The Brazen Nose
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The Brazen Nose Volume 54 2019-2020 The Brazen Nose 2019–2020 The Brazen Nose is also available as a PDF file, which can be viewed on many electronic devices, including tablets and e-readers. Please visit www.bnc.ox.ac.uk/alumni/publications Typeset and printed by Holywell Press Ltd., Oxford. www.holywellpress.com Text paper: Essential offset 90gsm manufactured using total chlorine free pulp, FSC® mix credit. Plates paper: Magno gloss 115gsm FSC® Certified. Cover board: Papago sunflower gold 180 micron PEFC. The production of The Brazen Nose has directly contributed to The Woodland Trust and has planted 56.48 sqm of new native woodland and captured 2.259 tonnes of CO2. Electricity consumption is part powered by 50kw PV solar array installed on the roof of The Holywell Press Ltd. CONTENTS Records The Ashmole Society ......................90 Editor’s Notes ....................................5 The Addington Society ...................91 Senior Members ................................9 The Arts Society .............................93 Non-academic Staff .........................19 Articles Class Lists ........................................24 A Sentiment Apt for Lockdown Graduate Degrees ............................28 by Thomas Traherne (1653) ................96 Matriculations .................................32 Cleethorpes School Years College Prizes ..................................36 by John Bowers QC, Principal ............96 Elections to Scholarships and Exhibitions ...............................40 Will Palin: Why I’m Proud to Work College Blues ...................................44 for the Hospital that Helped Save Dad’s Life by Camilla Tominey ........104 Reports “Covid-19 has Turned the Spotlight JCR Report .....................................46 on the Office for National Statistics” – HCR Report ...................................49 A View from the Inside Careers Report ................................52 by David Bradbury ...........................107 Ale Verses ........................................54 Finding a Voice Library & Archives Report .............55 by Michael Malone ........................... 110 Presentations to the Library .............57 Seeing Light: A Critical Enquiry into the Chapel Report .................................59 Origins of Resurrection Faith by Peter Music Report ..................................63 Gant: Review The King’s Hall Trust for the Arts ...67 by Christopher Penn ......................... 115 Financial Review ............................68 Stand Together Clubs Holocaust Memorial Day sermon, BNCBC ..........................................72 26th January 2020 Football – Men’s Team ....................74 by Dr Ed Kessler MBE .................... 118 Rugby Football ...............................78 Women, Family and the Economy: Hockey ............................................79 The Gender-Equality Revolution Tennis ..............................................81 Equality Lecture delivered on 13th Netball .............................................81 November 2019 Badminton.......................................82 by Sarah Jackson OBE .....................120 Lacrosse ...........................................84 Why Principal’s Conversations? Pool .................................................84 by Professor Robert Krainer ...............132 Squash..............................................85 A Patchwork Life Cross Country .................................86 by Professor Stuart Weir ....................134 PPE Society .....................................87 Courage and Reconciliation The Ellesmere Society .....................88 by Dr Andrew Sillett ........................136 Messenger Scotland Wild-Camping Adventure by Dr Llewelyn Morgan ....................140 by Matthew Doran ........................... 162 The Author’s Effects: On Writer’s House Brasenose Choir Tour to Köln and Museums by Nicola Watson: Review Altenberg, 6-10th December, 2019 by Dr Bernard Richards .................... 143 by Christian Wilson, Carole’s Covid Chronicle Director of Music ..............................164 by Dr Carole Bourne-Taylor .............. 145 News & Notes ............................. 170 A Brace of Brasenose Bounders Brasenose Society ...................... 173 by Professor David Womersley and Year Reps & Gaudies ................ 176 Alexandra Browne ............................ 149 Alumni Relations and Travel Development Report ................. 181 Introduction ..................................157 Donors to Brasenose .................186 Kaunas Trip Report Obituaries ....................................207 by Adam Husain ..............................157 EDITOR’S NOTES 5 EDITOR’S NOTES by Dr Llewelyn Morgan, Vice-Principal & Fellow The bit that starts every Brazen Nose, the editorial welcome, is of course the last thing written. Since it takes a while to extract a report on College music or finances or lacrosse from their authors, the material of this magazine for any given academic year tends only to be fully gathered and in need of editorial intervention quite a few months after that year’s completion. It is thus at the best of times a feat of memory on the editor’s part to sum up the relevant year, and these are not, I think we can probably agree, the very best of times. The month of March 2020 wrought radical changes in life at Brasenose that remain with us in some form at the end of the year as I write, pondering what Hilary Term 2021 will be like—entirely online like Trinity 2020, or face-to-face tutorials (distanced, masked, well-ventilated) like this last Michaelmas Term? But there were two whole terms of 2019-20 before the first lockdown. In fact Covid-19 observed the Oxford term quite respectfully, the Classics examinations I was chairing in Hilary, which concluded on Friday of 8th, being effectively the last University activity before the shutters fell. That left all the marking, etc., for lockdown, but let’s not go into that. How normal it all was in Michaelmas and Hilary! Not humdrum normal, of course. An 80th-birthday dinner for Graham Richards (Chemistry, 1958) in October, and our first Equality Lecture in November, delivered by Sarah Jackson (Classics, 1977), which you can read later in this issue; an event celebrating the great legal scholar Peter Birks, Law Fellow at Brasenose from 1971 to 1981; the grand opening of the Amersi Foundation Lecture Room in December by Theresa May, an opportunity to thank Mohamed Amersi (EMBA, 2014) for allowing us to create this fine (and badly-needed) lecture space at the heart of College; the visit of film director Kenny Lonergan in March; Mathematics Fellow Konstantin Ardakov scooping the hugely prestigious Adams Prize in the same month. In addition, between the PPE Society, the Principal’s Conversations and private initiative we remained well connected to contemporary developments—too well abreast of recent trends in art in the view of many students, who objected vociferously (and at Ale Verses even in song) to the Paolozzi statue Portrait of the Artist which is gracing Old Quad for the duration 6 THE BRAZEN NOSE of a generous loan from the Ingram Collection, curated by Jo Baring (History, 1996). The College persists in imposing outstanding works of modern sculpture on its aesthetically conservative junior members, as you can also read about later on. Yet, though Covid affected only one out of three terms in 2019-20, it is the story of the year. A society of learning is perhaps disproportionately vulnerable to a challenge of this kind, a restriction on human interaction, and I think we all know ourselves better, for good or ill, after this experience. It has reinforced my view that Brasenose is currently blessed with a superlative collection of College Officers: the response to such a serious and sudden crisis has been level- headed and creative, and two people deserve especial recognition: the Principal for his calm leadership, and the Domestic Bursar, Matt Hill, for his remarkable organisational energy and talent in conditions that have been, if one chose one word to describe them, unpredictable. But read Liz Kay’s report on the Library to appreciate how everybody in this wonderful institution committed themselves to the task of educating its charges regardless. Personally, as a tutor, I have learned, or perhaps relearned, an essential lesson from delivering tutorials online in Trinity, and then face-to-face more recently: that there is something irreplaceable in the education of our students that comes from being in the same room with tutor and other students, and that remote communication can’t supply it, even if it’s much better than nothing. Aristotle knew that we are animals that only thrive in social settings, and that we feel, as humans, an inherent compulsion to know, but it’s good to be reminded of that truth, and that the Oxford tutorial enacts a remarkably successful meeting of these two human impulses to be with other people and to understand. That creative response I mentioned has brought us very close to really being together, mind you. The Principal’s Conversations transferred with particular success to an online format—the international reach suits an Oxford college, and academia in general, and it will no doubt be something that in some form we retain. In big and small respects Brasenose displayed its powers of resilience: a key person in the Oxford-based Global Health Network’s response to Covid, sharing high-quality data about the disease around the world, was housed and supported at Brasenose