St Edward's, 150 Years

St Edward’s: 150 Years

Chapter 5 / Doorways and Gateways

THE KENNETH GRAHAME SOCIETY

IrathersuspectthatfewformerStEdward’spupilshaveenjoyed the unstinting admiration of a President of the United States of America andof aGermanKaiser. Only one has occupied the post of Secretary to the Bank of England, only to be shot at. None but one has received, over the course of a century, the gratitude of millions of childrenworld-wide.We have just cause to celebrate the life and contribution of Kenneth Grahame, OSE. In 2008, as Secretary of the Kenneth Grahame Society (the School’s oldest existing society), I invited SarahThomas to visit us. Sarah is the first ever woman Librarian of the Bodleian Library in Oxford and, as an American, the first ever foreign holder of the post. 2008 was an important year as it marked the centenary of the publication of The Wind In The Willows .

Originallyconceivedasbed-timereadingforKenneth’swayward son, Alastair, themanuscript of thework is held at the Bodleian. Having visited us, Sarah Thomas kindly returned the invitation and we were able to see the manuscript and a letter written by President Theodore Roosevelt to Kenneth Grahame. Alas, the copy of Grahame’s The Golden Age , one of only two books in English that KaiserWilhelm II kept onhis imperial yacht, has not survived into posterity! We keep Grahame’s memory alive at St Edward’s with the termly meetings of the Kenneth Grahame Society, where Sixth Formers discuss themes in his works. Topics have ranged over the years from ‘The absence of significant females’ and ‘Communism versus capitalism’ to ‘The trauma of anthropomorphism’ and ‘KennethGrahame:Edwardianprigortwentieth-centuryvisionary?’ The memory of Grahame is also recalled every time a boy or girl sits down to eat in the School’s Dining Hall. By several accounts, Grahame’s marriage to Elspeth was not a happy one, and made less so, inevitably, by the suicide, aged 19, of their son Alastair. Alastair was buried in the Holywell Cemetery, Oxford, followed in 1932 by Kenneth. Ian Rowley

Debating Dinner, May 2012.

DEBATING Senior Debating

where the motion was ‘This House would remain friends with ex-partners’. Needless to say the diners decided that it was far wiser to stay friends with ex-partners! Jonathan T. Lambe President of the Senior Debating Society Junior Debating Debating in the Lower School is going from strength to strength. The House debating competition (under British Parliamentary rules) was keenly fought and widely supported: Oakthorpe were worthy winners with the proposition, ‘We have a moral duty to intervene militarily in other countries to protect human rights.’ In external competitions, a team from St Edward’s (Ralph Outhwaite, Tom Lloyd and Scarlett Netherton) were highly commended in the English-Speaking Union Public Speaking Competition – we hosted this event in November 2013. Meanwhile, a very keen squad of mostly Fourth Form debaters has worked hard this summer to be ready for inter-school competition next term, and debating is now an established part of the Shell Circus. Margaret Lloyd Head of Junior Debating

After a long spell of inactivity the Senior Debating Society was re-founded in Autumn 2003 and since then it has been a permanent fixture in the calendar for many Sixth Formers who enjoy discussion and debate on a Tuesday evening after prep. Membership of the Society is entirely voluntary and this is reflected in the quality of debate and attendance in any given year. Almost always there is a core of 20 who will invariably attend the bi-weekly debates but depending on the motion the audience may suddenly become 80! This was certainly true of the debate featuring the Warden and Sub-Warden discussing ‘This House believes that celebrities have more influence on public opinion than members of the Establishment’ and the most controversial debate of the year ‘This House believes in gender equality in sport’. The best debaters go forward and debate for the School, in the English-Speaking Union Competition and the schools’ debates organised by the Oxford and Cambridge Unions. The Society in 2012–13 was captained by Sam MacDonald- Smith (H) and George Burt (E). They chaired and ran the society with great efficiency and panache and the debating year ended with a dinner debate in the Teachers’ Dining Room

Left: A letter written to Kenneth Grahame by President Theodore Roosevelt of the United States of America (reproduced by kind permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford). It is interesting to seewhat Roosevelt chose to add by hand after the typing of the letter. Was the presidential tongue firmly in the presidential cheek? Below:Grahame’sgrave(sharedwithhisson,Alastair) in the Holywell Cemetery, Oxford. His epitaph reads: ‘To the beautiful memory of Kenneth Grahame, husbandofElspethandfatherofAlastair,whopassed the river on the 6th of July, 1932, leaving childhood andliteraturethroughhimthemoreblestforalltime.’ Right: Kenneth Grahame in 1910.

Trips: Michael Gove with Politics pupils (above left); German trip to Berlin (above); Classics in Oxford, in the extension to the Ashmolean extension by Rick Mather, 2013 (right).

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