Reflections on 9.11

' You've never had it so good ', remarked Prime Minister Harold MacMillan in 1957 and, to a large extent, that has been the case for us baby boomers throughout our lives. Our earthly arrival immediately after the Second World War came in the midst of a period of austerity [ of which the country was rather proud ] and, as we head towards the final punctuation mark, behold another period of austerity [ of which we seem to be somewhat ashamed ] manifests itself but broadly we have been blessed as a generation with enduring peace and prolonged prosperity.

Of course countless members of our slice of western humanity have faced life changing and life ending challenges but many of us have had it so easy as well as so good. Only twice have I felt in mortal danger. The first occasion was in August 1970 and I was driving up the recently completed M1 in a Morris Minor Convertible [ a chariot of beauty if not exactly of fire ]; off to enjoy the delights of the Edinburgh Festival. As was, and is, my wont, the ever present temptation to doze off was irresistible and I succumbed on this sultry, the world is my oyster, sort of day. My open-air charabanc took me, without deviation or hesitation, from the inside lane to the central reservation in days when there was no barrier on that reservation to impede progress on to the lanes on the other side heading southwards. I awoke travelling at right angles to, and seemingly under the wheels of, some gigantic, angrily driven articulated lorries, musing that this would be a somewhat messy way to go. I was relieved to be able to call a halt to progress as my horizontal journey eased up on the hard shoulder on the other side, while I ignored the jibes and gestures of my fellow road users and tried to make it appear that I knew exactly what I was doing.

A year later found me on an Olympic Airways flight from Athens to London in the age of that great country of Greece languishing under military dictatorship. We had already skidded off the runway on take-off and then, over Italy, the pilot perhaps imprudently announced receipt of a message that there was an explosive device on the plane. As many of the passengers around me were, Kipling-like, losing theirs, I found myself as scared as the next fellow traveller [ literal interpretation ] but endeavouring to put a brave face on it, humming the celebrated words of Tom Lehrer: ' We will all go together when we go, every Hottentot and every Eskimo ', although neither of these categories of humankind had found a place on the flight register. Somehow, after an emergency landing in Italy where exit was enabled by inflatable shutes, we all survived.

The experience of 11 September 2001 was different. Despite being of eternally cowardly disposition, I never felt in mortal danger in New York on that day but I was close and involved enough to feel part of something truly historic. Looking back after eighteen years and not having re-read my contemporary account since that time, my abiding memory is of the contrast between the dynamic historic deeds of the members of the emergency services, achieving miracles at every turn, and the stunned torpor of public figures and just about everyone else, who seemed capable only of stopping and staring. It all feels strangely recent.

So here we are at Ground Zero,
Where battled so many heroes;
They tackled the fires,
Vile funeral pyres,
Others just fiddling like Nero.

I make no apology for publishing as a blog, in full and unchanged, the address which I gave at a school assembly when I returned to Gordonstoun. However, I do apologise for this meaning a style of rhetoric and a home made prayer which are out of keeping with my usual practice but reading this stuff is not compulsory and expurgation or changing history is rarely a virtue. So here goes.

REFLECTIONS ON TUESDAY 11 SEPTEMBER 2001

(An address in Gordonstoun Chapel at Assembly, 18 September 2001)

One of the defining moments for me of last week's tragic events came when we were in St Patrick's Church for the Service of Remembrance on Friday and had just sung that Hymn God Moves in a Mysterious Way. The Minister asked us, in the Christian tradition - and I am going to ask you to do this now - to greet one or others in this Chapel this morning by giving them the sign of peace. I do not mind who it is or where they are but I want you to shake hands or embrace someone, say "Peace be with you", and mean it and I would like you to look into the eyes of that person and think especially of young people of your age who, as a result of last week's events, are no longer able to say it.

I do not really feel qualified to speak to you this morning about such important events. I am not an expert in anything that has happened, I was not directly involved. You have seen almost as much on television as I have but I was thereabouts, if not there, and I can tell you how it felt for me and how the Americans around me responded. Having then had twenty four hours a day to think about it for five days, I can give you an impression of what I think we should now be focussing on.

This talk, therefore, falls into two parts. During the first twenty four hours of the crisis I kept a diary, minute by minute. The reflections which follow a week later will be totally different. As far as the diary is concerned, I apologise if it seems to be journalistic and superficial, self-centred, for such is the stuff of diaries and perhaps this is how we are, particularly in a crisis. Bits of it may be dull and I particularly apologise if it contains foul language but I felt the need at certain points to repeat exactly what was said. It may even seem insincere, but it does ask some questions and explains some of our reactions. It is entitled:

And how many times will it take till we learn….?

Bangkok it might have been for all the oppressive humidity as I stepped out of the airport concourse on 10^th September 2001 but New York, in fact, it was and there were just three hours with plenty of homework to fill the time before our guests, all friends of Gordonstoun, arrived at the Union Club for a fundraising reception.

As a student of neither America nor meteorology, the onset at six o'clock of the most violent thunderstorm in recent years was noteworthy but not remarkable. -to an audience depleted by torrential rainfall, I ventured the opinion that one ferocious rumbling outside resembled a bomb. "Surely not in New York" came the withering — and it turned out unprophetic — retort.

The next day was altogether different. I sat with Angela Harkness, the School's Development Director, in the Executive Lounge on the 44^th floor of the Hilton Hotel and watched a delicately pinkish sunrise cast its blessing over the up turned, elongated matchboxes which comprise New York's skyline. Thoughts of Wordsworth on Westminster Bridge and buildings seeming to sleep glanced superficially off our reflections as the unlikely possibility of America perhaps, after all, being part of God's kingdom was kindled by a delicate sense of the romantic.

But it was quickly to business; a 7.40 taxi through Manhatten back to JF Kennedy airport for the morning flight to Boston. As neither a lover nor a connoisseur of skyscraper architecture, I took a polite interest when Angela pointed out the two upwardly stretching turrets of the World Trade Centre as we passed. She had taken a photograph of them against the morning skyline as we departed, having visited them two days before.

Suffering, as is my usual habit, from British withdrawal symptoms, once in the terminal building, I made straight for the news stand in search of The Times - or even the Daily Telegraph — and I was being gently let down via the young lady shop assistant's message of depressing inevitability, when an airport worker breezed through breaking the news, accepted at face value by none of those present, that two aeroplanes had hit the World Trade Centre. The thought line of — "one small helicopter involved in a disturbing accident — yes;  two substantial airliners flown with obvious intent at a major landmark — of course not" — melted immediately into stomach churning reality as we all moved across to the café to see the next two hours unfold on television in all its brutal and unreal reality.

First thoughts from Angela and me were of relief because, if we had adhered to original plans we would have been flying out of Boston on an American Airlines plane that morning. Failing to appreciate the enormity of the tragedy, but perhaps already feeling its monstrous impact, one could not but admire the skill and effectiveness of this terrorist operation which had, by now, resulted in the destruction of both the World Trade Centre and then half of the Pentagon. America was clearly on its knees.

The starkest emotion was fear. The terrorists had selected American Airlines planes; JFK airport had to be a potential next target and we were trapped in Terminal 9,  the home base and centre exclusively to American Airlines domestic flights. And where was the guidance and instruction from those responsible for security? Where was the leadership and the disaster scenario organisation? We waited for ages, certainly two hours, before there was even a trifling announcement about reclaiming baggage and that was it. Here we were in the heart of the greatest democracy on earth — God bless it — and we might soon be the victims of their preoccupation with unqualified liberty, an arrogant preoccupation some might say, which sits myopically in a bunker of independence, armed to the teeth, polluting the world and without a care for the air travelling public. Or so it might seem in that instant for mortals who looked for guidance and help but found none.

We were frightened, we were stunned, we were angry and the futile trumpeting of a bald, red shirted official with a loud hailer did nothing to relieve any of these emotions. And why had my dear son, Robin, with whom I had had a row shortly before leaving on Sunday evening, twice insistently asked his mother to be sure to say goodbye to me?

Although no-one informed us in as many words until the sniffer dogs arrived, Angela and I sensed a move to another terminal might be prudent. In Number 8, life was horribly, chillingly normal. Conventional chaos, such as you might find in Bogota or Bombay was the order of the day with a largely Asian travelling public focussing on the important niceties of coca cola and compensation. An Indian woman, at this moment of high drama, was holding an airport official, almost unbelievably, in heated dialogue about damage to a suitcase. Only smaller children, through their nervy, interminable wailing, seemed to realise that the world was in crisis.

Rumours by now were rife — eight planes hijacked; four still in the air, 50,000 people killed as we were unceremoniously dumped on the forecourt in the burning midday sun. Angela tried to help a Czech couple who spoke no language apart from their own, had no contacts and nowhere to go.

But nor did we. We dodged deftly from one terminal to another, eventually, ironically, achieving success back at Number 9 and found a friendly taxi man who, mistaking us for an unduly wealthy American couple, agreed to drive us into the great (for us) unknown to try and find hotel accommodation.

The travel was easy as he took us along totally deserted motorways against the flow of traffic with millions trying to get out of Manhatten — but the search was far from straightforward. The big hotels were choc-a-bloc and as we became increasingly conscious of the deadly plume of smoke sitting mantra-like over us. Against the eternal whine of the vehicles of  the emergency services, we wondered if we might be returning to the alfresco nights of student memory.

Ironically, the haven which was to be our accommodation for the next few days — The Airway Motor Inn - was poignantly reminiscent of its ownformer times. Our Pakistan taxi driver looked slightly disappointed with his fifty dollars but assured us that this was 'very nice hotel'. 'Nice', of course, is a relative term especially if you come from Islamabad but it was reassuring to find our single room apartments with heavy metal clad outer doors, stained carpets generously populated by earwigs and centipedes and it was eerily reminiscent of the unpredictable plumbing in Greek holiday villas in the 1970s to turn on the hot tap in the basin only for a torrent of cold water to cascade in a single shoot from the shower. There were no cockroaches in the kitchen, only because there was no kitchen in which they might have done their thing with relish and abandon. We looked at each other and, once again, were glad to be alive.

An update of the evolving horrors through a temperamental, flickering television pushed me in the direction of escape. This I usually achieve through the medium of work but even Gordonstoun affairs didn't seem sufficiently significant, so I took to the streets instead. We were very much in downtown New York, the Queens district, as multinational as the centre but different in background and in a strange way, defying social categorisation. At times I wondered if the people really cared about what had happened.

"Quite a day" remarked a truck driver as I stepped on to the walkway.

"Quite a bad day" I replied, almost correcting him in my schoolmasterly tones.

"Quite a day" — his repeated but definitive words were the end of my first exchange on the disaster, in turn told me very firmly that America was still in charge.

The atmosphere was different from the stunned shock of the airport. For the most part, business went on whether as usual or otherwise, I knew not, but groups were gathering at four o'clock on street corners. There was much animated discussion and, I suspected, as many theories about the background to the day's events as lives lost. I was thinking about — well, something — so I went straight passed the Motor Inn and then suddenly it hit me — hit me in the forehead with the force of the smooth stone from young David's sling as he assaulted Goliath. Up to then it had been all pictures, commentaries and reports but there on Astora Boulevard, New York's equivalent of the scruffy end of the Edgware Road, was a commonplace ageing black Chevrolet, except is wasn't black, but white. It was a ghost car, driven straight from the Centre of Manhatten and as the driver opened the bonnet a layer of several inches thick of pale grey, flakey concrete dust was revealed, enveloping all its inner tubes — all its intestines. I had to stop, to peer in wonderment at this chilling example of surrealism, and in doing so, quite understandably, risking an insult as an interfering eccentric in a green tweed suit. However, the directives were saved brazenly for others, "If we don't bomb the shit out of these mother fuckers tomorrow, there's something wrong with this country. " I passed by very smartly on the other side.

Films were now appearing of the area around the World Trade Centre — pictures of a landscape akin to a nuclear winter — and what if these terrorists ever gain access to nuclear power? Slowly the awfulness of both the crime itself and its consequence was beginning to sink in. The effort of the emergency services were hugely brave, hugely impressive and one had the sense of a community coming together, co-ordinated by the calm, determined,- phlegmatic and very human mayor — Rudi Giuliani.

And what to do now? I remembered that at the time of the last major US disaster, (when everyone could remember where they were) the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963, his entourage, returning from Dallas to Washington, endeavoured to overcome the emotions by getting paralytically  intoxicated. They did the drinking but the paralysis eluded them and this was, to an extent, how it then went for many of New York's inhabitants that evening. Angela joined me at the start of this process in Joey's Restaurant at 4.30 pm, eight hours later things were yet more stark and no less crushing. My two strongest emotions were wanting to say "Happy Birthday" to Jenny, my wife, because that was what September 11 was really still about for me, but New York had no contact with the outside world and, very strangely, a nagging desire to light a cigarette. Fortunately feeble inhibitions about embarking on the process of purchasing a packet of cigarettes and the magnetic, enveloping attraction of the big TV screen meant that this passion passed unsatisfied.

Angela, who had already used all her consummate skill in persuasive communication to procure both transport and accommodation, was a reassuring companion so we watched and we took refreshment in this strangely noisy hostelry where the mood was uncertain — shocked, but perhaps it was an attempt at extrovert, if not fully genuine, bravado — a metaphoric two fingered gesture. The evening's show of boozing and socialising for all those around us had to go on. We reminded ourselves that the United States and their people have not , unlike most countries of the world, been bombed and terrorised on their mainland in living memory. However again and again "Turn back the day" was regurgitated, as two televisions with different channels deafeningly competed for attention. The inadequacies and occasional eccentricities of the Voice Recognition Text ("now over to one of our producers Rose Arse") was gently reassuring as I thought of my secretary, Sheila, ploughing through mountains of urnntelligible and, in context irrelevant, work which I had left behind at school.

"Quite a day" I rashly quipped again to my generously built bearded neighbour in the Gentleman's Comfort Station. "What do you mean, 'quite a day"' he responded aggressively. "I was standing only on block away when it collapsed, I thank God I'm alive" I decided not to talk to any more strange men.

The debate on the television about responsibility was warming up and fingers were now being pointed. I still felt appalled at the lack of airport security — no bag checks, vague kerbside inspection, visitors going to the gate and so on, and I remember writing to Merlyn Rees when he had been Northern Ireland Secretary in the mid 1970s about a similar lack of provision on car ferries between Stranraer and Larne. I remembered  also that he hadn't replied and I felt angry about that too. I had to remind myself time and again that the real criminals were the ones who had done these terrible deeds.

While through the surrounding atmosphere of Bud Light and Stoli, the authentic Russian vodka, the sickening images of the second plane slicing through the World Trade Centre were played ad infinitum and ad nauseam — strangely I became more disturbed rather than immune and had to shut my eyes each time before impact. I felt guilty, however, that the final collapse of the building seemed strangely and attractively gracious — a pink and white skirt billowing gently in the breeze.

How can you value your life so little and hold a fundamental belief so strongly that you will kill yourself and others in the pursuit of something which you will never see and which may not materialise? How can one man hold the world to ransom? And what is that chef doing in the kitchen preparing a salad with a cigarette hanging laconically from his mouth? Thank God for some mundane human misdemeanours.

Against our expectation, hush descended as the President of the United States spoke — and he spoke well, if unremarkably. People looked for consistency and a steady hand at the tiller. He was full of regret, praise and business as usual but, in the end, he really had nothing to offer except prayer. I found that reassuring in some ways to be looking to the power beyond ourselves — but a sense of glum realisation also — humankind had created problems which it could not solve on its own.

It was midnight and emotions were running strongly. The temptation to descend to rumour mongering was almost overwhelming. Of course it is the work of Osama bin Laden and of course he must be strung up immediately. The barbaric response, without logic, without justice — resist it or not... And then there is talk of general anti-Muslim feeling; wrong again but do we not all have the responsibility to condemn extremism in our own cultures?

Again the courage and camaraderie of the rescuers lifts us from indulgent distant debating points to appreciate now that too many have, indeed, died but the incredibly brave unselfish response of New Yorkers and the emergency services in particular are grounds for hope on the planet — hope on this day springs fraternal.

As we walk back to the hotel the glow, post explosion, in the direction of the World Trade Centre is more dim, the sirens more distant but the reality more compelling. I think of home, so proud to be in a school where service is highly valued, so sad still for Shivani's death, and so relieved still that Jamie — almost the last Gordonstoun student I saw on Sunday — at least is not one of the world's young casualties this week.

So the witching hour had come and we had slipped imperceptibly from the throes of black Tuesday 11 September 2001 forever securely etched in the short and simple annals of America's and the world's poor but, on this occasion also, and even more in the light of the success of this horrid mission, in the records of industrialised, more prosperous societies also.

Now its back to the bedroom, the bedroom reeking of stale acrid smoke, and I am glad I was not led completely into that temptation. Exhausted I fail to pray, but perhaps better done when sane and clear headed in the morning. And that came all too soon with the realisation that this had not just been my personal awesome nightmare but a real global tragedy. However, as darkness managed reluctantly to merge into a grey cheerless dawn, it hadn't been a nuclear attack and many of us are still alive.

And what of the lessons to be learnt? We educators have to justify our existence through 'improving' messages. Leaving the mighty themes at this stage to those appropriately qualified, we should always prepare our young to encounter crisis in their lives; we should never object to our bags being searched with the proverbial tooth comb in airports; and we should say "hallelujah" to text messaging, however infuriating that practice may seem to be, for some of us for a vital period in our lives, it was our only means of contact with the rest of the world.

And will the world — at least the world of America — really never be the same again? a message pumped out remorselessly by politicians and commentators alike.  As a long-time, part-time student of personal and public behaviour in Northern Ireland, I would not be too confident about that. However, I did pause to thank a lucky star or two that I wasn't a script writer for horror movies. As fantasy had become fact in the third millennium, we would not be needing the services of such folk again.

And, at the end of this long day, my friend, the answer is still blowing in the wind all over the streets of South Manhattan.

That is where the diary entry ends and, in fact, the five days that followed are one long blur. I felt I had freedom of movement but nowhere to go, my mind was wanting to work but had little to do. The result was that I spent hours and hours constantly watching the television. I found it addictive — anything up to 21 hours a day. A tremendous amount of repeats just to garner one or two new facts.

It is difficult to quantify the devastation if you have not seen it. Five days later the pile of rubble that had been the twin towers of the World Trade Centre were still smoking and smelling. At present between 4,000-5,000 tons of rubble a day are being moved. If that pace is kept up it means they will still be moving rubble in January, after the Christmas holidays when we reassemble here.

I wonder if one of you died, how many people would be directly affected. At a rough guess, counting, of course, family and close friends, but also families of friends and friends of families, a conservative estimate would put it at between three and four hundred. This means that over two million people were immediately and directly affected by bereavement from the 3,000 people killed in last week's tragic events.. Of course, in terms of more general shock and economic suffering, the number is far higher. There are some inexplicable quirks of fate. I got into a taxi last Thursday morning driven by a young man, not much older that some of you, who told me that his wife worked on the 101 ^st floor of one of the towers. On the day in question, their one year old son had been unwell and she had, therefore, decided not to go to work. On the other hand, I was told of a fireman who, between the first explosion and the collapse of one of the buildings, had rescued one of his colleagues and carried him down 40 or 50 flights of stairs to safety. He was walking, still holding him, just outside the building with a very short distance to travel when someone jumped out of the window from one of the top storeys landing on him and killing him.

The pile of rubble was, and is, vast. There were bits of it which were like pictures of  First World War battle grounds, bodies and parts of bodies mutilated beyond recognition. It was, in some way, a miracle that more were not killed. The two towers between them, when full of workers and visitors housed over 50,000 — that is nearly the population of Inverness. What an extraordinary thought! Very few were seriously injured and virtually none have been found as survivors since. Thousands will not be recovered and will not be recognised. In New York the walls are covered with photographs of missing people posted by families "anyone who has news of please tell us". I came across a young man weeping in an open phone box and he was carrying a picture, "Are you OK?" I said to him as I might say to one of you. He showed me a picture of his sister. He was not in any way hopeful of her being alive but he wanted to know if anyone in the building had seen her at the end of her life as the buildings collapsed — how had she seemed?, were there any last words?

Two years ago a small child went missing on the Essex coast. No one knew whether she had been lost, wandered off, abducted or swept out to sea. Time went by and the worst was feared. Then her body was washed up and strangely there was relief because, although she was dead, she had not been abused or murdered and it was not the result of some crime. It is the same with major disasters. We get used to earthquakes, floods, drought and terrible suffering. Thousands die and we are very sad but these are not as bad as deaths involving a similar number caused by human intention. These actions degrade us all and demean civilisation. In the middle of the last century there was the holocaust. Six million Jews killed and people said then that society had to improve after that but the killing fields of Cambodia, Rwanda and Yugoslavia tell a different and negative story.

International terrorism is a real blot on the landscape of the world. This was a monstrous crime and unspeakable evil and, if you stop to think about it, in 1963 a terrorist kills one person, John F Kennedy. In the 1980s terrorist actions result in the death of 230 people placing a bomb on a plane over Lockerbie, in 2001 there are 6,000 deaths with brains used as bombs. What will the situation be in 2020? Terrorists in possession of a nuclear device — 6 million? 60 million? 600 million? The principle will be the same - fanatics fostered from birth to think of such actions even if, especially if, they die as martyrs. The answer to this real worry must be to root out terrorism on a global scale and it will take a long time and require huge co-operation. Preventative measures must be put in place and must be effective. This will not be achieved by talking only and hoping that civilisation and wise counsel will prevail, nor will it be achieved by one violent strike taking out a supposed leader. It must be long-term, long-planned, must be supported by the overwhelming population of the globe and must not take one civilian life unnecessary.

None of us can hide from our responsibility in this and if we do nothing, evil will triumph.

I should add that the American reaction, I have found, broadly sensible so far, less frenzied and frantic than may be suggested here in the British press. Some rhetoric was inevitable but there has been no immediate, major build-up towards retaliation.

And is there any hope for the future? Watching the television for hour after hour, I got used to the names of the victims in the crashes and I noted that one of those, a ten year old boy killed in the crash in Pennsylvania, had been given the name Jesus by his parents. Well, his namesake who died over 2000 years ago has given great hope to humankind since then and I certainly found  hope in the response of New Yorkers. Yes, there was commercialism, certainly. Here is a T shirt with a picture of the aftermath, with the smouldering mass on the front. I am going to have this framed and hang it in our Ambulatory as a reminder and a symbol for as long as you are in the School of• what has happened and what our responsibilities might be.

But meanwhile, the New Yorkers set an example — candle-lit vigils on pavements; volunteers, too many of them, arrive to help; the marvellous work of the security services. I went to the theatre when they opened for something to do. The comedy was not very comic but the speeches by the actors at the end about the tragedy were most moving. There was a great feeling of companionship and a real feeling of hope.

As well as posters on the wall, graffiti sprang up similar to Ancient Rome and here was a quote by Mahatma Ghandi "I have seen that life persists in the middle of destruction. Therefore, there must be a higher law than that of destruction

Two footnotes. The first is that, as I was leaving the hotel to go to the airport, I could not help overhearing a conversation between a hotel porter and one of the cleaners clearly relating to the tragic death of a friend or relation. As he followed me into the lift, I said how sorry I was that he, too, had been affected by this terrible tragedy. "Oh no" he said to me, " It is just my sister who has recently died of Aids" We should not forget there are many other problems in the world to which we should also be turning our attention.

The second footnote. The very important one. The most generous, the most helpful and the nicest man I met in New York was a Muslim. I was trying to rush and buy a few presents on my last morning, thinking this was part of my duty. I had run out of money and credit cards weren't necessarily working as telephone and other systems had crashed. A shopkeeper told me that he would not be able to sell goods to me because of this and when I looked desperate, he advised me to go round the corner to another larger shop run by his brother who, with greater authority, might be able to provide some money for me. I appeared at the other shop and the Muslim gentleman, simply on presentation of my card and without further ado, without knowing me, without knowing that he would ever see his money again, provided the wherewithall for the purchase of these gifts. I thought that was remarkable. A lovely person and certainly one of God's children.

And what of the challenges for you, the younger generation. I have just four pieces of advice. The first is to take an interest in affairs and make sure you are informed not just when there is a crisis or a tragedy. Secondly, cherish your freedom, your reasonable freedom and what provides it. Thirdly, work out in life what you believe is right and is best and fourth, say and do it regardless of the consequences.

Or as I saw inscribed in large letters on the corner of 5^th Avenue and East 65^th Street

Do Justly

Love Mercy

Walk humbly with God

Love thy Neighbour as Thyself

Another defining moment came on the evening of the disaster when we were all stunned. There was a prayer meeting shown on television of politicians, policemen, firemen and so on. A young, afro-American policeman, an elegant man with a beautiful voice, gave an unaccompanied, solo rendition of Amazing Grace. It is befitting that we should sing that now after which I will say one short prayer:

Dear God of All Gods

Look with mercy on all the peoples of this world. Be with those who died tragically last week and all others who were dear to us and are no longer with us.

Be with the families and friends of those left behind.

Give them an understanding of the mystery of life and give them hope for the future.

Support all governments of the world that they may work together, acting wisely and humanely to ensure that good flourishes and evil disappears.

And be with us God with your still, small voice to guide us into thinking with clarity, speaking with integrity and acting with courage.

( Address dated 18 September 2001 )

22nd August 2019

Vindication with a hint of vindictiveness

Speaking of Her Majesty  --  which I was a couple of months ago  --  by the time I realised in the days of yore that the annus horribilis attributed to her was not a chronic colorectal condition but a reflection of a period of challenge, I was swimming around my own stormy teacup of a difficult professional stretch. In the autumn of 2001 I had been in post at Gordonstoun for eleven years, confident, having endured and enjoyed a fullish stint, that life would only get better, when I was assailed from many sides by the slings and arrows of at least highly unpredictable fortune.

It all began in New York, whither I had travelled to raise funds for scholarships and bursaries. The event was a disaster; the city was subjected to its fiercest thunderstorm in years; no-one of interest attended a poorly attended event and we were all looking forward to flying home the next day. However, the following morning was the not easily forgotten 11th September 2001 and my colleague and I found ourselves caught up, as fringe spectators, in the most celebrated of terrorist attacks. When I eventually returned to Scotland, I gave our school community a full description of our experiences, not excitements of biblical and life shaping proportions but events that were of reasonable interest at the time.

Eighteen years later I thought I would publish that school address in full by way of my next blog but there was one aspect of the aftermath which for me rather overtook the historic events themselves. I had noted in the speech how, compelled to stay in, and not move from, a small suburban hotel on the outskirts of New York, I was interested to see how the local populus, quite understandably, were consuming substantial quantities of alcohol in an attempt to obliterate the effect of recent traumas.

The British national press obtained a copy of the speech and set about enjoying a field day of excoriation. The Daily Telegraph headline told its readers ' Head drank to blot it out ', spawning a series of letters to the Editor, some of which pointed out that this was not actually what had been said and generously giving me a reasonably sound bill of health. But the damage was done; The Mail on Sunday went with: ' Principal fights for job, telling pupils he blotted out terror with binge. '

The press will do as the press feels it needs to do but the varied response from elsewhere was interesting. Those who mattered by and large didn't mind; they knew the situation and rode through the media storm but members of the public, completely unknown to the school or to me, waded in, animated to a major degree  --  and gosh, I began to learn that year just how unnecessarily rude people could be. Mr and Mrs McF of Dorking wrote: ' Dear Sir, What an utter prat you must be. Do you really think it clever to be so infantile and useless to go on a binge ( in your tweed suit of course, despite it being summer in NY ) and then make your idiotic behaviour public. God help those few pupils ...... ' etc. I did ask the anxiety ridden couple if they would like to visit the school at my expense or for me to call on them at number 27. I still await their reply.

Scarcely had this transatlantic storm begun to subside when the next tsunami of outrage reared its somewhat nonsensical head. This time it was the Head who cheated his entry in Who's Who. The facts were simple; my university career, along with most of my youthful experience, was a self made cocktail of enjoyable achievement and shambles, characterised by an early departure [ entirely voluntary ] from Oxford University and the completion of my degree as an external student at London. All of this was of course known to those who knew me and openly presented on cvs and letters of application as my career progressed. Indeed I managed to make something of a virtue of the supposed qualities of decisiveness and self-reliance which the move displayed. However, the Who's Who entry failed to make mention, in its very brief summary of London University. The question was: had this been an intentional omission buried as a desire for brevity or was there no sinister motive, merely a human error? I could not say then, and certainly cannot now, whether I intentionally omitted a detail. My general belief has always been that practical considerations, quite apart from morality, render honesty the wisest course of action and the evidence elsewhere tends to support this. Every other document told the full story.

In independent schools covert opposition can lurk in the shadows of dusty cupboards and long forgotten passages. These schools have often generated societies or clubs of former students. These associations hold social events; they encourage ties that bind. They also assume the role of defenders of the faith, where faith can be defined as tradition interpreted by themselves. These semi or fully autonomous bodies can be a hugely positive force of support and simultaneously be a nightmare for the parent organisation, which has limited control over conduct, expenditure [ monies often coming from or through the school ] and most significantly expressions of opinion.

This was fairly standard and, apologies, rather tedious stuff. New Heads make changes; former students don't like change in or to 'their' school and are difficult about it  --  all absolutely fine and a cross to bear with resignation and a smile. There was one gentleman, organiser of the Old Boys' cricket team [ and appropriately sharing the name, though not the spelling of a famous New Zealand cricketing dynasty ]. Bearing in mind the school's overall requirements, he was asked to change the date  --  and in some ways the style  --  of that most significant occasions, the Old Boys' Cricket Match. This he found difficult, which was a shame as he retired instead, Achilles like,  to his tent possibly to read Who's Who or certainly be ready to pounce when the news on the Pyper entry appeared ten years later. He wrote to the Chairman of Governors to inform him how unsuitable I was in a variety of ways to be Head of his old school, while Newspapers again had something of another indulgence of sledging, to keep us with the cricket theme; ' Gordonstoun Head guilty of forging Who's Who entry ' and so on. The Board of Governors, under Sir James Weatherall, stood firm. In fact he ensured that the storm blew in the right direction; the enemies were scattered and problem number two evaporated.

The next chapter in this saga of educational cataclysm is a touch more exciting involving, as it did, a conflict between two veterans of the Falklands War, from different services, with myself perched precariously and reluctantly between the two. The former students' committee [ again! ], perhaps not appreciating the nice distinction between philosophy and tradition, remained in some respects opposed to a ' reforming' Headmaster and stood ready to take a swipe when occasion arose. This is a suitable moment to say that I hope that, once or twice during this action packed year under discussion, I spared a thought for my family for whom all this nonsense was a bit tough, especially the next incident, which centred round one of our nearest and dearest, giving a whole new dynamic to the challenge of impending disaster.

The Head's daughter committed, at fifteen years of age,  a fairly standard transgression, causing me to ponder whether it is more embarrassing when the children in your own professional care excel at the things at which they should excel or are just hugely successful in nefarious activities. On this occasion it was a straightforward disciplinary offence but it reached the press [ not surprising as the going rate was £75 if a tabloid used your story ] where the interest subsided fairly quickly when it became clear that she was being treated in exactly the same way as other sinners [ of course ]. However, the somewhat over earnest and notably sensationalist editor of the former students' magazine grabbed the opportunity to embarrass the Headmaster and ran his front page on the topic under the banner headline: ' Pyper vs Pyper, Head suspends own daughter in drunken G'stoun scandal '. Almost twenty years later it still seems almost beyond belief that a school association should ever consider publishing something so divisive and scurrilous.

The Chairman of the Gordonstoun Association at that time was a retired Major, an extremely brave soldier, a veteran of the Falklands and a former parent, whose four excellent children had been highly successful students at the school. But he approved the editor's copy, to be swiftly reminded of the force of naval power in that South Atlantic conflict. The already mentioned Chair of Governors, the Vice Admiral, appalled by the disloyalty of the attack on the institution they claimed to support and the entirely unprofessional publicising of the private life of a young person, decided to ban the galloping major and the garrulous editor from entering the school  --  richly dramatic developments.

More unwelcome newspaper headlines followed. The Times of 21 September 2002 had a lengthy article under the heading ' Head bans paper over daughter's escapade '. To some of course the Headmaster was to blame as the root of all evil; for others the revisionist clique of old boys [ and they were all male ] comprised a pain in whichever part of the anatomy you chose to name; most people neither appreciated nor cared about these local difficulties and just hoped that ' wiser counsel would prevail ' [ reference Willie Whitelaw about the IRA ] so that everyone should just get on with life.

And that is what happened. It took a little time but this episode was the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end. While an excellent staff member  called Ben just kept his head down and looked after all former students, regardless of their proclivities, there were five gentlemen, John, Martin, Simon, Trevor and Peter consulted and thought and talked and chewed the cud for five or six years to very positive effect, preparing the ground for a lady called Sophie to appear and use her considerable skill to bring to a satisfactory and harmonious conclusion one of the longest running conflicts since the Hundred Years War. Peace and harmony took over.

Sadly it was not quite yet the end of the year of horrors; in fact the greatest was yet to come. North Foreland to most of us was a location mentioned to insomniacs during the nocturnal Shipping Forecast but with the word Lodge attached, it was also the name of a girls' school in Hsmpshire. In 2002 this previously excellent school was withering; Gordonstoun had the opportunity to acquire it, save it and start a feeder prep school on the same site. This was a noble and enterprising venture but it went wrong and the responsibility for that lay at least in part with Gordonstoun and therefore myself. We did not discover the full extent of the existing school's financial difficulties; we made a crucial decision early on but then changed course; we ploughed through the early stages of the operation with inadequate resources.

In the end closure of the existing school was the only solution and, with oceans of bad blood boiling in every breast and cauldron, Gordonstoun felt obliged to set aside its other plans and sell the property. The school would have closed in any case; Gordonstoun kept it operating for a further year so that students could finish their two year courses; the staff were properly looked after; the property was sold as a school and still is just that; the charitable proceeds from the sale exist today as a trust, helping dozens of young people every year to benefit from an education which they need and from which they benefit enormously.

The press were not so interested in this story which lacked glamour and sensation but there was a heavy price to pay, especially by him who was seen as the chief protagonist,  with interested parties and an assortment of nosey parkers. When we thought all was possibly said and done, a group of the North Foreland governors demanded a wash-up session with at least one Gordonstoun governor and myself. I was told to prepare myself to soak up the pressure and the pain; the warning was entirely valid. A gentleman who shared the name with the leader of the Five Members, whose attempted arrest by Charles I sparked the English Civil War, felt the verbal and moral thumbscrews had to be applied as emphatically as they were in the seventeenth century and he was the person to do the business. The virulent peroration which took place was as rude as it was unnecessary, as ineffective as it was tedious. I hoped the gentleman felt better after his vindictive rant. I fear the causes of humanity and education were not advanced by one jot or tittle.

And were any lessons to be learnt from this chapter of accidents, this litany of sometimes assisted misfortune? I became first much more aware of, and I hope wiser about, the rudiments of sound governance  --  both useful and important to me in the work I have tried to do in retirement. I served under three superb Chairs of Governors at Gordonstoun and the year of perdition, just described, happened when I was reporting to James Weatherall, whom I have mentioned  --  a man of very considerable authority and stature, as straight as a dye and as true as a bolt from William Tell.

I became aware of the danger of assuming that others know what is in one's mind; of the importance of direct, and if necessary painful, talking; of judging each issue on its merits; above all of supporting the Head until and unless it becomes necessary to do something else, never brooking the actions of those who would snipe and stealthily undermine. Those found guilty of this were simply blasted out of the water by Jim Weatherall, in an atmosphere where the code of practice was grounded in perspective and untrammelled by old fashioned public school incest.

I learnt also, slightly more subtly, the distinction between loyalty and loyalism, where the former reflects a bond with an individual or concept, based on integrity and principle, where the recipient of the loyalty feels and appreciates the sentiment. Loyalism, on the other hand, expresses adherence to an ideology or creed seen purely subjectively [ and often historically ]. Loyalism can be as pernicious in schools as it can be on the Shankhill Road in Belfast.

Thirdly, keep apologising even when you are not guilty, either specifically or generally, but try hard not to find yourself apologising for the same debacle three times in quick succession. Otherwise, saying sorry is not a sign of weakness and won't be seen as such but smile in a non-committal and disarming way as you move quickly on to something else.

Then be a phoenix; demonstrate your resilience [ all the rage now but we didn't hear much of it in 2002 ]; when national newspapers speak of you as ' beleaguered ' and ' embattled ', gently flap your wings as you rise from the ashes with even paced determination and do something so that people know you are still around. As 2002 drew to a close, I think we just about achieved that.

There once was a horrible annus
When many endeavoured to pan us;
We came through the crises,
Atoned for our vices
And saw off the foes with no manners.

And were we eventually vindicated? Whenever I think of vindication, I remember Edward Gibbon, author of that mighty six volume work ' The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ' which I enjoyed reading at Oxford University. I remember very little about Gibbon now, apart from the fact that, when tackled about the accuracy and veracity of some of his history, he published a separate learned Vindication and that the poor man suffered from a scrotal disease, involving an unwelcome enlargement of his private parts. Contemporary cartoonists were not kind, picturing him pushing all his most important equipment before him in a wheelbarrow.

So here, finally, is the unashamed, undiluted overdose of conceited vindication of myself. Nine years after the happenings described above and leaning heavily on a highly supportive governing body, a truly excellent group of staff and many wonderful students, despite the concerns of the opposition, we retired from Gordonstoun leaving the school larger than it had ever been [ well over 600 in number ] and, more importantly, a happy and thriving school.

In 2009 Gordonstoun had a full inspection by HMI [ in Scotland inspections of all schools, maintained and independent, were carried out by a single authority ]. It is not an exaggeration to recall that the officials were so impressed by our School Development Plan, they took a copy to use as an exemplar in all Scottish schools. They also wrote in their report ' The school has a very clear vision which is shared very effectively with young people, parents and staff. It focuses on preparing young people to take a full and active role as international citizens in a changing world. Staff across the school help young people to achieve this aim by providing numerous opportunities to develop their talent and potential, experience challenges and to develop as rounded, confident individuals. The headmaster provides inspiring leadership and is highly respected. He encourages staff and young people to take the lead and show initiative in a variety of situations and values their contributions to school life. '

After that, a little appreciation on retirement two years later from such variously diverse bodies as the Rank Foundation, the Tatler magazine and that great expert in horrible history, Queen Elizabeth II herself,was just the icing on the cake.

12th July 2019

A Tale of Two Plaques -- The Epilogue

As we make one gargantuan stride from preface to tailpiece in our musings on the subject of memorials, I wonder if you have heard the news recently from Thame, that gently dignified market town not far from Oxford. There the good burghers have decided that an enthusiastic local group may not affix five red plaques [the development from time honoured blue was news to me too], denoting buildings that have played a significant role in the television series Midsomer Murders. Of course, so prolific are the instances of unnatural death in Causton [or Thame], the whole population has died several times over in the past twenty five years. In Goring [or is it Streatley?] the attitude is somewhat more liberal and prominently placed above the main door of the parish church, where people once, one presumes,  worshipped the Almighty, is a blue plaque announcing to the world that Lewis Carroll preached there on one [just the one] occasion. The author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland [Dodgson by name and potentially jolly dodgy by nature if you were a small girl] clearly has the edge on Inspector Barnaby. What an unfair world it is.

But who or what is a celebrity and can you spot one? You might at some stage have watched the television show Big Brother, now late but not much lamented, having gone the way of all flesh, after showing us rather too much of that commodity in its declining years. If you saw the 'ordinary public' version one night and a 'Celebrity' instalment the next, could you tell which is which? Some, I suppose, are born celebrated [royals et al, see below]; some achieve celebrity status [through fame or infamy]; while others have celebrity thrust upon them for no apparent reason beyond the proportions of their posteriors and the ability to promote themselves though the largely antisocial media.

If we're looking for gender equality on our plaques  --  and banknotes for that matter  --  it is a real challenge in a world where for thousands of years women were responsible for kuchen und kinder, achievements which don't grab the headlines but which certainly prevent you from running a marathon, blowing a trumpet or ruling the world. However, resist the temptation to lower the bar for women with a view to increasing their number on the shortlist; rather raise the bar for men so they can strive to equal the top girls. There are not many male scientists around who can equal Dorothy Hodgkin, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry whose plaque I pass almost every day, or Mother Theresa, forgotten at the end as she had the misfortune to die at the same time as Diana, Princess of Wales. And if you are still looking at a lopsided, male dominated picture, remember that there are no longer barriers between fact, fiction and fake and just vote for Peggy or Jill from The Archers, worthy contenders in a changing world.

And would you rather be remembered with a plaque or a bench? In the University Parks in Oxford you will find a plain, handsome seat given in honour of JRR Tolkien. It is as solid as it is useful and some would say more fitting than countless plaques in his memory and the memorial with his grave in the Five Mile Drive cemetery. And if you return to the deserted village of Thame, you will find next to the war memorial a bench dedicated to a courageous dog, which showed extraordinary loyalty when a house fire was raging, saving his master and another dog before perishing in the flames himself.

Our family always likes to tramp over the South Downs to Seaford Head, there to find at a most beautiful spot a bench installed by Jenny in memory of her parents. 'Grandma's bench' is a delightful memorial in a charming, though occasionally cyclonic, setting, perhaps more real and personal than a blue reverse plate about which some stranger will make the important decisions about what is writ. There are no plaques for ordinary mortals when Domesday comes but I would choose a bench in any case where family can sit and ponder.

Should your plaque be reddish or blue?
I'm really not bothered; thank you.
Just give me a bench;
Our souls there we'll quench
With tales of the things we would do.

Schools of course tend to be littered with plaques marking visitations by people of note usually opening a facility and spreading a degree of light and joy. At Gordonstoun most such occasions were carried out by members of the royal family, all of whom I found to be unreservedly interested, supportive and hard working. They say you can get things painted when a royal is coming and, when the Princess Royal opened a new hall at Aberlour House, the grass surrounding the building had not grown sufficiently so we painted it a vibrant bottle green. Her Royal Highness  noticed and the grass died. You also have to look after them. Until very recently the Duke of Edinburgh had Double Diamond on his essential beverage list although I was sure it had gone out of production years before. HM The Queen also enjoys a slightly dated tipple. I was waiting once beside the Grace Gates, the main entrance to Lord's cricket ground, when a breathless young man arrived and tried to persuade the gatekeeper that he had left his pass inside, having been dispatched to fetch the Queen's Dubonnet ( to which lemonade would be added ) and this was what he was now clutching. 'And I'm the King of Siam', came the reply. Having had difficulty several years before finding that particular drink in Tesco, Elgin, for the same purpose, I found myself in deep sympathy and was able to offer support.

Daughter Sarah was three when she first met the Princess Royal [we were being vetted in our boarding house in Sevenoaks]. She took one look, burst into tears and ran out screaming; this was a fraudulent princess as she was not wearing a proper crown. After six years of intensive training, Sarah was more successful in presenting the Queen with a posy of flowers at Gordonstoun. On that day in October 1995 HM and Prince Philip were visiting, largely for the purpose of seeing their grandchildren, Peter and Zara, in action. The northerly wind was slicing through us but the loveliest of men and a tough Scot, Angus Macdonald, Chairman of Governors, was typically watching hockey with no sign of an outer garment. Sadly it was his last visit to the School for he was extremely unwell but did not know it. In any case we kept on the move and graduated to the rugby field where a school match was keenly contested. The referee had been told that we would be present for only five minutes but under no circumstances should half-time be taken when the royal party was watching. Her Majesty would want to see her grandson playing rather than chewing an orange.

After five minutes of freezing appreciation, I suggested to Her Majesty that we might move on as the musicians were waiting for us. ' No thank you, Mr Pyper; I am enjoying the rugby'. So we stayed for another five minutes and another and another. By now the first half of the match had run for fifty, rather than the scheduled thirty, minutes. Referee and players looked increasingly exhausted, dejected and desperate; I became concerned about health and safety issues. With a garrotte like motion I signalled to the referee to halt the proceedings; the Queen applauded so everyone else did and we moved on to the testy trombonists. The rugby players never made it back on to the field of play. I really learnt that day the true meaning of ' your humble and obedient servant '.

Advance fifteen years and the Pypers are approaching their final curtain at Gordonstoun in September 2010. HM The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh have arrived to open the new Sports Hall, the first phase of a mighty physical education emporium, soon to be completed and superb in every way. It is to be named after George Welsh, a former Head of PE at the School, a man of diminutive stature but a giant in the history and culture of Gordonstoun. The Queen started well; her opening remark to me was ' Good heavens, Mr Pyper, are you still here?' I thought this comment on a mere twenty year stint from someone approaching her sixtieth anniversary in the seat of power was rather rich but I knew now just how to bite my lip in abject supplication. No less tact was required when HRH Prince Philip, commented with a splutter after the drama performance that he had seen nothing because of excessive use of the smoke gun. Williams N never missed an opportunity to make a lasting impression.

The royal couple, accompanied by Lord Lieutenant, Grenville Johnson [an excellent man] and Chairman of Governors, Bryan Williams [no less excellent], advanced the full length of the expansive hall, climbed the dais and sat down. The other several hundred present remained standing and this clearly baffled the Queen and she asked Bryan Williams why the populace was not following their lead. 'I think' replied Bryan 'they are waiting for Mrs Welsh and Mrs Pyper to get to their seats.' And that was exactly what was happening. Betty Welsh was somewhat infirm and she was leaning heavily on Jenny so progress down the aisle was slow but it was rather a telling moment. I always found  --  and still find  --  it difficult to feel pride in the accomplishments of  individual students and pupils. They all have talents in different things and at different levels and, given the right support and encouragement, they should all achieve their potential for good. The brilliant flautist jolly well ought to be a brilliant flautist; if you were born to play a classic cover drive, get on and play it. Perhaps a little pride is permissible for the young person who overcomes great difficulty to achieve a goal but keep moving on to the next thing.

However, when the culture of a school achieves a shift in belief, in environment and in day to day operation; when there is a discernible change in a desired direction, that is a cause for everyone feeling a sense of pride. There was not an ounce of disrespect for the monarchy on that day at Gordonstoun but the community, through deciding to stay upright while the two senior ladies made it to their seats, was saying something significant about respect for all.

Mind you, the event had almost not materialised at all. A generous parent, Christopher Terry, an enterprising cricket loving gentleman, who dedicated his life to restoring an historic pile in Cumbria, volunteered to produce the plaque to mark the opening of the Sports Hall. This was a beautiful piece of Portland stone with the details engraved delicately and skilfully. Hugh Brown, Finance Director, and I did wait some time rather nervously as the stone failed to appear. At last, just a few days before the Opening, Christopher arrived in his aged, signature Volvo Estate and brought a substantial box up to Hugh's office where he opened it with a proud flourish.

Hugh and I looked at the plaque and then at each other for simultaneously we noticed a little snag. This Sports Hall was opened by Her Majety The Queen on ........ We had to point out to Christopher that Majesty should contain an 's' which seemed to be missing. This elicited from Christopher the not entirely helpful response ' Well, the sculptor is very good but he is Australian '. Back into the Volvo he climbed to return the plaque to the Antipodean in Cumbria. The correct version was carved on the obverse side and the finished article was delivered with just hours to spare. I sometimes wonder what archaeologists in the year 4000 will make of this double sided plaque when they rescue it from Elizabethan ruins. 

Meanwhile, shortly before this little episode, royal detectives, royal attendants and royal dogs  [of the sniffing variety] made their customary visits to the school. We all agreed that The Queen should exit the new hall via the old sports centre [about to be renovated] which she had opened over forty years before. She would doubtless pause at the silver plaque which she had unveiled on that occasion before moving on to watch some rugby [a practice of skills this time rather than a needle match]. As we stood in front of the plaque, a rather bouncy attendant of no little self-importance, remarked with barely disguised glee 'You do realise there's a word scratched on to the bottom left-hand corner of this plaque'. I had to confess I did not so approached to see clearly something I must have passed a thousand times: the word ' BOLLOCKS ' was scratched not without proficiency at the foot of the official message. Ah well, I mused, freedom of expression is a virtue among the young.

So this plaque too, with just four days to go to the opening ceremony, had to come down and disappear for restorative work and all was well that ended well. The new Sports Hall was the scene a few months later for our farewell dinner. Following the example of our good friends, John and Daphne Rea of Westminster School, we decided to leave at the end of a Spring Term as this meant we could creep away unnoticed and gentle into that goodnight. For better or worse, the Princess Royal had other ideas and told the Chair of Governors that there was to be an official farewell and that she would be speaking. Six hundred of us gathered; the PR thanked us for 'keeping it going' and I thought that was a rather accurate and appropriate expression of appreciation. Over dinner I told her the story of the two plaques but we agreed that we probably wouldn't share the tale with the Queen as, in common with her great-great grandmother, she might adopt an attitude of non-amusement.

Stick to benches, I say.

29th April 2019

A Tale of Two Plaques -- The Prologue

It was the best of rhymes, it was the worst of rhymes but mostly it was the latter.

There was a poor jester named Yorick,
Whose skull became somewhat historic;
It lay in the ground
Till Hamlet it found;
'Alas' quoth he, scarcely euphoric.

Shakespeare was quite good at several things and he certainly knew his onions when it came to death, tombs, graves, epitaphs and the like. We have all journeyed with him to the vault where life reached something of a full stop for Juliet and Romeo; we've gathered in a similar environment at the monument for Cleopatra's demise; like Peter Quince, we have struggled more than a little to find Old Ninny's tomb and we have made pilgrimage to the bard's own final resting place under the stone slabs of Holy Trinity Church, Stratford with an adjacent epitaph believed to have been written by the man himself:
Good friend, for Jesus sake forbeare,
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones
And cursed be he that moves my bones.

Hardly ' Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow ' but we all get a bit tired in or at the end. A few years ago curiosity plus science delved into the secret death of Shakespeare by using special X-ray cameras [ exhumation was quite rightly not allowed ] to test if the myths of his being buried standing up or lying on Anne Hathaway were correct. They were not but confirmation came that his skeleton was without a head; this having possibly been removed by necromancers at the end of the eighteenth century. I prefer to think that Yorick pinched it and is currently touring the southern seas with his own production of Tremlet, emphasising the line ' Alas, poor William, I knew him well '.

Incidentally Cleopatra brings back memories of North Wales where in 1965, when I was not only young and charming but physically quite fit too, a good friend, Adrian Bligh, and I ran to the top of  Snowdon. This we did up the old rack and pinion railway line without stopping and breathing only occasionally. In the evening we went to the local cinema to see the supposedly gorgeous Elizabeth Taylor but we both suffered from such severe cramp in the narrow seats of the Llandudno flea pit that we writhed and wept with pain while our fellow cinema goers thought with embarrassment that we were displaying excitement of a different kind.

While we're talking tombs and graves, we must visit Stoke Poges where in 1751 Thomas Gray wrote his ' Elegy in a Country Churchyard '. It is a favourite poem of mine, recognisable quotations drifting out to meet you in almost every verse. His theme of human equality and what the many unknown corpses in unmarked graves might have achieved had they been blessed with the advantages of the privileged few, does go on a bit even to the point of anti-climax after the first two verses, surely some of the most beautiful lines written in the English language:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimm'ring landscape on the site,
And all the world a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.

The poem in turn reminds me of Stoke House School, Seaford, Sussex, where I was born, the school having moved there from Stoke Poges in the early twentieth century. The annual school magazine had at its end two quotations. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit which you will know comes from Vergil Aeneid 1 and translates ' Perhaps it will please us one day to remember these things ', followed by The short and simple annals  --  Gray; this being the final line of another memorable verse:

Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.

When my father lost his sight completely in 1973 at the age of 57, he continued to teach classics both in local schools and to private students. Amongst the latter was a group of three senior ladies who wished to learn Latin in order to enable them to translate epitaphs on gravestones. How wise they were; there is so much to learn and appreciate inscribed thereon. I know fairly well the graves that surround the Michael Kirk at Gordonstoun  --  recent teachers, more distant members of the Gordon Cumming family and local people from three hundred years ago, about whose lives one could only conjecture. Going west, beyond the other end of the campus lie the ruins of the Peter Kirk, the local church for the village of Duffus until the middle of the nineteenth century. Here the surprise, shock even, was the mass of graves that relate to the final fifty years of the church's history. Here are buried whole families, large families, cut down before their prime; a catalogue of children not surviving to or through their teenage years. We should think carefully before we criticise modern day health care and the advances made in medicine and allied sciences in our own lifetimes.

If you are not too keen on death, you may have given up by now but for others the same trends are visible in Oxford where, in the early nineteenth century the local authorities commandeered three large pieces of land within the city for use as cemeteries, primarily to deal with an explosion in premature deaths as industrialisation ran ahead of the means to ensure sound quality of life. I find St Sepulchre's in Jericho particularly peaceful and, after you have lingered awhile, you can enjoy a large slice of Pineapple and Coconut cake in the Barefoot tearoom not far away. Among those whose graves I found there was that of Benjamin Jowett, one of Oxford's most noted academics at the end of the nineteenth century. As Master of Balliol College, he said about himself or others said sardonically of him:
First come I, Benjamin Jowett,
All there is to know, I know it;
I am the Master of this college,
What I know not is not knowledge.

Fifteen years ago I found myself in Cambridge and travelled the short distance to Granchester to see if Rupert Brookes's romantic memory from a First World War battlefield was recognisable ninety years later. Avoiding Jeffrey Archer's palace and failing to find any honey or other delicacies fit for tea, I came to the church of St Andrew and St Mary. Sadly none of the faces on the clock tower showed ten to three so I wandered into the churchyard and suddenly there he was. I looked down and I was standing at the foot of the grave of Henry Desmond Pritchard Lee (1908-1993), an eminent classical scholar and Headmaster of Winchester College during my time there. I had had a bit of an up and down relationship with him, with the down element being entirely my responsibility. When he encountered me in naughty vein, he gave me something responsible to do, a most valuable lesson for me in later years. My problem was that I tended to fulfil the task and then go straight back to sinning.

One Sunday in the summer of 1965 I was invited to lunch at the Headmaster's House. It was highly proper and very formal, with Lady Lee strengthened by a sufficiently potent dose of austerity to see us all through posterity, presiding in regal fashion. Wine was not offered to young men then but beer in the shape of Tolly Cobbold was an acceptable order of the day, provided one did not accidentally scrape or mar the highly polished surface of the walnut table. I was just in the process of taking a healthy swig of the said beverage when Lady Lee, with all the graciousness of a Thomson machine gun, fired a question at me. I cannot remember the subject but I do recall not having a clue how to reply. My mouth seemed to fall open of its own accord and out came a great big enormous burp, echoing eternally in the medieval hall. The rest, as Fortinbras said, was silence and the embarrassment is undimmed fifty four years later.

So when I came across Desmond again [ I cannot remember if Lady Lee was keeping him company 'neath the turf ], I was able to apologise  on bended knee not only for the merry dance which I had led him but also for the involuntary release of gas from my digestive tract which shocked his good lady so awfully.

And in this increasingly secular age, do bones matter anyway? As Crossrail snakes its way across London and HS2 flies like a crossbow bolt from wherever to wherever, bats and buttercups are of course religiously preserved but scant regard is paid to human remains. Shakespeare might be OK but what about one of his favourite anti-heroes, Richard III? Nestling peacefully under a car park in Leicester, he is unceremoniously dug up and carted off to a museum  --  and still without a horse.

Or perhaps the memorial is more important than the bones themselves. The eminent seventeenth century  Bishop of Bath and Wells, Thomas Ken, author of such beautiful hymns as Awake my soul and Glory to thee my God, this night, had carved his name [ quite neatly ] on a sacred pillar in the cloisters of Winchester College when he was a boy, still to be seen three hundred and fifty years later. When I first ascended the dome of St Peter's in Rome, I was shocked by the ubiquitous graffiti, noticing it was not an imitation of antique Roman ribaldry but thousand upon thousand of modern names. But then perhaps climbing almost to the roof and leaving your mark behind is perhaps in itself a sort of act of spiritual commitment. After all the local Archdeacon here in Oxford recently made a tour of local churches, daubing unintelligible hieroglyphs in blue chalk on doorways. What a topsy turvy world it is. The good book says And some there be that have no memorial; lucky old them perhaps.

War memorials are in a different category and how important it is for us all to remember those who made an ultimate sacrifice for others. I have always preferred the straightforward statement ' They died for their country ' than the slightly more complex biblical quotation ' Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends '. Perhaps laying down a life for an ideal or for people unknown is a demonstration of even greater love and commitment than if the beneficiaries are known and dear to you. Or perhaps it depends on your definition of a ' friend ' and that's certainly a topic for another day. In any event war memorials, reflecting love, courage and selflessness should stay in the forefront of our minds. I am particularly drawn to the boards at Gordonstoun School and Balliol College, Oxford, both of which name serving people of both British and German origin side by side.

And if you want to feel the peace that comes after war and reflect on the turmoil that preceded that peace, go to the War Cloister at Winchester College, the largest private memorial of its kind in Europe. I am not an expert in architecture and I now regret passing through it several times a day for five years [ although I always observed the tradition of raising my straw hat on entry ] without fully appreciating its dignified and elegant serenity but I have made up for this in recent years. In the unlikely event of my making it some day to the celestial city, I hope to find myself eternally lodged in a replica of Winchester's War Cloister.

Round the outer wall of the cloister is a message for all of us. The final part reads thus: Strong in this threefold faith they went forth from home and kindred to the battlefields of the world and, treading the path of duty and sacrifice, laid down their lives for mankind. Thou, therefore, for whom they died, seek not thine own but serve as they served, and in peace and in war bear thyself  ever as Christ's soldier, gentle in all things, valiant in action, steadfast in adversity.

3rd March 2019

Forty Years On

As 2018 slips over the starboard horizon, I note that it finished happily, with Christmas spent safe within the womb of a boys' boarding house in Hampshire  --  just like olden times. Presents were blessedly few in number but I had a novel fallback position anyway in the form of a message from Nematodes with details of the ideal surprise treat, one of their highly prized gift tokens. You know of course that Nematodes are the country's leading producers of slug repellents. One can imagine the faces on Christmas morning, smiling sweetly on receipt of the priceless voucher and adopting the response of that old [ now very old ] friend, Tom Lehrer, ' Just the thing I need; how nice! '.

So we have rolled on into 2019 and ' I'll remind you to remind me, we said we wouldn't look back ', although I have had to delve into the 1950s froth of Salad Days to find that sentiment. No longer do we cast a furtive look over our shoulders to grumble about the misdeeds and lack of perfection in our children as the boot of responsibility is now firmly on the other foot as they gather round, tut tutting on the subject of their parents' inadequacies and eccentric behaviour.

For those who might improbably choose to dwell on my lifetime anniversaries, 2019 is a year of significance. April 7th will mark forty years of marriage; what I believe is known as a Ruby Wedding and I do hope that doesn't mean that unreasonable expectations are raised around the theme of the provision of precious gems. For the other protagonist there is possibly a sense of triumph as we recall a breezy spring day in 1979. Facing unemployment [ notice foolishly given to the current employer with no new job obtained ], there were no stags, hens or even churches in this act of union. Those were the days, my friend, of deep thoughts  --  not getting married in a church as we felt our levels of belief were inadequately shallow. Oh where did that integrity go?

 Instead at the Lewes Registry Office we were ' done ' by a substantial, earnest lady with food remains all too apparent on the front of her heavy red jacket; an offence which was ameliorated by my father wearing a smart bowler hat throughout the proceedings [ loyal to the protestant traditions of Northern Ireland ]. Then it was a quiet reception in Jenny's family home by the sea; a much noisier meal in the Bistro Byron in Eastbourne with strong willed people arguing stridently about not very much; a brief free honeymoon in a cottage in Dittisham, Devon, where the daffodils were emerging, the Triumph Herald Vitesse broke down and the ghost of Agatha Christie was stomping around not far away.

And now here we are, forty years later with the in between areas, many eminently forgettable or craving to be forgotten, waiting until another time, while we perhaps just remember the words of Gabriel Oak to Bathsheba Everdene in Thomas Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd: ' And at home by the fire whenever you look up, there I shall be  --  and whenever I look up, there will be you '. That seems to me a pretty good basis for a marriage. Anything more is a bonus.

That was all forty years ago and very fine too. However, remembering things still with us, the events of 1979 are trumped [ how important it is to continue to employ that word normally so that it does not become completely hijacked by him of the yellow hair and very long red tie ] by fifty years of membership of the Marylebone Cricket Club. As Neil Armstrong stepped on to the moon's surface, I eased myself with a barely disguised self-conscious swagger into the Long Room at Lord's. This was one giant step for me and not noticed by anyone else at all. It is rather a pleasing accident of fate that in this year of 2019 son Robin gains full membership of the MCC after seventeen years on the waiting list. Those applying today face thirty years gazing at the valhalla from outside. On the terrace immediately in front of the pavilion there is a bench where those over 75 can reserve a seat for the day. When the weather is fine, all over the world aspiring young members are praying hard that it will be the hottest day ever so that at its end there will be a few found sitting on ' Death Row ' for whom the summons to play for the eternal test team in the sky has finally arrived, thus creating a few spaces on the current MCC membership list.

And so much has changed in fifty years. There used to be gentlemen and players, while now there are just players but the female species has at last arrived which is a major bonus. Five day test matches slip into oblivion as the immediate bang bang style of cricket takes over but I suppose the longer version was a Victorian invention in any case and a hundred balls is better than no deal at all. Nowadays your shirt is blue, your stump is purple and your balls are pink; will that halcyon era of cream clad cavaliers musing gently at deep square leg against the background of the green sward ever return? Meanwhile three cheers for a wonderful sport that encourages patience, application, sportspersonship and an interminable battery of meaningless statistics.

However, even this significant milestone of fifty years ago finds itself overshadowed by a Damascene moment in 1964 when I began listening seriously to The Archers. I do not know why, as I approached the climax [ Lilliputian variety ] of my school career I should become an addict to this particular radio show [ my mother was committed to Mrs Dale's Diary ]; perhaps it has something emotionally in common with the overtly undemanding poetry of the late eighteenth century. There are more daffodils than you can imagine in Ambridge. Fifty five years later Peggy and Jill remain as characters and actors from that time with June Spencer, who plays the former,  reaching her hundredth birthday this year.

We have been somewhat crudely translated from ' An everyday story of country folk ' to ' Contemporary drama in a rural setting ', which really means a bit more sex and violence to maintain the interest of the ' EastEnders ' audience as they dream in the early evening about crude and dastardly acts to follow a little later on TV. It is extraordinary that The Archers features twice every day with the omnibus edition on Sunday as well. And, assuming the current editor and script writer are reading this blog, you are at your best when (a) you are not obsessed with one story line; (b) you are not furiously driving a social or political bandwagon of feminism, social consciousness etc; (c) you keep up the agricultural content  --  keep telling us about turnips and milking machines; and (d) you encourage us to smile every now and again.

Another year thus bites the dust;
Less time to achieve what we must;
Forget all that stuff,
It's more than enough
In cricket and Archers to trust.

So on we go, burbling like a bunged up brook in a peat bog and January has already passed. A very happy February to all our five and a half readers.

28th January 2019

1968 -- A year of significance?

It was in 1955 that Pete Seegar first asked ' Where have all the flowers gone? ' It took twelve years of searching to produce the answer; most of them were in San Francisco, many of them entangled in the hair of the twenty something generation. This was in an age before pop festivals became the expensive preserve of the middle aged, middle class and middle bellied community. I noticed in 1969 it had become fashionable to make a sign of peace with one's right hand while saying, with obvious and meaningful pleasure ' Three days '. I thought I should adopt the habit myself, although not confident it would be appreciated in the rarefied atmosphere of an all male prep school common room, where most colleagues had been alive during the First World War and had fought in the Second. No-one ever asked me the meaning of the gesture, which was just as well as only later did I discover that it was a reference to the Woodstock [ USA not Oxfordshire ] Festival, enjoyed by 400,000 in 1969.

But were the 60s special and were they any more 'swinging' than any other twentieth century decade? After all, a good deal of stuff went on in the 1950s. As Empire morphed into Commonwealth, colonialism was painfully reversed. We all know that there had been a 'scramble' for Africa in the 19th century but restoring your pan of yellow goo to something like its original ovular state was not an easy task as the Mau Mau risings in Kenya demonstrated all too poignantly. There was trouble up north, in Egypt and Algeria, too while the Korean War gave us a taste of problems ahead in the not so gentle collapse of Indo-China. The Common Market [ now there's a novel concept ] opened for business in 1957; there was considerable friction between the Warsaw Pact and NATO; Stalin died but it didn't make much difference to the rest of the world.

By the end of the 1950s Britain was well on the way to becoming a car owning and television watching society. You could switch on and enjoy the manifestations of post-war prosperity at the seaside: Mods and Rockers; Brylcreem; itsy witsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikinis etc, while you hummed ' Fings ain't what they used to be ', lamenting the advent of parking meters and bowling alleys. Tony Hancock and Spike Milligan gave a contemporarily acidic feel to humour; film idols James Dean and Marilyn Monroe showed it was a young person's world in the cinema before they succumbed prematurely, reminding us that ' only the good die young '.The meaningless froth of Salad Days and the happy go lucky philosophy of ' Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be 'encouraged us to believe that peace and prosperity really were becoming permanent features. The brash Bill Haley, the gyrating King Elvis and the slightly more subtle Buddy Holly [ currently undergoing a revival  --  hooray! ] were evidence that the 1950s certainly had rock and roll but was that sufficient to define their age?

The Fifties persona said ' Heed,
Rock 'n Roll is all that you need.
The Sixties reply:
' Sex please and that's why
You can't tell your grass from your weed '.

One could argue that the 60s brought those 50s seeds of hope to fruition. We may have been encouraged by the Prime Minister telling us ' You've never had it so good ' but perhaps we didn't quite believe it until we walked down Carnaby Street in all its glory, celebrating the winning of the World Cup. In the late 1950s I waited each week  eagerly for the Eagle comic to appear with Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, locked in a death struggle with the Mekon, a very strange looking creature which David Attenborough has probably by now found on the seabed somewhere. Ten years later in 1969 humankind was actually walking on the moon. The limited Korean war gave way to the horrific conflict that was Vietnam; general tension rose ever more acutely in the Cuban missile crisis; the great sleeping giant that was the People's Republic of China woke up and began to explode nuclear devices but the Western powers looked away and continued to recognise the exiled Nationalist government on Formosa instead. The dream [ a horrendous nightmare for Victorian diehards ] of a more liberal society suddenly became a reality. In GB we stopped hanging people; we allowed women to take the contraceptive pill and to have abortions; homosexuality became legal; and pubs opened on Sundays [ except in Wales ]. We could scarcely believe it.

Thus was British destiny established for the next fifty years. On the stage we didn't just ' remind you to remind me; we said we wouldn't look back '; we were not afraid to look back in undiluted anger, while building theatres at the same time. The National took a little while to find its home and its identity but the Chichester Festival Theatre opened in 1962. A year later I watched in awe as Joan Plowright gave the definitive performance of St Joan [ why don't we do Shaw's plays any more? ]. The following year I saw her husband, Laurence Olivier, portray a mesmerising Othello. Even now, fifty four years later, I can see him so clearly striding the stage having dispatched Desdemona.

Then there were the Beatles and were they special? Were they a class apart? Their secret lay in not only being ahead of the game but in being simultaneously supreme practitioners in all branches of popular music  --  in lyrics, in composition, in musicality and in recording technique [ this last with a little help from their friends ]. As we focus on 1968 as the year which both defined the 1960s and set the trend and the pace for the next fifty years [ although 1979 might disagree ], it is worth noting that the two most popular songs in that year were the reassuring ' What a Wonderful World ' by Louis Armstrong and the slightly more challenging encouragement to improve your situation in ' Hey Jude '. Films of that year looked backwards,  Where Eagles Dare ; sideways, Bullitt [ with Steve McQueen doing his own stunt driving in the most brilliant of car chases ]; forwards  Barbarella ; but the most popular of all was 'Yellow Submarine. Sometimes a taste of superficial silliness is good for the soul.

In this year of 1968 Pope Paul VI tried in vain to recover lost ground by banning the contraceptive pill, while others were rolling back the boundaries of medicine as an epidural was used for the first time and Christian Barnard, a South African specialist, did something quite remarkable in the Groote Schurr [ pronounced Grochoor ] Hospital in Capetown when he carried out the first successful heart transplant operation on Philip Blaiberg. Private Eye, well into its sardonic stride by now, celebrated the happy event on record with a ditty to the tune of the well known hymn ' Onward Christian soldiers '

 Onward Christian Barnard,
Marching through Groote Schurr
With the heart of Blaiberg
In the bottom drawer.

Thus, as gender testing was used for the first time at the Winter Olympics in Grenoble, a new chapter in medical history began.

A strange new instant food item, a Macdonald, made its UK debut; sport was on the move as professionals played at Wimbledon for the first time; the Boeing 747 made its first commercial flight; and a computer mouse crept out from somewhere, announcing something rather significant to a pre-electronic world. Someone had the bright idea of introducing First and Second Class mail, while high above us Apollo 7 made the first manned orbit of the earth. Apollo 6 had previously circumvented the planet but only with tortoises on board. No-one seemed to know how this species had made it through the selection process.

So much there was in 1968 that at least presaged and in many cases set the trend for what was to come. It was a significant year for race relations and in this context, fifty years on, progress has been mixed. Following the assassination of Martin Luther King in March, the ' I am a man ' movement gathered pace in America and the Olympic 200 metre champion, Tommy Smith, gave a black glove fisted salute as his national anthem was played. Sidney Poitier starred in the classic film Guess who's coming to dinner, tackling racial tensions from a white liberal standpoint. Fifty years later black people still seem to die at the hands of the police [ eg Charlottesville ] and sports people are kneeling rather than standing for the national anthem. Despite the shocking number of stabbing incidents involving young black people in the UK, perhaps we have made some solid progress. After all, in 1968 Enoch Powell was just getting going with his Rivers of Blood speech and to a large extent we seemed to migrate from that irresponsibly incendiary language to the more prosaic but no less sincere words and spirit of the Race Relations Act of that year, making it illegal to refuse housing, employment or public service on the grounds of race. I never really understood discrimination as my childhood heroes had been the likes of cricketer Garry Sobers and athlete Kip Keino so those with black skin were almost in the ranks of the deity for me. Today, fifty years on, the degree of personal tolerance and appreciation of difference have made remarkable progress but there is always work to be done as the potential malign influence is forever present.

We should not move on without mentioning another area of strife, Northern Ireland. Someone once said that modern times began when Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day 800 AD. I can't be sure of that as I wasn't there but I can make a good stab at when the ' troubles ' in Ulster began, although problems had never been far absent since independence was granted to the Irish Free State in 1920. On 5th October 1968 the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, campaigning against ' discrimination in housing against the nationalist and catholic population ', persisted in holding a march, despite a ban, in Duke Street, Londonderry. What ensued was not pretty and heaven knows where one's sympathies should lie but there was much use of baton and water cannon and many demonstrators were injured. Although there was no individual human fatality, the events were filmed for posterity and the possibility of a peaceful resolution evaporated on that day.

As 1969 got underway, I remember stepping off the ferry at Larne in a state of innocent ignorance about political developments in order to hitch a lift along the county Down coast road. I had not gone far before a police officer warned me that this particular practice was now less than prudent. So a degree of darkness spread over that beautiful land for about forty years, although for a majority of people life continued in a routine and peaceful way. I continued to travel there, to the land of my father, to see friends and enjoy marvellous holidays and, outside certain hot spots, was largely unaware of the challenges facing certain sections of the population.

Elsewhere 1968 was proving to be no less seminal. Ask anyone who recalls anything about the Vietnam War to name one event in it and most will mention the Mee Lai massacre on 16 March which became something of a turning point in American involvement and set the scene for public opinion on overseas involvement for the next two generations. Meanwhile, in the fiftieth year since the Russian Revolution, Czechoslovakia rose in revolt, not so differently from Hungary's attempt twelve years earlier. Riots were put down with a vengeance and things seemed to be restored to their previous state but perhaps the seed of dissent had taken strong root and would continue to grow discreetly until the shaking off of the communist yoke twenty years later. But was the social life based on the capitalism of the western world to do any better? Robert Kennedy was assassinated on 6 June and in August the Democratic Convention in Chicago descended into the abyss of violent demonstration and an even more brutal imposition of the rule of law of which the Soviet authorities would have been proud.

All of this happened in 1968 and paved the way for global and domestic developments for succeeding decades. To many, however, 1968 was the year of student unrest, especially in Europe, spilling over into demonstrations, rioting and systemic violence. We recall the leaders' names  --  Danny, Andreas, Ulrike and Rudi, known further in case you're struggling as Cohn Bendit, Baader, Meinhof and Dutschke. These young revolutionaries caused much mayhem and earned notoriety rather than respect.

 We were a little more circumspect in the UK. The intellectual Tariq Ali preferred the pen to the sword, while our chief revolutionary was young Peter  --  do you remember him?  --  Hain who was nobly engaged in stopping a cricket tour rather than bringing down the established order. He, a South African by birth and culture, was determined that a cricket tour by his own country, where apartheid had a firm hold on sport, should not take place. His means were direct but controlled and where his continental colleagues foundered, Hain had total success. As a cricket enthusiast, I was indebted to him as the South African tourists were replaced by a Rest of the World team, which included, somewhat ironically, the best South Africans in any case. On 14 August 1970 at the Kennington Oval, in two hours after tea on the second day, I witnessed the most sublime batting partnership between two of the best left-handed batsmen the world has known. Graeme Pollock [South Africa] with exquisite timing and elegance and Garry Sobers [ West Indies and certainly deserving of a second mention in this blog ], in a spirit of unalloyed and disdainful aggression, put on 165 runs in less than two hours. Thank you, Mr Hain.

Cultures clashed; an indulgent, libertarian lifestyle on the one hand and a touch of the altruistic Robin Hood on the other  --  doing well by doing good as Tom Lehrer said about a different activity. The spirit of Ulrike Meinhof ' Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more ' shone through Lindsay Anderson's 1968 film If, where we saw revolution through the prism of an old fashioned public school and again it is not a pretty sight. The character Mick Travis, characteristically swigging vodka, warms to his theme of how ' one man can change the world with a bullet in the right place. ' It was  --  and remains  --  a memorable film but one aspect caused difficulties for me in years to come when I was running a boarding school. After a rebellious CCF Field Day the Headmaster, played so emphatically by Lionel Jeffries, opens a large drawer in his study to reveal the sublimely peaceful corpse of the Chaplain who has been killed on the military exercise. Whenever, and it was not too frequently, I had a really difficult conversation with one of the Chaplains who worked at Gordonstoun, I began to imagine his body being in a drawer close by, with my having to introduce him to visitors in that rather zany position.

While students rioted with varying degrees of venom and violence in France, Japan, Senegal, Columbia and a host of others, things were a little more sedate at Oxford University where I found myself for an ingloriously brief career. The left-wing committee of the Balliol College Junior Common Room decided that funds should be allocated to support our fellow students engaged in a serious sit-in at the London School of Economics. A meeting was called and, with monumental filibustering, it dragged on for ten hours, four of which were spent debating that ' The Chapel bell shall not be rung for religious purposes '. Late in the evening and with only a caucus of the hardliners remaining, the money was approved but, I seem to remember, it was never paid, an ancient, long lost statute being brought into play on the side of reason.

Things hotted up a little elsewhere in Oxford, particularly at All Souls' College, seen as a hotbed of privilege [ very well endowed and no undergraduate students ] and it was picketed by the Oxford Revolutionary Socialist Students. The Head of the College, known as the Warden, was John Sparrow so, above the milling throng, ten deep on the pavement, were some choice pieces of graffiti including ' Sparrow is a Great Tit '. I mingled with the demonstrators for a while before returning to Balliol College to discuss with a friend, William Elland, the dangers posed to the wine cellars at All souls', reputed to be the finest in the university. We wrote to warden Sparrow offering assistance, should it be needed, to keep the marauding hordes away from the treasured elixir of life. We were amazed to receive a reply, now proudly nestling in the All Souls' archives. It reads as follows: 

Dear Mr Pyper

I write to thank you and Mt Elland for your kind and encouraging letter. I am sure that the sentiments you express are shared by a large majority of the University, both senior and junior members.

I think we shall withstand the puny efforts of the infantile " revolutionary " students without outside assistance but I am truly grateful for your sympathetic offer. If need be, we will call upon you to guard the cellars, which you rightly recognise as the arsenals of learning.

Yours sincerely

John Sparrow.

Seriously, I was delighted to get your letter.

So a rather eventful year was drawing to a close and what, you might ask, from Mee Lai to Memphis, from Chicago to Czechoslovakia, was my abiding image of 1968. I do not hesitate; without doubt it was Bob Beamon winning Olympic Long Jump Gold Medal with a jump of 8.90 metres. That record had nudged forward by 22 centimetres in 33 years; he broke it by 55 centimetres in one jump. He seemed to take off and he landed beyond the point where the jump could be measured with the specialised equipment of the day. Yes, it was in the rarefied atmosphere of Mexico City but in the ensuing fifty years only one person on one occasion has bettered it. It was something of a leap in the light and a breathtaking reflection of a special and significant year.

30th November 2018