NO.119
now live I wear a tie about once a
year, sadly it does not get much of an
airing…
Gandhi Memorial
AR Longley (C, 39 – 43) has
been doing the legal work
relating to the erection of a
bronze statue of Mahatma
Gandhi, cast by Philip Jackson,
in Parliament Square – the only
distinguished person so honoured
not to have held high political
office. The statue was unveiled by
the Indian Finance Minister, Arun
Jaitley, on 14th March, 2015 in the
presence of Gandhi’s
grandson Gopalkrishna
Gandhi, Bollywood superstar
Amitabh Bachchan, the Prime Minister
David Cameron, and other dignitaries.
In a speech describing the unveiling as
the coming together of the oldest and the
largest democracies, Arun Jaitley also
noted the irony of the statue being
located near that of Sir Winston
Churchill, who was fiercely opposed to
Indian independence and once likened
Gandhi to a ‘half naked fakir’.
Poseidon Expeditions
AML Smith (F, 97-02) has just joined this
polar expedition cruise company as
official Artist/Photographer on trips to
the Arctic and Antarctic. He will be
joining the ship ‘Sea Spirit’ for several
trips in the Arctic during the
summer/autumn 2015, and then heading
to the Antarctic from Nov-March
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
2015/16. Anthony will be sculpting on
board, presenting talks on sculpture and
photography, and leading
photography workshops on shore he is already looking forward to
studying the fascinating birds and
mammals of the polar regions and
the new sculptures that will result
from these exciting trips!
Silver Stand-Up Awards
Edmund Tirbutt (K, 70-75) has
won the 2015 Silver Stand Up
Awards - the national competition to
find the country’s best comedian aged
over 55, held at Dave’s Leicester
Comedy Festival. Edmund, who used
to perform stand-up comedy in the
late 1990s, took it up again last
summer after seeing many
comedians he used to perform alongside
go on to become household names.
Help for Heroes
In June ASC TrousdelI (A, 02-07) will be
riding 350 miles across northern France to
raise £2,500 for Help for Heroes, helping
rehabilitate physically and mentally
wounded service personnel - any
donations would be gratefully received!
Further details at
https://www.justgiving.com/Arthur-Trousdell
Win Coll through Hollywood’s filter
As previewed in TS118, Queen of the
Desert, starring Nicole Kidman in a film
chronicling Gertrude Bell’s life as a
traveller, writer, archaeologist, explorer,
cartographer, and political attaché for the
British Empire, was released at the
Berlinale 2015 Film Festival to less than
universal acclaim: ‘a series of voguish
poster-girl poses’… ‘An uninspiring, and
wholly underwhelming piece of
23
cinema’… ‘Downton in the sands’... Even
co-star Damian Lewis, playing her admirer
Charles Doughty-Wylie VC, CB, CMG
(Coll, 1882-87), failed to redeem the
situation!
By contrast, in The Imitation Game, which
received excellent reviews, the second
most important person at Bletchley after
Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch)
was Hugh Alexander (Matthew Goode).
Like many of the codebreakers, CHO’D
Alexander CMG, CBE (Staff, 32-38) had
taken a first in mathematics from
Cambridge and found himself in Hut 6 in
1940 thanks to his brilliance at chess.
Twice British chess champion, an
International Master and subsequently
Chess Editor of The Evening News, Sunday
Times and Spectator, in 1941 he was
transferred to Hut 8 and became Turing’s
deputy. The Win Coll Register simply
records ‘Foreign Office since 1940’.
FILM SOC (1963)
Sunday afternoon
Grey Autumn day
Mist on the Itchen
What to do?
Film Soc.? Yes! New Hall
Black-and-white feature
Director Satyajit Ray
Scene – a spacious home in India
Clothes white
Sun relentless
Mood timeless
I summon the film
Fifty years on
As presented by
Mr Surry, don
Warren Hibbert (B, 60 – 65)