Jeremiah

STARSAILOR's 2005 tribute to the late Jerry Duggan (Th A 92-99) is the soundtrack for this awareness video from the Justice for Jeremiah campaign (3½ minutes):

Liz Taylor's future husband (#2)

NICE to see Michael Wilding (Ma A 22-28) on TV this afternoon in the 1941 spy caper Cottage to Let - albeit playing a bespectacled geek rather than one of the dashing romantic roles for which he was later famed.

Onward and upward

MORE people - 68 of 'em - have been added to my links page during June.

Last Boat to Avalon

LATE-flowering poet Stella Davis (Young, 1's & 3's 59-64) has a new book out from Peterloo.

Personable fellow

A fan video for the actor James D'Arcy (La A 84-91) (3 minutes):

Mystery Goth

HE describes himself as a Gothic artist. Among his influences are Bosch, Fuseli and Beardsley. His pictures aren't entirely safe for work, as the web likes to put it. Invited to state his "concept", he replies "Do me a favour…" And he says he went to CH - seemingly around 1970. But Michael Lucifer Death likes privacy, so I shan't float any theories about who he is. His profile and portfolio are here; twenty larger images are here; and some of his masterful work as an interior designer can be viewed here.

Christianity: a terrible disaster

SO maintains Bill Clinton's old tutor Alan Ryan (La A 51-59, ex-Almoner) in this 1999 debate with the learned Roman Catholic journalist Christopher Howse.

As term ends in Oxford, Ryan is retiring as Warden of New College after a spirited, combative, high-profile thirteen-year reign.

Hit-and-run victims

TWO CH boys are badly hurt in a road accident.

Man with the power

MARK WARDELL (Staff 92-97) lets rip on the organ of Cunault Abbey, France (4 minutes):



Mark's Wikipedia entry says he now has a formidable reputation as one of the foremost British exponents of liturgical improvisation.

Can these bones live?

THIS disused platform at CH station used to serve the Cranleigh line, and features in a BBC slideshow of axed lines that may be brought back into use.

A late start in art

BORN into a family crammed with artists, Tobias Wilkinson (Pe A 69-76) became a soldier, then went into business, but had to yield to his genes in the end and graduated from Central St Martin's College of Art in 2005, since when he's been a professional artist working in a range of different media. See more at TobiasWilkinson.com.

Stabbed by a madman

AT the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre in 1897, melodrama star William Terriss (CH 1854-56) became our most famous murder victim.

Swirling romance

THE BBC Concert Orchestra glides through the Anna Karenina suite by Constant Lambert (Col A 14-22) at the 2007 Proms (10 minutes):

Birthday Honours

CONGRATULATIONS to these Old Blues who appear in today's Birthday Honours List:

CB
Roger Bright (Ba A, Mid A 63-69), Chief Executive of the Crown Estate, for public service. (Profile here if you scroll down.)



OBE
Professor Christopher Rowe (Ma B 54-62), Professor of Greek, Durham University, for services to scholarship.



MBE
Christina Kitchen (Morgan, 3's 38-45, Governor), for services to Oxfam in Epsom.

Change and decay

AN early jeu d'esprit by Ben Calvert-Lee (La B, Th A, Gr W 94-01).

First new album in a decade

COLIN SOMERVILLE (La A 68-75) weighs up The Liberty of Norton Folgate by Madness.

From footlights to pulpit

ACTOR-cum-priest Tenniel Evans (Th A 37-44) dies at 83.

Infectious good humour

Just a reminder of what CH is really about (4½ minutes):

Fifties-style motoring

TONIGHT brings the final episode of Britain's Best Drives with Richard Wilson on BBC2, but you can still enjoy the book of the series, co-written by Nigel Richardson (La A 69-76).

Guru of Cryptography

THAT'S what they call Professor Fred Piper (Th B, Mid B 51-58), and now he's in the Hall of Fame.

Remembered always

ON this day in 1989, my formative friend Stuart Pryle (Col A 70-76) took his own life. May he know peace.

Next week at the Wigmore Hall

FOUNDED in 2007 by composer Tim Benjamin (Pe A, Pe B, Mid B 87-92), the Radius ensemble will be premiering his new work A Dream Of England - a dramatic setting of Charles Darwin's journals and letters from the Beagle voyage - on the evening of Thursday 18 June.

65 years ago today

…KEITH DOUGLAS (La A, Mid B 31-38), the finest Old Blue poet of the twentieth century¹, died in action in Normandy. He was 24.

And all my endeavours are unlucky explorers
come back, abandoning the expedition;
the specimens, the lilies of ambition
still spring in their climate, still unpicked:
but time, time is all I lacked
to find them, as the great collectors before me.

This photo - taken during his service in the North African desert, recorded in his classic memoir Alamein to Zem Zem - is said to be the best ever taken of him, portraying his face and expression exactly.

---

¹Personal opinion; no disrespect implied to his friend and mentor Edmund Blunden (Col A 1909-15, Senior Grecian) or any of the other candidates.

Unconditional love

AMONG the most remarkable Old Blues of the last century was Bede Griffiths (Pe B, Ba B 19-25), a Benedictine monk who spent many years living as a holy man in India. Here he describes an intense mystical experience after a stroke he suffered in 1990 (3½ minutes):

National Union of Voters

STEPHAN SHAKESPEARE (Kukowski, Pe B 68-75) launches a new political movement:

Big business was once all-powerful and workers had few rights. Labour unions were established to change that, helping workers to achieve better pay and conditions and a more balanced distribution of social power. Today, power is again unevenly distributed. It has shifted towards the centralised state. In the coming year the public sector will spend about half of the nation's income. Government has acquired enormous surveillance powers. More and more laws are passed, with big implications for the way we all live. But while the state has grown, our democratic culture has almost shrivelled up... It's time for a new movement that will give voters more powers. That new movement is called the National Union of Voters and it is launching online today. Every British voter can join and every member will have an equal say in deciding the union's reform manifesto.

UnionOfVoters.com

Our man on Woman's Hour

ALL this week on Radio 4's Woman's Hour, the "Writing the Century" feature is dramatising the unpublished diaries of Sir Linton Andrews (Wd 6, Pe B 1898-1902), veteran editor of the Yorkshire Post and author of the Great War memoir Haunting Years. The Yorkshire Post itself has the story.

Memorial service details

THE memorial service for Esther Green will take place on Saturday 27th June at 2.00pm in the CH Chapel. ''No mourning attire'' is requested. Refreshments will be offered afterwards in the Court Room. If you plan to attend, please notify Esther's daughter Pauline Mahy by email or phone: 01481 257885.

Not led by donkeys

WITH Gerald Davies (Horsham Staff 71-74) managing the British Lions' tour to South Africa, it's highly appropriate that a number of Old Blues and OBRFC members have chosen to go and support them.

Former CHA chairman Steve Webb (Col A 60-69, Governor) is organising one or two OB gatherings out there - including, with any luck, a get-together with the South African Old Blues - so if you too are making the trip could you please contact him?

Interchangeable

A MEMORABLE Spanish car advert starring the
Gregory triplets, Eliot, Julian and Ryan, all CH 95-02 (30 seconds):

Another Old Blue artist

TEN paintings by Anna McCallion (Tracey, 5's & 6's 53-62).

World overrun by Innes-Hopkinses

THIS is of course mere surmise and irresponsible speculation, but here at Houseyblog we suspect the following people to be closely related to each other:

• Linden Innes-Hopkins (Fletcher, 5's 61-70), director of music at St Andrew's Church, Enfield, where she'll be giving a lunchtime organ recital at 12.45 on the Wednesday after next

• Frances Innes-Hopkins (Old Blue, left 2006), who'll be giving a lunchtime violin recital at the same church at 12.45 on Wednesday 15 July, accompanied on the piano by Linden Innes-Hopkins

•Claire Innes-Hopkins (LHB, Gr E 02-04), formerly an organ scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge, and now organ scholar of Peterborough Cathedral, who has a noteworthy CD due out this month.

Best of luck to them all.

What's that buzzing noise?

Steven Connor (Mid B 66-71) proffers a cultural history of the fly.