N o .123
Years later when I started my agri-
leisure business at Raeshaw, mainly
marketing to the USA and Europe, we
had a ‘hymnal’ based on many Scots
and Irish ballads, including of course
‘Amazing Grace’. Music is still very much
part of my life, be it classical, jazz or
ballads.
T he T rusty S ervant
A recent tour of our great cathedrals
reminded me of the importance of choir
schools and the singing tradition of the
Anglican service: back to Havergal. A
visit to Tate Britain to see Paul Nash’s
exhibition reminded me of the missing
link I had at Win Coll with art, but
have since rectified this and am a keen
amateur artist as well as collector of
British 20 th -century paintings, drawings
and sculpture.
A Sloan Fellowship at the London
Business School, with my main subject of
Organisation Behaviour, has a strong link
with the desire to learn and work hard
and to remain eternally curious about
the human race, which goes straight
back to Win Coll - and to hell with the 4
GCEs!
The Purgative Powers of Poetry:
How an 18th-century Wykehamist fought the pangs of love
Lucia Quinault (Co Ro, 01-) explains:
In the Fellows’ Library there is a
handsome octavo notebook of 400
pages, bound in reverse calf, and the
property of a ‘Guernsey divine’ called
Thomas Le Mesurier, who lived from
1756 – 1822. He became a distinguished
public figure, who published 19 sermons
and tracts, mainly in defence of the
Anglican Church against the rising
threat of Roman Catholicism. But he
also wrote poetry and, in 1775, just after
leaving Winchester, he bought this book
in which to collect it, thus creating a
unique poetic autobiography.
Poetry was a habit he caught at
Winchester, which had a long tradition
of encouraging its pupils to read and
write English as well as classical verse,
and to collect it, both informally, in
school notebooks known as ‘gathering
books’, and latterly in the more elaborate
keepsake volumes known as ‘Carmina
Wiccamica’, one of which can be seen
in the current exhibition in the School’s
Treasury, ‘Educating Boys and Girls in
Jane Austen’s England, 1775-1817.’
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