The Chronicle, Autumn 2018

29 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

Nick Coram-Wright What do you do at Teddies and how long have you been here?

Sometimes people surprise themselves; they are more resilient than they think - it’s just persuading them to take that step and be brave enough. How many times have you been flying or parachuting? I’ve parachuted

I have previously been Head of German and was HM of Cowell’s from 2004 until 2015. For the last three years, I’ve been Assistant Head Co-curricular with Judy Young and my responsibilities include organising the Shell and Fourth Form activity programme, the Shell trip to Brecon, Saturday night events for boarders and commanding the CCF. What’s the best activity you’ve taken part in? I remember a school trip to Russia, pre- 1989, and we were convinced we were being followed everywhere by the KGB! We had some real adventures. I also have great memories of an exchange with a school near Zermatt in Switzerland, a beautiful part of the world. We went snow-shoeing up to a wooden chalet in the mountains where a farmer had made us lunch with homemade ham, cheese and juice, and then we snow-shoed down – that was wonderful. Last year’s four-week trip to Borneo was probably the toughest trip that any of us had ever done. It featured a five day trek through the jungle with rain, leeches and a couple of snakes! It was definitely a challenge as we were wet, cold and miles away from anywhere at times, yet, as one pupil said, tackling IB and A levels seemed quite straightforward in comparison!

three times with the School, all incredible experiences. It’s

absolutely terrifying until that second you throw yourself out of the plane and freefall for 45 seconds. The adrenaline rush is amazing. It’s not

Nick Coram-Wright and Octavia Hamilton

everyone’s cup of tea but I would encourage everybody to do it at least once. If you’re 16 you can do it with the CCF, but the bookings fill up quickly – it’s so popular. I took 12 of the Fourth Form flying down to Braxton recently to do aerobatics and they loved it. It’s that sense of doing something you’ve never done before. One thing to change in the CCF? Inspire more girls to stay on, and encourage more people to join in the activities across the School.

What would be your top advice for pupils? Be brave enough, it may work out, it may not, but you’re never going to regret trying. What is the naughtiest thing you did at school? That I can confess to… in our leaver’s chapel service we let off a load of helium-filled balloons in a chapel 10 times the size of ours. We were banned from ever returning to the school… I wouldn’t recommend it but it was one of those things you remember!

Kenneth Grahame Society By Sixth Former Octavia Hamilton Is it possible to solve every single philosophical question in the world? “No” might be the immediate answer, yet Ludwig Wittgenstein, a tortured and misunderstood man who became one of the most renowned philosophers of the 20th century, spent his life endeavouring to do just this. For the first of this year’s Kenneth Grahame Society events, the Warden explored Wittgenstein’s life and work, focusing primarily on his early work and his desire to overcome the limitations that language can impose on philosophy. Born into one of the richest families in Austria, Wittgenstein was a key figure in this radical European trend. Yet, after three of his brothers committed suicide, driven by their over-dominating and abusive father, Wittgenstein, pursued by severe depression and suicidal thoughts, retreated to an unpretentious hut in Norway to explore the questions of logic and philosophy alone.

Despite this unstable upbringing and having turned away from philosophy several times, Wittgenstein triggered the radical trend of attempting to escape the “prison-house” of language in expressing philosophical ideas. As Bertrand Russell, the controversial writer and campaigner, and Wittgenstein’s early mentor, wrote in 1924: “Language misleads us both by its vocabulary and by its syntax. We must be on our guard in both respects if our logic is not to lead to a false metaphysic.” Thus Wittgenstein’s unparalleled logic, recorded in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus , created the picture theory of meaning and proposed a radical solution to the problems of philosophy. Wittgenstein, misunderstood, mystical, depressed, yet hugely talented in both music and philosophy, was key in using logic to show the limitations of language – what can be said and what cannot be said – and thus, in philosophical terms, what ultimately can be asked.