Brazen Nose Vol 50, 2015-16
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The Brazen Nose The Brazen The Brazen Nose Volume 50 2015-2016 Volume 50, Volume 2015-2016 BRA-21812 Cover.indd 1 24/01/2017 13:07 The Brazen Nose 2015-2016 BRA-21812 The Brazen Nose 2016.indd 1 24/01/2017 07:59 Printed by: The Holywell Press Limited, www.holywellpress.com BRA-21812 The Brazen Nose 2016.indd 2 24/01/2017 07:59 CONTENTS Records Articles A Message from the Editor ...............5 H.L.A. Hart: The Principal and Senior Members ...............................9 the Man Class Lists .......................................19 by John Bowers QC, Principal ...........87 Graduate Degrees ...........................23 55 Years On Matriculations .................................27 by Stephen Green...........................94 College Prizes .................................30 Buchan, BNC, Bobby Moore and Me Elections to Scholarships and by Richard Piper ........................... 99 Exhibitions .....................................33 Response to Toby Young’s Article in College Blues .................................38 Vol.49 of the Brazen Nose Reports by Andy Ford ............................ 103 JCR Report ...................................40 Address Given at the Admission Careers Report ...............................43 Ceremony of Principal John Bowers QC HCR Report .................................44 by Professor Richard Cooper ........... 104 Library and Archives Report ...........48 Presentations to the Library.............53 Ted Maslen-Jones, MC, DFC, and Chapel Report................................57 VJ70: A Day Never to be Forgotten Music Report .................................59 by Bob Ireland ........................... 106 The King’s Hall Trust For The Arts ....62 Prophet Working on China’s Soil: Ale Verses .......................................63 Bishop Ronald Hall Financial Review ............................64 by The Very Revd Dr Martyn Percy .. 109 Clubs BNC Authors: A Novel Approach BNCBC – Women’s Team ...............67 by Dudley Harrop ....................... 110 BNCBC – Men’s Team .....................68 Graham Richards and Tony Football – Women’s Team .................70 Marchington, Entrepreneurship: Football – Men’s Team ......................71 A Case Study From Two View Points Rugby Football .................................73 by Professor Christopher McKenna ... 116 Hockey – Women’s Team .................74 For His Country Hockey – Men’s Team ......................75 by Dr Llewelyn Morgan ................ 118 Cricket ..............................................76 An Interview with Professor Elspeth Netball ..............................................78 Garman by Josephine Pepper ......... 125 Tennis ............................................79 Oxford Chitral Expedition 1958 Boxing Camp .................................80 by Ted Norrish ........................... 130 Arts Society ....................................81 PPE Society ....................................82 Travel The Ellesmere Society ....................84 Introduction .................................143 Life at the Lab by Victoria Cox .......................... 144 BRA-21812 The Brazen Nose 2016.indd 3 24/01/2017 07:59 4 THE BRAZEN NOSE Investigating the Refugee Situation News & Notes ..........................161 in Denmark by Benjamin Davies and Brasenose Society .....................167 Rachel Dunne ............................ 145 Year Reps & Gaudies ................169 My Trip to Rhodes; Castles, Knights Development Office Report ......173 and History by Clio Takas ........... 147 Donors to Brasenose .................177 Fringe Obituaries .............................193 by Sophie Tang .......................... 150 Mandarin Lessons by Benjamin Davies .................... 151 Archiving Work in the Bodleian by Emily Boseley ........................ 152 Poetry Trip to Iceland by Annie Hayter ......................... 154 BRA-21812 The Brazen Nose 2016.indd 4 24/01/2017 07:59 EDITOR’S NOTES 5 EDITOR’S NOTES Dr Llewelyn Morgan (Tutorial Fellow in Classics) We probably have to admit that other colleges in Oxford left a bigger imprint on World Literature than Brasenose. I have encountered the fine turn of phrase “to talk pure Brasenose to someone” in a Kipling short story (The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat), meaning to speak condescendingly to a social or moral inferior, and the Tudor poet John Heywood once attempted a feeble play on our name and the tendency of Henry VIII’s debased shillings, or testons, to be rubbed down to the underlying red copper on the king’s nose: Testons be gone to Oxforde, God be their speede: To studie in Brasennose there to proceede. Let us never forget either Thomas Hood’s poem The Lament of Toby, the Learned Pig, on a pig allegedly fluent in Latin, Greek and Hebrew; in Hood’s telling, destined for the chop for all his learning: Oh, why did I at Brazen-Nose Rout up the roots of knowledge? A butcher that can’t read will kill A pig that’s been to college! But it’s high time that this college took proper stock of its literary achievements, and that is the challenge posed to us all by Dudley Harrop (1955) later in this issue. He asks us to read the works of Brasenose- educated authors and share our assessments with him. I can tell him now that I think J.G. Farrell’s Troubles richly deserved the delayed Booker it received in 2010 (the prize having skipped a year in 1970, when the novel was published), one of my favourite novels even before I realised Farrell had a Brasenose connection. Dudley will warmly approve of the discussion session led by Dr Julia Smith, General Editor of the monumental, fourteen-volume Oxford Traherne in the College Library in January: the mystical poet Thomas Traherne has a claim to be the most important author to emerge from Brasenose. My only request, to Dudley and to you, is that you read this Brazen Nose 2016 before you start on anything else. Literature certainly seems a more promising source of collegiate pride this year than politics. Certain momentous events in the summer BRA-21812 The Brazen Nose 2016.indd 5 24/01/2017 07:59 6 THE BRAZEN NOSE lost us our Brasenose Prime Minister (in the UK, at least; we’re holding out in Australia) and a number of ministers, too. A Chancellor of the Exchequer, with the weight of the world on his shoulders, was spotted at a graduation in July, although he himself, regrettably, was educated on the other side of High St. As for the bigger picture, Brasenose will no doubt weather this storm as all others, but the peculiar character of this most troubled of years has its own oblique reflection in these pages. Physically, the most significant and visible development in Brasenose this year has been our ambitious project to develop the library, which has exiled students all of a hundred yards away to the Bodleian across the square. The renovated library, extending into the Old Cloister below, will be stunning when finished, simultaneously an improvement to the library and a restoration of the cloister. In the meantime work to renovate adjoining parts of the College, the Muniment Room and Treasury, and the Deer Park, is already complete. The Treasury now has elegant display cabinets in which the works of Brasenose authors, such as Mr Harrop has in mind, are currently on show, in an appropriately attractive context at the top of the Old Quad Tower. From those dizzying heights the building works have plunged us, unexpectedly, deep down into the bowels of the Oxford earth. Most excitingly, a lost well was uncovered in the Deer Park, evidently serving whatever the Medieval Kitchen used to be. (I have an idea about that, and will reveal more next year...) Those developments, needless to say, are made possible by your generosity. A memorable moment in my own year was sitting next to Robert Kyprianou at a graduation lunch (another of my jobs is Dean of Degrees) when one of the first two scholars funded by the Robert and Soulla Kyprianou Scholarship was celebrating receiving his Masters degree. Graduations are always very special collegiate events, the moment when students become Old Members. But here was an Old Member back in the College Hall, recalling his own student days as the results of his generosity were marked. We depend on (and are grateful for) so many acts of kindness, I know, but that conversation crystallized for me the network of mutual regard that maintains our precious institution. 2016 saw the retirement of a number of our colleagues: Susan Wollenberg (Music), after 29 years affiliation with Brasenose, and no fewer than 44 years at LMH; Richard Cooper (French), a warm and ebullient presence in College who we suspect may be tempted back to dinners once in a while; Maria Chevska (Fine Art), to whom we owe so BRA-21812 The Brazen Nose 2016.indd 6 24/01/2017 07:59 EDITOR’S NOTES 7 much of our visual environment by virtue of her tasteful deployment of our art collection; Lesley Abrams, like Professor Wollenberg more of another college than ours (Balliol in Professor Abrams’ case), but much appreciated in this corner of Oxford, too; and Thomas Johansen, gone to our great regret to a prestigious professorship at the University of Oslo. On the other side of the perpetual balance, we welcomed Adam Perry as our new Fellow in Law, and later in the year John Willan (Medicine), a clinical haematologist in his spare time; and a new Director of Music, Christian Wilson, a highly respected organist, musical director and researcher. Internally, Sos Eltis assumed the onerous role of Vice- Principal, bringing to it her commitment to equality