The Brazen Nose
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The Brazen Nose Volume 52 2017-2018 The Brazen Nose 2017–2018 Printed by: The Holywell Press Limited, www.holywellpress.com CONTENTS Records Articles Editor’s Notes ..................................5 Professor Nicholas Kurti: Senior Members ...............................8 An Appreciaton by John Bowers QC, Class Lists .......................................18 Principal ..........................................88 Graduate Degrees...........................23 E S Radcliffe 1798 by Matriculations ................................28 Dr Llewelyn Morgan .........................91 College Prizes ................................32 The Greenland Library Opening Elections to Scholarships and Speech by Philip Pullman .................95 Exhibitions.....................................36 The Greenland Library Opening College Blues .................................42 Speech by John Bowers QC, Principal ..........................................98 Reports BNC Sixty-Five Years On JCR Report ...................................44 by Dr Carole Bourne-Taylor ............100 HCR Report .................................46 A Response to John Weeks’ Careers Report ..............................51 Fifty Years Ago in Vol. 51 Library and Archives Report .........52 by Brian Cook ...............................101 Presentations to the Library ...........56 Memories of BNC by Brian Judd 3...10 Chapel Report ...............................60 Paper Cuts: A Memoir by Music Report .................................64 Stephen Bernard: A Review The King’s Hall Trust for the Arts ...67 by Revd Canon Dr Peter Groves ......105 Financial Review ..........................68 An Elegant Solution by Anne Atkins: Clubs Review by Dr Bernard Richards .....107 BNCBC - Women’s Team .............71 My Year of Brazen Novelists BNCBC - Men’s Team ..................72 by Dudley Harrop........................... 110 Football - Women’s Team ..............73 Barry Nicholas as a Comparitive Football - Men’s Team ...................74 Lawyer by Dr Birke Häcker ............ 114 Rugby Football ..............................75 Brasenose and “The Table” Hockey - Men’s Team ....................76 by Dr Simon Smith ........................ 119 Cricket ...........................................77 Brasenose, Elias Ashmole and the Tennis ............................................78 Mainwarings by David Bradbury ...123 Netball ...........................................79 Silver Rush by Brasenose Badminton .....................................80 News Staff Writers .........................125 Lacrosse .........................................81 Ingoldsby’s Ale Verses: PPE Society ..................................82 Two Unpublished Ale Verses The Ellesmere Society ...................83 from 1808 by RH Barham The Ashmole Society .....................84 by Roderick Clayton .......................127 The Brasenose Society and News & Notes .............................156 Its Transformation in the 1990s: Brasenose Society ....................... 162 A Personal Memoir Year Reps & by Paul Dawson-Bowling ................138 Upcoming Gaudies .....................164 Travel Alumni Relations & Introduction ................................. 143 Development Office Report 9...... 16 Making an African Impact Donors to Brasenose ................. 173 by Sophie Gunning .........................144 Obituaries ...................................190 OUAFC Blues Post-Varsity Tour by Wulfie Bain ...............................146 Forensic Archaeology at Cranfield University by Maria-Nectaria Antoniou ............148 Supra by Florence Downs ................ 149 A Conference at the Camp Nou by Gautam Menon .........................152 EDITOR’S NOTES 5 EDITOR’S NOTES Dr Llewelyn Morgan, Tutorial Fellow in Classics & Vice-Principal Diversity is the buzzword this year. Does our community reflect the full spectrum of our society as well as it might? This year there came into our possession a remarkable document, the probate copy of the will of William Hulme, containing what has proved to be, since Hulme’s death in 1691, the most generous individual donation ever made to the College, mainly because some of the land gifted by Hulme happened to be located in what is now central Manchester. Hulme’s stated wish, to support “four poor batchellors” in their pursuit of four further years of education beyond the BA at Brasenose, may fundamentally have been about reinforcing the Church of England against the inroads of Nonconformism, and not all the beneficiaries of his bequest were poor by any reasonable definition. But there were countless disadvantaged students between Samuel Davie in 1692 and John Wilkinson in 1881 for whom Hulme’s generosity levelled the playing field. One of them, aptly, was William Webb Ellis, whose father had died at Albuera during the Peninsular War and left his family destitute. His mother had moved to Rugby, thereby securing for William the free education at Rugby School available to local boys or “foundationers”. Brasenose then took up where Rugby left off, awarding Ellis a Hulme Exhibition in 1828 and launching him on a successful career in the Church. Different times entail different priorities, but the essence of the College’s mission is there: to make education accessible to the talented whoever they may be and whatever their gender, race, sexual orientation, physical needs or economic circumstances. Diversity in a college can seem paradoxical, nevertheless. Members of a college, junior or senior, need to share fundamental objectives, collaborate and cooperate, live together, eat together. But Brasenose has repeatedly shown that a community defined by academic ambition can in all other respects be as diverse as the society it serves. In Dr Joe Organ we are blessed with an Outreach Officer of huge energy and talent, and our application numbers are growing year by year. Much has been achieved and (as Joe would insist) much more remains to be done. But neither William Hulme nor William Webb Ellis would be disappointed by the 21st century College’s preoccupation with, and commitment to, its accessibility. 6 THE BRAZEN NOSE An image to illustrate this theme was provided to me by Professor Abigail Green, Tutor in Modern History, whose research on Jewish- owned country houses took her to the Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking, the oldest mosque in Europe west of Lithuania, originally established by the Jewish philanthropist Gottlieb Leitner as part of an Oriental Institute encompassing a mosque, synagogue, church and temple. Abigail’s research was launched with seed funding from the Jeffrey Fund, a smaller bequest than Hulme’s which quietly helps out with the research expenses that academics encounter, and with luck the future will see an “interreligious heritage trail” introducing to visitors the religious pluralism of Leitner’s plan for Woking. One of Abigail’s interests is the art collections that these country houses hosted, and Leitner’s particular enthusiasm was for “Gandharan” art, the Greek- influenced art of Buddhists in what is now Pakistan - Leitner in fact has a claim to have defined the category of “Greco-Indian art”. It was in pursuit of my own interest in the colonial rediscovery of a Greek presence in the Subcontinent that I visited Pakistan for a week at the end of the year, a Classicist doing Classics in 19th century India and hopefully in the process showing that my subject can do diversity, too. There is a deplorable lack of variety, notwithstanding, in the editorial department of The Brazen Nose, where I continue to reside having confidently announced my retirement a year ago. Someone who did successfully retire, though we were very sad he did, was Alan Bennett, College Steward, who in his 39 years at Brasenose served as Junior Butler and Butler before becoming Steward. The “silver muster” described later in this issue reflects just one aspect of Alan’s meticulous stewarding of our material history, and I for one will miss getting ticked off for going to watch Queens Park Rangers rather than an equally underachieving team closer to home. Another departure was Professor Rui Esteves, after 11 years as an Tutor in Economics and three as Curator of the SCR, a far more weighty responsibility. We wish him the very best at the Geneva School of Management. Among new arrivals we were delighted to welcome Dr Sneha Krishnan as Tutorial Fellow in Geography and Dr Perla Maiolino as Tutorial Fellow in Engineering. 2017-18 saw the usual whirl of activity within College. We were visited by Bruce Kent, who submitted himself to an enlightening interview by the Principal. Another of the Principal’s initiatives, EDITOR’S NOTES 7 the Great Lawyers series, focused this year on Barry Nicholas, once Principal of Brasenose himself. A talk on that occasion by one of his pupils, Professor Birke Häcker, can be found later in this volume. But the highlight of our year, without doubt, was the formal opening of the newly-renamed Greenland Library, incorporating the Smith Reading Room, in the old cloisters, and the Del Favero Reading Room upstairs - a stunningly beautiful space for students to pursue their research. Within these pages you can read Philip Pullman’s speech at the Opening Ceremony, a powerful celebration of the library as engine of that free flight of the intellect and imagination which this College exists to foster. We are deeply grateful to the old members who made it possible. A final departure to mention before I leave you to enjoy the remainder of this issue. Dr Sos Eltis ended three very