pembrokian 2011
TRANSCRIPT
ISSUE NO. 35 - JULY 2011
A day in the life of The Hall
Pink Panther, Berliner Bahnhof, Zumba, Stomp and Gargoyles
Leader of the Band
The TutorialSystem
Not just a City Breakfast
With the new kitchens, refurbished hall and, of
course the spectacular bar, there has perhaps
never been a better time for alumni to think
about using the facilities of their College as a
venue for a special occasion – whether a private
family event or for corporate entertaining. We
can offer a range of catered functions even in
term time and, of course, out of term we can
usually offer overnight accommodation too, with
a large number of high quality en-suite rooms.
We look forward, naturally, to the completion of
the new build and the superb additional facilities
it will offer, especially the 170 seat multi-
function theatre but for smaller conferences,
there is no need to wait – the Forte Room,
enlarged and beautifully re-appointed as part of
the kitchen/hall refurbishment project, can
accommodate conferences of up to around
40 guests (depending on preferred layout), as
can the Mary Hyde Eccles room in the Samuel
Johnson building (formerly staircase 8), itself
extensively renovated just a few years ago.
If you are interested in using the College for your
event (whether for yourself or your company),
please contact the Conference and Events team
to discuss your requirements.
Heather Earwicker Conference & Events Manager
Joanne Bowley Conference Assistant
Email: [email protected] Telephone: 01865 276484 Pembroke College, Oxford, Oxon. OX1 1DW
Web: www.pmb.ox.ac.uk/conferences
Contents
Pembroke as a Venue
A sense of togetherness 3Andrew Seton
The Tutorial System 6Tim Farrant
Pink Panther, Berliner Bahnhof, Zumba, Stomp and Gargoyles 8Lydia Lewis
MCR-Alumni Seminar Hilary 2011 10Sam Wills
Accessing Oxford and Beyond 11Peter Claus and Ian Power
A Day in the Life of the Hall 12Greg Neale (1999)
Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat 16Robin Wilson
It’s great time to be a neuroimaging scientist 18Irene Tracey
‘I’ve come to Earth’ 20David Knowles (1979) Life in a croft
More interesting (and better value?) than the large Hadron Collider 22Ben Davis
‘An Incandescent experience’ 23Sam Baker
College Life 24
Not just a city Breakfast 26Clive Stainton + Nigel Jackson
Pembroke students go NorthWest 26Rebecca Wilson
Pho
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T H E P E M B R O K I A N
By Andrew SetonStrategic DevelopmentDirector
A SENSE OFTOGETHERNESS
For much of last year, and until the end of
Hilary Term this year, Pembroke suffered a
temporary loss of that most collegiate of
spaces: its dining hall. We ate in a Nissen
hut for a while – and we survived the blitz of
builders. How fantastic then, to celebrate the
Spring re-opening of the Hall this year, the
successful functioning of the new kitchen and
servery, not to mention the new bar, and the
much smarter, enlarged Forte Room. And all
on time, on budget and according to original
specifi cation. Good on us, we put up with
all that discomfort and a strong bursar-led
team to make it all bearable. The result - a
superlative boost to the facilities which help
make Pembroke fundamentally a College.
There is an awful lot of talk about colleges
being communities. It is certainly a source of
strength that we are smaller than universities
and, that we are multi-disciplinary. However
my recollection of Oxford several decades
ago, was that my college community was
no more than that, and had no plans to get
better: it consisted mainly of students and to a
lesser extent, tutors who taught them besides
doing their own thing (i.e. research), with a
smattering of post-graduates who occasionally
turned up to a meal but did not really seem
to belong in the place. Being one of the less
engaged members of this community par
excellence, i.e. a student destined to leave it
after 3 years, it was diffi cult in those days to
see any need to question either the ‘future
direction’ of this community, or indeed,
the apparent treading of water I could see
Breakout Session at Ditchley Park
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everywhere around me. It all felt comfortable
and bound to continue for ever. I am sure
everyone has felt like that about some or other
place where they have spent time during their
lives, be it home, workplace, or school/college.
Perceptions might differ, of course, depending
on your role in the place, and whether you are
a mover and shaker or just enjoying the ride.
At various times, and in some colleges, the
direction might have been characterised as no
more than an instinct for survival. Today our
existence at Pembroke, whether we like it or
not, is questioned far more than in the past: the
questions are many and varied, not always the
ones we wish to be asked but always insistent.
They range from the reasonable: “are tutorials
economically viable?” to the more outlandish
“is Oxford doing enough to promote social
mobility?” (which is not the same as encouraging
talented sixth-formers from all backgrounds to
aim high and thus widen our pool of excellent
applicants to help us advance learning and
science). As public money gets ever tighter, and
as more such questions are asked, we cannot rely
on just a survival strategy to survive, we have to
swim and not just tread water.
At Pembroke, we have never had the luxury of a
substantial endowment in terms of land, money
or other assets, and perhaps this has been one
of the major drivers in a search to shape and
plan the future more deliberately than others.
Perhaps in recent times, another driver has been
the sense that the broad community has become
closer than before and more people within it are
aware and interested in what happens next; in
how to make it exciting and not merely durable.
And so, while much of the past academic year
has seen the Campaign bus drive round the
world connecting our alumni groups in the USA,
Dubai, Hong Kong as well as Edinburgh and
Manchester with our community in Oxford, we
have also paused for a deep breath nearer to
home – in the Cotswolds as it happens. In leafy
surroundings, we considered, over a weekend
in the company of an invited group of alumni
from around the world, our longer-term strategy
- beyond Bridging Centuries.
That event, held at Ditchley Park conference
centre, was a high point in the year for many of
us and I think for all the participants. It proved
that our alumni can choose to be serious
stakeholders, and that the Pembroke community
does not shrink, or simply remain the same size
with an annual replenishment, each time our
students graduate. At Ditchley Park, friends,
alumni and their partners could rub shoulders
with many of our Fellows, as well as JCR and MCR
offi cers (who show much more engagement
than was the case in my day with the common
aspirations of the Oxford community). They took
part in discussions which will help to shape
our academic future, as well as examining our
fi nancial goals, encouraged by drop-in visits from
the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor.
The event was a serious milestone in
the College’s planning agenda, no mere
entertainment for an outside audience. When
the current strategy cycle is complete later in
the year, we shall have more to tell everyone
about Pembroke’s plans but be aware that we
received every encouragement to be bold and
ambitious. Treading water is not an option: the
shape of undergraduate teaching, the increasing
importance of post-graduate research and a clear
identity for the College need to be established
and properly communicated. For a fl avour of
those debates, consider Tim Farrant’s piece on the
tutorial system, something that needs a clear and
proper defi nition, with its true contribution spelt
out and convincingly communicated to an often
sceptical -public.
Back on the ‘bus’ now, ready to raise the fi nal
£7m to complete the commitments needed for
Bridging Centuries. Let this year’s Pembrokian
offering show you once more what an
extraordinary place you belong to. What these
pages reveal is more of the College’s heritage
of fascinating personalities (Viz, Twinkle, Twinkle
Little Bat), its living body of distinguished and
prominent alumni (viz. the revealing visit of Lord
(Michael) Heseltine) and the life and thoughts of
its dynamic community. From the honouring of
Pembroke’s very own birdman, Alex Kacelnik to
the leadership of the University Orchestra by our
Junior Organ Scholar, Henry Chandler; from the
joys of friends reunited at the savoury delights of
a ‘well-regulated’ City Breakfast to the saccharine
future, predicted by Professor Ben Davis. Enjoy!
Gallery
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1 Kitchen Tour (Ossulston Lunch)2 Campaign Launch UK3 Campaign Launch Edinburgh4 Campaign Launch Dubai5 Careers Fest6 4th City Breakfast – Hector Sants7 Gaudy 1998-20008 Gaudy 1989-1991
9 Gaudy 1995-199710 New Building – breaking ground11 Pembroke down under – N Zealand12 Pembroke down under – Australia 13 Ossulston Lunch14 Tesdale Lunch15 Campaign Launch USA 16 Paris Alumni Dinner
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teaching, interface, synergy By Tim FarrantVicegerent and tutor in French
The Tutorial System
Oxford is seen as indissociable from ‘the tutorial
system’. But what is a tutorial, what is this
system, and what factors in our way of running it
might be special to Pembroke?
The tutorial system is often thought of as the
one-to-one teaching of students in colleges as
the main or sole means of of education. But,
while much teaching is still done one-to-one,
paired tutorials are now the norm, and they
can often be in threes and fours. If courses are
still built around the frequent, generally weekly,
encounter with the tutor, for which the student’s
essays are prepared and read, tutorials exist
in dialogue, interface and synergy with many
other forms of learning, both in College and
outside, in lectures, seminars, and in individual
reading, refl ection, and research – not to
mention the many vibrant, spontaneous, ongoing
conversations which continue outside formal
fora, and which are central to Oxford life.
Dialogue is at the heart of the tutorial system.
Its crucial features are: rigour; proximity;
responsiveness; partnership; continuity; and care.
The tutor has stewardship of the students, from
their fi rst contact with college, at, say, Open
Days, and supports them throughout their career.
The tutorial system is at least as much a tutelary
system, whereby the tutor may both teach them
personally and oversee their progress in other
hands. It is a personal system, from beginning
to end – from the candidate’s choice of college,
and the tutor’s choice of students, on the basis of
potential as well as achievement, on perception
and responsiveness, the ability to spot things
and make connections, as well as on what has
already been learnt. A tutorial is a live encounter,
a conversation, and a partnership, based on a
common and ongoing commitment to discovery,
judgement, and the development of learning.
The student’s essay forms the core of the tutorial,
as the answer to a question, and the fi rst move in
a quest for knowledge and understanding which
grows in the tutorial and beyond. The essay
is, at root, a weighing, a balance, an attempt,
and it is from that attempt to get to grips with
a subject that dialogue and understanding
comes. Learning emerges from the student’s,
as well as the tutor’s input, from the essay’s
particular emphases and argument; the
dialogue develops as the tutor picks up, directs
and corrects points and positions, suggests,
modifi es and criticises interpretations and lines
of enquiry – all things the student is equally free
to do. The system is incremental – the course,
conclusions and outcome of one tutorial may
infl ect the subject of another, as understanding
builds – permissive, and enabling: tutorial essays
are rarely coursework, directly contributing to
fi nal marks in an exam. The tutorial gives the
freedom to make education what it really is,
a drawing-out of what is present in potential
in the scholar and the subject; to engage in at
attempts at understanding which may not always
succeed, but from whose failures and mistakes
we can learn. Tutorials can teach more rigorously
than any other system the close analysis and
critical refl exivity indispensable to confi dent
and fi rmly-grounded autonomous study,
action, and judgement. Our courses not only
cover more, and more intensively, than courses
almost anywhere else: the weekly discipline of
defending views before tutors and peers at close
quarters encourages judiciousness, precision,
and circumspection, and equips students with
Tutorials are often said to be one of Oxford’s “unique selling points”, but what are they, what do they really mean? From his special perspective as a tutor in the classical humanities, Tim Farrant attempts to defi ne what the tutorial system as a whole entails and to identify the particular benefi ts which it brings as an “interface”.
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T H E P E M B R O K I A N
the ability to work quickly and effi ciently, to
analyse and synthesize large amounts of reading
and other material and to construct robust
arguments for the weekly essay or the three-
hour exam. Students are prepared for work at a
high level, under pressure, with a key skill which
is transferable, as well as knowledge in their
own subject. These are the features which make
the tutorial system so indispensable, and our
graduates so sought after by employers, and so
successful in many careers. The tutorial system,
because it is so rigorously academic, provides an
unrivalled education for life.
The tutorial system, then, makes teaching here
different, not just in tutorials themselves, but
in terms of what may be more broadly called
interface, not just electronic, but actual: the
personal presence of scholars at all levels
interacting for a common goal. World-class
experts are on-site and accessible, not just
delivering one-off, set-piece lectures, but selecting
and teaching fi rst-years as much as graduates,
or giving papers to colleagues, experimenting,
researching, discovering, and making a full
contribution to running the college and university
as well. Hardly anywhere else has this close
and multifaceted engagement: in most world
universities, education is a matter of mass
lectures, classes and seminars, and of detachment
between teaching and other aspects of university
life. But we are small enough to be individual,
and big enough to be signifi cant: world class,
with the top departments, research, teaching,
people, yet reachable, and here.
The system, then, is an interface, and Pembroke
is taking its interface further than ever before.
Our reachability, and outreach, function at many
levels, from pre-application mentoring and open
days to fi nals, postgraduate study, and beyond. It
takes many forms – not just pedagogic (tutorials,
lectures, classes), but also ‘meta-’ and ‘extra-
pedagogic’ – the conceptual, policy-making,
domestic, pastoral, practical, administrative,
fi nancial, and operational business which goes
on in the college. Not to mention, of course,
the extra-curricular – all the other activities,
sporting, social, artistic, musical, ethical, dramatic,
outreach, which are at the heart of college life.
Pembroke has them in peculiar concentration,
quality and abundance, by dint of the exceptional
character and commitment of its members,
starting with the Master, Fellows and lecturers,
but not ending with the students or the staff.
Pembroke is truly tutelary in the fostering of its
activities, and in the clarity, drive, and focus with
which it pursues its aims. One of the College’s
particular features is in the close involvement
of its students, but Junior and Middle Common
Rooms, not just in study, but in management and
strategy. One thing we all learn, and learn to do
well here, is how to work together. Pembroke
is a synergy. And it’s a peculiarly vibrant synergy
because of its focus, talents, energy, and drive.
We need to build on that synergy and interface,
not just tutorially, or at one level (undergraduate,
postgraduate) but ‘horizontally’, via the
interdisciplinary mixing of disciplines, at
undergraduate, postgraduate, and research
(including research centre) level. We need to do it
‘vertically’, from mentoring pre-Admissions, pre-
application (for example via, but not exclusively
via, access) to careers networking and beyond.
And we need to do it across time, using both
experienced colleagues with the long view, and
new recruits, postgraduate teaching assistants
and researchers, and who will bring fresh impetus
and ideas – as well as, of course, with students
and alumni. Our tremendous assets will need
protection, husbanding and development for
us to continue defi ning ourselves as we wish.
Strong outside pressures to rationalise teaching,
particularly in the Humanities, may jeopardise
the tutorial and college system as we know it,
grouping students together in larger groups with
fewer, less frequent ‘assignments’, distancing the
close engagement between tutors and students
which is our greatest asset.
I believe Pembroke is bigger than this, because
our ‘tutorial system’ goes far beyond what is
usually understood by the phrase. It encompasses
the centripetal, internal, interface, but also
centrifugal, outreach energies which make our
college strong. But we will have to make a fi rm
case for the value of close, small group, regular,
tutorial engagement, especially in the Humanities,
because teaching history, literature, philosophy,
is not just teaching a skill, because the input of
the individual, small-scale dialogue, is that much
more important. We need to make a case for the
Humanities tout court: they are at the centre of
cultural, political (and by extension economic and
social) gravity, and of what makes us human, of
our memory and identity; they cast our past, and
shape our future. We need the Humanities more
than ever, to understand, articulate and mediate
our place in the world, and our engagement with
others. Pembroke today is strong in arts, in music,
in drama, as well as strong in sport. Pembroke
is young, cosmopolitan, outward-facing and
international, forward-looking and progressive,
as well as anchored in tradition. But we need
to ensure that we attract the best candidates,
whatever their background, and that they stay
here, rather than going to institutions with
more resources – accommodation, bursaries,
scholarships. We will need many more resources
to ensure that students and tutors stay here, and
to make a success of access, which we must.
We need resources to protect and develop the
tutorial system, and the freedom of its students,
researchers, and tutors. Pembroke can only
operate optimally if those scholars retain a high
degree of autonomy in terms of what they do
and how. The tutorial system has at its heart
interaction and autonomy: engagement between
its participants, yet autonomy in encouraging
and enabling freedom of enquiry, argument and
judgement which sets its members free. Its best
success comes when students outstrip their tutor;
its enduring reward is a dialogue for life.
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Art... We kicked off Arts Week in style with a
typically Pembrokian-themed ‘Big Art Attack’, as inspired
by the nineties children’s TV show, coordinated by
Matilda Smith. After having pondered the feasibility of
recreating Samuel Johnson’s head through the medium
of ‘anything-we-could-fi nd-nearby’, we decided this
was perhaps a little over-ambitious and settled for the
suitably-coloured Pembroke mascot, the Pink Panther.
We attempted this via an assortment of pink shower
curtains, various fruits, plates, highly appropriate ‘pink
panther’ wafers etc.; even getting one helpful fresher
to don the Pink Panther outfi t for photos once we had
created our masterpiece in giant form on Chapel Quad.
This was followed two days later by a landscape class in
the beautiful surroundings of Christ Church meadows,
and the next day by our grand fi nale, the annual student
Art Prize. The standard of work this year reached a new
high, with more than ten students submitting artworks,
from photographs to sculptures, videos to paintings, and
all displayed (and standing their ground next to) the
collection in our stunning Emery Gallery, including works
by Dame Elizabeth Frink, Lynn Chadwick, Minton, and our
newest purchase, a highly-intricate Tom Phillips collage.
We were very privileged to have as our judge Michael
Stanley, Director of Modern Art Oxford, who gave fi rst
prize to a quirky and ‘logical’ fi lm of the Berliner Bahnhof
by First-year student Dyedra Just. A wonderful display of
the breadth of artistic talent to be found at Pembroke and
a fantastic way to fi nish the week on a high!
Music... Music both opened and closed
Pembroke’s arts week, providing melodic interludes
to brighten the day. The week began with a concert
in the chapel featuring internationally renowned
performers Yvonne Friedli and Cristoph Ostendorf from
Berlin, as well as several numbers from the Pembroke
Choir. Tuesday things began to get interactive, with a
Zumba class for all those wanting to exercise through
dancing to an exciting fusion of Latin styles from
salsa to samba. For those less physically inclined,
there was a superb recital in the Master’s house
which saw a diverse range of musical styles, from
Adele to Beethoven, with highlights including an
“angelic” rendition of Elgar’s ‘The Snow’. Wednesday,
was similarly varied offering a workshop exploring
the rhythmic techniques used by the show STOMP!,
and a concert in the chapel to raise money for Japan
showcasing a wide variety of talent both from within
Pembroke and without
Drama... On the Wednesday night of
Arts Week, in the wake of a successful performance of
Maths Fellow Robin Wilson’s ‘Alice in Pembrokeland’ on
the evening of the previous Monday in the JCR, a big
crowd which included Pembroke students from across
the year groups gathered in the marquee that had
been set up on Chapel Quad to enjoy the one and only
performance of a short play which had been written by
a group of their peers. The play, about a Pembroke
By Lydia LewisJCR President
1st and 3rd prize winners Dyedra Just and Fitzroy Morrissey with the competition’s judge, Michael Stanley.
Pink Panther, Berliner, Bahnhof,Zumba, Stomp and Gargoyles...It’s Pembroke Arts Week!
Photo by Adam Lindley
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T H E P E M B R O K I A N
alumnus and his dreams to attain recognition
as a scriptwriter and actor (even if only
through an outrageous involvement in
Pembroke Arts Week!), was incredibly funny,
and perfectly pitched for the audience and
the event. Particularly well received was
the onstage representation of current JCR
President Lydia Lewis by a male actor!
The admiring crowd were highly amused
throughout, and the performance represented
a great achievement for its writers and large
cast of performers.
The Big EventAfter a jam-packed and entertaining Arts Week
we held a fi nal event to round the week off.
Performers from across the University came
and performed in the marquee on Chapel
Quad. We had musical performances from
some of our own very talented students,
followed by stand-up comedians and rounded
off with Oxford’s current number one a capella
group - The Gargoyles. It was an outstanding
evening of entertainment showing off some
of Oxford’s best talent, and enjoyed by a large
crowd of Pembroke supporters.
A massive thank you to all those involved in
Arts Week, yet again Pembroke pulled together
to put on a very enjoyable week for all.
Matilda Smith, William Tyrrell, Samuel Elwin and Lydia Lewis.
Photo by Adam Lindley
Photo by jakegalson.com
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T H E P E M B R O K I A N
“I’m a glass half-full person” was how Lord Michael
Heseltine (PPE, 1951) characterised himself, and this was
the lasting impression he left on the packed audience in
Broadgates Hall at the MCR-Alumni Seminar in Hilary
2011. Such optimism seemed to lie at the foundation
of Lord Heseltine’s considerable achievements in both
business and politics, illustrating to the students present
the power of self confi dence and a positive outlook.
Speaking effortlessly and candidly, Lord Heseltine
succeeded in shrinking Broadgates Hall to something
approximating a fi reside chat and led those in
attendance on a short tour of his life. Starting with what
was described as a modest childhood, Lord Heseltine
touched on a fl irtation with politics in the 1951 General
Election, before coming up to Pembroke to read PPE.
Expressing a deep affection for his years at Oxford, Lord
Heseltine confessed that he was swept away more by
the student politics of the day, and their manifestation in
the debates at the Oxford Union, than by his tutorials in
Pembroke. While this meant that he was not the most
diligent student in his early days, failing all three of his
preliminaries on their fi rst attempt, he did redeem himself
before going down. On completing his fi nals with a second
his tutor, Neville Ward-Perkins, described the result as a
“great and undeserved triumph”. Whilst studying for fi nals
in his tenth term Lord Heseltine also served as President
of the Oxford Union, realising a fi xation held since his
schooldays. Amongst a number of achievements during his
term, perhaps none has been so fondly remembered as the
establishment of the Union’s cellar bar, now in service as the
Purple Turtle some fi fty years later.
From his undergraduate days Lord Heseltine moved on
to his experiences in business. His fi rst forays were in
property with fellow Pembrokian Ian Josephs (1951).
Rapid success was to follow in publishing, with the
opportunity to acquire the magazine “Man about Town”.
The subsequent growth of his publishing company,
Haymarket, assured fi nancial independence. Lord
Heseltine credited his success in politics to the freedom
this independence provided: being fl exible enough to
bide time in both opposition and on the backbench.
Lord Heseltine then described his political life through
a series of episodes. One such snapshot was his work
with foreign governments on funding the Concorde,
as Minister for Aerospace in 1973. Lord Heseltine
recalled these negotiations with great fondness, and an
appetite for foreign policy that was to characterise his
support for European integration in his later years. Lord
Heseltine spent less time on the more heavily publicised
aspects of domestic policy. Little comment was given
on the 1990 Conservative Party leadership contest with
Margaret Thatcher and John Major, except on the mutual
admiration held between Heseltine and Major.
The seminar concluded with a brief insight into Lord
Heseltine’s passion for gardening. In this arena too
Lord Heseltine showed his fascination with the foreign,
describing his enjoyment of bringing fl oral species from
abroad to his arboretum in Northamptonshire.
For the audience, the talk was enlightening and well-
received. For Pembroke, the seminar was an opportunity
to invite another distinguished alumnus back to share
his experiences with a new generation of students. The
MCR-Alumni Series continues in 2011 with what looks
to be another excellent schedule of speakers.
MCR-Alumni SeminarHilary 2011By Sam WillsMCR President
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
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Accessing Oxford and beyondAnother successful year of the ‘Pem-Brooke’ collaborative outreach programme will come to an end in August when 25 A’Level students from East London come to Pembroke College for a week long residential summer school.
The group of select students from BSix Brooke
House Sixth Form, Hackney and NewVic Sixth
Form in Newham have completed an intense
schedule of multi-disciplinary lectures which
began in February and concluded with a Study
Skills programme during the Easter Break.
The aim of the programme is to challenge
talented students with undergraduate style
lectures as they study for their A’Levels while
at the same time giving the students an insight
into the student experience at Oxford and
informing their University choices by providing
course information and admissions guidance.
This year saw participants attend six
lectures based on themes connected to
Enlightenment and Romanticism at the
CitiBank headquarters in Canary Wharf,
London. The students examined the impact
the Enlightenment had across a number of
different areas including politics, philosophy,
literature, history, economics and science.
Students engaged with the topics through
readings, lectures and discussion and most
delivered presentations to the group.
The programme is taught mainly by Pembroke
historian Dr Peter Claus and has seen a
number of students progress into courses at
Oxbridge and Russell Group universities. Shirley
Tetteh is one such student, currently studying
an A’Level Humanities at BSix, who has been
offered a place to read English at Harris
Manchester College, University of Oxford.
Shirley, who took her GCSEs at Woodside
Park school in north Finchley, joined BSix
in September 2009. As a member of the
Pem-Brooke programme, she has attended
all the seminars, visits to Oxford and the
summer school. At the summer school,
Shirley won a Pembroke JCR sponsored
Scholars prize for being the best student
on the programme. This involved Shirley
attending a week long residential school
at a major educational charity at a campus
outside Cambridge. Shirley was praised
by the Oxford undergraduates, who assist
in the running of the summer school, for
“already studying like an undergraduate”.
“I really enjoyed the time I spent at Oxford”
says Shirley. “There was a really nice
atmosphere and some of the academic
lectures we attended were simply amazing,
including a fascinating one delivered by the
College chaplain [Andrew Teal] on saints
through the ages”. “The programme really
helped me to get my head around a lot of
the application information and in getting a
general idea of what it would be like to live
and study at Oxford”. “A key concern was
whether I would fi t in at Oxford, but having
taken part in the programme I now
know I will fi t in just fi ne. Not only did the
programme help me get sorted for the future,
it helped to motivate me to do the work
required to get into somewhere like Oxford”
concludes Shirley.
The Pem-Brooke programme continues
this summer with the residential summer
school at the Pembroke College campus in
Oxford to be taught by Pembroke College
undergraduates and postgraduates with
contributions from Fellows.
Dr Claus expressed his gratitude for
charitable and JCR funding received to
run the programme and efforts made
by Pembroke students that help deliver
this innovative programme. “Pembroke
contributes to the university’s widening
participation strategy in the north-west, and
with the “Pem-brooke” scheme the college
is in the forefront of Access activity across
the collegiate university’.
By Peter Claus. Pembroke CollegeIan Power, BSix Sixth Form College
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
11
A day in the life of The Hall
Greg Neale(1999)
Photo by Quintin Lake
12
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
12
“It’s exciting. We’ve got more space,
everything’s brighter and lighter, we’ve got
great new equipment – it’s really a happier
place to work.” It’s mid-afternoon on the
Wednesday of Sixth week, and Chris Allnutt
is already well into his stride. Pembroke’s
29-year-old sous chef – he is second in
command to head chef, Kevin Dudley - is
looking ahead to the evening’s work, and
commenting on life since a £3.7 million
refurbishment of the College Hall and kitchens
was completed earlier this year.
In many ways, the Hall is the social centre of
Pembroke life. Every Pembrokian will have
memories of meals, formal and informal,
and every year those memories are rekindled
at gaudies and other gatherings. But most
Pembrokians will have little idea of what goes
on behind the scenes in the building. I set out
to watch a day unfold there.
For more than a year, the college has
resounded to work on the Hall, part of
Pembroke’s planned expansion, via a bridge
across Brewer Street, to a new quadrangle
and set of buildings that are currently under
construction. the temporary cooking and
dining accommodation – based in in a very
cramped temporary building in North Quad -
has now been removed, and life has returned,
renewed, to the Hall complex. Inside the
Hall itself, with its magnifi cent hammerbeam
roof, stained glass windows, oil paintings
and heraldic crests, little seems changed.
Underfl oor heating has been installed,
however, and tiles restored. But a clue to the
wider changes is already apparent: the clutter
of movable serving trolleys that used to greet
entrants to the Screens Passage immediately
on entering the Hall has now gone, and a
gleaming new servery now awaits informal
dinners, though it is hidden from formal
dinners by carved wooden “secret” doors
within the panelling.
Before I can inspect it, my tour takes me, via
a newly installed lift, to the new basement
‘prep’ kitchens – and a series of gleaming
rooms in which food is stored and prepared.
Chris Allnutt takes time out from working for
the night’s two evening meals - an informal
serving from 5.30-6.30 and the Boat Club’s
formal Summer Eights dinner an hour later
– to show me around. Vegetables are being
peeled, chopped and diced. Meat is being
prepared, and bread has already been baked.
“The new kitchens have made a hell of a
difference,” Chris says. “We’ve two-to-three
times as much space as before, we’ve got
natural light, we’ve state-of-the-art equipment
including eight ovens instead of the two we
had before. Now, we can think of cooking
a wider range of food, we can provide new
menus – and we don’t have to worry about
the odd tile falling off the walls!”
The new kitchens are designed to handle a
heavy load. Head Chef, Kevin Dudley, reels
off lists of some of the foodstuffs that are
handled each week – cases of eggs and
tomatoes, blocks of butter, kilos-worth of peas
or diced chicken, sausages by the yard and
spuds by the sack full.
For most students, their immediate contact
with the kitchens will come in the shiny new
servery just a few feet from the ovens. Here
food is cooked and then transferred to a
serving island. Cold food and drinks are
served from other units.
It’s 4.30, and in an hour it will be time for
informal dinner. I leave Chris Allnutt and
his team, and search out the Bursar, John
Church. The man who is overseeing the
entire Pembroke: Bridging Centuries project
is delighted at the completion of the latest
stage. “We’ve brought it in on time and on
budget,” he tells me. “We’ve stripped the
building to its core for the fi rst time since it
was built (the Hall dates from 1848-1850),
installed a service lift, a public lift, toilets and
showers, extended the Forte Room (it can now
accommodate 50 people), built and equipped
the new kitchens and servery, and we’ve also
built a new Cellar Bar, running underneath the
Hall itself.”
John Church also points out that Pembroke’s
commitment to involving local companies
has benefi ted from skills including architects
Berman Guedes Stretton and builders Benfi eld
and Loxley, as well as the support of Oxford
City Council’s various departments. “It’s been
a real team effort,” he stresses. The result,
he thinks, was summed up when he recently
took a group of bursars from other colleges
around the Hall complex. “They were all very
impressed,” he says. “I think we’ve now got
some of the best kitchen and bar facilities in
Oxford”.
Clearly journalistic investigation of the new
bar will be required later, but before then, it’s
time to consult consumer opinion. Students are
already in the new servery when I return to the
Hall. Tonight’s informal dinner menu includes a
selection of pasta and sauces, sweets and fruit.
Other days give an indication of the variety
now available – there’s a ‘Mexican Night’ and
a ‘BBQ’ promised, while formal dinners are
equally varied.
Sam Elwin, a fi rst-year History student, is
enthusiastic about the new service. “It’s light,
clean and airy”, he says of the servery, while
Matthew Garner, a Chemistry undergraduate
13
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
thinks it has improved the speed food can
be served. In the Hall itself, I fi nd a general
sense that Pembroke’s new kitchens are
meeting the needs of a new generation. “It’s
more practical, but at the same time, it hasn’t
changed the atmosphere of a formal dinner,”
says Piotr Galeziak, a Polish student who is
reading History and Politics. Hiba Mohamad is
also in her fi rst year, reading Arabic and Islamic
Studies. She appreciates a diversity of food and
cooking that can meet the dietary requirements
of a wider range of students. “It’s really good:
there is more choice,” she says.
Just as the informal dinner is proceeding, so
the kitchen and serving staff are getting ready
for tonight’s formal dinner. Robert Wilson, the
College Steward, is in no doubt that the Hall’s
refurbishment is a success. “It’s already diffi cult
to imagine how we coped before,” he says.
By 6.30, the last informal diners are leaving,
and the Hall is being prepared for the
formal dinner that will follow in an hour. I
watch tables being set, as College silver and
glassware appears, and candles put in place.
Meanwhile, Chris Allnutt and his team – it
includes young chefs who are training for their
NVQ qualifi cations – are bringing a second
menu to the point of readiness. The Pembroke
Boat Club and their guests will enjoy an entrée
of sea bass, garnished with lime and chives,
before a main course of pan-fried breast of
duck, cooked in honey. Strawberry cheesecake
and fresh strawberries to follow, with a
sauvignon blanc and a rioja on the wine list.
Half an hour later, as he decants bottles of
port, Robert Wilson tells me of a menu that
came to light some years ago, for a formal
dinner held just before the First World War.
“Ten courses,” he remarks, “most of which
we’d never heard of”. Today’s meals are
less elaborate, perhaps, but the skills with
which they are brought to table are no less
accomplished. A small team of cooks and
serving staff will ensure that some sixty
people will enjoy the Boat Club dinner as
much as any of their Pembroke forebears.
Outside, in the early June evening, Boat Club
members are gathering for a photograph.
Inside, Robert Wilson overseas the fi nal
preparations in the Hall, while Chris Allnutt
times the fi nal moments of cooking to the
second, ensuring that all is ready in the
servery. Over the next hours, there’s a steady
progression of plates to place; and an equally
steady return of china and cutlery to the
impressive washing up machines in another
part of the new kitchens. At one point, a
guest arrives late; she is seated and being
served, I note, within 48 seconds.
The dinner proceeding smoothly, this
correspondent adjourns to the other new
feature of the refurbished Hall. A basement
cellar bar, with fi ne vaulted brick ceilings,
stylish tables and chairs, and an impressive
array of beer pumps, now runs the length of
the basement. Presiding over it, Len Weekes
– himself a Pembroke institution – and his
assistant, Karen Seeley – fi nd themselves in
surroundings that seem a lifetime away from
the cramped bar that has been replaced.
I’ve no desire to intrude into private grief, so
I wait till Len has poured my pint before I ask
him about Chelsea’s season. Meanwhile, I ask
him how students have reacted to the move.
“Cherwell once described the old bar as a bear
pit – adding ‘not that there was anything wrong
with a bear pit’,” he laughs. “As soon as you
got fi ve or six people in the old bar, it would feel
crowded. Now we’ve got more space, but we’ll
not want for atmosphere. I think this could be
the best college bar in Oxford.”
It won’t just be students who will benefi t
from the Hall’s refurbishment, of course, and
the development will boost conference and
other visiting activities. But there is a sense
of continuing tradition amid the change as I
walk back upstairs. In the Hall, the Boat Club
dinner ends with speeches and toasts. All has
gone well. Another day’s work in the kitchens
is already planned and prepared, just as the
celebrations continue in the cellar bar. All in
all, the day’s demonstrated an impressive step
in Pembroke’s development, and a testament
to the ideas of continuity and change:
bridging the centuries.
Greg Neale (1999) came to Pembroke to
study for an MSt in Modern History after
working in Fleet Street as a journalist for
newspapers including The Times, The
Observer and The Sunday Telegraph. After
college, he went to the BBC to launch the
monthly BBC History Magazine as editor;
worked as a “resident historian” for BBC
Newsnight; edited the University alumni
magazine, Oxford Today; and is now a
freelance journalist and university teacher.
Details of the refurbishment work to the
Hall, together with the Pembroke: Bridging
Centuries project and campaign can be
found on the College website
Photo by Quintin Lake
14
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
Steward’s DiaryWhen I’m covering an evening shift my day might go something like this:
14:00 I arrive at College and check with the morning crew (who
have been busy dealing with Lunch and any catered meetings as well as
polishing cutlery and glass for tonight’s dinner) how things have been and
if there’s anything I need to know. I then Check emails – if I’ve haven’t
already done this on my iPhone at home!
14:30 I need to have had a caffeine fi x by this time and am usually
munching on an M&S sandwich or I start to get grumpy as I won’t have
had lunch at home and arrive too late to grab a bite in the Hall.
15:00 Ensure that the evening team know what events are taking
place and that all the preparation is in hand including making sure that the
correct wines are either chilling or at getting up to room temperature.
15:30 By this time I have been over to the Conference and Events
Offi ce a number of times and taken several phone calls detailing changes
of seating plans and/or guest numbers and requirements.
16:00 Check that preparation is going to plan, including table
settings and cleanliness of the Hall. I will have collected the menus and
seating plans ready for display.
17:00 Await the arrival of the evening casual team.
18:00 Final preparations now begin, including moving all the
furniture in Broagates Hall and the setting up of serving tables in the
vestibule in readiness for the drinks reception.
18:30 Any silver is now brought out, checked for wax deposits
and set out on the tables with fresh candles. Team brief including a fi nal
delegation of roles is given to the waiting staff: who will serve reception
drinks, take care of food/wine service
19:00 Guests begin to arrive for the drinks reception while I
check that the Hall lay up is complete and that water, bread rolls and
butters are in place.
19:25 I announce dinner and the guests make their way to the Hall.
19:30 Dinner is served. This is where things get a little easier
and I can relax. With a good team, a logical serving system and plenty of
forward planning everything should happen automatically!
22:00 The event is over and guests are beginning to leave. Now
the really hard work starts: the clear up!
23:00 Last orders and a London Pride for me.
15
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
The Reverend Bartholomew (‘Bat’) Price, D.D., F.R.S., was at Pembroke College for over 60 years, as student, Fellow and Master. A distinguished mathematician who contributed a great deal to the running of the University, especially through his long involvement with the Oxford University Press, he is now best remembered for his association with his friend and former pupil Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll).
By Robin WilsonLecturer in Pure Mathematics
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat!
the Parish Church Clock gave up the ghost,
he studied its mechanism, designed new parts
that were made by the village blacksmith, and
got it to run again (which it then did for more
than 100 years).
He enjoyed a very successful school career at
Northleach Grammar School, leading to his
Bartholomew Price was born on 18 May 1818,
one of seven children. His father had been
a Fellow of Pembroke College, but had to
resign when he married, becoming Rector of
Coln St Dennis in Gloucestershire. His mother
died when he was only 9. As a child, the boy
showed great interest in science, and when
Bartholomew Price as Master of Pembroke; this portrait, painted by Marmaduke Flower in 1896, now hangs in the gallery above the College Hall.
being selected as a candidate for an award at
Pembroke College. He took his matriculation
examinations in March 1837 and was
admitted as an exhibitioner. Three years later
he was awarded First Class Honours in his
Mathematics and Physics Finals, and a Third
Class in Classics (which were then compulsory
for everyone). In 1841 he was awarded
a Benet scholarship and in the following
year he won the University’s Mathematical
Scholarship. He received his M.A. in 1843,
and became a Fellow of the College in June
1844. At that time, all dons were required to
proceed to Holy Orders, and he was ordained
Deacon by the Bishop of Oxford in December
1841, and Priest in 1844, nine days before his
Fellowship.
From this time on, Price became one of the
University’s main mathematical tutors and
examiners. He wrote two important textbooks,
his Treatise on the Differential Calculus
and its Applications to Geometry, which
appeared in 1848, and the infl uential Treatise
on the Infi nitesimal Calculus in four
volumes (on Differential and integral calculus,
Calculus of variations, Applications to algebra
and geometry, and Analytical mechanics),
published between 1852 and 1860. Shortly
after the appearance of the fi rst volume, Price
was elected to Fellowships of the Royal Society
and the Royal Astronomical Society, and was
appointed to the University’s Sedleian Chair of
Natural Philosophy, a position that dates back
to 1620. One of the earliest Oxford professors
to be allowed to marry, he and his wife, Amy
16
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
Eliza Cole, brought up their seven children in a
house in St Giles.
In January 1851, Charles Dodgson arrived
at Christ Church to read Classics and
Mathematics. In the summer of 1854, shortly
before taking his Mathematics Finals, he joined
a reading party, organised by Bartholomew
Price in Whitby in Yorkshire, and enthused:
I am doing Integral Calculus with him now,
and getting on very swimmingly.
Thus began a long and fruitful friendship.
In the event, Dodgson emerged top of the
Mathematics Finals list in December 1854, but
was unsuccessful in gaining the University’s
mathematical scholarship, in spite of receiving
some personal tuition from Price. Their
mathematical partnership continued for the rest
of their lives, with Dodgson frequently asking Price
for advice on various matters, especially in his early
years as Mathematical lecturer at Christ Church,
and the two of them regularly collaborating on the
setting of University examinations and the award
of mathematical studentships.
A well-known story, probably apocryphal
(see [4]), relates that Queen Victoria was so
utterly charmed by Alice’s Adventures
in Wonderland that she demanded to be
sent the author’s next book: this was An
Elementary Treatise on Determinants with
their Application to Simultaneous Linear
Equations and Algebraical Geometry. The
Queen was not amused.
In this book Dodgson presented a new method,
still used, for calculating algebraic determinants
of matrices, which Price subsequently presented
on his behalf at a meeting of the Royal Society in
London.
Bartholomew Price was widely known in
Oxford by the abbreviation ‘Bat’, reportedly
because his lectures were said to be way
above his audiences (which is unlikely, because
he was a fi ne and respected teacher), but
probably because he was always seen to be
fl ying energetically between committees or
lectures. He is memorialised in the Hatter’s
famous nursery rhyme parody that appeared in
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!How I wonder what you’re at!Up above the world you fl y,
Like a tea-tray in the sky.
Bat Price was a weighty fi gure in the life of
the University, being appointed, at various
times, Curator of the University Chest and
the Bodleian Library, Proctor, Member of the
Hebdomadal Council, Member of the Faculty
of Medicine and Chairman of the Faculty of
Natural Science, Member of the Ashmolean
Society, Delegate of the University Museum,
Honorary Fellow of Queen’s College, Visitor
to the University Observatory and the Royal
Observatory at Greenwich, and a Royal
Commissioner for several enquiries into the
running of the University. It has been claimed
(see [3], p. 257) that ‘Such was his standing
that those who disagreed with Price were
labelled as “unstable” or “extreme”. It was
said that ‘a few plain words from Price settled
many a debate in Congregation’.
Probably the most noteworthy of Price’s
involvements was that of Delegate to the
Oxford University Press, a position that he held
for many years. In 1861, at the time of his
appointment, the Press published Bibles and
little else of note (the two main exceptions
being Wordsworth’s Grammar and the
Greek Lexicon of Liddell & Scott). Price and
his colleagues immediately began to set the
Press on a proper fi nancial footing, expanding
the publication list with many worthwhile
educational books to enhance the University’s
reputation while making a satisfactory profi t.
By 1870, the Press had fi fty titles in its list in
a wide range of subjects, and continued to go
from strength to strength from then on.
It was expected that Bartholomew Price might
proceed to the Mastership of Pembroke when a
vacancy arose in 1864, but a fi nancial scandal
involving his brother, who was College Bursar at
the time, prevented this (see [1]). In the event,
he was not elected Master until 1892, and
that was only on the casting vote of the newly
appointed Visitor, Lord Salisbury. Associated with
the Mastership was a canonry of Gloucester
Cathedral, and Price took his Bachelor and
Doctor of Divinity degrees in the same year.
Although he did not assume the Mastership
until the age of 73, Price was still vigorous in
body and lively in mind. In College, he played
an active role, and when the undergraduates
petitioned the Master and Fellows to introduce
music into their Chapel services and to build
an organ, he covered most of the costs of
transplanting Dr Sheldon’s organ case from the
Sheldonian Theatre to Pembroke (see [2], p.
368). In 1897, the University chose Price as its
representative at the Queen Victoria’s Diamond
Jubilee Ceremony at St Paul’s Cathedral.
In January 1898 Bartholomew Price was greatly
saddened by Charles Dodgson’s untimely death
from pneumonia; later that year he himself fell
ill, and died in the Master’s Lodgings on 29
December at the age of 80; he was buried in
Holywell Cemetary on 3 January 1899. A photograph of Bartholomew Price, taken by Charles Dodgson in 1860.
References 1. E. I. Carlyle, ‘Bartholomew Price (1818–1898)’, Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. 2. Douglas Macleane, A History of Pembroke College, Oxford, Anciently Broadgates Hall, Oxford Historical Society, 1897. 3. Edward Wakeling, ‘Lewis Carroll and the Bat’, Antiquarian Book Monthly Review IX No. 7, Issue 99 (July 1982), 252–259. 4. Robin Wilson, Lewis Carroll in Numberland – his Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life, Penguin Books, 2009
17
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
Irene Tracey, Nuffi eld Professor Anaesthetic Science (Head, Nuffi eld Division Anaesthetics) & Director, Oxford Centre for FMRI of Brain (FMRIB), Nuffi eld Department Clinical Neurosciences
It’s a great time to be a neuroimaging scientist
There has been an explosion in our understanding of how the human brain works over the past decade. This has largely been afforded due to rapid developments in our ability to ‘image’ the brain as it works (functional imaging) and image its structure and chemistry (structural/chemical imaging) in more sensitive and spatially resolved ways. I have had the luck and fun of being involved in this revolution over the past fi fteen years and I want to share some of this excitement with you here.
The FMRIB Centre, which I direct, is a multi-disciplinary neuroimaging research laboratory where cutting edge developments in image analysis and physics are exploited to answer neuroscientifi c questions of clinical relevance. FMRIB is the hub for neuroimaging within the University of Oxford and is recognized as one of the world’s leading laboratories. The Centre is composed of research groups interested in all aspects of brain imaging research, including physics, image analysis, basic and clinical neuroscience (Figure 1). In addition to our strengths in magnetic resonance methods, we actively use related technologies, such as Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to ‘manipulate’ the brain as well as Electroencephalography to measure neuronal electrical events directly. We recently installed a state of the art 3 Tesla MR system and this July 2011 we are installing a whole body 7T machine, funded by an £8.2 million investment from the MRC, EPSRC, Wolfson Foundation and University of Oxford. This leading-edge MRI system will enable imaging of brain structure and function at even higher spatial resolution and signal to noise than currently possible giving us unprecedented opportunities to discover new features of brain structure and function. This critical investment will allow Oxford and the UK to retain its position as leaders in neuroimaging science.
In parallel with developments in ‘functional’ imaging’ – where we exploit the observation made by Charles Sherrington in the 1890’s, here in Oxford, that neuronal activity was directly coupled to blood fl ow and oxygen
18
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
18
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
consumption to spatially ‘map’ which brain regions are involved in our everyday sensory, motor, cognitive and emotional experiences (and how they go wrong in diseases affecting the brain), we can now use diffusion weighted imaging and tractography analysis have allowed us to image white matter connections. Measuring how these connections change in the human brain during development, learning and disease processes have overturned our ‘textbook’ understanding of brain anatomy and its adaptive capacity. Linking brain function to structure and how this adapts to injury or alters during normal learning forms the next era of projects being undertaken, with plans to create databases pooling this information globally to catalogue these observations. Application of chemical neuroimaging using Positron Emission Tomography via development of novel radioligands and improved chemistry is one of the more exciting areas of neuroscience research, and linking endogenous neurochemistry to brain function and behaviour should form part of the next phase of research but will require more PET centres and investment in radiochemistry to occur. Stand-alone developments within the fi elds of evoked related potentials (ERP) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) are adding
to our knowledge about brain function and are now being applied increasingly to disease led problems. It is a great time to be a neuroimaging scientist as we have a plethora of methods available that allow us to probe the human brain to better understand how this most complicated of organs works.
My own line of research within this rich area of neuroimaging science is acute and chronic pain. While acute pain is essential to survival – it is your body’s alarm system – and is reasonably well managed, chronic pain is not essential and ruins rather than saves lives. Also, we are very poor at treating and managing it. In fact, chronic pain is one of the largest medical health problems in the developed world affecting 1 in 5 adults and costing society billions of Euros per annum in care, treatment and days lost from work. Many sufferers are left with unmanaged pain that signifi cantly reduces their quality of life and increases their mortality. Until recently it has been diffi cult to obtain reliable objective information regarding this private and subjective pain experience; this has been greatly wanted as over-reliance on the verbal report and description of pain makes diagnoses and determination of treatment effi cacy diffi cult. With the advent of functional neuroimaging
Fig 1
Fig 2
methods, such as those listed above, this has been made feasible. Using such noninvasive brain imaging tools, we can now identify what brain regions become active during painful experiences and relate this to an individual’s specifi c pain experience or measure of pain relief, bringing potential diagnostic value as well as a better neuroscientifi c understanding of pain perception. This activation, often considered an “objective” readout of the subjective phenomenon, can be related to what the subject describes, allowing issues such as how anxiety, depression, attention, and physiological changes alter the pain experience to be better understood at a neuroanatomical level. We have performed many experiments that have specifi cally isolated areas of brain and brainstem central to these processes; particularly those involved in the transition from the acute to chronic state. More recently, pharmacological functional magnetic resonance imaging (phMRI) has been developed and applied to the fi eld of pain research within our laboratory. Again, many advances have been made that illustrate the neural correlates of analgesia (pain relief) in the human brain. New thoughts related to how pain and pleasure interact force us to broaden our understanding of relief mechanisms and wellbeing. Combined these data provide evidence that neuroimaging tools will play an increasing role in clinical decision making, analgesic drug development and perhaps even the legal profession in the coming decade (see fi gures 1 and 2).
For more information, go to www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk.
The Nuffi eld Division of Anaesthesia, which I am also Head of, has major research interests in four core aspects of anaesthesia: pain and consciousness, respiration and hypoxia, adult intensive and vasospasm in neurointensive care, Simulation and Human Factors training (OxSTAR).
Further, we have nationally and internationally recognised teaching programmes in a range of anaesthetic related areas (e.g. primary trauma care (China), regional anaesthesia, anaesthesia in developed world).
Finally, but most importantly, I am married to Professor Myles Allen, a climate physicist, and we have three wonderful and irrepressible children: a daughter, Colette, and two sons, John and Jim.
19
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
David Knowles studied Physics and Philosophy at Pembroke (1979-82) before joining the Royal Air Force. During his RAF career he fl ew over 3000 hours on frontline tours in the Tornado GR1/4, and was awarded a DFC for his actions during the opening nights of the invasion of Iraq, 2003. He retired from the RAF in 2007 to become a crofter and the poetry editor of Two Ravens Press. His poetry, based on his experiences in Iraq, published as Meeting the Jet Man, was shortlisted for the Scottish Arts Council First Book of the Year and Highly Commended in the Forward Poetry Prize.
By David Knowles (1979)
“I’ve come to earth”
Photo by Jamie Hunter of Aviacom
20
A little after fi ve every morning my young sheepdog nuzzles me awake,
gently insisting that there is work to do. Through a half-dream I hear
the distant rumble of heavy traffi c. Strange - because there isn’t a trunk
road within a hundred miles of here. If there are two cars an hour
through the crofting village of Breanish it counts as congestion. Fully
awake and I hear it more clearly. The wind is, for once, near calm. I am
hearing the Atlantic swell at the end of its thousand-mile journey from
an origin in some tropical storm, sucking at the geos, assaulting again
the stubborn cliffs of the Aird.
This is the far west coast of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. On
a clear day you can see St Kilda from the kitchen window. We live on a
croft with about six acres of its own rough grazing and the right to graze
over many hundreds of acres of hillside and moorland. Last year we
moved here from the mainland on a ferry that could have been mistaken
for Noah’s Ark. We brought with us a small fl ock of Hebridean sheep
(the little black ones), some Jacob sheep (the piebald, biblical ones),
four Roman geese, some Cayuga ducks, a hive of bees and a bunch of
chickens, various breeds. Plus numerous packets of vegetable seeds and
cuttings. Oh, and a small, fi ercely independent publishing company -
more of which later. This is the croft, literally at the end of the road, where
I have come to earth some 30 years after leaving Pembroke.
I say ‘come to earth’ because that best captures the feel of it. I could
have said ‘where I’ve washed up’ or just ‘where I’ve arrived’ - even
‘where I’ve fi nally found my place’. But ‘coming to earth’ seems most
apt; and only partly because I spent almost all the years between
Pembroke and the Outer Hebrides in the front cockpit of a Tornado
bomber. So it isn’t that I’ve spent all those years just marking time until
I could fi nally go ‘out west’. I was overhead the outskirts of Bagdhad
on the opening night of the 2003 invasion - and a number of nights
thereafter. I was, I promise you, totally focused on the job!
Nevertheless, throughout the to and fro of a career in the RAF there
was always an underlying drift northward and westward - in quiet
moments my eyes always turned towards these outer margins, my
feet were always setting off in this direction. Whenever possible I got
myself posted to RAF Lossiemouth on the coast of the Moray Firth. I
served there with three frontline squadrons - including an unforgettable
tour with the legendary 617 ‘Dambuster’ Squadron. From Lossiemouth it
was a few hours’ drive to the west coast of the Highlands, to Assynt and
Suilven and the magical mountains of Norman MacCaig’s poetry. When
I left the Air Force in 2007 I initially went to live on a croft near Ullapool
- the ‘capital’ of the north-west Highlands. I thought it would be perfect.
My wife, Sharon Blackie, had set up a small publishing company - Two
Ravens Press (www.tworavenspress.com) - to publish the sort of literary
work for which the modern mass-production publishing industry rarely
fi nds room. The aim fi tted with crofting - independent and grounded.
We publish books that matter, books that change the way people think.
Books you won’t fi nd on supermarket shelves - though you will fi nd them
from time to time in Waterstones. We threw ourselves totally into making
a success of a venture that everyone advised us was Quixotic at best. And
in a modest way we succeeded. At the same time we learnt to handle
sheep and to run a croft.
And yet... And yet the compass of our lives still pointed resolutely
westward. There was no ignoring it. We sold up and moved in just
a couple of months, and are now fi ghting to keep a small company
thriving in nationally hard times while driving ourselves to the physical
end-stops to renovate an old crofthouse and get our long-neglected
croft re-fenced and fi t for the beautiful animals we keep, breed and
eat. And to grow enough vegetables that we don’t need the bendy
broccoli that has struggled halfway around the world to reach here. For
us it is heaven. Not a retreat from life, much less a retirement from the
game of life - but life itself. For others it would be hell - the seemingly
endless days of driving rain, the sheep that insist on getting stuck in a
peat-bog, the three-day round trip to a dentist! But like the old crofter
up the road says - it’s easy to get what you want: the tricky thing is to
know what it is you want in the fi rst place.
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
21
More interesting (and better value?) than the Large Hadron ColliderSugars are everywhere - most will know of their roles in diet but their roles in Biology and Medicine appear to be much more widespread.
It is becoming increasingly clear that oligosaccharides
(sugars in small clusters) and alterations in proteins
(modifi cations) are examples of chemically complex
biological markers that can act in important recognition
processes such as microbial infection, cancer metastasis
and cellular adhesion in infl ammation, in addition to many
intracellular communication events. Their remarkable
structural diversity means that they can often mediate highly
specifi c and therefore complex processes. In our group
it’s application of an understanding of such systems on a
fundamental level that leads to the design, synthesis and
modifi cation of potential therapeutic and biotechnologically
applicable systems – for us this is one of the most
remarkable stomping grounds of science.
For many years sugar molecules have long been known
to adopt chemically unusual shapes – an observation
attributed to a global effect known as the ‘anomeric effect’.
It’s an archetypal effect that we teach to all Chemistry and
Biochemistry undergraduates in their 1st year – it’s so much
part of background of science that I chose this as the image
for the fi rst text book I wrote on Carbohydrates.
However, as for many models, the origins of this ‘effect’
have been argued about for over half-a-century. Some
scientists attributed it to the presence and infl uence of
water or other substances, at least in part. So to test this
theory and others, our group teamed up with another
Oxford research group led by Emeritus Professor John
Simons in the same department; together we found a
way of isolating the sugars from all other substances – by
turning them into a gas – and then a method of monitoring
their behaviour once in the gas phase.
We discovered that the molecules maintained their unusual
chemical appearance despite their isolation and we were
fortunate to have this work published in the fi rst issue of
the journal Nature in this year, the UN International Year of
Chemistry. The discovery might have implications for many
things given the prevalence of sugars.
For example, sugars are the most abundant organic
molecules in the world; their use as a feedstock must be
part of our future planning for the manufacture of products
currently reliant on waning supplies of oil - knowing their
shape allows us to understand their chemistry. In biology, if
sugars didn’t change shape, life would be radically different
and some, perhaps many, biological processes just wouldn’t
work anymore.
The implications for medicine could be equally signifi cant
but will need much additional research. Much less is
understood about sugars than other molecules such as
DNA and proteins. Translating sugar biology into medicine
is one of the great, last frontiers of biology but the rewards
could be huge. Personal perspectives need to be taken
with a pinch of salt but, to me, this is certainly to me more
exciting and, I think, potentially useful than, for example,
fi nding the Higg’s boson. In this era when many try to
naïvely drive science from the top into so-called predictable
alleys (‘pathways to impact’), I think it is useful to recognize
that simple fundamental questions may have a totally
unpredictable value when answered.
By Ben DavisProfessor of Chemistry
22
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
23
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
Quite a busy Hilary Term for the College Chapel Choir ended with a hectic but brilliant 5 day tour of Berlin. We checked out, performed and crossed off an eclectic mix of Baroque, High Romantic and modernist churches in this very special city, allowing enough time to explore and discover it at leisure. Not that there was a great deal of room in our tightly fi tted schedule for the tourist trail, other than the monumental sights savoured as we sung in and journeyed from place to place.
On most days the choir had two performing engagements. Our singing began with a short afternoon concert right in the heart of the Prussian centre of Berlin in the “Friedrichstadtkirche”, and ended with a large scale concert in the “Kreuzkirche” in Schmargendorf. We were very lucky to have been able to sing for an evening service at the impressive ”Berliner Dom” (Berlin Cathedral) as well as to have lead a service and given an evening concert in the striking “Gedächtniskirche” in former West-Berlin.
Our programme of English Choral Music, running through the ages from Tallis to Tavener, without missing Byrd and Britten, seemed to go down a real treat among the tourists and native audiences, many of whom remarked upon the rarity of performances in Germany of the sorts of English motets and anthems that Oxford audiences and choirs tend to take for granted.
Berlin culture, nightlife, and extraordinarily good times were not to be left out of our tour, and I’m sure all who were on board felt they made quite the most out of such a short time. Our snap-shot comments capture the spirit and energy of this delightful adventure, do read on.
Our choir tour this year was a musical exploration, in which our performances continued to evolve with each venue we performed in; not only did we present polished performances, but we simultaneously honed the musical skills of blend, balance, and intonation as a group.Amanda Williams visiting student reading English
From the fantastic performing venues to the fi lthy ex-nazi-bunker night clubs, Berlin was an experience never to forget. Singing fantastic repertoire in the Berliner Dom, the city s largest athedral, was absolutely incredible, and luckily attracted a large audience. Cycling through the Brandenburg Gate was defi nitely a highlight to the trip, despite then nearly being killed by oncoming traffi c...Henry Chandler 1st year Music; Organ Scholar
By Sam Baker2nd Year Music, Organ Scholar
Berlin is such an inspiring city, with a history so raw and recent. Singing in places of worship which had been wholly or partially destroyed by allied bombings was quite a moving experience.Elliot Malkin 2nd year Mathematics
Pembroke’s Berlin is a surprisingly dulcet Berlin - and from the quirky, prestigious venues to the stellarly-received music and everything in between. In short: I smile unreservedly when I think on it, and have a new favourite perspective on my old favourite capital.Ashley Werner-de-Sondberg 2nd year History
It was an incandescent experience. The venues were beautiful and had incredible acoustics, the audience was unbelievably supportive, and we were able to explore many different neighborhoods in Berlin – not only the touristy areas, but also the more off-the-beaten-path enclaves only reachable by S-bahn. In short: fun, rewarding, memorable, intoxicating, and exhausting in the best possible way.Yin Lu visiting student reading English
‘An IncandescentExperience’Pembroke Choir Tour to Berlin 2011
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
23
SportingRound Up
COLLEGE LIFE
Boat RacesOut of seven athletes from PCBC that trialled
this year, we had 5 in the boat races, and
all 5 brought home wins for the University.
George Blessley and Alex Woods were in Isis
and pulled out a dominant performance over a
much heavier and stronger Goldie crew to win
by 6 lengths in a fast time.
Brianna Stubbs, Ellie Piggott, both from last
year’s winning crew, and Natalie Redgrave
were in the women’s Blue Boat. They started
as underdogs after having suffered a sobering
21 second defeat only weeks previously at
Henley Fours and Eights Head, but led within
the fi rst 500m of the race to grind out a 1
length win against a resurgent CUWBC, the
only Oxford women’s win of the day.
EightsThis year saw 8 crews racing for PCBC, 4
women’s and 4 men’s. W3 and W4 were
unfortunate to not qualify in a strong
rowing on fi eld, but M4 were one of the
fastest rowing on crews. The luck of the
draw, however, put them amongst some fast
invitational and schools crews and they were
unlucky to drop a few places. It is worthy of
note that they nearly managed a triple
overbump on the fi nal day. M3 unfortunately
went down 4, W2
W1 started in fourth position, and after rowing
over behind an inevitable bump on Wednesday
managed 2 consecutive bumps to put them in
striking distance of the headship on Saturday.
They closed to a large amount of overlap on
Balliol but immediately before contact had a
boat stopping crab. They then rowed out of their
skins to escape the crew behind. There was an
appeal over whether we had managed contact
on Balliol but unfortunately the evidence,
whilst compelling, wasn’t conclusive and W1
ended eights at 2nd. M1 bumped Christchurch
to take second place, breaking their bows in
the process, but couldn’t manage better than
even distance on Oriel, who had managed to
recruit 5 university rowers to their cause. Once
again we’re within striking distance of a double
headship and this speaks volumes about the
strength and breadth of rowing at Pembroke as
compared to other colleges.
W2 were a strong crew and managed overlap
several times in some close racing, but after failing
to bump some strong crews ahead, they fell to an
experienced women’s second crew over the whole
distance, fi nishing down 2 for the week.
In hockey we won mixed cuppers and got to
the fi nal of mens’ cuppers.
In football, we had our fi rst good year in
living memory and achieved two promotions
by winning two divisions with the 1sts and
3rds (the 1sts went unbeaten all season).
The rugby team got promoted and then
relegated and got to the Bowl fi nal.
Kate Sage is a women’s rugby blue and vice-
captain of the Oxford Rugby League Warriors.
The tennis team have beaten rivals
Christchurch 11-1 recently.
The ladies basketball team are in cuppers
semifi nals hoping to defend their crown.
In blues sport, we have a few high achievers.
Ellie Piggott, Natalie Redgrave and Brianna
Stubbs raced on the 1sts blues ladies boat,
Ellie and Brianna for the second year running
(they won).
Jos Charman has been appointed blues
hockey captain for the next year.
And Josh Fields captained the Blues boxing
team to victory away against Cambridge 6-3,
winning his bout.
Boat Race
24
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
COLLEGE LIFE
Professor Alex Kacelnik Elected Fellow of Royal Society
Professor Alex Kacelnik, Professor of
Behavioural Ecology at the Department
of Zoology and EP Abraham Fellow of
Pembroke College. has been elected to the
Fellowship of the Royal Society. He founded
and heads the Behavioural Ecology Research
Group and currently works on decision-
making under risk, brood parasitism, and
comparative cognition. Professor Kacelnik
pioneered the use of microeconomic models
and experimental psychology techniques
to investigate problems in the ecology and
evolution of animal behaviour. His team
discovered the ability of New Caledonian
crows to invent new tools according to need,
hitherto unknown outside apes. Professor
Kacelnik is also a co-founder of OxfordRisk,
a spin-out company of Oxford University. He
won the Research Award of the Comparative
Cognition Society earlier this year.
Alex said “I am absolutely delighted, and, of
course, immensely grateful to Pembroke for
its support over the last 21 years. I can hardly
imagine a more congenial and stimulating
College environment. The danger is that I
enjoy this work so much that I may not want
to stop when the time comes….”
Is there a musical tradition in your family?My brother is also a musician, but the
rest of the family aren’t. Although, my
great grandfather was a professional
violinist, and had an extremely nice
(Nicolo Amati) violin which was passed
down the family. Unfortunately my
uncle didn’t practise, so they sold it.
What were your fi rst musical tastes?I can’t really remember my fi rst
musical tastes; although I was
immediately drawn to the Beatles
before anything classical.
How many hours do you practise?I aim to practise for at least 2 hours a
day during term, and much more during
the holidays when I’m less busy.
What is your favourite piece of music and why?I couldn’t name a favourite piece –
it changes all the time depending on
my mood!
How do you think you might pursue your musical career?The plan is to go to a Conservatoire
after University although with a
career in music there’s a lot of luck
involved, so I’ll hope for the best and
see what happens.
The Leader of the band...
Henry Chandler (2010), fi rst year Organ Scholar, had the great honour of being appointed the Leader of the University Orchestra – in his fi rst year at Pembroke!
25
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
Not just a city breakfastNigel and I met at the Pembroke City breakfast in March and had the pleasurable experience of not only an extremely high profi le and interesting speaker, (Hector Sants CFO of the FSA) but the chance to meet some old friends. Although Nigel and I had met before at a similar Pembroke event some years ago, we had not realised our shared love of music, and the writing of it. It transpired both of us had performed self penned works to reasonably sized audiences whilst undergrads. I remember playing a kazoo to a formal occasion at the Master’s lodge accompanied by a now celebrated Royal School of Music Prof on the Steinway. I remember being in awe of his talents, but I doubt this was reciprocated! My version of a Jilted John song whilst experimenting with different guitar tunings was sandwiched between venerable classics on fl ute and piano played by distinguished music scholars with rare diplomas; my own qualifi cations having been won from the High Wycombe multi-racial centre community committee on the Bob Marley method of playing reggae guitar.
Today Nigel runs his own law practice in the West End but still fi nds time to write and record his music, and splendid it is too, having now enjoyed his CD since meeting at the breakfast.
My trusty old guitar now tours with a variety of artists from Joan Armatrading to Paul Carrack, with my daughter Elisabeth under the name Lisbee Stainton (www. lisbee.com). I’m honoured to say I did contribute a strum (that’s all) to her early works: now I just get to sit in the control room at Abbey Road and imagine if I ever had the talent to sing and play like her. Apparently the strings on my old guitar are permanently tuned to D-A-D-G-A-D, which was a favourite of Crosby Stills Nash and Young, and I wonder how much D-A-D-G-A-Ding they still get to do? These days I’m more like D-A-D-H-A-D.
By Clive Stainton (1978) and Nigel Jackson (1971)
Pembroke students go North WestOur outgoing JCR Access Rep, Rachael
Lindsay, has organised a road trip to a
number of state schools and sixth form
colleges in the North West following the
roll-out of the University’s regionalisation
scheme. This scheme aims to simplify the
college system for schools that might
have little or no experience of the Oxford
application system, providing each region
of the UK with an Oxford college to contact
as a fi rst port of call. Pembroke has been
linked with Hammersmith & Fulham in West
London, and with areas in the North West
comprising Bolton, Bury, Cheshire, Halton,
Rochdale, Warrington and Wigan.
From Cheshire herself, Rachael will be
visiting six schools and sixth form colleges
in this region from 29 June to 1 July, along
with three other Pembroke undergraduates
who between them will cover a range of
subjects that Oxford offers in the Arts,
Sciences and Social Sciences. They plan to
give a short presentation about Oxford and
the application process, followed by smaller
informal workshops in subject groups where
each undergraduate will tackle the typical
kinds of interview questions that applicants
may get asked. They will also showcase
Pembroke with the short video produced by
Nick Gulliver last year.
There has been a very positive response to
the initiative and many of the schools have
asked other local schools to participate,
ensuring that there will be a targeted
audience of Year 11 and Year 12 students
who are seriously considering applying to
a top university. We hope that the road trip
goes well and may become one of the yearly
features of access work at Pembroke in the
future.
By Rebecca Wilson, Admissions and Access Offi cer
26
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
Open for BusinessLen Weekes, Bar Manager
27
T H E P E M B R O K I A N
Contacting The Development Offi ceThe Development Offi ce, Pembroke College, Oxford OX1 1DWE: [email protected] | T: 01865 276501 | F: 01865 276482
Contact details for individual members of the Development Offi ce, and details of the areas each member of staff handles, are available on the Pembroke Alumni website:
www.pembrokecollege.org.
Alternatively, please feel free to call the general offi ce number above, and our Development Assistant will be pleased to connect you with the right person to
handle your enquiry.
The Pembrokian
Editor Juanita Hughes E [email protected]
Design www.fortioridesign.com
EVENTS
Future EventsDates for your diary. Full details for all of these events will be sent to you in due course.
2011AUGUST 12 Fri Gaudy (1965-67)
SEPTEMBER 2 Fri Gaudy (2005-2006)16-18 Oxford Alumni Reunion
Weekend
16 Sat Pembroke Alumni Dinner
NOVEMBER 16 Wed London Reception and Concert, Royal College of Music
2012JANUARY 28 Sat Annual Meeting + Lunch
MARCH 10 Sat Tesdale Lunch
APRIL 13 Fri Gaudy (Up to 1957) 60 years on for some
JUNE 22 Fri Gaudy (2001-2003)
AUGUST 31 Fri Gaudy (1972-1973)
Gaudy invitations with full details will be sent out three months before the event. All future events, including some still in the planning stages, will be posted on the Events section of our website. We also highlight all events in our monthly email newsletter. If you are not receiving these newsletters, please let us have your current email address.
T H E P E M B R O K I A N