The Jesus College Record 2011 College Record The Jesus © 2012 JESUS COLLEGE, OXFORD Printed by leachprint Distributed by TMB International Edited by Armand D’Angour Designed by Rebecca Hoare RECORD 2011 CONTENTS From the Editor 2 The Principal’s Report 4 Fellows’ News 12 List of Fellows & college lecturers 15 Prizes, Awards, Doctorates & Elections 22 T. E. Lawrence’s Rescue Boat 31 All the Fun of the Fair 34 Paul Shreder: ‘Turl Street in Snow’ 37 Unscrumpled 38 Western Civilisation: Decline - or Fall? 39 Any Dream Will Do 46 Travel Award Reports 49 The JCR Mural 57 The Catering Team 60 Sir Watkin Williams-Wynne’s Pudding 63 (Pwdin Watcyn Wynne) 63 Reginald Lane Poole & Lawrence of Arabia 64 The Fellows’ Library II 69 The Boat Club 74 A Year in the JCR 78 A Year in the MCR 80 A Year in Development 82 A Year in Chapel 86 Greeks and the New 88 In the Pleasure Dome 90 Choir Tour to Lisbon 93 Old Members’ Obituaries 95 Select Publications 116 Honours, Awards & Qualifications 124 Appointments 126 Marriages & Civil Partnerships 130 Births 132 In Memoriam 135 Useful Information 137 Merchandise 144 1 FROM THE EDITOR ARMAND D’ANGOUR ‘An army marches on its stomach’, declared Napoleon (the exam question in 1066 and All That adds ‘Illustrate and examine’). Winston Churchill went further: ‘It is as well to remember that the stomach governs the world’. Accordingly, this edition features members of the Catering Team (p. 60), following readers’ commendation of last year’s feature in the Record on the College Porters; and future issues will feature other staff members whose hard work and dedication ensure the smooth running of different areas of the College. The Catering Team works all year round to feed students, visitors, Fellows, guests and alumni. In recent years, College catering has undergone something of a revolution, after the kitchens were rebuilt in 2009. Debbie Kelly-Greaves took over as Head Chef and Catering Director in 2010, and her excellent direction and cuisine has been widely welcomed and praised. In a ‘first’ for the Record, we print one of her recipes (p. 63). (Star Signs next, or perhaps a Sudoku column? I think not.) Changes in editorial practice can be perilous. Last year, in pursuit of simplification, I thought that the names of Tutorial Fellows standardly printed in the Record would be less cumbersome if middle names were removed. But while most Fellows feel no special fondness for their middle names, some are familiarly known by them: Ockham’s razor sliced the wrong bits off two Fellows’ names, for which I apologise. Worse still was the fact that one of those so discomfited was Nicolas Jacobs, former Fellow in English, who for many years in Governing Body meetings was famous for his lynx-eyed scrutiny of the draft minutes. (Other Fellows have since attempted to follow his example: the palm is currently held by Engineering Fellow Peter McFadden, who by condemning a misplaced 2 comma in Trinity 2011, overtook Professor of Astronomy Fred Taylor, who had earlier exploited his climatological expertise to denounce a misspelling of ‘whether’...) Nick Jacobs publishes one of his fine poems in this issue (p. 38), while David Cram, who last year retired as Lecturer in Linguistics, offers more light-hearted verse (p. 90). The announcement last year of Hugh Doherty’s departure from Jesus happily turned out to be premature. Having secured funding for his project on the Magna Carta, Hugh’s time here as a Hugh Price Fellow in Mediaeval History has been extended for at least one year, and he contributes a piece on the historian Reginald Lane Poole (p. 64). The latter tutored T. E. Lawrence, whose work in designing a boat for air-sea rescue, recently rescued for posterity, is commemorated by alumnus Haydn Watkins (p. 31). The College’s former professional Senior Tutor, Jane Sherwood, now Director of Graduate Admissions for the University, writes about her experience of promoting Oxford in China. Thomas Charles-Edwards, who courteously ushered readers up one side of the Fellows’ Library last year, now guides us knowledgeably down the other. A number of students, Fellows, and alumni (and for the first time, Megan Daffern, the Chaplain) give accounts of their activities and productions inside and outside of College, and we can be confident of Jesus’ vigorous involvement in the events that will shape 2012. Becky Hoare, Events and Communications Officer in the Development Office, has given me splendid assistance in compiling and designing this issue: thanks from us both to all who have contributed to it. 3 THE PRINCIPAL’s REPORT LORD KREBS I start by recording my special thanks to Dr Will Moore, who as Vice Principal stood in for me during Trinity Term 2011 while I was on study leave. In the normal run of things the Vice Principal’s duties are very light, but in his term of office Will took on the role of Principal with enthusiasm and aplomb. Some of you will have seen him at Gaudies, graduation ceremonies and the Jesus College Society Dinner. Much of my study leave was spent writing the first draft of a book on food for the Oxford University Press series ‘Very Short Introductions’. To write about the story of food in 35,000 words - from the diets of our Australopethicine ancestors 3.5 million years ago to the question of how to feed nine billion people in 2050 - is a challenge. It brings to mind the remark attributed to Blaise Pascal, Mark Twain and many others: ‘If I had had more time I would have written a shorter letter’. The study leave enabled me to give a short series of public lectures at Cornell University and a keynote address at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Max Planck Insitut für Verhaltensphysiologie near Munich. I was also able to spend more time in the House of Lords, where the Science and Technology Select Committee, which I chair, published two reports, one on Innovation and Public Procurement, the other on Behaviour Change. Readers of the Record will, I am sure, be familiar by now with the fact that funding of undergraduate teaching in UK universities is about to change. I have written about this in the Newsletter, so a very brief summary will suffice. The UK students applying to come up in the autumn of 2012 will be the first to pay the new £9,000 per annum fee towards their tuition. This covers a little over half the full cost of an Oxford education, 4 the remainder being subsidised through a combination of College endowment income or donations, and cross-subsidy from University research income. Students will not pay the fees up front, but will pay back a loan to the Government after they graduate. The full implications of the new fee regime for the numbers and kinds of applicants to the College, as well as the subjects they choose to read, may not be apparent for several years. This year, however, the number of applicants to the University as a whole was similar to last year, although with a slight shift from UK to overseas students in this total. According to the independent website MoneySavingExpert.com, Oxford has the most generous no-strings financial support package of any UK university, worth over £22,000 for students from the lowest income families. Jesus College, as well as contributing to the University scheme of bursaries and fee waivers, is one of very few colleges at Oxford to run its own additional bursary scheme, which benefits about one quarter of our undergraduates. We are able to do this because of the generous support of our alumni, and for me it is of very great importance in allowing the College to maintain its strong tradition of being accessible to outstanding students irrespective of their background and family income. Donations from alumni have also enabled the College to offer Teach First Bursaries to Jesus graduates who are successful in this highly competitive and successful scheme, which aims to ‘address educational disadvantage by transforming exceptional graduates into effective, inspirational teachers and leaders in all fields’. The College has welcomed four new Tutorial Fellows: Alex Gajda in Early Modern History, Simon Douglas in Law, Arnaud Doucet in Statistics and Yulin Chen in Solid State Physics. They replace, respectively, Felicity Heal, Charles Mitchell, Peter Clifford and Mike Glazer. Two of our Professorial Fellows have retired: Fred Taylor as Halley Professor of Physics and Thomas Charles-Edwards as Jesus Professor of Celtic 5 Studies. Fred’s position will be advertised and filled next year; but unfortunately the University has decided that for the moment it cannot continue to fund the Celtic Chair, even though the College has partly endowed it. The College has a strong commitment to Celtic Studies, and has an important Celtic Library. We will, therefore, do what we can to encourage and support the University in its efforts to raise the endowment as soon as possible to secure the post in perpetuity. The Jesus Chair is important both nationally and internationally and it has been held by very distinguished scholars, including the first incumbent, Sir John Rhys, who was, of course, also Principal of the College. I would be pleased to hear from any alumni with ideas about possible donors. Seven new Research Fellows have joined the College this year. They are Dr Ash Asudeh and Dr Paul Collins (both Hugh Price Fellows, in Linguistics and Ancient Near East Studies respectively), Dr Roi Cohen Kadosh, Dr Regini Rini and Dr Kirsten Christensen (Junior Research Fellows, in Experimental Psychology, Philosophy and Chemistry respectively), and Professor Richard Bosworth, Senior Research Fellow in 20th-century History.