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: conferences@pmb.ox.ac.uk 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

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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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“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: development@pmb.ox.ac.uk | 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 Juanita.hughes@pmb.ox.ac.uk

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