interview
Island Life - June/July 2010
and each year now, an event for youth with
good brain”. They ate, drank and each
the Association of Sail Training Associations,
table quoted their favourite Shakespearan
which sees 30 yachts and 400 youth sailing
lines. With Ryde’s Adrian Ould, Anthony
at Cowes. "Participation by Island youth is
is a champion of the possibility that the
growing, which is a joy to see.”
great man visited the Island, as the closest
He is still basking in the recent success of
friend (or could it be more?) of the Earl of
this year’s “Ventnor Piano Fund” concerts.
Southampton, made Governor of the Isle of
“We filled the church twice in one day – it
Wight in 1603.
has never been so full – and raised another
Anthony has great fun with the alchemy
£1,500 for the fund.” He is determined that
of socially mixing people. “I enjoy putting
the town shall have a decent piano on which
people together who are second removed
the young could learn and which would be
from their usual lives.”
worthy to accompany Richard Studt and his
Stradivarius, and others he invites to play.
Shakespeare’s birthday saw a gathering
And does he ever get it wrong, put people
together who don’t get on? “Oh absolutely,”
he says with a wicked twinkle.”But if they
of Bardic fans in the Rex restaurant –
can’t get on, that’s their own fault, not
run by Abdel Kaissam, another man on
mine!”
whom Anthony heaps the accolade of “a
PHOTO: Anthony
had the crew of
Morning Cloud
III sign this metre
high Beken
photo of the
team and yacht
at full chat, Ted
signed top left,
Anthony bottom
left. It hung at
the Holmwood
Hotel, Cowes but
then disappeared
for thirty years,
turning up at
Island Auctions
for sale - where
Anthony bought
it.
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