The TRUSTY SERVANT N O .122 N OVEMBER 2016 The Headmaster replies: Dr Timothy Hands speaks to the Editor, 3. Having left the madding crowd of 4. From Div to compulsory Latin, Tim Giddings: Oxford to come to the heart of Winchester is known for its Wessex, would you describe traditional curriculum. Can this 1. Three weeks into your first Short yourself as a Boldwood, a Troy or an ethos continue when Japanese and Half, what are your initial Oak? computer-programming might be impressions of the School? more useful in the global talent race? Well I’m no second Troy: the man That’s a simple question: it’s fantastic. was a philanderer, and Mrs H wouldn’t The school of which I was last Why? 1, the houses; 2, the beauty; 3, the approve. Boldwood and Oak, however, Headmaster had an even more traditional accumulated traditions. It’s unique and are both fixated on one woman; Mrs H curric ulum. Draw your own conclusions – I’m loving it. might be flattered. Hardy, on the other and perhaps see if Ladbrokes will offer 2. What first drew you to school- hand, could never make his mind up you odds. mastering? about what he felt about either gent: 5. How much do you think we should Boldwood is first to be executed and then My father was a headmaster. My be aiming at shaping the whole pardoned; and in the American serial mother was a teacher. My sister was a character of the men rather than version of the novel Oak becomes a teacher. There was even an ancestor who just the intellect? Will Happiness churchwarden. By contrast, I’m pretty was schoolmaster on HMS Victory in hours be appearing in the sure of my destiny: I’m in Winchester, and Napoleonic times. So the simple answer is curriculum? very happy about it. genes. The answer to your second question is ‘unlikely’. The answer to your first question can best be expressed in the words of the editors of The Wykehamist in 1910: ‘Some of us will hope that the incoming chairman of the Headmasters’ Conference and the incoming headmaster of Winchester will have no doubts whatsoever as to the value of boarding- school education in the formation of character. Some will remember the words with which Lord Selborne finished his reply Ad Portas in 1910: “Of the three – muscles, brain and character – the greatest is character”.’ 6. Which sport will see you pacing the side-lines on New Field most enthusiastically? I don’t pace the side-lines. I like to 1 N O .122 T HE T RUSTY S ERVANT stand and watch and work out what might 8. Spencer Leeson once described be improved. I like rugby (sorry). I like Winchester as a school which cricket. I like Gaelic hurling – which I ‘should be a powerhouse radiating believe may have some similarities with energy into all the rest’. What role Winchester football. And that’s the sport do you think we should be playing to which I’m most looking forward. on the wider educational stage? 7. From the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ I guess that role should be one of movement to calls for trigger- substance, of integrity, not persiflage (as it warnings about potentially offensive perhaps can be elsewhere). Winchester views, free speech is under great does – and should – have a certain scrutiny in our universities. How humility, yet also a confidence sired out of should we balance the need for experience. Dr Townsend expressed it robust debate with the responsibility very eloquently last year: ‘The wonderful to protect young minds? thing about Winchester is that it really understands what tradition is – not a I feel rather strongly about this one. static hanging on to the past, but a So does the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, dynamic carrying the best of the past into Louise Richardson, in conversation with a new vitality.’ her gratuitously offensive interviewer on the Today programme recently. 9. What do you do in any spare time? Educational institutions are ‘places where project is a book about Shakespeare; I’m I like listening to music, and we should hear any legal speech, and we teaching VI Book 2 using the rough draft watching sport. I also like writing. That’s should teach our students how you of the first part of a book about English mostly been about Victorian literature, or confront any speech which you find poetry. At some stage I think I might like about educational issues. A long-term objectionable.’ to write something about Winchester. I Adam Crick (E, 71-75 and Co Ro, 89-92, 93-98 & 00-01): ‘You were a rare coat cut from a very limited silk…’ Laurence Wolff (Co Ro, 82-) writes: a copy of the Book of Common Prayer in a Nutshell will be available that evening, (Oxford, 1683) with a fine Restoration but may also be ordered from Wells. To those reading this article, Adam binding by a craftsman known as Queens’ Crick might be remembered as a pupil, a An extract from the funeral address: Binder A. In Common Time 2017, most fellow Old Wykehamist, a don who taught of the Crick bequest will be on display in ‘In these last days and weeks, indeed them, or as a colleague. To his friends and the wonderful new Treasury; over these several months, all of us who acquaintances, he was a particularly simultaneously, there will be an exhibition knew Adam was dying have played and distinctive person. His character is of paintings in the Art School with the replayed in our minds the memories of our conveyed in the extract below from the title In Memoriam APSC by his friend and special times with him. Time with Adam address given by Richard Robinson (E, 71- contemporary Christopher Twigg (K, 71- was always special. He made it so. Indeed, 76) at his funeral. With his bequest of 75). On Saturday, 7th January, 2017 a CRICK, the very word, means special. For watercolours, he has become a significant poetry reading in Mob Lib from Bound in a his 21st birthday I gave him the complete benefactor to the College. There are works Nutshell , the volume of Adam’s poetry Oxford English Dictionary and I was by Francis Place, Francis Towne, John published after his death, will follow the delighted then to find, when I looked up White Abbott, Thomas Rowlandson and openings of both exhibitions. If you would his name, the reference, 1663, to “a merry Peter de Wint, among others, that amplify like to attend this event, which will begin Crick and boon companion…” And so the already comprehensive collection of at 6.30pm in Art School, please contact you have been, to us all, a ‘boon English watercolours held by the College. [email protected] . Copies of Bound companion.’ Adam also donated to the Fellows’ Library 2 N O .122 T HE T RUSTY S ERVANT A week before he died, he was was a map that traced a walk he’d lying on his bed upstairs at Vine devised near to our house, along Cottage. I was sitting with him and which he had laid a treasure hunt. thought he was asleep. Weakly in a Our family jumped into the car and sort of hoarse whisper, he said to went off to walk the walk and look me, “If this is dying, it’s not too bad for treasure. I remember small piles I suppose…” of white stones hidden along the route with franc coins buried Anguish and self-doubt were underneath each. This was not very much at the heart of Adam. only great fun and a kind gesture The sheer number of his but a wonderful Galwsorthyesque friendships, and the intensity and piece of performance sculpture.” quality of these relationships bear witness to his ability to turn his That wholly decent New Zealander own self-doubt into an intelligent Jarrod who cuts his lawn put it best: empathy with everyone he loved. “You were a rare coat cut from a A lifelong diabetic, the ups and very limited silk…”’ downs of his endocrine system A fragment ‘discovered’ among the could lead to, let me say, some Aubrey MSS in the Bodleian by Rob volatility in his moods. There is no Wyke (Co Ro, 85-15) reads: coffee pot in Vine Cottage: it spurted out the freshly brewed coffee as he astonishing variety of metric forms and This Crick was a great Leaver of lowered the plunger just once too often. voices within to articulate his feelings. Schooles: the Acta of St Maries Coll of He was on his third computer keyboard: A handsome anthology of Adam’s Winton shew that he left that Schoole the previous two were knifed to death, poetry, Bound in a Nutshell , is being three or foure times. But in the literally, when they ceased sending published today. In a way that a short talk remarkable Passages of his life as a instructions to his Apple Mac in the way like this never could, this volume, complete Schoolemaster, he did cause the young he expected. The keyboard was, of course, with a unique set of photographs of Adam Impes of Fame (for so he calld those actually blameless. The problem lay in the and what I might call Adamobelia at the that were his Pupills) to love their computer itself, but understanding or back, will mean that his voice and his Literature, to lie down as if dead in the indeed tolerating technology was not his highly original personality will live on.