ISSUE No. 153 WINTER 2013 School News EDITOR E DITORIAL Richard Hudson, Churchill’s Hall Shrewsbury School Shrewsbury SY3 7AT The inspiring cover photo, taken at 6:40 am on Tucks – when he was still a third former – and 3rd Tel: 01743 280630 13th May earlier this year, shows Old Salopian place in this year’s race. Suffused with the [email protected] Adam Booth (PH 1995-2000) on the summit of gorgeous light of a late African afternoon (see the ASSISTANT EDITOR Mount Everest, a journey which began at report on the recent RSSH tour to East Africa on Shrewsbury School on the local Shopshire and page 35), this photo is a dramatic reminder of the Annabel Warburg Welsh hills (see page 11). Adam, climbing from increasingly ambitious outreach of Salopia. For OBITUARIES EDITOR Nepal via the South Col, is the latest in a tradition the pupils and staff involved, this was a life- Hugh Ramsbotham which extends back to 8th June 1924 when changing experience, not merely in terms of the Sandy Irvine (S 1916-1921), climbing with George runs they ran and the runners they met, but for THE salopian club Mallory from Tibet via the North Col, disappeared the insight it offered into very different ways of Lt Col Nick Jenkins OBE on the north-east ridge, weighed down by their living lives than those lived in England, with the (Director from February 2014) cumbersome oxygen apparatus, never to important message that both happiness and Miriam Walton reappear alive. It is thought unlikely that they misery are found in every condition of life. (Interim Director/Administrator) reached the summit. Individual achievement, born So we move from individual aspiration to the of an enthusiasm nurtured at Shrewsbury and importance of nurturing the inner life, so Dianna Firmin brought to fruition in adult life, is thus embodied in eloquently articulated in Revd Gary Dobbie’s (Assistant Administrator) this image. Sandy Irvine was a fellow Old address to the new sixth form entrants, the text of The Salopian Club Salopian. But I have personal connections too which opens this issue. Not all of us would be as The Schools, Shrewsbury SY3 7BA with Mallory, who came from the same Cheshire happy – from an aesthetic perspective, I hasten to Tel: 01743 280892 or 894 (Office) Village where I grew up (Mobberley), and was an add – to have a Rothco hanging at the foot of our 01743 280891 (Director, from alumnus of the same Cambridge college beds, but the allegory the painting offers, as February 2014) (Magdalene), where for three out of my four years interpreted by the Chaplain, is as important as I lived in Mallory Cottages. anything achievable through a Shrewsbury Front cover: Below this editorial can be seen a current School education: inner peace ‘less about Adam Booth (PH 1995-2000) on the Salopian, Freddie Huxley-Fielding (R, 4th form), accuracy and more about the call to feel more, to summit of Mount Everest. an extraordinary young runner whose string of imagine more, to love more.’ Intus si recte ne Photo by Chiten Sherpa achievements include 4th place in the 2012 labora. RSSH in Africa. Freddie Huxley-Fielding (R, 4th form) 2 School News A DDRESS TO NEW S IXTH F ORM E NTRANTS Chaplain and Art Historian Gary Dobbie meditates on a Rothco canvas and the Shrewsbury School motto. It is a particular pleasure to welcome new members of the Sixth Form to this service, and also members of their families. The invitation that parents received came with a reproduction of the painting by Mark Rothko, which is on the cover of today’s Order of Service. It seemed a good idea therefore to use this as the basis for my Address, and to pick out one or two things which might be relevant to a moment like this. “all of us have a fear of baring ourselves to other people” An artist’s work is a piece of his heart and soul, a material expression of his inner world. And of course all of us have a fear of baring ourselves to other people. Mark Rothko once said, ‘A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer . it is, therefore, a risky and unfeeling act to send it out into the world.’ But out into the world we must go, unless we settle for some sort of ‘womb with a view’ which rather turns life into a spectator sport. When you first look at a painting, I think there are two questions that arise: 1. What is it? And Rothko kept the answer to this question quite matter of fact. Thus this painting of 1950 he entitled White Centre (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose). 2. The second question is one we tend to ask of ourselves: Could I do that? We tend to be uncomfortable with something which is beyond us. Indeed someone once said to Rothko rather rudely, ‘I could do that’. To which he replied, ‘Why don’t you?’ the difference between pupils from Eton (Motto – Let Eton Flourish) and Harrow (Motto – Let Fortune Attend Those that Dwell Here) and White Centre was sold in May 2007 on behalf of David Rockefeller, Shrewsbury (Motto – If Right Within, Trouble Not). But more of that who with a personal fortune of $2.5 billion isn’t exactly strapped for anon. A woman walks into a room, and the Etonian says, ‘Fetch that cash. It was sold to Qatar’s ruling Al-Thani family, setting the record woman a chair’. The Salopian fetches it – and the Harrovian sits on it. as the most expensive post-war work of art sold at auction. It went And when we get into this painting we find it full of light and for $72.8 million, so I bet you wish you had done it. Go on, knock warmth and colour. Mystery was what Rothko was desperate to one up and take it along to Sotheby’s! At 240 x 140cm there is a lot instill into his paintings, and for me he has done just this. These of it and I would be quite happy to have it at the bottom of my bed. huge colour fields with their blurred edges feel luminous and In the past, huge paintings were inclined to be pompous, making vibrant, moving from candy floss to golden sunset. It has been a us feel insignificant. For Rothko, large paintings were intimate and good day. Rothko spoke of the ‘inner light’ that he felt radiated out human; small paintings are outside your experience. ‘However you of his richly stained canvases. And what of your inner light? A white paint, the larger the picture, you are in it,’ he said. centre? Intus si recte ne labora: if you are all right inside, don’t be So let’s get into this one and see what we find. worried. There is a 1968 Beatles song written by George Harrison, Inner In the writings of St Paul in the New Testament, we find many Light, which contains the lines: references to the inner man, in contrast to the outer man – and don’t worry, it’s gender friendly! And we are familiar enough from Without going out of your door, the news of great athletes whose private lives contrast with their You can know all things on earth, public image. Great physical prowess does not guarantee moral Without looking out of your window, strength. The legendary George Best, who struggled with inner You can know the ways of heaven. demons, was famously found in an hotel room with the then Miss World, casino winnings strewed around, when a waiter brought a This basically suggests that the answers are within you. You do not bottle of champagne, the sight prompting him to ask, “Where did it need to search outside for happiness. It is all within, if only you all go wrong, Mr Best?” search for it. You don’t need to buy into things that are ‘outside’ to For me, something of that is indicated in the wobbly black line make you happy. It is within. Which brings us to the School motto: I lurking around Rothko’s White Centre. And each of us to varying love school mottoes and some of you may know the old joke about degrees has it. No one is exempt. Those moments of struggle, 3 School News anxiety, self-doubt, angst, despair and loneliness – when we feel up had been made and all the facts that against it, not able to find a way forward. And sometimes it comes had been settled, would be up for “there is another from a blue sky or, as here, from a White Centre. And it is a timely grabs again: all possibilities would be kind of truth and reminder that however sunny our disposition, we all hit and hide renewed, for who knew what lay on dark patches and the challenge is, as perhaps in the music of the other side?” this Chapel Bach, to face it down, surf it, see it through and hold course. And So nourish the inner life. Dream and invites you to most of the time, as the song has it, ‘we get by with a little bit of read about the dreams of others. take time to help from our friends’. So be a good friend. And those of you who Nourish your imagination. One of the are new will not have heard me say before, that friends listen to great pleasures of reading is the engage with it.