Davies (1998-2003) who was a year older than him and not only did they do lunch time concerts at the school but they graduated to paid gigs at the Kings Head in Putney in front of 250 people when he was just 15. “The thrill of public performance was fantastic.”

Charlie is one of several who sing the praises of the Head of English John Venning (Master 1989-2014). “He was amazing and the way we studied John Donne’s Death Be Not Proud’ has definitely influenced my own lyrics. But the school didn’t encourage either music or art as something to do with your life. I suppose, though, it gave me something to push against. That’s important, as it’s what gives you drive. I don’t think I ever felt I really fitted at St Paul’s and by 18 I was furious…I was being told ‘you can’t do this’ and I guess that motivated me more. Too much encouragement is death.”

Another who was “gagging to leave” towards the end of his time at School is film and television director Tim Fywell (1965-69). He is now more appreciative and even admits to “warm memories of »

Tim Fywell (1965-69)

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IN CONVERSATION

St Paul’s.” Interestingly, for him it was two teachers with quite opposing relationships to him that probably had the most profound influence on the direction he took. Tom Berry (Colet Court Master) was “a lovely, lovely man. He was quite old, walked with a limp, was really dishevelled with his trousers held up with a tie. A bit of a Dickensian character really and very volatile.” But he and Tim definitely had a rapport and Tom directed Fywell in numerous productions, including playing Alice in Alice in Wonderland – (don’t ask) – and the title parts in both the Scottish play and Scrooge. Berry gave Tim confidence as an actor and all he wanted to do then was act.

But Berry retired and the teacher who took over had no connection with the adolescent Fywell at all. They did a production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle and he lost all of his confidence.

The upside though was that it taught him the importance of the director in the process, and from then on he was determined to direct. Together with a visit to the school in 1966 by Jonathan Miller (1947-53) who showed scenes from his then recent production of The Death of Socrates with Leo McKern, the young Fywell believed he had found his destiny. To this day he remembers how Miller explained his approach to the play: “I just wanted to humanise Socrates,” he said.

By contrast Rory Kinnear believes he benefited from the increasing professionalism in the way drama

Rory Kinnear (1991-96)

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started to be regarded at the School.

Instead of random teachers who fancied themselves as directors staging a production, he was in the first year that drama was offered as an actual subject at GCSE with properly qualified drama teachers being hired, albeit with the requirement that they teach something else as well. For Kinnear though, “acting was already bubbling in me when I came to St Paul’s from my prep school, and so it was not so much a question of the furnace being lit, as the already burning fire being stoked. I found that I had both a passion and an instinct for acting in those years and I loved the showing-off aspect of it. The chance to do a play a term, to direct as well as act and the privilege” – that word again – “that came from the amazing facilities, and also all the extra curricular opportunities, compensated for the fact that I didn’t feel that smart when I realised shortly after my arrival that I wasn’t in the top group academically. In fact I was shocked after I left school to find that I was considered quite bright.”

I recall seeing Kinnear in a production of Cyrano at the School and it was obvious that he would one day shine on the professional stage.

He oozed charisma and he had that indefinable quality that even when he was stock-still and not speaking your eyes were drawn to him. He remembers the experience of doing Cyrano well and the kudos it gave him. “I even got respect from Neil Lamb (Master 1990-2012); a chemistry teacher!”

For Rory, apart from the teachers he recalls with affection – Joe Sutcliffe “who found us funny and obviously liked us, and took us on a trip to Joyce’s Dublin”; and John Venning, “my tutor and a man capable of great kindness and an invisible awareness of emotional need”, it is the friends that he made there and he still retains. “I have kept up with 6 of them to this day, and 4 of them I have known since I was 2 or 3 before I even started school.”

“To this day he remembers how Miller explained his approach to the play: “I just wanted to humanise Socrates,” he said.”

If Rory Kinnear’s school career was largely a happy straight-line trajectory to acting fame, by contrast and somewhat surprisingly, historian and television presenter Dan Snow (1992-97) sees his St Paul’s career as “a story of two halves”. Initially he felt he struggled both academically and socially. “I was tall, gangly and weird.

But then the last two and a half years or so were heaven. I gave up the subjects I was bad at and I grew into my body. I suddenly became confident. Looking back I don’t think I have ever been in a place where criticality was so encouraged and of course the school also gave me rowing which has been a very important part of my life.”

But as he remembers the young man who had excelled at rugby and rowing, was Captain of School and a senior scholar, who in his own words had “succeeded at everything”, Snow is somewhat critical of that 18 year old and the part the School played in creating him as he then was. “I was

an intolerable slave to the Bonapartist sense that you must live life to the full and end up being significant in history. The 18 year old looking at the 42 year old would be sad that he hasn’t carved out a significant career in politics. I spent far too much time reading dated historical and imperial histories and being made nostalgic for a world where people” – and by this I assume he means British public school boys – “could do extraordinary things. I recognise this as a trait that Boris Johnson and Jacob ReesMogg have never outgrown. For me I now realise that studying history is just as handy as being remembered by history.”

So there you have it. 10 men, 11 including myself, ranging in age from 80 something to 30 something, with the only thing apparently in common, that we all attended the same school for a few years in our adolescence.

Whether it made us or not, I cannot truthfully say, but one thing is certain, it did not break us. 

10 Unbroken Creative OPs George Amponsah (1982-1987) Multi award winning and BAFTA nominated film and television director Charlie Fink (1999-2004) Founding member and lead singer of indie rock and folk band, Noah and the Whale and theatre composer and lyricist Tim Fywell (1966-1969) Film and television director Tim Hunkin (1964–1968) Engineer, cartoonist, writer, artist and designer/builder of numerous humorous public engineering works Rory Kinnear (1991-1996) Olivier Award winning film, television and theatre actor John Retallack (1963-1968) Award winning playwright and director, founder of ATC Theatre and Artistic Associate at the Bristol Old Vic Adam Sisman (1967-1971) Biographer of A J P Taylor, Hugh Trevor-Roper and John Le Carré amongst others Dan Snow MBE (1992-1997) Historian and television presenter Max Webster (1996-2001) Award winning theatre and opera director, currently Associate Director of the Donmar Warehouse Benjamin Zander (1954-1955) Conductor, founder and music director of the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and inspirational leadership speaker.

With thanks to Paul Marotta for the photo of Benjamin Zander.

With thanks to Hope Kinnear for the photo of her father

Dan Snow (1992-97)

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PAULINE PROFILES

 Cold Night, 1963 Gouache on paper 16 x 26.5 inches © Martin Bradley, Photograph © England & Co

Martin Bradley (1946-7): An unconventional Pauline Michael Simmons (1946-1952) shares his experiences of a remarkable school friend.

Martin and I joined 3b in the London branch of Colet Court in September 1944. There was an unpleasant culture of bullying at the time and as the only new boys in the class we were very much thrown together as “new bugs.”

Martin was much older and worldly wise than the rest of us. Even then, it was obvious that he had a special talent as an artist He entertained us with his pen and ink strip cartoons complete with dialogue in speech bubbles.

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H

e used to come over in the school holidays to spend time with me in Wembley. He lived in nearby Greenford with his guardian. He was learning Mandarin Chinese and we became friendly with the sons of a Chinese diplomat whose home backed on to the same playing field as ours. We used to cook rice in the fields and do unmentionable things to butterflies. Mandarin was the common language and even I learned to speak and write a little.

We both moved up to five alpha in the senior school but it was obvious that Martin’s days were numbered. His complete lack of discipline did not fit the culture of St Paul’s at the time. In art classes with Mr Burn (Master 1946-72), he would be sitting at the back studying Chinese. In other

 Washing in the River, 1958. Oil on canvas 28 x 36 inches © Martin Bradley, Photograph © England & Co

lessons, he would be producing marvellous and sophisticated art. I remember how wretched he looked in his CCF uniform. It was no surprise that he did not turn up for the summer term in 1947. My route to school took me along Hammersmith Road past Rowton House, an inexpensive hostel for single men. I was accosted by Martin. He was dressed in a heavy-knit, blue seaman’s sweater. He told me that he had quarrelled with his guardian and run away to be a cabin boy at sea. He needed half a crown for the night’s stay at Rowton House, which I was able to give him. My first lesson of the day was with Pat Cotter (1917-23 and Master 1928-65). He started off: “You’ll never guess who I just saw in the street: Martin Bradley. I gave him half a crown for a night’s stay at Rowton House.” He then continued with the same story that Martin had told me.

Over the years, I did think occasionally about Martin and wondered what happened to him. I was idly leafing through the Sunday Times Colour Supplement when my eye was caught by some very colourful modern art in a style that I remembered from many years before. The English painter, Martin Bradley, now resident in Paris, was having an exhibition at the Gimpel Gallery in London. I duly went along but Martin was not there. I left my business card and a note for him. I thought no more about it.

A few years later, I was working in my office when I received a phone call out of the blue: “Michael, it’s Martin Bradley. I’m staying at Hazlitt’s Hotel in Soho. Come and have a drink.” I was wondering what to expect. In walked a white haired but robust looking Martin with his Japanese wife, Tatsuko. He was working in Paris but living in Bruges.

He was thinking of relocating to England and needed advice on Tatsuko’s immigration status. She spoke no English but we had Italian as a common language.

“You know, Martin, I often thought of you. I reckoned that by now you would be dead, in jail or famous.”

“Well, all three! When I was living in Soho in the 50s and 60s, I was known as the English Rimbaud and drinking two bottles of whisky a day. I was hanging out with Dylan Thomas, Brendan Behan, John Osborne and the other angry young men. I served in the Spanish Foreign Legion before I deserted they put me in prison and I suppose now I’m famous.”

Martin was being relatively modest. In France particularly he was known as a great artist. I learned later that he had held more than 130 solo exhibitions worldwide and that he had works in the permanent collections in the Tate and the Museum of Modern Art in New York as well as many others, not to mention some famous private collectors.

“By the way, I owe you this,” he said producing 25p from the pocket of his jeans. A few months later, I was in Belgium on business and I arranged to visit Martin in Bruges. He lived in a rather featureless suburb and I realised that I did not have a complete address. I did not need to worry as the taxi dropped me outside an ordinary bungalow but with a perfect Japanese garden, Tatsuko’s work. I was made very welcome and left with several characteristic works of his art. Both of us were far too busy to remain in contact and where is Martin now if indeed he is still alive? He would

“When I was living in Soho in the 50s and 60s, I was known as the English Rimbaud and drinking two bottles of whisky a day.

I was hanging out with Dylan Thomas, Brendan Behan, John Osborne and the other angry young men”

be 89. I made contact with the gallery that represents him in London. I was told that he has given up painting and retreated to a monastery in Japan. He converted many years ago to Buddhism and Japanese is one of at least 10 languages that he speaks fluently.

In his Wikipedia entry and elsewhere, Martin always refers to his time at St Paul’s. I think that he can be classified as a proud if extremely unconventional OP. 

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Paul Nash (1903-06) and Duncan Grant (1899-1902) David Roodyn (1967-1971) describes two of the most celebrated British painters of the twentieth century who attended St Paul’s over a seven-year period without being there contemporaneously.

 Paul Nash

P

aul Nash, the son of a barrister, came under the influence of another Pauline artist Eric Kennington (190004) whose work ‘The Kensingtons at Lavanie’ was featured in the OPC November eNewsletter. Nash fought on the Ypres Salient but was injured falling into a ditch.

After St Paul’s he enrolled at the Slade under the legendary Henry Tonks whose pupils included Ben Nicholson, Christopher Nevinson, Stanley Spencer, Graham Sutherland and Edward Wadhurst. The Royal Academy had been founded in 1768 with Joshua Reynolds its first President but the Slade was less formal and more innovative, for example they admitted women such as Bloomsberry Dora Carrington who enrolled aged seventeen.

Duncan Grant was the son of an impoverished army officer but not a war artist. He is chiefly known as an integral member of the Bloomsbury Set many of whom he painted. He lived at Charleston near Lewes the Sussex outpost of Vanessa Bell and

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formed a fecund creative relationship with her. Their relationship went from the studio to the bedroom as after a short affair they had a daughter Angelica who married Grant’s lover Bunny Garnett. Grant was a highly successful artist in the inter-war years whose public commissions included Borough Polytechnic, Lincoln Cathedral and RMS Queen Mary but his reputation then waned. It was revived after dealer Daniel Wildenstein’s retrospective in the 1960s and he remains a collectible artist.

Like many an artist it was war that was to define Paul Nash. However in the First World War any artist worked under severe restraints. They could not depict a dead British soldier.

Christopher Nevinson had “censored” plastered over his work when he tried to do so. Nash manoeuvred his way

 Landscape of a Dream, Paul Nash

round this by depicting felled trees.

This was most effective (and depressing) in ‘The Menin Road’ with its stasis of pools of water, felled trees, pallid colours and a confused group of soldiers at the centre. He became an official war artist in 1917.

After the war, Nash though always at heart a landscapist became more of a surrealist. He was fascinated by Freud’s theory of dreams best reflected in his ‘Landscape of a Dream’. He always suffered from asthma though he was a war artist in The Second World War too. His brother John who did not train at the Slade has recently become more and more fashionable.

It is a reflection of the promotional operation of the art world that the more of his work that becomes available, the greater the number of publication of articles swelling his reputation.

 Duncan Grant self-portrait

“Their relationship went from the studio to the bedroom as after a short affair they had a daughter Angelica who married Grant’s lover Bunny Garnett.”

Duncan Grant was a fully paid up member of the Bloomsbury Set of whom Dorothy Parker wrote, “they lived in squares, painted in circles, and loved in triangles”.

Duncan Grant did all three. By all accounts he was a kind man and good company. He had a good relationship with Clive Bell notwithstanding an affair with his wife. The Bloomsberries did not do divorce. Grant was a cousin of Lytton Strachey and a good friend of another Pauline Leonard Woolf (1894-99) the husband of Virginia who lived near to Charleston. He founded the Hogarth Press, which published T.S. Eliot and Freud.

Paradoxically and arguably the greatest legacy of Bloomsbury was not on the canvas but in the exhibition hall as at the Grafton Gallery Roger Fry and Clive Bell organised the two post impressionist exhibitions of 1910 and 1912. These attracted huge crowds. Victorian art had become introspective and the two exhibitions did much to attract contemporary French art to an enthusiastic art public though no critical acclaim as it was the termed “artquake”. Fry was a huge admirer of Cézanne and Vanessa an early buyer of Picasso.

War artistry is a valuable historical resource. In the very visual age in which we live mobile photos can and do capture the moment over 100 years ago you were reliant on painting to record. John Singer Sargent’s ‘Gassed’ shows a pitiable line of bandaged and blind soldiers moving forward to nowhere. Mark Girtler’s superficially irreverent ‘Carousel’ must surely have inspired Richard Attenborough director of Oh! What a Lovely War with much of it filmed on Brighton Pier. Art is as important as the poetry of Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen in the Great Debate of patriotism/King and Country versus the loss of a generation.

“I had a vision of Paul Nash and Eric Kennington (1900-04) in the St Paul’s art studio with an inspired art teacher and a furious Dr Walker (High Master 1876-1905) railing at the door demanding the two aesthetes translate Virgil in his classics class.”

Neither Paul Nash’s unfinished autobiography Outline nor Hilary Spurling’s definitive biography of Duncan Grant is especially illuminating on their time at St Paul’s. I had a vision of Paul Nash and Eric Kennington (1900-04) in the St Paul’s Art studio with an inspired art teacher and a furious Dr Walker (High Master 1876-1905) railing at the door demanding the two aesthetes translate Virgil in his classics class.

Instead the only reference was this: “Wandering up to the first floor I found it pleasurably flooded with the afternoon sun in which the modelling of the various busts and statues of the antique showed up well. In the middle of the corridor perched on a stool was a fair-sized swarthy boy drawing at an easel. I recognised in this phenomenon Eric Kennington who looked as no other man but like a bird on a perch knocking off likeness of the plaster cast and whistling tunelessly the while”.

Nash who struggled at maths went to a crammer to prepare for his naval exams that he failed. Despite a lack of drawing talent especially of the face, the Slade made him the considerable artist he became.

Duncan Grant arrived at St Paul’s aged 14 the beneficiary of a fee-paying scheme for army children. He won seven prizes for art but failed admission to the Royal Academy Schools and went instead to the Westminster School of Art. The reputation of Grant today is harder to evaluate. He suffered as many of the twentieth century British artists did for lack of classification and great popularity.

The great debate of twentieth century British art was between the figurative and the abstract. The President of the Academy Sir Alfred Munnings, the worse for wear after a dinner in 1946, castigated Picasso to which the Spanish genius retorted that British art was too pretty. Grant was probably in the figurative school. In my opinion his best work was his portraiture of the Bloomsberries. I am not qualified to judge which of Nash or Grant is the superior artist and such comparisons are not that productive but if offered a choice on which I would prefer on my wall I would take Grant’s sensual portrait of Vanessa Bell over ‘The Menin Road’ as I would find it more uplifting. 

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PLAYING IT “RIGHT”

Jazz and blues trombonist, bassist and band leader (Donald) Christopher Barber (1946-47) died as Atrium was going to print. He had finally retired in 2019 having led the Chris Barber Band through almost seven decades on the road.

His role in bringing Black American blues artists to the UK sparked a musical tsunami that led to the birth of British rock and pop.

I

was watching Jools one night last October. The former member of the successful pop band Squeeze, now beloved Rhythm and Blues Orchestra bandleader and well-known host of Hootenanny was interviewing the legendary rock icon Robert Plant, lead singer of Led Zeppelin. As is standard with Jools Holland’s format, he was asking Plant to name the most influential musicians in his life. One of his answers came as something of a shock – Chris Barber! How could a trombone-playing exponent of New Orleans 1920’s ‘traditional jazz’ possibly have influenced the life of a ‘rock god’?

For the answer we have to go back to a teenage boy’s interest in and love of old jazz and blues recordings from the 1920’s. Chris Barber was to take a very different path from the one he seemed destined to follow when joining St Paul’s in the autumn of 1946 to study pure mathematics under Chris Heath (Master 1927-56).

While a prep school boy at King Alfred School in Royston in Cambridgeshire, Chris would travel in to Cambridge each week for a violin lesson. He quickly realised that his bus fare allowance for the trip was the equivalent to the cost of a 78rpm jazz record. So, forsaking the bus for his bike, he was able to start acquiring records at the rate of one a week from Miller’s, a specialist record shop he enjoyed frequenting. Chris would persuade local lorry drivers to pull him along on his bike down the then uncongested roads to ease the effort of cycling the 14 miles there and back. In this way Chris started to acquire what would eventually become an extraordinary personal library of over 30,000 jazz and blues records that would come to influence the set lists of his future line-ups.

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Photographs courtesy of Kate Barber

Simon Bishop (1962-65) reflects on Chris Barber’s musical legacy

Chris grew up listening to the music broadcast by the BBC during the war. Music While You Work was a moraleboosting programme aimed at working people, especially in factories, but there was little or no ‘jazz’ content other than the very occasional record to which he was instinctively drawn. Chris started to follow his interest in earnest, listening to programmes produced for the American Forces Network that featured American jazz musicians. He was inspired by finding a discarded copy of the book Really the Blues by 1920’s Chicago jazz musician Mezz Mezzrow, which laid out the history of jazz and its roots – enough to make him want to track down recordings of the musicians that were mentioned. By the age of 15, Chris had already acquired almost seventy ‘78’s’.

Once he returned to London, Chris often frequented Dobell’s bookshop at 77 Charing Cross Road which was later to become a hub for jazz record collectors, a small collection of fans that he described as being akin to a secret society! He would eagerly buy up books on jazz such as Rhythm on Record by Hilton Schleman and Charles Delauney’s Hot Discography. Chris asked a neighbour who frequently travelled back and forth to New York to bring back Bluenote and Mercury label recordings.

But it would be a live concert given by the George Webb Dixielanders, organised by the Hot Club of London in 1946, that would leave such an impression on the young Barber that he would never be in doubt again about what it was he wanted to do. His early professional career as an actuary would merely prove to be a brief step in the wrong direction. Once his father had backed his interest in music and with the good fortune to be warmly welcomed into the

Guildhall School of Music as a trombonist and bass player, rather than as a violinist, for which there was a long list of applicants, his future was assured. Chris bought his first (second-hand) trombone in 1948, when he was 18.

For Chris, jazz and blues went hand in hand, “I don’t like to do one without the other. I couldn’t live with having a band and not having blues in it.” One of his earliest collaborators was fellow Pauline, guitarist Alexis Korner (1941-46). They had not known each other at School, as they were two years apart, but came together to form a band in 1949. Because of their joint interest in blues, they put together what must have been one of the earliest blues sets performed by British musicians, with a line-up that included two trumpets, piano, banjo and guitar. It is interesting to think of them both at St Paul’s in West Kensington at the same time – two of the most influential figures of British blues, R&B and rock, passing each other in the corridors completely oblivious to their entwined futures.

In Chris’s case, it was his particular love for American blues that led him to seek out seminal artists such as Muddy Waters, Big Bill Broonzy, Howlin’ Wolf, T-Bone Walker, Memphis Slim, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee with whom he played and befriended on his early tours to the States in the 1950’s. They were later encouraged to tour with him in the UK and Europe, sometimes at Chris’s band’s own expense when agents refused to cover costs for guest artists appearing in his concerts. It was exposure to these American ‘greats’ that would inspire early R&B and blues English bands such as the Rolling Stones, Eric Burdon and The Animals, Eric Clapton and The Yardbirds, Georgie Fame, Long John Baldry, Keith Emerson and many others.

Chris’s forays into skiffle, with Lonnie Donegan on banjo, formed the precursor to British Rock’n’Roll, with its roots bedded in the blues. In 1955, the record of Rock Island Line, featuring Chris on double bass, was an instant hit, selling hundreds of thousands of copies in the UK and the States. The American folk and blues singer/guitarist Leadbelly had originally made a recording of the song in 1937 after hearing it performed by an Arkansas convict gang. Chris’s version is probably one of the earliest examples of a British recording influenced entirely by Black American roots music. Later in 1956, Monty Sunshine’s liquid clarinet voicings in Petite Fleur took the recording by the Chris Barber Band to number 3 in the UK charts and number 5 in the US, winning a Gold Disc for its sales of over a million copies.

Chris went on to collaborate with countless other musicians. Ottilie Patterson, the gravelly-voiced blues singer from Northern Ireland who later married Chris, lent enormous appeal to the band especially during their early live TV performances on the BBC’s Six Five Special. Van Morrison, Paul McCartney, Dr John, Mark Knopfler, Rory Gallagher, Jools Holland all played with him. Chris was also a founding director of the Marquee Club on Wardour Street where he pooled his music business experience with the club’s owner and jazz promoter, Harold Pendleton. As well as establishing the Marquee, the pair initiated the National Jazz & Blues Festival in 1961, which eventually grew into the Reading Festival.

It would be amiss to not mention Chris’s other great passion – owning and driving stylish and fast cars. Lagondas and two LaSalle cars manufactured by Cadillac were amongst his prize possessions, as well as a Dodge Charger similar to Steve McQueen’s motor in the film Bullitt! In the late 1950’s he struck up close friendships with Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus Cars and racing driver Graham Hill, then later with George Harrison, a fellow enthusiast. He became an avid collector of the Lotus brand, owning a succession of Chapman’s sports cars including the Lotus Mark IX, the Elite and the Elan before finally acquiring a closed two-seater Lotus Europa that he raced at Brands Hatch.

The connections he made in the racing community led to the Chris Barber Band being offered regular gigs at Brands Hatch, and later regularly for the British Racing Driver Club and as recently as 2013 at Silverstone. His wife Kate remembers Chris being unable to resist taking a hair-raising spin round the Nürburgring track in his Mercedes while on tour in Germany where Chris enjoyed a huge following.

Apart from his own substantial back catalogue of recorded works, Chris Barber’s lasting legacy will be the ‘blues bridge’ that he helped to bring about between the US and the UK, allowing the ensuing music and friendship to do the talking at a time when racial discrimination was rife. He should be considered as one of the founding fathers of the UK R&B and blues scene, along with Alexis Korner and John Mayall, laying the ground for the rock and pop scene of the later 1960’s, which was to export back to the US a form of music inspired by its original American exponents. Chris’s ability to play with a genuine blues feel, “playing it right”, was appreciated by the legendary black American blues artists he befriended and played alongside.

St Paul’s also owes Chris a big debt of gratitude for the fundraising concerts he gave at the School in the late 1950’s and more recently in 2012. There have been enormous cultural changes between those gigs. At the first concert, given in the Great Hall at West Kensington, the boys were admonished for tapping their feet too loudly on the floor! Happily, we’re still tapping Chris. Thank you for the years of wonderful music-making – RIP. I would like to thank Kate Barber and John Crocker, Chris’s long-term clarinettist and sax player, for their help with this article. 

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FOUNDING THE NATIONAL YOUTH THEATRE Michael Oliver (1946-47) shares his memories of its foundation.

M

y first memory of the connection between the theatre and youth is an event that took place at school when I was about seven years of age. It was a pre-prep school, West Croft on Cricklewood Lane, north west London. There were two headmistresses Miss Challen and Miss Biggs and they must have had some thoughtful pleasure from acting. We were allowed to create and act in front of the small audience what I can describe only as a scene that could have been in a pantomime. In the middle of the stage was one of us dressed like some sort of animal while the rest of us were also clad but in an inferior fashion. The principal made clear his superiority to his servants who circled him, kneeling to his regal position, thus showing our loyalty. I do not recall whether we ever performed in front of parents: I think the unusual theatricality was confined to the pupils, to Miss Challen and Miss Biggs.

Memory moves on by 10 years, to St Paul’s School. It was a school in which acting and the appreciation of and respect for the theatre were inherent in its character and presumably had been so during the many hundreds of years since foundation. My memory as described in 2020’s Autumn/Winter Atrium is of a duo (Michael Codron (1946-48) and me) that took place with the consent and unlikely assistance of the English master. Not to dwell on it unduly but the piece may be regarded as an attempt by young teenagers of sophistication.

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Time rolls on to some years later. I had continued and expanded my interest in the theatre, going to many plays and musicals, economically sitting in the highest circle or the lowest stalls.

It was not therefore a shock or surprise to me when I had a phone call from Sandy Wilson, the celebrated creator of “The Boyfriend”, that he hoped that I would not mind if Michael Croft, English master at Alleyn’s, phoned me.

I did not mind at all because I had heard of Michael Croft and the way he had introduced his pupils to theatricality and he had arranged for them not only Shakespeare (conventional for schools) but other playwrights as well. I met Michael Croft. He explained that he was retiring from Alleyn’s and intended to organise a “club” of students that would know about and would be acting. And he wondered if I would help him to get it going. I thought it was a splendid and original idea and I had no reserve in telling Michael that I would help him in any way that I could.

Once Michael had completed his retirement the group had to abandon the use of Alleyns in its title. It became “The Youth Theatre”. Michael had to find places where it could perform and this he did with determination. I helped wherever and whenever I could and as it became more and more recognisable and popular. After quite a long period of activity and participation by young

So, the National Youth Theatre became a home for pupils wishing to enjoy drama and showing their ability to their fellow students and, for a few, the first step on the journey to a professional career people from many parts of the UK it was not a presumption to call it “the National Youth Theatre”.

In London, a suitably sized theatre was found and the NYT audience expanded from fellow pupils, parents and family to one whose interest was that the young could form a theatre with such confidence and ability. There were occasions when senior politicians and royalty attended and gave the organisation a status that moved it into a truly national organisation, recognised by schools some of which encouraged their appropriate pupils to join the youth theatre.

A suitable office was found and the finance to allow full time organisational staff. It was not long before Michael Croft, advised by his lawyer and senior supporters, decided that the reality of the organisation entitled it to add the truth of its geography and wide membership to its name by being known as “The National Youth Theatre”.

Accordingly there was hope that the government would offer some financial

assistance but this was a hope that had to be delayed for quite a long time.

But in the meantime and miraculously, the theatre of the right size had been found in London. And there the youth theatre was able to continue its performances. Once national became part of that name, the theatre continued to be available and there were generous charity performances given by the famous such as Elton John.

As time passed, it was not surprising that some of the boys and girls showed the appropriate ability to become professional performers who left their amateur acting for the reality of professional theatre.

So, the National Youth Theatre became a home for pupils wishing to enjoy drama and showing their ability to their fellow students and, for a few, the first step on the journey to a professional career.

The National Youth Theatre blossomed and became respected by all. 

“I met Michael Croft.

He explained that he was retiring from Alleyns and intended to organise a “club” of students that would know about and would be acting.”

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PAULINE PROFILES

The billion dollar question: On the hunt for purpose-driven unicorns Simon Lovick (2008-13) speaks to Cameron McLain (2001-06) and Tommy Stadlen (2000-05), founders of purpose-driven venture capital fund Giant Ventures, about why they are investing in entrepreneurs solving the world’s greatest problems.

 Cameron McLain (2001-06)

E

very investor will know that discovering the next great startup is a billion dollar question – but it is easier said than done. They are so elusive and mythical that the investment community has appropriately dubbed them ‘unicorns’.

Once teammates in the St Paul’s First XV, Giant Ventures founders Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen are on the lookout for the next startup unicorn. Yet unlike the social media and e-commerce giants that have dominated investment in the past decade, they believe purpose and impact-driven companies will be the next great startups to shape the world.

“In 2021, we have some serious challenges ahead, be those pandemics or inequality or climate change, and governments alone aren't going to be able to solve these problems,” Cameron says.

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They believe entrepreneurs have the ideas, tools, and technologies to offer creative solutions to these problems; if successful, they will also produce great returns in the process. “We hope to lead an evolution of business’ role in the world, and within that, the role of investors and private capital,” Cameron adds.

Entrepreneurial inclinations started early on for both Tommy and Cameron, stretching back to their time at St Paul’s. Cameron ran an eBay business out of his bedroom, while Tommy helped his older brother launch a tutoring agency, built off the back of cold-calling every parent in his St Paul’s year group. This ultimately went on to spawn Holland Park Tuition, now one of the UK’s leading private tutoring agencies.

I ask if they ever talked about going into business together at that stage: both humbly admit that most conversations at that time were about who they were playing at rugby that coming weekend. But something certainly emerged from the mutual respect built from playing on the same rugby team, a very successful one at that.

“We had a shared bond as successive Captains of Rugby that stood the test of time,” Tommy says.

There is no doubt in either’s mind that this was the basis of a long term friendship, one which would ultimately end in them going into business together. Although, in the meantime, both had career ambitions and other entrepreneurial yearnings to itch.

After graduating from Princeton, and working at a talent agency, William Morris Endeavor, Cameron founded a big data social analytics company called Beehive. Tommy also found himself drawn to the US. He

worked as part of then-Senator Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidential nomination, as a speech writer. After a spell at McKinsey, Silicon Valley came calling, where Tommy co-founded a photo app called Swing Technologies, which he ultimately sold to Microsoft.

The sum of these entrepreneurial experiences had a profound impact on the pair. Both had gained first hand experience of what it was like to conceive, build, launch, and sell a business – a competitive advantage for their own personal investments “As former founders, we are hopefully more credible to the next generation of entrepreneurs and better able to identify talent as well as resilience,” Tommy says.

Over a beer, Cameron came to Tommy with his idea to start his own venture capital fund oriented around purpose and impact. Sceptical at first, Tommy was soon persuaded. “Cam showed me we were at a tipping point in European technology, where there were so many great founders, as well as talent going to build these purpose-driven companies. Cameron saw this opportunity to be the purpose-driven VC.” Giant Ventures was born in July 2019. Launching Giant was much like building a startup, creating a brand, identity, and strategy all from scratch.

The added benefit this time round?

“Rather than being stuck on one product and one brand, you are meeting thousands of entrepreneurs every year,” Tommy reveals.

Their own endeavours, along with their own mistakes and regrets along the way, were important points of reflection for Cameron and Tommy when building their own VC fund.

The desire to make it purpose-driven came before anything else. “I wanted

 Tommy Stadlen (2000-05)

to build a firm that would back “companies that matter,” those that would contribute to society.”

Cameron says.

“Great companies are fuelled by purpose, more than money or good ideas,” Tommy adds. “Purpose-driven businesses are wonderful places to work, and those without purpose are miserable places to work.”

Tommy already had some experience looking at businesses with a social mission at their heart. In 2015, he co-authored a book with former BP CEO Lord Browne titled ‘Connect: How Companies Succeed By Engaging Radically With Society’, drawing on interviews with global business leaders from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg to World Wide Web founder Tim Berners-Lee. “The thesis was that companies can gain competitive advantage by integrating social and environmental considerations really deeply into the purpose, strategy, and operations of the business, rather than just as an afterthought,” Tommy details.

Giant was an opportunity to invest in businesses that did exactly this. Post COVID-19 pandemic, impact feels more relevant than ever, given the scarcity of resources and the impact the pandemic has had on poorer communities, the environment, and mental health, all areas Giant is looking to invest in.

In addition, purpose makes business sense. Businesses were already increasingly reoriented around what is

called environmental, social, and governance, or ‘ESG’, factors. Investing in startups that had this mapped into their DNA was likely to increase returns on investment.

Calm, the mental health app, has been one of Giant’s most successful investments so far. The app combines sleep and meditation activities, as well as adult bedtime stories read by stars including Matthew McConaughey and Stephen Fry. The business is already valued at over $2 billion.

Other promising ventures include: Mighty Buildings, which builds lowcost 3D printed houses; Airly, an air quality technology company; and Starcity, a co-living startup aiming to do for accommodation what WeWork has done for offices. Going forward, Cameron and Tommy are keen to invest more in the climate and energy sector, which they feel will both be impactful and a significant revenue driver.

So what makes a successful startup?

The more entrepreneurs they meet, and the more examples of success (and failure) they see, the better their idea is of the winning formula. “I wish I'd had some VC experience before I started a company. The pattern recognition you get from looking at loads of companies is really useful,” Tommy explains. It is for this reason he believes that so many venture capitalists go on to found successful businesses.

In every case, success looks different, but there are a few things Cameron and Tommy look out for when they are making their investments. Above all else, they look at promising founders. At the seed stage of investment, many founders barely have a product let alone a business plan, so you really have to look at human talent.

“We look for obsession, relentlessness, a ‘never say die’ attitude, and a deep authentic passion,” Tommy says.

If the founder has already launched a successful business, that is a big added bonus. Their chances of survival are exponentially higher. Founders also need to be “talent magnets”, people who are able to attract highly talented people to come work to with them on their businesses.

Diversity remains a key emphasis, too. “We believe that diversity of

thought and background is a crucial competitive advantage for companies.

Whether it's in the founding team, or the people they choose to hire, we encourage diversity at every stage.

It is something we actively track,” Cameron says.

While the middle of a recession may not seem like the optimum time to start a business, both insist that now is as good a time as any. In fact, many of the last decade’s biggest businesses were launched in the wake of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, such as Airbnb and Whatsapp. These successes come when there is a strong demand or significant change in demand from the market.

“If a great founder comes up against a bad market, the bad market always wins. If a mediocre founder comes into an amazing market, they can still build a successful company,” Cameron adds.

Their advice for aspiring entrepreneurs? Do not feel like you have to go down traditional paths before you launch a business, particularly those careers that Paulines are often ushered down. Many people launch great businesses straight out of school or university. For older founders, it is not too late either: the majority of successful founders are in their 40s and 50s.

“Entrepreneurship is an area where you learn most by doing. The experience of trying it is the most valuable thing,” Cameron believes.

“But,” Tommy adds, “don’t do it unless you're really passionate about it, and really good at it. Any endeavour will take a long time to create value, so at its core should be something that fascinates you and gets you out of bed.” 

 Cameron and Tommy, St Paul's First XV

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Arts Funding – Where Now?

 Jennie Lee, Minister for the Arts 1964–1970

Ed Vaizey (1981-85) argues that the UK needs a reset

Jennie Lee, the first ever arts minister, appointed by Harold Wilson, said that all the arts wanted from government was “money, policy and silence”. It is a pretty fair and accurate summary of how successive British governments have approached the arts since Lee came to office in 1964.

I

was lucky enough to serve as David Cameron’s arts minister between 2010 and 2016. In fact, I held on for grim death until I had surpassed Lee’s record tenure. I also published the first White Paper on the arts since Lee herself. So it is fair to say that I operated somewhat in her shadow.

Both Lee and I followed the same course, which on the whole has served the arts well in this country.

First, money. It is fair to say that the arts tend to look to their Minister to extract as much cash as possible from the Treasury. I have always said to my (numerous) successors that they will simply be judged by the size of the cheque they hand over. Given that I took office when austerity cuts were being introduced, I suppose I could be regarded as a failure.

Broadly speaking, the arts receive the bulk of their funding via the Arts Council. Originally set up after the war by John Maynard Keynes, it now supports hundreds of institutions with a budget of around £600 million.

About half of this comes from the

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Lottery, for which John Major deserves huge credit. Lottery money (for heritage as well) transformed the climate for the arts, in particular allowing a huge range of capital projects throughout the country.

Of course, being a Tory, Major’s contribution is barely acknowledged by the arts establishment.

About a third of the income budget of the Arts Council goes on just five institutions – the Big Five – the Royal Opera House, The English National Opera, the Southbank Centre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Indeed, the first arts institution to be directly funded by government was the Royal Opera House, in the 1930s. All this means that there is little spare cash to go around to fund the hundreds of other arts venues that deserve support.

In addition, the government funds directly the thirteen national museums, such as the British Museum, which adds a hefty chunk to its bill.

Defining arts funding can be a tricky business. There is funding for English Heritage. Local councils contribute a great deal (though far

less than they used to thanks to the cuts in local government funding in the 2010s). The BBC is itself arguably a great contributor, with five orchestras, Radio 3 and extensive arts programming. The Department for Education funds a variety of arts projects, such as music education. Even the Ministry of Defence has a tiny line of spending supporting Regimental Museums.

And there are other bodies such as the British Council that cover this beat as well.

With a bit of creative accounting, you can argue that annual arts funding in this country easily tops a billion quid. Chuck in as much of the BBC budget as possible and you get to the many billions. This can be quite useful especially when people always bang on about how much the Germans spend, which was the constant refrain when I was in post.

Nevertheless, there is not enough to go round – and always demands from interested parties for funding (music venues and brass bands spring to mind). But actually, this is a good thing. I am glad that we fund the arts

Ed Vaizey (1981-85)

The Arts tend to look to their Minister to extract as much cash as possible from the Treasury.

enough to give them a base, but not enough to stifle their entrepreneurial instincts. Many arts organisations make up their income by being commercial (in other words giving visitors what they want) or from generous philanthropy, or both. It makes for a much livelier arts scene than that on the continent, in my view. And it also avoids the arts becoming avidly commercial, as they risk doing in the US. In effect, we have a happy medium.

It also makes the arts less “big P” political. To paraphrase the Jennie Lee dictum, the policy IS silence. For years we have employed the “arm’s-length” principle, whereby the government funds the arts, but does not dictate what arts institutions should do. This serves many useful purposes. It means that the people appointed to runs arts venues and museums actually know what they are doing, rather than being has-been politicians. It means that when the Greeks come calling for the Elgin Marbles, the Government can tell them to talk to the British Museum.

And it means that people can put on shows and exhibitions without fear or

favour – and the government does not get blamed when they inexplicably back some nude hippy dance ensemble covering itself in spaghetti hoops.

Sadly the arm’s-length principle is now under threat. Not from a bunch of politically-correct lefties determined to shove their views on the rest us, but from a Conservative government no less. Not even Maggie, exasperated as she was by the left-wing intelligentsia, would have dreamed of doing what our current Culture Secretary has done – namely to summon the heads of all our heritage bodies to a kind of re-education camp to tell them what parts of our history they can and cannot explore. I fear that the government in its absurd anti-woke Don Quixote style culture war has lurched on to a rather slippery slope. And slippery slopes tend to lead to great tumbles.

COVID has obviously hit the arts hard – harder than almost any sector apart from pubs and restaurants (which are arguably part of the arts in any event). Brexit has also dealt a body blow, by making touring in Europe prohibitively expensive.

So we need a reset.

We need to ensure arts funding is put on a sustainable level. There is room for greater generosity – and certainly a plan to put in place long-term arts funding, so there is not the three-year scramble for funds.

The arts budget is small enough to be set for the long-term and forgotten about. We also need to fund more smaller arts organisations outside London. I would fund the Big Five directly and let the Arts Council spend additional cash on new clients. Finally, I would learn from tech – and have an innovation fund and approach that puts Britain at the forefront of digital innovation in the arts.

We are very lucky in this country – world-leading museums, terrific national performing arts organisations, and broadly speaking the right approach. Just as Keynes began a new era after the War, let us do it again, after the pandemic. 

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A Life with The Bard

Tim Hardy (1954-59) describes how ‘Shakespeare has it covered’.

“And that was the moment it all began. In all my time at the school, no one had ever said I was good at something – anything.”

‘We’d very much like you to play Antonio the Sea Captain!’

This from a boy I’d never met, waiting for me after class.

‘It’s a production of Twelfth Night we’re putting on ourselves.’

‘Sorry, you’ve got the wrong person. I’ve never acted in my life.’

I could have added that I had absolutely no desire to do so, now or at any time in the foreseeable future.

‘Well, actually we’ve asked everyone else who’d be available.

You’re the only one left.’

‘As in bottom of the barrel.’

‘Yes.’ ‘Thanks.’

‘Look, you wouldn’t have to act or anything, there isn’t time now. We’re into the third week of rehearsals. Just learn the lines and say them.’

And that is what I did. He was right, there was not time to do anything other than learn the lines and say them, in this case more-or-less in the right order. To be honest, I did see a lot of acting – or rather A-C-T-I-N-G – going on

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around me, while all I could do was hope the words would do the work for me. And in a strange way that I could not explain, I did come to like the taste – the feel – of the words in my mouth.

Anyway, all went well and when it was done we celebrated with several cartons of J Lyons’ Dunky Doughnuts, delivered direct from Cadby Hall just by the school, and therefore warm and fresh in a way you could never find in the shops. One of the best reasons for going to St Paul’s.

‘Well done, Scalchi.’

This was Mr Pirkis (Master 1955-86), President of E Club.

‘Oh….thank you, sir.’

‘Yes…you’re quite good at this.’

And that was the moment it all began. In all my time at the school, no one had ever said I was good at something – anything. In any discipline, scholastic or sporting, if I did my very best I might just about be average, and often not even that.

Mike Brearley, in his book ‘The Spirit of Cricket’, talks about the need to play sport not just because you are supremely talented, but also because it is something worth doing just for the love of the game. He quotes GK Chesterton (1887-92): ‘If a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing badly.’

That will be me.

But now I had stumbled on something that it seemed I might be quite good at! And it was this, more than any love of acting itself that initially drove me on. And here I am, over six decades later, still doing my best to be quite good at it.

My last term at school, I was playing Comus for Mr Harbord (Master 1928-1967), and the ‘acting bug’ – addiction actually – had truly taken hold. To my family’s dismay, I said I wanted to be an actor.

‘You try for RADA and that’s it. If you don’t get in there, forget it.’

That was the deal. No pressure then.

A young master, not long at the school, tried to take me in hand. He shall remain nameless, and is still my hero.

Gently, he told me that — ‘Scalchi, you probably think acting is all glamour, fame, and wealth. This is what we read in certain newspapers. The truth is very different. I’d like you to know that my sister is an actress, and for her, life is a constant struggle. She may get a part in repertory from time to time, when she has to leave her home and live in digs which can be quite depressing, when the remuneration is poor – she is always short of money – she has, very occasionally, appeared on television, always just a few lines, and most of the time has to take temporary jobs just to make ends meet. This is her life.’

I was at a loss. This was too important a conversation not to say everything that might be relevant. And yet, the obvious point to make was just not the kind of thing you could say to a master. But he seemed so kindly, and it »

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was he who had instigated the conversation, so...

‘Is it also….perhaps…sir….possible….that your sister….is – not very good?’

I remember the moment so clearly. Silence. He looked away, and then down at the ground. And then he said, with such sadness, ‘This is also true.’

My hero indeed.

RADA did not teach me how to act, because that is not something that can ever be taught. RADA set me on the path towards becoming the best actor I could possibly be.

And gave us all practical advice on how we might survive in this ferociously competitive business. And suggested I get myself an English name – we were not so multi-cultural then – and with a sense of guilt that has never entirely gone away I took my mother’s maiden name.

A wonderful job touring America saw my first attempt at getting the requisite visa. Many, many forms, the first of which had 64 questions. Including, ‘Have you ever lived off immoral earnings?’

‘Well,’ I joked, pencil poised, ‘if you’d seen some of the plays I’ve been in….’

The kind friend helping me – I must have been away during the form-filling classes at St Paul’s because when faced with any kind of form I turn into an idiot – put a hand on my arm.

‘No.’ she said.

‘But I just thought —’ ‘No. No jokes. They don’t do jokes at the American Embassy.

Ever. No jokes.’

But it is true that there have been many times when I have wondered if this really is a job for a grown man. There are many reasons put forward to argue that theatre is not just important but essential, and a few of them might even be true, but on a personal level, for heaven’s sake, why do I still need to stand in bright light in front of all those people and say, ‘For the next two hours I want you to look at ME!’ However. Sometimes, like the man said, ‘stuff happens’, and sometimes it happens in a way that gives theatre the chance to show what it’s for. And on one occasion the stuff happened because of something I was part of. The Vienna English Theatre produced a play by the Irish writer Frank McGuinness, ‘Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me.’ It is a play for three actors, and is based on the true story of the capture by Islamic Jihad terrorists in Lebanon in the 1980s of men who were then held hostage for several years, and for the most part in solitary confinement.

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The character I played, John McCarthy, was held prisoner longer than anyone else, from April 1986 to August 1991.

We had just given our final performance, and at the reception for cast, crew, and selected members of the audience, I was to make a speech of thanks and farewell.

Time was getting on, a lot of booze had gone down, and I felt I had better get on with it. One of the other actors was at a table, talking to two Asian-looking men I had noticed sitting in the front row. The actor had his back to me, so I tapped the side of my glass for silence. When the actor turned round I saw that he was in floods of tears. Now the room was silent, so I made my speech, and as soon as it was done went over to see what on earth was wrong.

The younger man explained. They were indeed from India, father and son, on holiday following the son’s release from prison. Without going into details, it seemed this was the result of ‘financial difficulties’, and in any event it was enough for us to know that the young man had served two years in jail, mostly in solitary confinement.

‘And you chose to come to this play?’

They actually giggled, both of them. The father said, ‘Well – because of the title – we thought it would be about Ella Fitzgerald. Maybe even a musical.’

And then the son explained. To his dismay, he had found that the real and lasting damage had been caused not by the experience itself, but by the loneliness he felt now he was back among family, friends, and colleagues at work.

‘You can’t describe what the experience was really like, because you lock it away, bury it, and then blame your loved ones for not understanding. Now, the more I’m surrounded by people, the more I’m alone, and this frightens me. But this play, it gets to the heart of what it’s actually like. Yes, other people have been through what I went through. I knew that intellectually, of course, but that wasn’t enough, in spite of the therapists, medication, hypnosis, I’ve never felt I was part of anything, ever since I came out.’

I know that in my long life, everything I have experienced – really good, really bad, and all the stuff in between – Shakespeare has it covered somewhere in his plays or sonnets.

And there is comfort in that.

 Tim Hardy as Comus

I know that in my long life, everything I have experienced – really good, really bad, and all the stuff in between – Shakespeare has it covered somewhere in his plays or sonnets. And there is comfort in that. There are dickheads who have come before me, and no doubt others who are yet unborn. Theatre, along with the other art forms, can help to show us – sometimes even explain – who we are.

RADA did not teach me how to act, because that is not something that can ever be taught. RADA set me on the path towards becoming the best actor I could possibly be.

And yet…..When I think of the sometimes almost frenzied silliness of our business, of the ever-increasing worship of celebrity….I think of the actor who appears on my television screen, it seems about once a month, to tell the watching millions what a very private person he is. I think of the Britain’s Got Talent’ competitor who – after screaming the obligatory ‘Oh my God!!!’ tells us through the heaving sobs that her life ‘has changed for ever!!’

He went on to say that he felt he had truly seen himself on stage, and that because the play was based on true events and real characters, here was evidence that you could not just survive, but also perhaps, in time, actually recover.

Interestingly, he said that – though he still had so much to process from the evening – he felt that the one thing more than any other that had helped him to believe in the play, was the humour.

‘I think that, in the end, it’s an understanding of the bizarre humour that comes out of such an experience, that most separates those who have known solitary confinement, and those who can only hear about it.’

We exchanged addresses, and months later I received a letter from the father. His son was truly on the mend, and he wanted me to know that both son and his therapist believed that his visit to the theatre that night was what ‘broke the dam’, and started the journey towards his eventual recovery.

And then I think of that wonderful performer Rita Moreno, who in 1962, for her performance in West Side Story, won the Oscar for best supporting actress. In the following press interview, a rather over-excited young reporter asked her how she felt, given that — ‘Now your life has changed – I mean for ever!’

She replied, ‘Who won this Oscar last year?’

No one knew the answer.

She smiled and asked for the next question.

But I am truly grateful to have earned a living doing something I love. I am in my 25th year now as a freelance faculty member at RADA, serving on the Admissions Panel and directing Shakespeare on the many short courses.

I have just managed, I hope, to play Shylock on zoom – old dogs and new tricks comes to mind – and a few weeks ago, for RADA – also on zoom – I directed ten actors from all over the world in Shakespeare monologues. This brought people together from Florida, St Petersburg, Delhi, Rome, Karach... One actor, in Peru, when we said goodbye, told me that the only place he had been able to get connection on his laptop was sitting on his loo. By such means will theatre survive. 

Sometimes, this is what theatre can do: it tells us, ‘You are not alone.’

41

ET CETERA Robin Hirsch (1956-61) remembers the Combined Cadet Force’s Annual Inspection from his memoir, LAST DANCE AT THE HOTEL KEMPINSKI.

Leading Cadet Hirsch “The Annual Inspection of the Combined Cadet Force this year will be conducted by a distinguished Old Boy of the School, Field Marshal Viscount Bernard Montgomery of El Alamein.”

which the legendary RAF was made.

Indeed it was largely because I was so inconspicuous a presence that I found myself this year in the central role of the Air Force demonstration. I had been volunteered.

We all knew about Monty. He was a nebbish, he had a totally undistinguished school career, he had a totally undistinguished career at Sandhurst, but by dint of hard work he had risen in the ranks, gone to Africa, defeated Rommel, and saved the country from the Germans. Then he came back and saved the rest of the world with some American named Eisenhower who was now President of the United States – indeed they had planned and executed the entire Normandy Invasion from their joint Headquarters in the High Master’s (aka Trickle’s) study.

We were going to demonstrate a parachute jump. The force of landing in a parachute is equivalent to jumping off a thirteen-foot wall. I was going to be strapped in a parachute harness with a rope attached. At the end of this rope would be six other Air Force Cadets who would collectively represent the Wind. I would climb to a plank suspended between two ladders thirteen feet above a mattress. At a given signal I would jump. After I landed the six cadets representing Wind would pull me across the playing field until I released myself.

Annual Inspection was at best a dreary business, five hundred of us ranked in platoons, schoolboys pretending to be soldiers, standing on the tarmac behind the school at the height of summer, dressed in thick itchy woolen uniforms with boots, buckles, belts and webbing mercilessly polished, rifles with fixed bayonets at our sides, waiting for the Inspecting Officer with his aides de camp to walk up and down every single line looking at our nose hair.

After this there would be demonstrations by the different arms of the Cadet Force. I was in the Air Force, but I was hardly the stuff of

42

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2021

The day arrives. It is of course the hottest day of the year. Teachers in gowns, parents in lightweight suits and summer dresses are arrayed on the playing field stands. We are arrayed five hundred strong on the tarmac, which is melting. We wait.

We wait interminably. We mutter.

I wonder about my parents out there on the grass with their German accents – please God, may they not speak to anyone.

Eventually, instructions filter down to our platoon commander and we are told to stand easy. We wait some more. Trickle, the Captain of School, and the Senior Under Officer appear from a balcony on the second floor

looking for Montgomery. They confer.

The Senior Under Officer descends.

Trickle and the Captain of School with-draw. On the tarmac now boys faint. Members of the PT squad in white shorts and shortsleeved shirts rush in and remove them on stretchers.

Finally, after two and a half hours, a black bullet proof Avis roars round the school and onto the tarmac and a little man in a beret jumps out, followed by several larger men in military hats. Platoon commanders now spring into action, bringing their exhausted troops to attention. Trickle and the Captain of School reappear on the balcony. The little man strides up to the Senior Under Officer and begins the inspection. He looks at boots. He looks at trouser creases.

He looks at pimples. It takes forever.

After inspecting a given platoon he instructs the platoon commander to turn his men in a different direction.

After he has finished with the last platoon he disappears inside the school and reappears on the balcony with Trickle and the Captain of School.

Platoon commanders are busy bringing their troops to attention and turning them round again. “Pltoon, atten . . .

SHUN,” is heard all over the tarmac.

“Platoon, left . . . TURN.” “Platoon, right . . . TURN.” “Platoon, about . . . TURN.” When we are all back facing in the original direction, the Contingent Commander shouts, “Contingent,

M onty Inspecting the CCF

shoulder . . . ARMS.” This we had carefully rehearsed. Up, two, three; over, two, three; down. “Contingent, present . . . ARMS.” Arm, two, three; rifle, two, three; stamp – five hundred feet come crashing down.

“Contingent, forward . . . MARCH.” This too we had carefully rehearsed.

We march forward, closing ranks until all five hundred of us are marching in place with our nose in the nape of the neck ahead of us.

“Contingent, . . . HALT!” We halt.

“Contingent, stand at . . . EASE!” We stand at ease. “STAND . . . easy.”

This is the moment for Montgomery to address us. “Men,” he begins in his clipped voice. Then he explains how hot it is and how if you are in the desert fighting the Germans as he had been it can be beastly uncomfortable, which is why he had had our platoon commanders turn us around. Then he asks us to sit on the ground. This we have not rehearsed and is in fact impossible. We are so close that there is not enough room. Nevertheless we try. We slide down our rifles and manage to get the seats of our trousers onto the melting macadam. Then he tells us how important we are to the defence of the country and how important the country is to the defence of the rest of the world and how considerate he has been in having us sit down now and how when we have two million men under our command as he had had we will remember this day. He concludes and we climb back up our rifle butts, black tar stuck to our behinds.

“Contingent, atten . . . SHUN!” “Contingent, remove . . . HEADGEAR!” Head, two, three; up, two, three; down.

“Contingent, three cheers for the Inspecting officer. . . HIP, HIP . . .”

And from five hundred throats “HURRAYYYY . . .” and five hundred arms with five hundred berets go up in the air.

Twice more. And then, “Contingent, replace . . . HEADGEAR!” Up, two, three; head, two, three; down.

This of course is where it all breaks down – five hundred berets are now balanced incongruously on five hundred heads. However the Army is never at a loss.

“Contingent, stand at . . . EASE!” Stamp.

“STAND . . . easy.” We stand easy.

“Contingent, adjust . . . HEADGEAR!” Shuffle, shuffle, five hundred rifles slither between a thousand legs.

We adjust our berets.

Then we march past the reviewing stand and salute Montgomery who salutes us back and then the entire cadet force breaks up into demonstration units.

My parents are there and dimly as I climb the ladder I can make them out on the fringes of the crowd, my mother in a summer dress and a hat with a veil, my father in one of his German suits, smoking. We go through our routine half a dozen times and suddenly Montgomery and his party are upon us. We line up. The Air Force Commander explains that this is a parachute demonstration, that Under Officer Williams, Sergeant Groves, Corporal Walsh, Corporal Stedman-Jones, Leading Cadet Jacobs, and Leading Cadet Sorkin will be representing Wind and that

Leading Cadet Hirsch crouching in the parachute harness will now climb the ladder and jump off the equivalent of a thirteen-foot wall.

I climb. I walk out on the plank. At the signal I jump. Wind, however, keyed up by the importance of the occasion, starts running before I hit the ground, with the result that I miss the mattress altogether and land with the rope wrapped between my legs and Wind already tearing across the playing fields in the direction of the tarmac. I am screaming because not only can I not reach the harness release but also the rope is in danger of ending my sex life before it has even begun. We are mere specks in the distance, long past the playing fields, three quarters of the way across the parade ground, before I finally get free and Wind rushes headlong into the School wall.

My father says later that he heard Montgomery tell the Commanding Officer, “Damned effective show.” Or as my father says that night at dinner, “Nicht schlecht.” Or as my mother says, “Ach, all this marching, all this uniforms, they always have to make so ein Getue und Getah.” 

43

A PAULINE ABOUT TOWN

LONDON’S WEST END Rohan McWilliam (1973-78)

I wrote my book, London’s West End: Creating the Pleasure District, 1800-1914 (Oxford University Press, 2020), because of my life-long love of what this special area in the centre of the metropolis has to offer. Remarkably, this is a history no one had written before. As I write, the West End in lockdown faces the greatest challenge in its history (even during the Blitz it mostly stayed open). Let us look forward to a time when we can spend a day prowling round luxurious shops, meeting a friend at Eros in Piccadilly Circus, catching a show on Shaftesbury Avenue and eating an over-priced meal in Covent Garden.

WHERE TO EAT

WHERE TO DRINK

The West End can boast the first restaurant in Britain: Rules on Maiden Lane in Covent Garden. Founded in 1798, it used to be famous for its oysters that men about town cherished for their aphrodisiac qualities. Walk through the door and be whisked back in time. It retains a defiantly old world feeling with its stags’ heads, Vanity Fair prints and hunting scenes on the walls. The food is of a similar highly traditional quality. It specialises in game (brought in from the Rules estate in the Pennines) whilst its steak and kidney pie is legendary.

R ules, Covent Garden

More up to date is Gymkhana on Albermarle Street. Having opened in 2013, Gymkhana is one of the best Indian restaurants in London and enjoys a Michelin star. A friend recommended we go as it opened which was just as well. Gymkhana got rave reviews from food critics and quickly became booked up for months in advance. The restaurant goes for delicate flavouring, which contrasts with most high street Indian restaurants. The elegant oak panelling offers a refined environment that nods to a fantasy of the Raj. You will feel the price in your next credit card statement but it is worth it.

Much more up market, one of the best-kept secrets in the West End are the martinis in the bar at the Duke’s Hotel on St James's Place. Ian Fleming maintained that the Duke’s served the best cocktails in London and the bar returns the compliment with drinks named after James Bond characters like Vesper Lynd. I have often wondered why no one can make a gin martini as well as the waiters at the Duke's who mix the drinks in front of you. It is not spacious so you may not get in but it is worth the effort. The martinis pack a serious punch and on no account should you have more than two. The polite waiter will advise you against. Listen to him. T he Duke's Hotel, St James's Place

44

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2021

Most places to drink in the West End are, let us face it, aimed at the lowest common denominator. Pubs can be packed out but here are a couple of recommendations if you want a quiet drink. For a pub, check out The Angel on St Giles High Street. A little off the beaten track, it is at odds with most modern pubs. There is no piped music and no Sky Sports. Instead, it offers cosy wooden nooks in which to drink Sam Smith's and have a decent conversation. The food is like school dinners but I suspect most Old Paulines are okay with that.

P ollocks Toy Museum, Scala Street

WHERE TO VISIT

This is a bit of a cheat as it is just off the West End as I define it but everyone should go to the Pollocks Toy Museum on Scala Street when it reopens. The Museum is often under threat of closure and needs your support. Check out its collection of Victorian dolls, Punch and Judy puppets and toy theatres upstairs.

I argue in my book that nineteenthcentury toy theatres were an important way in which the stage was opened up to children.

One of the best-kept secrets in the West End are the martinis in the bar at the Duke’s Hotel on St James’s Place

Make sure you catch the performers in Covent Garden. No walk round the West End is complete without taking in the jugglers, clowns, magicians and entertainers who perform outside St Paul’s Church (the actors’ church).

Covent Garden was originally designed by Inigo Jones in the 1630s and very quickly became the site of a fruit and vegetable market that was only moved over to Vauxhall in the 1970s. Since the 1980s the market building (which dates back to 1830) has become a tourist venue. The performers engage in traditional form of entertainment such as mime and escapology.

WHERE TO VIEW

Where to see a show or watch a film?

Well, here the possibilities are almost endless. The West End has been attracting leading performers since the 1660s and every theatre has a rich history. Movie premières are part of West End life. I have seen Tom Cruise taking selfies with fans outside the Odeon Leicester Square when one of his new films has opened. What makes the pleasure district special is that it combines so many different forms of entertainment and prestige shopping.

Despite the challenges of lockdown, the West End is likely to survive as it enjoys its own special magnetism.

C ovent Garden Street Performer

45

BURSARY & DEVELOPMENT UPDATE

SHAPING OUR COMMUNITY Ellie Sleeman, Director of Development and Engagement at St Paul’s School, gives an update on the progress of the Shaping our Future campaign.

When asked to apply for the role of Director of Development at St Paul’s I was living in Windsor with no intention of heading back into London. I came in to meet Professor Bailey and Governor Ali Summers and, almost despite myself, found my professional interest piqued as they talked eloquently and passionately about their fundraising ambition for St Paul’s. I looked at this impressive, historically significant school with its extraordinarily talented pupil and alumni body and felt a desire to help deliver their vision of more equal access – the way that it might have been when assisted places were part of the landscape.

M

y instinct was that the only way this could be done in a sustainable way was if we first built a greater sense of community; if OPs, parents and former parents felt an ongoing regular connection to the school, and if the fundraising ladder was pointed at the right wall, then the rest would surely follow. At that stage Professor Bailey handed over the communications and engagement remit too and my dream of escaping to the country was parked.

What has followed has been a huge amount of generosity from OPs and parents as well as hard work from Governors, fellow staff members, volunteers and a very talented team.

The plan has stayed consistent – listen to what is needed, build the community through increased engagement and by widening access to the extraordinary events and content the School has access to (through the Old Pauline Club and committed parent groups in particular) and then share a fundraising vision to inspire those who are able and keen to support.

46

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2021

Shaping Our Future We launched the £20m campaign at St Paul’s Cathedral in May 2019 with ambitious fundraising targets.

Following consultation with our community, there were three elements: bursary and partnership work as the main strategic areas of focus (joint target of £10.4m), and building to inspire, which allowed provision for the West Pavilion and Boat House replacements (£2.5 and £7m respectively due to the complexities related to both builds), for those members of our community who wish to support capital projects.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have held back on our fundraising work on the Boathouse, which leaves us with a target of £13m. I am pleased to report that together, in less than two years, we have raised over £11m.

One of the most important elements was the scale of participation.

We hoped that almost everyone in the Pauline community would feel able to give at a level right for them. We built on the 1509 Society model introduced

£11m has been raised in less than two years

Donations 2018-2020

■ ■ ■

Parents

71%

Old Paulines

26%

Other

3%

by Old Paulines, John Dennis and John Ellis, offering the chance to support the school from £1.50 or £15.09 a month up to £1,509 and we have been delighted with the results. We now have 849 members of The 1509 Society and 528 regular donations being received which amounts to £155,000 per annum – the equivalent of six bursaries. 36% of all current parents are now supporting the campaign and 4.4% of all contactable Old Paulines – our ambition is to increase this to 50% of parents and 10% of OPs by the end of 2021.

This level of support will ensure that whatever happens politically, St Paul’s will have the independence to deliver

what it believes is the right thing to do.

Any responsible fundraiser of course also needs to ask themselves what is being spent to generate income. My role of Director is split between fundraising, external relations and marketing and communications. On top of which there is a Fundraising Manager, Sam Bushell, and a Fundraising Operations Manager, Andrea Hudson, who runs the data, and financial processing elements. Alex Wilson and Viera Ghods who spend between half and one third of their time on fundraising related activity. For the sake of analysis we will say 4FTE plus revenue expenditure which still gives a very healthy ROI of £9.66.

St Paul’s Fundraising projections 2018/23

£000

2018/19

2019/20

2020/21

2021/22

2022/23

Total

Income Target

685

2,420

3,705

2,765

10,425

20,000

Actual Cash In

3,350

1,789

2,233

7,372

Annualised Regular Gifts

160

164

162

486

HNW Gifts Due in Year (Pledges)

1,771

904

515

3,190

Income Actual for Year

3,350

1,789

4,164

1,068

677

11,048

Projected Fundraising Revenue costs

-333

-353

-431

-440

-448

-2,005

Net Gain

3,017

1,436

3,733

628

229

9,043

Cost to Income Ratio

9.94%

19.73%

10.35%

Return on Investment (ROI)

£10.06

£5.07

£9.66*

*(IDPE Benchmarking 2018 – Development offices raising £1m+ average ROI is 6.3)

Creating a long term sustainable community One of the key contributors to the success of the campaign has been ensuring the community feels able to engage and be involved. The Old Pauline Club and successive Presidents have worked tirelessly to ensure they are supporting the School and the pupils – and this now extends to funding 2 bursaries within the School. By building on the activity offered by the Club as well as the Parents’ Groups and teachers/pupils, we have been able to share an increasingly rich offer that has seen nearly 5,000 attendances by OPs at a school event since the programme launched in 2017.

Our annual programme provides a variety of thought provoking speakers, predominantly from our own community, and COVID-19 has forced us to become more creative in terms of our online offer.

We have now had nearly 12,000 attendees at virtual events since April 2020, including OPs tuning in from across the world – something they were unable to do when the majority of events were held face to face. We will retain the more positive elements of online programming when we hopefully return to normality in the foreseeable future. »

47

BURSARY & DEVELOPMENT UPDATE

St Paul’s Connect, championed by former OPC President Rob Smith, is an easy way for the community – ultimately including partner schools – to communicate. We now have over 2,000 members connecting, sharing everything from job opportunities to a desire to offer mentoring. It is also an area where our professional networks (another OPC initiative) are able to interact and we will be increasing the range of professional networks over the coming year.

Results Our bursary numbers are growing and are well on track for the initial target of 153 bursaries by 2023. This figure is just over 10% of our current pupil numbers, but also reflects Colet’s original provision ‘for one hundred and fifty three boys of all nacions and countres indifferently to be taught free’, emulating the biblical reference to the miraculous draught of fish.

The school partnership work has grown exponentially during this period. It consists of three main strands: Working in Partnership with local primary and secondary schools, volunteering opportunities in the local community for school pupils and supporting local, national and international charities. All of the

Year 12 and 13 students have the opportunity to contribute to the programme and each week around 100 boys are involved in the work.

Every year, over 1,000 students from around 30 different schools get directly involved in St Paul’s School programmes and many more are involved indirectly or in one-off events. St Paul’s School is a founding member of the West London Partnership, an association of secondary schools from both the independent and state sectors in west and south west London. Its aim is to create a genuine partnership built on sustainable, collaborative projects, social inclusivity and diversity, and the sharing of resources and expertise, in order to address educational needs and to enrich learning for everyone.

Through three enormously generous donations from a lead sponsor who is the parent of two OPs and two current parents we are now within £650,000 of the monies we need to rebuild the West Pavilion (the Pavilion to the left as you drive in to school). We are currently applying for planning permission.

Once completed, the revenue from hiring out the entertaining space within this new building will be another source of funding for our bursary and partnership work. 

How bursary numbers have grown in the last five years at St Paul's School

48

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2021

Legacies One important source of income for many charitable organisations including schools is legacy income. It is an area that supporters who may not be able to contribute in their own life time or those who wish to make a final gesture to reflect their previous giving may be able to make a difference when it comes to their will. For St Paul’s, which does not benefit from a large endowment, this income will be change making.

By becoming a member of the Colet Society, we can recognise you in your lifetime. We currently have 33 members of the Colet Society who, post COVID-19, will be invited for annual drinks with the High Master and Christmas Carols in the Chapel, amongst a number of other ways of sharing the community's gratitude including a Colet Society tie and pin.

THE ONLY WAY WAS UP – WHY? Alistair Summers (1978-83), the Chair of the Governors’ Access Development & Partnership Committee explains school fee and cost inflation.

My parents’ final term’s bill, when I left the School, was £1,020 and it is no coincidence that my Dad remembers the exact figure. Even in 1983 it was eye watering. He was visibly shocked when I told him today’s fees are £8,636 a term.

H

e is not alone. Robert Stanier (1988-93) in his letter to Atrium calculates that in 1993 the School’s fee income was £5m (£10m in real terms) and in 2018 it was £32m. After such an increase, he cannot believe that the School cannot afford to cover its costs and pay for 153 bursaries without campaigning for additional funds.

With some exasperation he asks, “Where is all the money going?”

only seven pages. My analysis is therefore based on the Boys’ School making up 60% of the combined income and expenditure.

I was a Governor for twelve years during which time I sat on the Governing Body Finance Committee.

Robert makes good points that made me uneasy. So where has the money gone?

Comparing Income 1993 to 2020

Difficulties comparing 1993 to 2020 There are some practical problems in finding out.

In 1993, the Boys’ School and Girls’ School produced combined accounts with both being subsumed into the Mercers’ Company accounts. I am not even sure they were published. The copy I have is simplified and runs to

Today, it is easy to see in detail the School’s income & expenditure.

Its Annual Accounts (available on Companies House or Charity Commission websites) run to 45 pages and tell you pretty much all you need to know.

If my split is correct, in 1992/93, the School’s fee income must have been about £5m and in 2019/20 it was £32.6m.

As a charity the School must spend all its income on its charitable activities.

It is fair to assume therefore that the main driver of its fees is its costs.

Comparing Expenses 1993 to 2020 If one removes fundraising costs (which did not exist in 1993) and the granting of bursaries, the School spends on the same costs as it did thirty years ago:

49

BURSARY & DEVELOPMENT UPDATE

Staffing SPS Expenses £’000

1993

2020

Staffing

3,052

19,712

Pensions

40

3,200

Premises

404

4,516

Education

115

3,584

General

962

1,627

Total

4,574

32,639

The largest cost for any School is its staff salaries. Interestingly the School spent a slightly lower amount of its income on salaries in 2020 (58%) than it did in 1993 (61%).

Some of the increase in staff costs is because there is almost double the number of teaching staff:

Staff numbers

Size of School and Inflation Some of these very large cost increases reflect a bigger School. In 1993 the best estimate is that there were 1,140 boys in the two Barnes Schools, today there are 1,485 – an increase of more than 30%.

More boys need more teachers, create more “wear and tear” and require more lunches.

Inflation also means that £4.574m would naturally increase irrespective of what the School did. The Bank of England calculates that inflation (CPI) between 1993 and 2020 was 2.083, which means that if nothing else had changed the costs of the School would have doubled.

That still leaves a pretty big increase.

As can be seen below, all the School’s costs (apart from General Expenses) have increased well in excess of inflation.

Increase in SPS Expenses

Times Increase

Staffing

6.5

Pensions

78.6

Premises

11.2

Education

31.2

General

1.7

Inflation

2.1

50

ATRIUM

SPRING / SUMMER 2021

1993

2020

SPS

83

153

SPJ

44*

59

Total

127

212

*Approximation from 2000, as no figures available for 1993.

In 1993, the High Master, Surmaster and two Undermasters ran the School.

Today the Senior Management Team runs to thirteen. This reflects a need to comply with more national and sectoral requirements and to be more sophisticated in the School’s management and recording of relations with staff and pupils.

As an example, in 1993, there was no formal appraisal of staff, today the system of review and support for all members of staff is extensive.

Parents, staff and Government expect better qualified and better managed teaching. The days of my Fifth Form Maths teacher storming out in a fit of frustration and banging his head on the wall outside are thankfully long gone even though I now have some sympathy with him.

On the non-teaching staff, the increase in compliance can probably explain the rise in costs alone. Thirty years ago, HR was a single person in a room near the changing rooms. Today it is a

In 1993, the High Master, Surmaster and two Undermasters ran the School. Today the Senior Management Team runs to thirteen

whole department keeping the School compliant with Immigration, Child Protection and Employment legislation.

Pensions

Equally, today’s School has roles that no one would have recognised thirty years ago – Head of Mental Health and Designated Safeguarding Lead being two good and modern necessities.

All teachers benefit from the Government run Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS). Like many public sector schemes, it is generous and now in deficit. In 1993, the Government subsidised the School’s contribution.

The dramatic increase in cost is because that subsidy has started to be phased out over the last five years and will continue to be so.

Teachers’ Salaries The other component of staffing costs is what teachers are paid. Extra roles require more skills and qualification and so my suspicion is that the School has more, better paid professionals than it had thirty years ago.

Teachers’ salaries also have risen above inflation. To some extent this reflects St Paul’s being a London school where housing costs have increased in the last thirty years well above inflation. In 1993 many teachers owned or could afford to own homes in Richmond or Barnes. Not now.

Another anomaly of all schools is the pay grading system which means teachers get paid more for greater years in the job – inflationary because the longer you work the greater your pay. Even without cost of living increases this spine adds up.

The largest increase in costs in relative terms has been pensions.

In addition, the School has its own non-teacher scheme that is increasingly expensive because our pensioners are living longer.

Premises Premises cost increases are a mixture of increased depreciation on new buildings and greater cost of maintenance and support. Some of it is discretionary; the rest is the world today. Security in 1993 did not involve sophisticated fire alarms, CCTV and automatic sprinklers all of which need maintenance and care.

Education In my analysis Education costs include everything from the cost of running

departments, to IT to school trips to welfare support costs.

I have no idea what is in the 1993 accounts but am pretty sure that the cost increase is newer costs (IT) and more being done (welfare). Although I suspect that today’s pupils have far better school trips than my O Level week away to Bourton-on-the Water and Milton Keynes.

So where has the money gone?

I am sure everyone who comes back to Barnes is able to recognise something familiar about the School.

The reality is that running it now is very different to thirty years ago.

Today’s School is bigger, more sophisticated, with greater emphasis on supporting its pupils and staff and commensurately larger costs. It is also supported less by the Government’s pension subsidy.

Could the School save money?

I suspect so but nothing close to getting the fees back to what my parents paid.

With grateful thanks to Alex Wilson and Owen Toller for additional information. 

51

OLD PAULINE NEWS

The OPC President Brian Jones (1961-66) comments on the Club’s initiatives, events and news in the last six months.

While lockdown restrictions have meant that Old Paulines have not been able to meet in person, I am delighted that this has not called a halt to Club activities.

Late in 2020 the Main Committee met to discuss a report from The Strategic Review Group. The most immediate impact of a number of proposals agreed was the setting up of a working party to propose changes to the Club’s governance and structure. I hope this will lead to changes being introduced that mean the leadership of the Club is more diverse and better able to engage across our membership, particularly with younger OPs.

Kayton Library was maintained, also virtually, at the end of the Feast. The book this year was a signed original copy of Fun and Fantasy: a book of drawings by OP EH Shepard (189496). (A recording of the Feast service and the Order of Service are available to view on the OPC website). I hope we will be back in the Cathedral and at Mercers’ Hall in 2022.

The OPC has worked alongside the School by taking events on line. OPs of all ages and background have been involved in the popular Topical Tuesdays webinars.

I was delighted that we were able to hold a virtual Feast Service in early February, maintaining a 350-year tradition through a modern medium.

Matthew Knox the School Chaplain led the service and there were contributions from the High Master, the Chairman of Governors, the Captain of School and OP clergy. The tradition of making a presentation to the rare books collection in the School’s  The Kayton Library where the Club archives will be stored

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As has become traditional for retiring High Masters, the Club commissioned a portrait of Professor Mark Bailey to hang in the Montgomery Room. This was completed in time for the planned unveiling at the Annual Dinner last June but unfortunately this fell victim to the pandemic restrictions as have subsequent efforts. I hope the unveiling can take place soon.

B asil Moss, OP Club President 1991-93

Old Pauline Club Committee List 2021

President B M Jones Deputy President The Rt Hon the Lord Vaizey of Didcot Past Presidents C D L Hogbin, C J W Madge, F W Neate, Sir Alexander Graham GBE DCL, R C Cunis, Professor the Rt Hon Lord McColl of Dulwich, The Rt Hon the Lord Baker of Dorking CH, J M Dennis, J H M East, Sir Nigel Thompson KCMG CBE, R J Smith Vice Presidents P R A Baker, Professor M D Bailey, R S Baldock, J S Beastall CB, S C H Bishop, J R Blair CBE, Sir David Brewer CMG, CVO, N St J Brooks, R D Burton, W M A Carroll, Professor P A Cartledge, M A Colato, R K Compton, T J D Cunis, A C Day, S J Dennis MBE, Sir Lloyd Dorfman CBE, C R Dring, C G Duckworth, A R Duncan, J A H Ellis, R A Engel, D H P Etherton, The Rt Hon the Lord Etherton of Marylebone PC, Sir Brian Fall GCVO KCMG, B R Girvan, T J R Goode, D J Gordon-Smith, Lt Gen Sir Peter Graham KCB CBE, Professor F D M Haldane, S A Hyman, S R Harding, R J G Holman, J A Howard, S D Kerrigan, P J King, T G Knight, B Lowe, J W S Lyons, I C MacDougall, Professor C P Mayer, R R G McIntosh, A R M McLean CLH, I C McNicol, A K Nigam, The Rt Hon George Osborne, T B Peters, D M Porteus, The Rt Hon the Lord Razzall of Mortlake CBE, The Rt Hon the Lord Renwick of Clifton KCMG, B M Roberts, J M Robertson, J E Rolfe, M K Seigel, J C F Simpson CBE, D R Snow MBE, S S Strauss, A G Summers, R Summers, J L Thorn, R Ticciati OBE, Sir Mark Walport FRS, Professor the Lord Winston of Hammersmith Honorary Secretary S B Turner Honorary Treasurer N St J Brooks FCA

After two decades of service Tim Cunis (1955-60) has retired from his position as OPC Archivist. The Club is immensely grateful for the tremendous commitment that he has brought to this role and the contribution he has made. The Club has appointed Ginny Dawe-Woodings, the St Paul’s School Archivist, to succeed him. Ginny has already started the process of sorting and cataloguing the Club’s archives, which will be stored alongside the school archives in the temperature and humidity controlled archive room in the Kayton Library. This will result in our archives being available for research and enquiry.

The Old Pauline Club, as well as innumerable individual Old Paulines, owe a huge debt to Basil Moss, who died in November at the age of 85.

Basil was President of the Old Pauline Club from 1991 to 1993. The two OP

organisations closest to his heart were Colets at Thames Ditton, which he helped to set up in the late 1970s and then served as Director and Chief Executive for 40 years; and the Pauline Meetings, the charity which ran weekly Sunday Meetings, Easter and Summer House Parties and other activities for St Paul’s pupils in conjunction with the St Paul’s School Christian Union. In the 1960s and 1970s he was captain and inspiration behind innumerable OPFC rugby teams. When the OPAFC was established in the 1990s Basil was delighted to be its first President.

The OPC enters its 150th year in the summer. A committee has been set up to organise events in celebration. 

Main Committee Composed of all the above and P R A Baker (OP Lodge), N F Cardoza (Golfing Society), T J D Cunis (AROPS Representative), C S Harries (Association Football Club), J P King (Colet Boat Club), P J King (Fives Club & Membership Secretary), H J Michels (Rugby Football Club), J D Morgan (Elected), N H Norgren (Elected), T B Peters (Cricket Club), A J B Riley (TDSCC Ltd Representative), D C Tristao (Tennis Club), J F Turner (OPC Sports Director), J Withers Green (Editor Atrium & Social Engagement Officer) Executive Committee B M Jones (President & Chairman of the Committee), The Rt Hon the Lord Vaizey (Deputy President), S B Turner (Hon Secretary), N St J Brooks (Hon Treasurer), A J B Riley (TDSSC Ltd Representative), J H M East (Elected), J A Howard (Liaison Committee Representative), P J King (Elected), J D Morgan (Elected), J F Turner (OPC Sports Director), J Withers Green (Editor, Atrium & Social Engagement Officer) Liaison Committee J A Howard (Chairman), I M Benjamin, R J G Holman, T B Peters, A J B Riley Ground Committee J M Dennis (Chairman), R K Compton, G Godfrey (Groundsman), M P Kiernan, J Sherjan Accountants Kreston Reeves LLP Trustee OPC Trustee Company Limited

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OBITUARIES

In Memoriam Christopher W Arnold (1939-44) Donald C (Chris) Barber (1946-47) Brian A Barnett (1946-51) Timothy J Bonham-Carter (1954-58) Stanley J Clayman (1948-53) John C Durnin (1973-77) Nicholas R Gooud (1958-63) Gilbert W Green (1938-42) John C Grover (1948-53) John B Hewitt (1946-49) Robert F Lees (1970-74) John A Lunn (1941-48) John L R Melotte (1971-75) Charles H Merriman (1954-58) Basil D Moss (1948-53) John S Parker (1959-63) David P C Russell (1960-65) Richard L L Simmons (1955-60) Michael J Stacey (1949-53) Richard A Stokes (1955-60) Stuart W C Taylor (1949-54) Jack E Thomson (1935-40) John F Turner (1961-66) Alexander A Wheaten (1938-42) Harold D Wicks (1946-50) Henry J Winson (1940-46)

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Brian A Barnett (1946-1951)

Alistair A Conn (1950-55)

Brian Barnett attended St Paul’s in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and with his parents having moved out to rural Rickmansworth, he was immediately enrolled in High House, where he was a weekly boarder throughout his time at School. In his first year, he received instruction for his bar mitzvah from the late Reverend Sam Vennett of the Hammersmith Synagogue, which was then opposite in Brook Green.

At School he was a keen boxer, captaining the School team. He made lifelong friendships, and his regular Monday night bridge games with Old Paulines John Garden (1942-51), Raymond Davoud (1944-49) and Clive Moss (1944-48) were to last half a century.

He left St Paul’s to read economics and international history at University College London and then joined the army for National Service, during which he narrowly avoided court martial for using an army vehicle to take a girl on a date.

On leaving the army, he joined public company Ellis & Goldstein, a manufacturer and retailer of ladieswear, rising over 30 years to become the Group Managing Director before the company was taken over in 1988. During his time there, he was Chairman of the British Mantle Manufacturers’ Association and a pioneer of what was then called shop within shop retailing, which is the model that all department stores operate on today.

He also successfully developed the manufacture of what we now call loungewear, using the advent of the fax machine to have London designs made seasonally in the Far East.

He was particularly proud when his son Keith (1974-1978) joined the School and when his daughter Joanna married Old Pauline, Jonathan Mindell (1973-1977), also the son of a school friend, Bertram Mindell (1945-1950).

In later life, his joy was his family. He is survived by wife Susie, three children, eight grandchildren and two greatgrandchildren and will be very sorely missed by us all.

Keith Barnett (1974-1978)

Alistair was born in Twickenham in 1937.

He attended the Mall School and then St Paul’s from 1950 to 1955. He was a prefect, captain of the Boxing Club and the 2nd Cricket XI, secretary of the Christian Union and treasurer of the Historical Society. Alistair was posted to Wuppertal for his National Service.

He read history at Downing College, Cambridge, and obtained his boxing Blue.

Alistair studied at Lincoln Theological College and was ordained as a priest in 1963. He was a curate at St Paul’s in West Hartlepool and then was school chaplain and assistant housemaster at Busoga College in Uganda for one year.

Alistair was school chaplain at Shrewsbury School from 1966 to 1973. He also taught English and R.E. and helped coach the under-14 football and cricket teams. He met his future wife, Bella, at Shrewsbury. They married in 1968 and in the following years their first two daughters were born.

Alistair and his family then moved to Scotland, where he was rector at St Anne’s, Coupar Angus. Alistair and Bella’s third daughter was born in Scotland. From 1978 to 2002, Alistair was a vicar in the Southwell Diocese and served as Rural Dean of Newstead and of Newark. He played cricket for the Southwell Diocesan Clergy team and was its captain for some years. Alistair had an active retirement; he walked many of the National Trails, was a literacy volunteer, undertook several courses, was a regular cinema-goer and spent many happy hours at Trent Bridge.

Alistair’s health deteriorated rapidly after Bella died in 2014. He was diagnosed with dementia in 2016. He died peacefully on 26th March 2020, aged 82 years. He will be remembered for his kindness, his caring and gentle nature, his dry sense of humour, and his strong sense of fairness and social justice. He lived a deep and full life, but also lived a life in the service of others.

Lucy Conn (daughter)

Robert F Lees (1970-74)

Brian (Bunga) Lowe (1948-51)

Basil D Moss (1948-53)

Rob arrived at St Paul’s in 1970 as a voracious reader and thrived under the tutelage of Bryan Robson (Master 1970-90) and Harry Quinn (Master 1966-79). After reading English at Pembroke College, Oxford, he emerged in 1978 with a relentless curiosity, a keen appreciation of good beer, and a group of friends that never stopped expanding.

Rob was rare in being both creative and logical, an intellectual and a ‘doer’.

So, when it came to career choice, there were plenty of options. He decided to enter business, focusing on IT. One result was that he worked on many innovations we now take for granted, from barcodes to SMS texting. Another, at Vodafone, was the tense New Year’s Eve he spent navigating the company through the infamous Millennium Bug. Later, after gaining Chartered status in the procurement field, he moved into consultancy, serving the London Metal Exchange among other City institutions as well as the Ministry of Defence.

Rob’s teams knew him as an outstanding boss and mentor: sharp, often challenging, but always generous with time and advice. And once away from work, no one was better company.

Passionate about both music and sport, he also delighted in model car ‘slot racing’ relishing the chance it affords to engineer ‘stuff that works’.

Above all there were, and are, his wife Sonia and their children. A chance meeting in Devon initiated Sonia and Rob’s life together. Adam, Katy and Tom’s arrival soon followed, as did countless happy times shared across Cornwall, Somerset, and Wiltshire.

Another passion was cycling. Rob loved being out on his bike – and it was while riding that he first realised something was not right. He was diagnosed with cancer, which sadly overpowered him in October 2020 after a short, brave battle.

It was typical of ‘the big man’ that he continued to make plans until his last day.

He even specified a ‘final overture’ of voice recordings for his funeral – culminating in a sentiment that perhaps helps explain why his memory will be so cherished.

“It’ll be alright in the end. And if it isn’t alright, it’s not the end.”

Hugo Kondratiuk (1970-74) and the Lees Family

Brian was born in Twickenham in 1934 to a prosperous family of Billingsgate fish merchants. He attended the Mall School before entering St Paul’s where his genial personality shone through. He raised eyebrows when, in his last school year, he came to school on his powerful motorbike.

Leaving school early, he secured a job selling cars at a prestigious Mayfair dealer, which set the pattern for his future career in the motor industry. He quickly joined the OP sports clubs at Thames Ditton, which started him on an amazing membership as an active and popular member spanning almost 70 years.

At rugby, he played mostly for the 2nd or 3rd XV in those halcyon days when the OPs ran up to 7 rugby sides. At cricket, he was a stalwart of the 2nd XI and will always be remembered for hitting a huge six onto the roof of an adjacent bungalow against Datchet C.C that prompted his skipper, Neil Fitch (1955-60), to call him ‘Bunga’ – the name that stuck to him for the rest of his life. After retirement from field sports, he continued as a very regular attender at TD and joined rugby and cricket tours. He was also a tennis and squash player and in his eighties played croquet.

Bunga became a prominent member of the OP golf society. As past captain, he managed matches against Fulwell Golf club for over 40 years and played until he was 80. In his seventies he was elected a VP of the OP Club to add to his Vice Presidencies of the Golf and Rugby clubs.

Bunga married twice and then had a final good run of 25 years with his partner Jane. His children kept in close and loving contact. Jane sadly died in 2019 after a short illness and her demise upset him so that he quickly declined himself, becoming too weak to fight some underlying health problems. Bunga will be sadly missed.

Bunga’s family and friends

It is hard to quantify the immense contribution that Basil, who died peacefully in November last year, made to the lives of countless Paulines and Old Paulines – and to the OP Club, of which he was President from 1991-93.

After graduating from RADA and acting in rep, Basil became a regular in the BBC TV soap opera Compact, as Alan Drew, and, later, in the corporation’s equally popular radio soap Waggoners’ Walk. A variety of stage, screen and radio roles followed.

Throughout the 1960s and 70s he was a key driving force in one of the most successful periods in the history of the Old Pauline rugby club. He ran the club’s ‘Extra A’ – regularly fielding three teams himself – and was appointed an OPFC Vice President in 1974.

When the decision was made to expand the facilities at Thames Ditton, Basil spearheaded a major fundraising campaign that enabled the building of the current clubhouse, which the Club would use in partnership with the newly formed Thames Ditton Sports and Squash Club – now Colets – ensuring the long-term future of the Old Paulines’ pitches and sports teams.

Basil served Colets for 35 years, first as managing director then director and CEO. He also supported the newly established OPAFC and became its first chairman when football was introduced to Thames Ditton in 1992.

Basil’s prime cause, however, was that of The Pauline Meetings and house parties, the Barnes branch of which he ran for many decades. Speaking at Basil’s funeral, the Very Revd Joe Hawes said: “Time and again, testament has been paid to the work at the centre of Bas’s life: the St Paul’s School Christian Union, through which he expressed his quiet but deep faith, into which he poured unshowy, costly and generous love and from which he received friendship and the return of seeing young lives flourish.”

A person of genuine warmth and charisma, Basil was also a gifted musician.

He ran a jazz band and composed a number of songs and choral works, including two Mass settings.

A memorial service for Basil will be held at Southwark Cathedral on 22 September.

Andy Puddifoot (1974-79) and John Howard (1971-75) 55

OBITUARIES

John S Parker (1959-63)

Associate Professor Michael H Pritchard (1951-56)

Professor EOR Reynolds CBE, FRS (1946-51)

My brother John Parker, born in 1946, entered Colet Court as a scholar in 1956 and left the senior school in 1963, on election to an open scholarship in mathematics at Trinity College Cambridge. He was no sportsman but received a superb training in maths in the 8th form from the celebrated Jack Moakes (Master 1931-67).

At Cambridge, where he was in his element, he got firsts in both parts of the tripos, very close to the top of the list in the second part. He started a PhD at Warwick University but broke it off to become a civil servant in the Ministry of Transport, which mutated into the Department of the Environment. He enjoyed the work and rose to the rank, if I remember, of Under Secretary, until disaster struck: because of a personality clash with a boss recruited from the private sector and not appreciative of civil service ways he was forced (unjustly and wastefully, in my view) into early retirement. In this enforced state of leisure he joined the Hertfordshire family history society and conducted spectacularly successful researches into every branch of our family history.

He was a loner among loners, who never married but could apparently live happily with few social contacts. But his interest in family history was an expression of a strong loyalty to family: he kept us all in touch and was a devoted uncle to my daughter. Only now do I realise how shamelessly I exploited and relied on him to cope with all the administrative tasks (for instance after our parents’ and other elderly relatives’ deaths) of the family.

Until his middle years he was a keen mountain walker, with an impressive total of conquered Munros; classical music was also very important to him, and he read voraciously, mostly non-fiction, and stored an extraordinary amount of what he learnt in a quite formidable memory.

Robert Parker (1963-1967)

Born in Southampton, England on 10 August 1938, Michael died in Auckland, New Zealand aged 82, on 18 August 2020.

His mother, widowed when he was six, worked as a housekeeper to send him to Colet Court from 1944, and St Paul’s School (1951-56), where he flourished as a choirboy, rower and scholastically.

Rejecting a place at the University of Cambridge (then not offering geology), Michael graduated with an Aberystwyth University Bachelor of Science.

Aged 23, with a young family (eventually seven children, fourteen grandchildren and four greatgrandchildren), he migrated to New Zealand in 1961 to take up a position with the Ministry of Works, going on to study Town Planning at the University of Auckland. Recruited to the staff in 1965, he helped fashion Planning Education in New Zealand, then an emerging discipline and profession. He established the New Zealand Planning Institute’s professional journal, Town Planning Quarterly while writing a regular newspaper column to enhance public recognition and understanding. An outstanding teacher, he received the University’s Distinguished Teaching Award (1994). Prominent in academic leadership, he headed the Planning Department (1990-93) and the Faculty of Architecture, Property, Planning and Fine Arts (1996-2004).

Michael was also a community activist and at the forefront of New Zealand’s heritage and environmental movements.

He entered local politics in his home suburb of Devonport, as a councillor (1971-83) and Deputy Mayor (1977-80).

A visionary polymath, talented in harmonising discordant voices towards constructive transformation, Michael’s New Zealand legacy is substantial.

St Paul’s provided the foundation: a reverence for knowledge and the obligation to pass it on.

The Pritchard family

“Os” Reynolds died on 24 April 2017.

He was in the Biology 8th, taught by the legendary Sid Pask (Master 1928-66) with two other classmates who also achieved national fame, Oliver Sacks (1946-51), author and neurologist, and Ian McColl (1948-51) who became President of the Royal College of Surgeons, and a Peer. A year behind them was Jonathan Miller (1947-53), the future pathologist and polymath. Captain of Fencing, he was an exceptional talent described by a team-mate as having “very fast moving feet, long arms and legs so that when he attacked you he unfolded like some sort of terrifying spring coil.”

On leaving school he fenced for Wales at the Empire and Commonwealth games, and for Great Britain in the 1955 World Championships and won a team Bronze Medal, defeating France, reigning World and Olympic champions, on the way.

He then retired from the sport to pursue his career in medicine, but maintained that his fencing career had changed his life. He strongly believed that children should be encouraged to be good at something, and it probably did not matter what it was.

His medical career was summed up by a colleague, who said he was the founding father of neonatal medicine in the UK and a major leader in the field worldwide. In 1993 he was the first neo-natologist to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, a singular recognition of his leadership and influence in this field of medicine. He was awarded the CBE in 1995.

His wife Margaret was a distinguished physiologist and their two sons Mark (1970-75), now a doctor was awarded an MBE for services to General Practice and Matthew (1982-86), currently a Professor of English at Oxford University are both Old Paulines: Mark was Captain of Fencing. Os’s family was most important to him and he was extremely proud of them and his grandchildren. Another great love was music, Glyndebourne being a high spot of the year.

He was a delightful man, kindly, courteous and considerate with a great sense of fun. His company was sought and relished by his many friends.

Charles Madge (1952-57)

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OPC Old Pauline Sport returns at Thames Ditton

Harold D Wicks 1946-50 Harold grew up in Kensington and attended Colet Court before moving up to St. Paul’s School in 1946. Academically Harold was in the Pauline science stream where he benefited greatly from the care of the gifted master Sidney Pask (Master 1928-66). Athletically Harold became a competitive fencer and with St Paul’s pre-eminent as public schools’ champions, Harold was a redoubtable member of the épée team.

Leaving school Harold served in the RAF where his linguistic knowledge took him to West Germany and many hours spent with headphones clamped to his ears listening Eastwards. Freed from the blue uniform he joined the major advertising agency Masius Wynne-Williams and later the prestigious London Press Exchange. Harold also worked for several years in London and Eindhoven marketing the products of Phillips Electronics.

In 1962 he married his wife Jill after a chance meeting on a boat the previous year, while returning from a trip to Russia.

They have a daughter, Nancy. After marriage Harold eventually shifted the focus of his working life to reflect his and Jill’s lifelong commitment to natural health. Harold together with a leading Westminster Hospital consultant initiated an activity that became the Research Council for Complementary Medicine.

Thirty years on it is established as an ongoing valuable contribution to the relationship of conventional and natural health therapies.

In his later years Harold moved with Jill to Lavenham in Suffolk where he became an active member of the local community. He volunteered his time and considerable communications experience to support the work of the Suffolk Building Preservation Trust at the unique Little Hall, Lavenham.

Throughout his life Harold held firm to his beliefs, followed a varied path and excelled in all that he did. He was truly a people person with always a great concern for helping others. He is sorely missed.

Contributions from family and friends

Since the UK government announced the roadmap out of lockdown in late February, 29 March has been a date etched on the mind of all associated with Old Pauline sports. Cricket, football and rugby are set to resume playing at Colets this summer, ensuring a busy few months at Thames Ditton.

For the football club, their interrupted seasons are set to continue after The Amateur Football Combination member clubs voted to complete the remaining fixtures. The OPAFC finds itself in the unprecedented position of being unbeaten in the League heading into Easter. The 1st XI resume in second place, the 2nd XI, flying high at the top of their division, and the Vets, buoyed by their advanced position in the vaccination queue, play in the Vets Cup against Old Westminster Citizens on Sunday 11 April. If you would like to become involved with the OPAFC then please contact Ciaran Harries (ciaran.harries@btinternet.com) to find out more.

The rugby club also makes a playing return. Touch rugby sessions begin again in from the end of March with an additional session at Colets on Saturday 3 April. The big date for your diaries is 17 April when the OPFC hosts an invitational touch rugby tournament open to club regulars and newcomers alike. The club will be following the RFU’s ‘Return to Rugby Roadmap’ so will begin contact training in late April in anticipation for matches with adapted laws against other local clubs from 1 May. If you would like any more information or would like to be in touch with the rugby club then please email info@opfc.org.uk.

As for the cricket club, for a long while it did not look possible, but optimism is beginning to surge through the OPCC at the prospects of a full league season for both 1st and 2nd XIs, starting on 8 May. Both teams are looking to pick up from where they left off, as they continue to take the club to unprecedented levels of success. The 1st XI will resume their battle in the 1st XI division 4 of the Surrey Championship, while the 2nd XI will compete in the 2nd XI division 4 for the first time, having finished top of division 5 in 2019. As always, new playing members are welcome and if you are interested in representing OPCC, please contact Chris at berkettc@gmail.com. 

OPC Annual Dinner Save The Date: Thursday 8 July 2021 The Old Pauline Club invites all OPs to save the date for its Annual Dinner which this year will be held at St Paul's School.

This event is a wonderful opportunity to meet up with old friends and hear an update from the school. We are pleased to announce that foreign correspondent and world affairs editor of BBC News John Simpson (1957-62) will be the guest speaker for this year’s event.

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OLD PAULINE SPORT

A successful football season cut short is described by Jehan Sherjan (1989-94)

1ST XI

2ND XI

Confidence was high heading into the 2020/21 season, on the back of a very strong pre-season and a large influx of extremely talented recent OP leavers – a direct result of the work put in by St Paul’s Head of Football Luke Warriner (1997-2002).

With the previous season ending with a push for promotion, there was intrigue as to how the 2nd XI would respond when football finally started up after a six-month break.

This year’s squad is built around a good mix of youthful energy (the likes of James O’Byrne (2010-15) and George Mayo (2010-15)) and the wise old heads of Max GordonBrown (2006-08), Harry Browne (2005-10) and the ever-present Andrew Robertson (1996-2001).

We started with two convincing wins. However, just as our season was accelerating into third gear, a coronavirus scare within the team forced an emergency break in proceedings and caused two matches to be postponed.

Yet, as the saying goes, ‘when COVID-19 taketh, it might giveth back’. In our case this was the cancellation of Jasper Harlington’s (2010-15) year abroad, freeing up his Saturday afternoons to terrorise unsuspecting opposition defenders on the pitch.

On our return to action, after two unfortunate draws, we bounced back with three excellent victories in a row to leave us second in the league table, still undefeated and with a couple of games in hand. Now we are ‘enjoying’ a prolonged Christmas break, eagerly anticipating welcoming everyone back to Thames Ditton for the rest of the season.

We have had over 30 players turn up for us this year, which is great, and are always looking for new recruits to help sustain our unbeaten push to the league title. 

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A league restructuring had resulted in a de facto promotion giving us a chance to test ourselves against better opposition. With new recruits from the St Paul’s ‘Class of 2016’ swelling the ranks and COVID meaning most other weekend plans were now illegal, numbers soared. With over 20 people making themselves available some weekends, squads have been consistent, using only 23 different players, 17 of them OPs. Four weekends to gel as a squad proved a huge advantage come the first league games of the season, with back-to-back wins as the new players integrated themselves into the team. By the time we played Reigate away we were firing on all cylinders. The 5-1 win that followed was all the more impressive after losing our trequartista to injury 48 seconds in, as well as there being a glaring absence at left-back – the change from Clapham proved too complicated for some.

Next up a 6-1 win, the footballing ability in the team such that even our keeper got a 20-minute cameo outfield, notching up two assists and three key passes. It made no sense, but very little does in these unprecedented times.

Two wins and a draw preceded Lockdown 2, with our final game before a return to the sofa against a plucky Brent team, who represented everything we enjoyed about this division. They insisted on playing out from the back despite the weather and pitch (and their captain) screaming not to.

We showed our appreciation by Gegenpressing ourselves into a 6-0 lead at half time. Four more goals followed, before we generously offered not to clear their token one long ball over the top, allowing them a consolation goal. We marked our return from the next COVID break in December with a gritty 2-0 win over fellow title rivals Witan.

We currently sit top of Division 5 South, undefeated and hoping for a safe return to football as soon as possible.

A number of crunch games stand between the Old Pauline 2nd XI and an open bus tour along the A309 (along with the giddy heights of 4 South), but with the team scoring an average of four goals a game, there is every chance we will get there. 

VETS The 2020-2021 Old Pauline Veterans season sees a strong squad – both in quality and in quantity. We have been oversubscribed for every fixture so far, with approaching 40 OPs from a huge age range making themselves available. We are plotting a twin assault on the Southern Amateur League Sunday Cup and Saturday Shield competitions.

2 nd Football Team

The first game, in early October, was a home fixture against West Wickham Vets in the Shield. Despite the sending off of our goalkeeper, and some overall understandable rustiness, we managed a creditable 2-2 draw to put points on the board in our first run out of the season.

An imperious 6-2 thrashing (it could easily have been double figures) of hapless Merton on Halloween followed.

This result, with six different scorers, showed the talent, application, and strength in depth of this exceptional squad and put us on a very strong 4 points in our group, poised to qualify for the knockout stages.

Sadly, thanks to COVID and various lockdowns and restrictions, that was the last game of the calendar year leaving us set up hopeful of a Spring charge to success in both competitions. 

54 OPs have played for the Football Club this season.

This is 20% up on 2019/20.

Hatam Al-Turaihi

Max Gordon-Brown

Ben Roberts

Roland Archdall

Harry Gostelow

Jeremy Roberts

Dave Arrowsmith

Gideon Habel

Andrew Robertson

Ed Barnard

Alex Harlington

Kemlo Rose

Ollie Bonnavero

Jasper Harlington

Jehan Sherjan

Kit Brice

Ciaran Harries

Alec Stewart

Harry Browne

Oly Jones

Olly Tapper

Russell Burns

Sahil Kher

Charlie Thompson

Max Carter

Jarek Kleiber

Declan Thompson

Will Cole

Mike Kiernan

Nick Troen

Jeremy Conrad

Adam Klein

Henry Walker

Harry Cotterall

Onur Kuzalti

Luke Warriner

Harry Draper

Tom McGlynn

Jack Welby

Matt Evans

George Mayo

Pete Welby

Scott Fairbairn

James O'Byrne

Mark Weston

AJ Foster

Patrick O'Neil

Hal Wilkinson

Nirav Ghantiwala

Ed Owles

Nye Williams

Ruben Girn

Henry Owles

Ed Woolgar

A direct result of the work put in by St Paul’s Head of Football Luke Warriner (1997-2002)

59

PAST TIMES October 1979, Russian Grandmaster loses to Board 5 player at St Paul’s School. D an Rosen (1977-81) on Board 5 beat the great Russian Grandmaster

F

or a decade from the late 1970s St Paul’s was the leading school chess team in Western Europe. In 1979 the top three boards were Julian Hodgson (1976-81), William Watson (1975-79) and Richard Holmes (1975-79). Their BCF ratings were 211, 211 and 210 respectively. Julian was the youngest player ever to defeat two grandmasters in successive rounds of a tournament. He became a Grandmaster and was British Champion four times.

In 1978 Michael Stean had been one of Viktor Korchnoi’s seconds in the World Championship match against Karpov.

Michael was also a coach at St Paul’s. In October 1979 Korchnoi was his guest in London and the world’s second best player was looking for some competition. So on 5 October 1979 Korchnoi came to Barnes to play a clock simultaneous display against a School team of 10. Julian Hodgson on Board 1 lost, William Watson achieved a draw on Board 2, while Dan Rosen (1977-81) on Board 5 beat the Great Russian Grandmaster.

Dan recalls the Korchnoi against 10 Paulines match. “It is such a long time ago, I do not remember much about that evening. I do recall we were due to have a match against another school but the

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The team was so strong that only once in those two seasons did the result of my individual game actually matter

prospect of playing against Korchnoi was sufficient to make a couple of team members suddenly become available.

Although I do remember everything feeling rather surreal for a few days, with kudos and respect I did not really deserve because the only reason I won was because Korchnoi blundered when I am sure he was winning. I did get Korchnoi to sign my scoresheet, which he did with good grace; I kept it safe in a wallet for several years, but to my eternal chagrin, I mislaid the wallet about 20 years ago. At least I still have all the trophies from the various competitions the school won during my time, although the team in 1977/78 and 1978/79 was so strong that only once in those two seasons did the result of my individual game actually matter.” 

PAULINE RELATIVES

 Francis and Patrick with their Father

THE ELDER NEATES Out first ball – Francis Neate (1953-58)

I

started at Colet Court aged 11 as a Foundation Scholar in the Upper Remove. It was something of a shock initially after 4 years at a small boarding school.

At St Paul’s there were boys who were cleverer than I was. I was also initially bullied, verbally not physically.

Fortunately, I was good at games, so the bullying stopped quite quickly.

I respected without liking or disliking the masters in the early years. I remember Bo Langham (Master 1916-60) fondly, despite his being in charge of boxing. Bill Williams was

the boxing coach but he had other jobs to keep him active. One was to coach the Under 14 Rugby team, so I had to deal with him in my first term in the senior school. My main problem was that I could not, or rather did not want to, tackle. I regarded this chore as one for those who could not catch, pass and kick a rugby ball. Bill Williams had other ideas and in the course of my first term, I learned to tackle. I suppose I was taught a method, but the main problem was courage. Bill seemed to know about that, so we had a relationship of sorts.

I think I started to grow up at the start of my third year in the senior school, when I encountered Buster Reed OP (Master 1947-72). I never felt quite comfortable with Buster, although many others liked him. What was undeniable was that the Colts Rugby team (and Buster) was where it all mattered, and I was captain. In time I made my way to the 1st XV where Phil McGuinness (Master 1951-87) and John Allport (1937-42 and Master

1953-87) were jointly in charge. I liked and respected both enormously.

That was my first year of three in the Upper 8th, mainly learning Latin and Greek. That was the system then and it did not fail me, although I tend nowadays to believe that there are better ways to acquire an education.

I learned to respect Wol Cruickshank (Master 1947-73) greatly, while disrespecting Pat Cotter (1917-23 and Master 1928-65) who was too full of himself. But the two of them got me to Oxford, so I can hardly complain.

I took up Fives at the senior school in order to get out of boxing, but I was too much of a chicken to refuse to box in the Green Cup when told that otherwise my prospects of Club colours would be in doubt. My first year as a Fives player gave me one of my greatest humiliations. As a natural ball player, I was good at Fives, or at least I thought so until the first match against St Dunstan’s. Eric Marsh was their number one, who subsequently became England champion for some »

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years. He won 15-0 in less than 20 minutes. He thrashed me each year for five years. I was a little better by the end – in the last year I only lost 8-15 in a match that lasted almost an hour.

I had never been so exhausted.

Geoffrey Phillips (Master 1954-60) started his career as a schoolmaster at St Paul’s in 1954. I believe that he was lined up to succeed Douglas Young (Master 1921-56) as master in charge of cricket, so in his first year he was in charge of the Colts when I was captain.

Consequently, I lived and breathed cricket with Geoffrey for 4 years. It was like I suddenly had an older brother who loved playing cricket with me. In each of my last two years at School my batting average was over 50 and in my last year I was selected as captain of the Southern Schools to play against The Rest at Lord’s; the pinnacle of the schools’ cricket world at that time.

I was helped on the way to my first match at Lord’s by events when St Paul’s played Felsted in 1958.

Geoffrey Phillips told me that the master in charge of cricket at Felsted was John Cockett, an international hockey player and a distinguished Minor Counties cricketer (against whom I subsequently played for Berkshire against Buckinghamshire).

Geoffrey told me that Cockett had the ear of the selectors at Lord’s of the team for the Southern Schools, so a few runs would be more than usually welcome.

This is when Bill Williams reappears as the umpire of the first cricket XI. I do not know what, if any, training he had for this onerous role, but he was on parade when we played Felsted.

We had a very small number of runs to score to win, so the best I could do to impress John Cockett would be to compile an elegant 20/30 not out. I was getting on with this job when the bowler let loose a slow long-hop outside my leg stump. There are two ways to deal with this delivery. The first is to smite it out of the ground, which is what I aimed to do. The second, which can happen occasionally, is to snick it to the wicketkeeper, which I did. The whole of Felsted appealed.

I knew I was out. Bill knew I was out.

I knew that Bill knew that I was out.

The whole of Felsted knew I was out.

Bill did his duty. I stayed, not out, we won and in due course I was appointed

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captain of The Southern Schools against The Rest. The cricket gods had their revenge; I was out first ball in the great match. 

I knew I was out. Bill knew I was out. I knew that Bill knew that I was out. The whole of Felsted knew I was out.

Bill did his duty.

Monty’s kicks off and other memories – Patrick Neate (1960-65)

I

followed my brother to Colet Court and then St Paul’s. They were eight happy years. Sport was at least as important as work in my young days.

I chose the History route at St Paul’s and so was taught by the newly arrived Peter Thomson (Master 1961-84), an excellent schoolmaster in my opinion. There were several boys cleverer than me, but I did OK without much effort.

In the 1960s, Field Marshal Montgomery liked to visit his old school. The High Master, Tom Howarth, had been one of his staff officers in the war and could hardly refuse. He turned up when we were playing Wellington at rugby and decided that he would like to kick off, so he walked across the grass in his shiny brown brogue shoes. We rushed up the 10 yards, but he had not kicked the ball far enough. The same thing happened the second time. When you are starting a rugby match, you want to rush up the 10 yards and smash into the opposition. So, we were frustrated.

I was the captain, so I asked the referee if we could get on with the game. Monty walked off the pitch and left soon after. We won the match.

He came another time and went round the prefects, asking us what our career plans were. There were rather

vague answers – business, law, teaching etc. He expressed his disappointment that nobody wanted to join the military. He asked one boy – fortunately not me – why not? The boy said that he did not want to kill people. There was a long silence and Monty walked off. It must have made an impact as I still remember it clearly 55 years later!

In my last year at the school, I noticed a younger boy carrying a large Bible and surrounded by other boys.

So I confiscated the Bible and took it back to the Prefects’ Room. The middle of the Bible had been cut out to hide of a cache of pornographic photographs, which the boy had been selling. We convinced ourselves that the responsible thing to do was to pin up the photos in the Prefects’ Room.

Unfortunately the High Master was showing some prospective parents around the School a few days later and chose to show them the Prefects’ Room. I was summoned by the High Master, and decided that attack was the best form of defence. Before he could get going, I told him that he should not enter the Prefects’ Room without being invited. This put him on the back foot, but it was a tricky moment. Perhaps, with hindsight, we should not have displayed the photos, but it seemed a good idea at the time.

A couple of years earlier, the Colts cricket XI was due to play away at the Leys School in Cambridge. The colts cricket master was Chris Train (Master 1957-67), another good schoolmaster.

I remember that one of our number, Paul Cartledge (1960-64), now a distinguished professor, was promoted to the First XI. We travelled on the coach with the First XI, the idea being that we should watch their match in the morning before playing our match in the afternoon. We did not think much of that plan, so slipped away into Cambridge. We hired a couple of punts and enjoyed ourselves on the river before having a couple of pints at a pub with a relaxed approach to under-age drinking. On our return for the match, Chris Train looked at us and suggested that we should field first if we won the toss. This was good advice as boys regularly left the field to have a pee. We also sobered up in the fresh air and won the match quite easily.

Nothing was ever said. 

CROSSWORD

Philosophy

Answers

by Lorie Church (1992-97) In this crossword, two answers must be entered as zigzags.

After finishing the grid, change the three darker squares for F P 6 (capitals, in that order L-R). Then enter all 8 shaded letters into Google and click on the first image result.

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to Atrium’s Autumn/ Winter 2020 crossword Coronavirus and Vaccination can change places to create new words.

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PHILOSOPHY Across 5 Indian Dahl picked up in floodlit Nelson (6) 7 Bias of old from Sigma organisation (5) 9 Get on with getting leg-over (3) 10 Cheers constructive artist M.C. (6) 11 Bury: football team from Italy (5) 12 (Zigzag) broad disciplines combining to make 18 (3, 7) 18 (Zigzag) broad discipline resulting from 12. (10) 20 Spanish boyfriend beats Topless Naomi good (5) 21 Horses’ backgrounds in art (6) 22 Wretchedness in heart of homeowner after setback (3) 23 Someone else’s beneficiary not before time (5) 24 How’s your father? Over my dead body, understood? That is. (6)

Down 1 What’s taken off in front of camera? (7) 2 Cretan painter of Toledo (2-5) 3 3 He saw stars, as Mercury rose Five times before Figaro (7) 4 Human engineering i.e. botch arrangement (7) 6 Island of Christian mutineers where Gaugin flourished (6) 8 Capital philosopher verbal on “old money” in Germany (4) 13 Right performance during her ‘Alien’ creator (1, 1, 5) 14 He painted matchstick men and matchstick cats and dogs (1, 1, 5) 15 Seems in confusion, what was mho... (7) 16 ... new mho pronouncement from the lungs (6) 17 Boris who put in Putin, shabby in style (7) 19 He offered enlightenment, King, six-footer (4)

Across 5 We’ve been locked down by this carnivorous monster (11) 8 Burdened with taking nothing from “no-deal” arrangement (5) 9 Guevara left cheese and fruit (5) 11 Bloody thing like Yttrium or Neodymium (4,7) 14 It may help to consider skinny monarch concerned with power (8, 3) 18 Driving license maybe taken after conviction for speeding (5) 20 Forgive roué at heart, he is a generous soul (5) 21 One shot puts 5 down (11) Down 1 “With my little eye”: something beginning with O (6) 2 What racehorse needs to finish, less rain (6) 3 Catholic priest leads an Anglican to surrendering territory (6) 4 This portmanteau involves a game played online (1-5) 6 Pierre’s refusal to admit hole-in-one took five strokes first and gimme at the end (3) 7 Six mile dash (3) 10 Changeable virus (infectious disease) (5) 12 Hole-in one for fritz having taken short break (3) 13 Sucker can mouth tankard (3) 14 Boom and bust TV hire (6) 15 Consequence could be Monkey-business? (6) 16 Give up about bloodline (4-2) 17 Mouldy turnip containing foetid material (6) 19 ABC..FGH. of gods (3) 20 Billy hasn’t time for State of India (3)

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LAST WORD

Ralph Varcoe (1984-89) argues that the most valuable lessons come once you leave.

A

n emotionally unintelligent Master told me that I was wasting the education St Paul’s was offering.

Only, at 16 I did not really know what emotional intelligence was.

I just understood I was a crushing disappointment because I was not Oxbridge material. My heart was set on music college partly because I did not have any other options, and partly because it was the family business.

It was 1987 and I was not much good at any of my academic subjects.

Certainly not in comparison to the ‘10 A’s at O’ level brigade’. I sought solace in rowing and music. Only, as an asthmatic, I was never destined for the 1st Eight. One more thing I was not to be much good at.

1989, and so bad was I at English that the school agreed I could drop the A level. My remaining 2 were rubbish. A measly B and C. I proved the emotionally unintelligent but extremely perceptive Master right.

I told myself it did not matter because I was heading for a career in music. I auditioned for the Guildhall and got in off the waiting list. I turned it down. I was mad. Mad because it turned out that the thing I was

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supposed to be good at, singing, I was not even good enough to get in without having to wait for others to drop out. I really was not very good at much.

A year later I got in straight from the audition, which felt like the first thing I had ever truly achieved. Yet still, my father, uncle, brother and sister were all Oxbridge. All my school friends were Oxbridge or Russell Group. I felt like the thick one.

In my first year at the Guildhall, I entered the English Song Competition and sung ‘Silent Noon’ and ‘Ha’anacker Mill’. I was certain every other singer was 20 times better than me. As the judge summed up the competition and announced the winners, I thought about leaving the room. There was not any point in staying, was there?

It would be an opportunity to have an awesome judge confirm what I already believed about myself – that compared to all the others, I was not much good.

“And the winner is….Ralph Varcoe”.

Jesus! What? Really?

Stunned does not begin to describe the overwhelm that rose like a volcano from the pit of my stomach. Five years’ worth of emotion surfaced in a nanosecond. My acceptance speech would have made an over-emotional Oscar winner look downright repressed.

Life moved in different phases.

I left the Guildhall and studied Homoeopathic Medicine. Then took a job selling sports club memberships.

Then selling some software. Once I was in I.T., I carved a career out of nothing but fear and determination to prove myself – over and over. Each job I took, each promotion, I told myself that I needed to feel the fear and do it anyway. It worked. I made it to Global VP. I ran marketing and sales teams.

People relied on me to define their growth strategy. How the hell did that happen? Did they not know I was the seriously mediocre boy from a school that saw me as a crushing disappointment?

But career success grew at the same rate as the impending divorce apocalypse. While I was doing well in one aspect of my life, I was melting down in another. This was a wakeup call.

Over the past few years, I have had much time to reflect, coming to the

conclusion that St Paul’s was both the making of me and the foundation of a lack of self-worth. The foundation of self-worth issues should be obvious from the story so far; the making of me because these very feelings have driven me to strive and prove that I can be something. But, through all of that, I have also realised that none of it provided much joy or happiness – not a real sense of purpose.

Roll forwards to today and I have discovered a different way to be.

Things in life fall into three categories – to do, to have and to be. Instilled from school age is the need to do the work, get the grades, do the things that were expected of the job, hit the numbers, do the tasks, have the car, have the nice house as a reward. It has always been about getting/having and doing. But nowhere along the way is there much about being. Being fulfilled.

Being happy. Being a better person, partner, parent. Being a contributing member of society. Just being.

So, today, I focus on being content, grateful and comfortable with who I am, what I am and how I am. Not all days do I succeed, but most are there or thereabouts.

That epiphany moment hit me hard, and it was like a weight, lifting from my shoulders. I felt lighter as I realised, I need compare myself to nobody.

It did not matter that I was a crushing disappointment to the school – their issue to deal with.

It did not matter that I didn’t get 5 A’s at A level or go to Oxbridge – nobody else cared.

It did not matter that others were better than me at singing – in fact, were they better, or just different?

In these unsettling health and economic times, with Lockdown 3 in place at the time of writing and the vaccine programme running with ever more haste, the mental health of our nation has never been more important.

We are penned in, locked up, fearful, without normal social interaction.

And do not get me started on the abnormal social interaction and highly polished veneer that is social media.

If ever there was a threat to the nation’s health, there it is. While none of us can do, or have, what we did, or had, before, we can focus on being – being who we are, without judgement or comparison. 

A H EA LTH C LUB L IKE NO OTH E R

2 YE RUN ARS NIN G

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