ISSUE NO.20 JUNE 2014 Floreat Domus BALLIOL COLLEGE NEWS BALLIOL CELEBRATES 750YEARS Contents PAGE 1 From the Master PGEA S 38–39 Global Balliol Two Old Members talk to Floreat 750th anniversary Domus about living and working in North America. celebrations Page 7 Pages 8–10 PGEA 40 D-Day landings: PGEA S 2–3 Honorary Fellows, a testing experience Master’s Seminars, Holywell Manor In the 70th anniversary year of the Festival, 750th Commemoration landings, David Gibling recalls his Page 40 Pages 34–35 Ball, 750th Celebration Weekend, service in the Second World War. Chapel celebrations, the anniversary PGEA 41 All downhill from Balliol exhibition and other festive events Simon Lee pays tribute to the Balliol man who introduced downhill skiing Other news to the Winter Olympics. PGEA 14 College News PGEA S 42–43 Bookshelf Some recently published books by P AGES 25–29 Student News Old Members. Features Development news PGEA 30 Oxford at War On the centenary of the First World PGEA 44 The Heart of the Matter War, Aoife O’Gorman describes the Balliol scrapbooks and other research findings about Oxford’s war. PGEA 31 Balliol Boys’ Club Anna Sander writes about the Balliol Page 31 Page 16 Page 11 Boys’ Club, which influenced the WWI experiences of many. PGEA S 32–33 50 years of University Challenge A look back at Balliol’s participation in the ever-popular television programme. PGEA S 34–35 Rare breeds Pigs and Boran cattle: two Old Members share their experiences of animal breeding. P AGES 36–37 A life in the law Tom Lowenthal interviews Sir Michael Burton, President of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. Editorial Publication details Editor: Anne Askwith, T hough it may not be quite the last word on activities, interests and achievements Publications and Web Officer the subject, and it is certainly not the first, of Balliol people in College and around ([email protected]) this edition of Floreat Domus aims to sum the world. Editorial advisor: Nicola Trott up the 750th anniversary by capturing as We are tremendously grateful to all Design: RBDA Studio many as possible of the ways in which the who have so generously given their time Print: Hunts College celebrated it. (There is also a briefer by writing articles or being interviewed. Contact details summary at www.balliol.ox.ac.uk/750th- Many thanks, too, to the Senior Tutor, Balliol College anniversary.) But other anniversaries Nicola Trott, and other Fellows and staff Oxford OX1 3BJ are marked in these pages too – of war, who have made suggestions for this issue. Telephone: 01865 277777 University Challenge and even coffee We are always glad to receive ideas for www.balliol.ox.ac.uk drinking; lions (symbolic and real) and articles and comments on the magazine. Front cover: an image of the College’s founding other animals provide another leit motif, in donors, from A W N Pugin’s book of designs for stories and features that reflect some of the Anne Askwith, Editor rebuilding Balliol, 1843; photograph by Anna Sander. FLOREAT DOMUS BALLIOL COLLEGE NEWS Ian Taylor S till more upsetting, if that were T o end on a celebratory note once possible, is the upcoming retirement more, we have recently announced From the Master of Douglas Dupree, our Dean and a new cohort of Honorary Fellows, Chaplain, and an absolute pillar of the whose names we hope represent some BY DRUMMOND BONE College for some thirty years. Quite of the spread of talent and success what we do to try and refill the many with which Balliol has been associated College roles that Douglas has in hand – an association we seek to revive That Was the Year That Was. We are now sailing free is going to take some real thinking. by the award of these Fellowships. from the 750th anniversary and its many events, but T he great kitchen refurbishment Indeed it was immensely difficult to hope we leave with you the pleasant memories we is under way, which sadly means that reduce the number of such awards certainly have here in College, and even a renewed the Garden Quad is disfigured by a to a manageable level, so great is the structure which houses a temporary pool of past students and Fellows who enthusiasm for our endeavours. kitchen, though the effect of its are eligible. We hope you can join blank walls is somewhat lightened us in being proud of such a newly I t was done in house, without The 750th celebrations by vinyls from our archives and augmented Fellowship. inappropriate razzmatazz and in College ended as collections which represent some of consequent expense, and it they had begun, with the highlights of Balliol’s history. The a recital in Hall. feeling of a building site is inescapable, concentrated on what Balliol exists Above, the Master for: our intellectual output in both leads the applause however, and the route to the SCR teaching and research. In financial for András Schiff, has become something of an obstacle terms we had been set a target at the who played Bach’s course. The quality of the food both beginning of the campaign in 2006 Goldberg Variations in SCR and Hall seems not to have of raising £30M, and we managed on 1 December 2013. suffered at all, we are pleased to say, to exceed that by well over £2M and we have to thank our Executive – indeed, did we count things the Head Chef, Bertrand Faucheux, and way the University does (including his team for their great flexibility in a proportion of known legacies) we coping with what cannot be the easiest would have exceeded it by nearer £5M. of conditions. Meantime elsewhere That is an enormous credit to your the Magdalen Street façade is under generosity, and also to the work of our wraps for stone re-facing, and there Development Office. is work being done on the sports The end of our anniversary sees pavilion down on the Master’s Field Judy Longworth retiring from her post too. Thinking of sport, Balliol won the as Development Director, which is a Karting (motor sport) Cuppers and great loss indeed, though she will stay the Cuppers Bowl for rugby; the men Executive Head on part-time for a few months. Her Chef Bertrand won the Christ Church Regatta, which successor will be Richard Norman, at Faucheux outside the we hope cheered former coach Nick present Acting Development Director temporary kitchen in Bevan shortly before his untimely at the University of Reading. the Garden Quad death, which saddened us all. ISSUE NO.20 JUNE 2014 1 Ian Taylor 750th anniversary celebrations The following pages record some of the many ways in which the College marked its 750th anniversary during the year of 2013. You can see videos by Voices from Oxford of many of these The 750th logo was designed by events at www.voicesfromoxford.com/news/balliol-750-video- Mireia Crispin Ortuzar (2011). list/262, as well as a video message from the Master, on the occasion of the anniversary, about the history of Balliol and the outlook for the future. The quotations by Denis Noble (Emeritus Fellow) are from his article ‘Balliol Breaks Barriers’, which can be read in full at the same link. This article and videoed events are indicated by the Voices from Oxford logo: 2 FLOREAT DOMUS BALLIOL COLLEGE NEWS Nicholas Penny, FSA is one of the most wide- ranging and universally admired art historians Honorary Fellows of our time. Having started his career at The Master and Fellows marked the ending of the 750th anniversary by electing Cambridge and Manchester Universities, he has since held senior posts at the Ashmolean to Honorary Fellowships these distinguished people in a variety of fields, all of Museum, the National Gallery in London, and whom have past associations with the College, and who represent the wide range the National Gallery of Art in Washington; he of Balliol’s intellectual and cultural reach. was appointed director of London’s National Gallery in 2008. He was Slade Professor of Fine Professor Hagan Bayley, MA PhD FRS Professor Clare Grey, BA DPhil FRS is the Art in Oxford in 1980/81. His publications (1970) is Professor of Chemical Biology in the Geoffrey Moorhouse Gibson Professor of range over sculpture, paintings, and the history Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford. Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry, of taste and collecting. He was a Professorial He is best known for his work at the interface University of Cambridge, and a recognised Fellow at Balliol while Keeper of Western Art between chemistry and biology. He has used world leader in the use of solid state nuclear at the Ashmolean from 1984 to 1989. protein chemistry, organic chemistry, and magnetic resonance (NMR) to study structure Professor Richard Portes, CBE FBA (1962) biophysics to explore the folding, assembly, and and function in inorganic materials. Balliol is Professor of Economics at the London function of transmembrane channels and pores. Junior Research Fellow in Physical Science Business School. He was a Rhodes Scholar These studies have led to the development of 1990–1991, she has pioneered ground-breaking at Balliol and a Fellow of the College protein pores as ‘nanoreactors’. Applications in situ NMR studies of batteries and fuel cells, 1965–1969. He is known internationally for of this methodology have led to the creation which have greatly enhanced understanding of his research on the global financial system. of Oxford Nanopore, which is developing the processes that occur when a battery charges He led proposals to use collective action electronic systems for analysis of single and discharges, and when a fuel cell operates.