THE EAGLE A MAGAZINE SUPPORTED BY MEMBERS OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Vol. LXX No. 293 EASTER 1985 'For the Publick Good' ... I. J. Mcintyre page 3 'Big Bob' Remembers 18 Johnians Abroad ... E. M. Miller, I.T. Gardner, S.S-J. Chen 24 Johniana ... J.C. Frost 32 Our Grass 34 Arts 36 Sport 40 Gifts to the College 46 Obituaries 48 Reviews 68 College Notes 71 Announcements 84 The Eagle is published at £1.50 per year, free to Junior Members. Further details about subscriptions and bankers' order forms are available from the College Office. 'For the Publick Good' Broadcasting and the Unive rsities Sixth Annual Johnian Society Le cture, 1984 Se nior Editor: Dr R.P. Tomb s Junior Edit ors: Miss Sharon S.L. Chen Miss Juliet Frost Mark Twain , you will remembe r, in The Innocents Ab road , had some Miss Frances Moyle difficulty when he go t as far as Italy with the name of Le onardo '' t he Y spe ll it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy" . He concluded that Typing: Mrs Jane Jones •fo reigners always spe ll be tter than they pronounce" . Editorial Comm it tee: Dr H.R.L. Be adle This dictum came to mind be cause I've bee n having a litt le local Dr P.P. Sims-Williams difficulty ove r the title of this le cture. One of my sons rang me up Dr I.M. Hutchings and said , "I he ar you're sp elling 'public' with a 'k' ." Now he is a ,J o hnian , so he said it ve ry politely, which is what one would e xpect Treasurer: Mr A.A. Macintosh fr om some one whose manners and language we re re fined in the Lady Marga ret Boat House. Since his time , of course, standards of Col le ge Notes: Mr N.C. Buck sc hola rship and the ge ne ral tone of the Colle ge have bee n raised by a cer tain broadening of admission procedures , so it's hardly ne cessary Su pp leme nts: Dr P.A. Linehan for me to explain th at my title is a qu otation. In 1662 , one of the northern bishops, a fine body of me n skilled then as now in the holy enterprise of minding other pe op le 's business, advised this Illustrations by courtesy of: N. Simm ons (cove r) ; A. Nasiri (pp . 8, university to se ll its printing privilege to the Stationer's Company . 12 , 17, 23 , 33 , 35 , 39, 45 , 67 , 85) ; R.C. Fuller (p . 19); M. Guarino The then Master of Emm anue l College saw the bishop off with a (p .2 1) ; E. Miller (p .25) ; S. Chen (p .30) ; Dr P.A. Linehan (p. 49); magisterial re tort . "The University 's privilege" , he said , "is Dr R. Howles (p . 57); College .L ibrary (pp . 52 , 60 , 62 , 65) . looked up on as a trust for the pub lick good•. 1 What ap p lied to the University Press app lies more broadly to the Unive rsity of which it is a part. It also seeme d to me to have an imp or tan t app li cation to the mu ch more re cent phenomenon of public se rv ice br oadcas ting, and that is what brought me to my theme . What wish to do tonight is re flect on some of the similarities be twee n the roles of the university and of broadcas ting: to consider some of the hazards and temp tations which they both seem to me to face ; and rev ie w some of the ways in which they nourish an d influence each to uther. Though I shall spe ak fairly ge nera lly, I may we ll find myself drawing the occasional examp le from the BBC and Radio 3, which are what have come to know be st, and from this University and this I Colle ge , which are what I have no t ce ased to love bes t. I've neve r bee n sure how far one can go in saying that . lnd iv i dual colleges attract or produce a particular sort of pe rson. � fe w ye a rs ago , I remembe r, a Students ' Prospe ctus had some rather ard th1 . ngs to say ab ou t one of ou r ne ighbours - "This rare spe cies � s i n e ssence rich and thick , and if asked to make a choice be twee n a . vlng a Mistre ss and having a Be agle would have to think ab out it•.2 Of this College one could cer tainly say that it has , ove r the e a r Y s, se nt a ge net· ous stre am of ve ry diver se talent to the BBC. Ke n n eth Adam did importan t things in both radio and the te lev ision s "''Vl c · d e Le onard Miall be came one of the Corporation 's most lS t i nguished foreign correspondents . Thirty and more ye ars ago Glyn 3 Daniel was a national television celebrit y in the days when that t sort of broadcasting are obv iously The universities and the bes e tapestry, but it would be meant much more than just being well known for being well known. oncerned with the right side of th b ot h c it s More recently the distinctive features and enormous hands of Jonathan ,deny that in this century the wrong side, with all wl ii h to Miller have fiiled our screens ; Freddie Raphael is another who has tio ns, has been thrust powerfull y and se ends and disloca � o o _ ting, in the made and continues to make a not abl e contrib ution - radio and y on our att ention - in literature , in pain ·n s 1stentl televison , fiction and non-fiction ; and in the late 1950s , when it in social and political life. h e at re and was feared that the Third Programm e was under threat, one of the � in this country remain for the most voices most insistent and el oquent in it s defence was that of Peter Academics and broadcasters openness Laslett who later jumped ov er the wall to Trinity but was at that eped in liberal traditions of rational enquiry and p art st e time a young fellow of this College . And in very recent times , it ruth. There is an acceptance of the duty to listen and read t o n e w t and a recogn ition that precision and was the first of these Johnian Society Lectures which prompted the full y before forming a view care . BBC to invite you, Mr Chairman, to be last year 's Reith Lecturer. are necessary for the understanding of complexit ies But p at ience ts of mind are very much at odds with much of 20th century the s e habi Ov er the years the apparently simple question "What is a 5 entional literary analysis, for instance , does not get us - l ife . Conv university?" has had a curious tendency to reduce good minds to understanding Kafka or Beckett . The practitioner of verY far in rhetoric and ev en to metaphysics . Somebody happily not afflicted in or 'pop art' is concerned with what is •concret e poetry' this way was Lord Annan . "There reall y is no myst ery ab out the role random . Cl ear communication comes to be regarded as indeterm inat e or of the University" , he wrot e bri skly. "For the past century , there ibl e of ac hievement or not actually worth achieving , and e it her im poss has been no dispute ab out it s two main functions . It exisLs first to loosened grasp of language , but a degree of the result is not merely promote through reflecti on and research the life of the mind ; second alienat ion from it . to transmit high cult ure to each generation . Whatever is thought to be intellectuall y im portant and of concern to society it teaches to In the 19 60s and early seventies the influence of this sort of new st udents".3 nee-modernism in the arts began to be felt in some areas of university life. The past was dead . Universities must concern Now at first gl ance broadcasting might seem to be ab out them selv es with the here and now . The dreadful word 'relevance ' something rather different. The cl assical formulation of it s began to appear. Shakespeare , Milton and Shell ey were not function , in it s publ ic service aspect at least, is that it is there •relevant '. 'Beat' poetry, on the ot her hand , was , because it was to provide information, education and entertainment , and that might concerned with what was immediate and present. Now of course if indicate some ov erlap. A programm e like Bl ankety Bl ank , however, is hist ory is dead , and you are concerned only with the present, you cl early not high culture , though grand opera might b e . And alt hough don 't reall y need teachers , because there isn't actually anything to much of the science broadcasting on Radio 3 is concerned with the learn. A text , whether in English, or ancient Greek or modern frontiers of knowledge , a consumer programm e or a phone-in on Capital Albanian , is simply a text.