150 Years - Flipping Book v1

St Edward’s:

150 Years

DEBATING

Senior 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

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

Debating Dinner, May 2012.

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

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

THE KENNETH GRAHAME SOCIETY

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).

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.

Chapter 5 / Doorways and Gateways