All in a day's work

WHAT does Max Normal (Gordon Miles, Mid B 76-83) do, exactly? (2 minutes - you may need to turn up the volume):

Formative years

SINGER, ex-model and marketing communications consultant and trainer Lynda Thain (Russell-Whitaker, 3's 71-76) has a meatier web page than most, and CH finds its place:

My really formative singing was at school… We were fortunate to have a superb choir 'master' (Ms Taverner [Staff 63-85]). Whilst at school I had the pleasure of singing in some of London's most glorious churches, including All Hallows By the Tower and The Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Holborn Viaduct and was invited to sing with The Bach Choir at The Royal Festival Hall.

Her brothers, mentioned as accomplished guitarists, are both Old Blues too: Russell (Mid B 69-76) and Clive (Mid B 74-79). (A more succinct profile here.)

Heirs of Milton

THE HILL is a new magazine celebrating every aspect of Cambridge creativity and offering "some of the best comment, criticism and art in Cambridge." Not bad for a quid! One of its two editors is Churchill College undergraduate Pascal Porcheron (Md B, Gr W 99-06).

Putting on weight

IN the past month, 73 more people have been added to my links page.

Camp romp

NOT content with playing corrupt cop "Supermac" in the drama series Ashes to Ashes (now running on BBC1), Roger Allam (Pe B, Th A 1964-72) has just taken over the role of drag artist Zaza in the hit West End musical La Cage Aux Folles. Here's a six-minute audio interview with him and co-star Phillip Quast (Roger's the one without an Australian accent):

Baleful revenant

IT'S thirty years since Iran's Islamic revolution brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power. In Khomeini's Ghost (Macmillan, £25), Con Coughlin (Pe B 66-73) examines his career and legacy. The Observer thought it "a very readable and entertaining introduction to a nation badly misunderstood in the west."

He followed his dream

AT the age of fifty David R Butt (La B 38-45) left the financial world and became a professional artist, eventually making his name in Scandinavia.

This memorial gallery (he died last year) shows more than 160 of his paintings.

(Understandably, the text is in Norwegian.)

In at the start

THIS blog was begun two days ago by the business editor of The Mail on Sunday, Dan Atkinson (La A 72-79), with the aim of hunting down "the fallacies, the bogus arguments and the vested interests in economic policy."

Back on home ground

THE Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education, Baroness Deech (Ruth Fraenkel, 7's 53-61), gives a spirited and amusing address at St Anne's College, Oxford, where she used to teach law and was latterly Principal (5 minutes):

A few Frank words

THIS unembarrassed young person is the electropop musician Vincent Frank, better known as Frankmusik (and formerly as Mr Mouth).

His Wikipedia entry gives his date of birth as 9 October 1985 and says he attended CH.

Now, there is an Old Blue born on that day whose first name is Vincent: he was in Maine A and Grecians East from 1997 to 2004. His surname (which I promise not to mention here without his permission) wasn't Frank, but this blog will work on the assumption that they're one and the same.


So…

• Recently Frankmusik did a twelve-day Scotland-to-London "Live and Lost" tour, relying solely on supporters of his MySpace page (where you can hear several of his tracks).

• He featured on the long-list of the BBC's "Sound of 2009" poll.

• His first album is appearing in July.

• His website is here.

• This is an interview from the end of last year.

Clearly a man to watch.

---

And yes, the title is a gratuitous retro allusion. From 1968 to 1981 the editorial in the Old Blues' section of The Blue was always called "A Few Frank Words", in reference to its fearsome old pirate of an editor, Frank Smith (Ma A 19-26).

Make money in a recession

FOLLOW the example of agriculturalist Rex Paterson (Ba B 12-18), advises the Irish Independent.

(Learn more at RexPaterson.com.)

"Humbling to read"

ANNE MORGELLYN, a current CH parent who's fighting cancer - and numpties in the NHS as well - is introduced by D M Thomas, pipped at the post by Salman Rushdie for the Booker Prize in 1981.

Morning Song

…composed and performed two years ago by Ed Mayhew (Ma A, Gr E 02-06) (2 minutes):



Visit Ed's MySpace page

Cricket, scourge of wildlife

THIS sparrow, now in the MCC Museum, was killed at Lord's cricket ground on 3 July 1936 by a ball bowled by Jahangir Khan (Cambridge University) to Tom Pearce (Ma A 17-22, Governor) of the MCC.

(To enlarge the picture, click on it.)

All-seeing eye

Chris Steele-Perkins (Mid B 56-65) is, as far as I know, the only Old Blue to become a Magnum photographer, and he now has a website worthy of his gifts.

He's also one of the eight contributors to Magnum's Disposable People exhibition on contemporary slavery, which opens in Carlisle this month and will be in Nottingham and Aberystwyth later in the year.

Death of Richard Kroll

VERY sad to learn last night that the English literature scholar Richard Kroll (La B 66-71), one of the most amiable and quietly impressive of the older boys I remember from CH, died in February at the age of 56.

His Independent obituary gives a thorough guide to his achievements; a more personal obit by one of his students is here.

Rousing stuff

THE aria "Con Tromba Guerriera" sung by countertenor Simon Baker (La A 83-90) in the first English performance (and first ever recording?) of Handel's restored opera Silla (5 minutes):

News flash

TODAY'S Times and Telegraph obituaries of the poet James Kirkup both reproduce in colour a fine 1951 portrait of him by Maurice de Sausmarez (Ma A 26-32, Horsham Staff c. 1938). (Bigger version here.)

Elder statesman of breaks

A 2007 interview with renowned DJ Tayo Popoola (Ma A 86-93).

Outlandish land

David McKie (Col A 45-53) probes hundreds of eccentric nooks and crannies.

Bloodless Coup

THIS blues supergroup boasts an ex-Iron Maiden guitarist/vocalist, an ex-Wilson Pickett saxophonist, a harmonica player/vocalist who worked with The Who - and Jevon Ellis (Pe A 69-75) on keyboards.

Raindrops on roses

THAT ubiquitous actor Jason Flemyng (Mid A 78-83) - I last saw him as Brad Pitt's father in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - lists five of his favourite things (30 seconds):

From Billy Bragg to cheese fondue via communist tableware

CONGRATULATIONS to Daisy Horwell (Ba A 90-97) on her engagement to Tom Swayne - and is she the first Old Blue to have her courtship written-up in detail in The Times?

Part of something very special

JOHN FRANKLIN (Headmaster 2007- ) considers the CH garb:

A new pupil dressed for the first time in their "Housey" uniform becomes a member of a world-wide community and an heir to four-and-half centuries of tradition. The Christ's Hospital uniform is a symbol of continuity and equality. However deprived a background or disadvantaged a family, wearing the uniform unites the pupils. Provided free to all our pupils, its continuance has been put to the vote which only underlined how proud they are to wear it as a distinctive feature and tradition of Christ's Hospital.

Wigs and fiddles

LAST night on BBC2 Charles Hazlewood (La B, Ma A 78-85) launched his latest TV series The Birth of British Music with a look at the life and works of Purcell. Among those taking part was the organ builder Dominic Gwynn (Pe A 64-71). Upcoming episodes will focus on Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn.

Among his other achievements Charles has won three Sony awards for hosting The Charles Hazlewood Show on Radio 2.

Next Saturday he and his orchestra Army of Generals will begin their residency at Bristol's Colston Hall by performing at the opening of its new foyer spaces. The hall takes its name from Edward Colston, philanthropist and slave trader, a private pupil at CH c. 1650 and later a Governor and benefactor.

Come on you reds

JESSICA ANTWI-BOASIAKO (Col A 90-97) talks about her involvement in the Urbania artists' collective (7 minutes; you may need to turn up the volume):

Crippling costs

HE was perhaps the first Old Blue to be a full-time High Court judge. Last year he became our first Appeal Court judge. Then he was asked to investigate the cost of the civil justice system.

Now Lord Justice Jackson (Sir Rupert Jackson, Md B 58-66, Governor) is in the news for reporting that the price of going to law in England and Wales is far too high.

Woman of parts

ACTRESS, astrologer, singer-songwriter, psychic, screenwriter, children's author, djembe drummer, Shamanic healer, and creator of a "downright disgusting" CD… Yes, as former Christ's Hospital teachers go, Jaki Miles-Windmill (Staff 00-05) is definitely one of the more colourful.

Unimpressed

THE essayist Charles Lamb (CH 1782-89), above, is traditionally seen as the most lovable of Old Blues - but in 1831 Thomas Carlyle, right, took a different view:

Charles Lamb I sincerely believe to be in some considerable degree insane. A more pitiful, ricketty, gasping, staggering, stammering Tomfool I do not know. He is witty by denying truisms and abjuring good manners. His speech wriggles hither and thither with an incessant painful fluctuation, not an opinion in it, or a fact, or a phrase that you can thank him for - more like a convulsion fit than a natural systole and diastole. Besides, he is now a confirmed, shameless drunkard; asks vehemently for gin and water in strangers' houses, tipples till he is utterly mad, and is only not thrown out of doors because he is too much despised for taking such trouble with him. Poor Lamb! Poor England, when such a despicable abortion is named genius!

In fairness, Carlyle's is the only unreservedly hostile picture of Lamb that has come down to us.

RIP Mrs Green

SORRY to say that Mrs Esther Green, a matron at CH Horsham from 1973 to 1987 (and at times thereafter), and an assistant in the Tuck Shop until last year, died on Tuesday.

Wendy Killner of the CH Association writes:

Esther was well known to many of you… She was, along with others, a regular visitor to the old CH Club Room on Wednesday mornings, meeting up for coffee and a chat. We will really miss her.

The funeral will be on Wednesday 13th May at 2.00pm at St Matthew's Church, Guernsey. Family flowers only, but donations to "St Matthew's Church" can be sent to The Revd Claes Selim, The Vicarage, St Matthew's Church, Rue de la Lande, Catel, Guernsey.

A memorial service will be held at CH later in the year.

The Unofficial Forum responds to her death

Time capsule

BEATING the Retreat at Horsham in 1976 - two minutes of silent (but most evocative) film:

Not yet extinct

I'M uncertain whether the Leeds-and-London-based nine-piece band deFunkt - involving James Mitra (Pe A, Gr W 98-05), Emma Topolski (Ba B, Gr W 03-05), Katie Clenshaw (Col B, Gr W 98-05), Martin Batchelar (Th B, Gr W 03-05) and Sam Edgington (Md A, Gr W 03-05) - remains a going concern; but they still sound good on their MySpace page.

Israel and Palestine

MARTIN LINTON MP (Th A 54-62) holds forth at a G20 protest rally in Trafalgar Square last month (3½ minutes):

His spirit lives on

A BEAUTIFUL article by Nicola Gauntlett, mother of Rob Gauntlett (Ma B, Gr E 98-05), the mountaineer and adventurer who died on Mont Blanc in January with his climbing companion James Atkinson (Ma B, Gr E 99-06).

Land, sea or sky?

ON Saturdays and Sundays throughout this month the painter Dion Salvador Lloyd (Mid A 79-84) is holding his ninth Open House exhibition of new paintings at his home in Hove (see page 5 of this PDF document for details). He also has a solo show coming up at the Northcote Gallery, London.

His website's well worth a visit, and this more personal profile is likeable and touching.

Butterfly Oscar

BELATED congratulations to National Trust nature conservation adviser Matthew Oates (Th B 63-72) on receiving the Marsh Lepidoptera Award for Lifetime Achievement from the charity Butterfly Conservation in November 2007.

There's more about his life and work in this 2006 interview:

At the age of ten I got sent to school in butterfly-rich West Sussex. There was an elderly housemaster - a gentle giant - who had been teaching maths without humour for several centuries to the uninterested. But, on Tuesday afternoons in the summer, he ran a butterfly and moth collecting group. He never knew my name but nonetheless he fired me up - he was the catalyst, and I owe him everything.

Can anyone put a name to him?

Cyclist/vocalist

JAZZMAN Jonny Boston (La A 82-89) sings and plays his own composition, "What's Waiting?" (4 minutes, plus outtakes):

"The Church which has been our home"

INTERESTING to see the signatures of the Rev Michael Collis (Ba A 46-52), the Rev Ian Colson (Chaplain 09- ), Canon Charles Davidson (Col A 39-47), the Rev Peter Homewood (La B 70-76), the Rev Stuart Leamy (Ma B, Th B 57-65) and Canon Hugh Williams (Md B 54-62) on this open letter to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York from clergy who doubt the sacramental ministry of the women who have been ordained to the Anglican priesthood.

They ask for "a structural solution" to the problems that will arise when the church ordains women as bishops, and say that in the absence of such a structure they might not be able, in conscience, to continue ministering in the C of E.

Another signatory is the Rt Rev Lindsay Urwin, until recently Bishop of Horsham.

Amused, but never mocking

A FELLOW photographer profiles Tony Ray-Jones (Col B c. 50-59) who won lasting renown with such pictures as this before dying of leukaemia in 1972. (Alas, the profile says he too "hated" CH.)

We rose as one

JOHN GLOSTER-SMITH (Horsham Staff 74-75) reflects on the Susan Boyle phenomenon.

"Riches beyond compare"

A GLOWING tribute to hospital chaplain Judith Thompson (Lillie, 1's & 7's 53-63).

Here today

HOLLY WALSH (LHB 92-99) hates temping (3 minutes):



Visit Holly's YouTube channel

Seven Deadly Glasses

THE Seven Deadly Sins inspire a set of wine glasses designed by Kacper Hamilton (Ma A, Gr E 98-05).

The curse of inherited wealth

NICK FOULKES (Th B 76-83) is starting to believe in it:

The best man at my wedding…enjoyed enough inherited money to enable him to give up working for a management consultancy firm when it became rather dull… After a few years he was found dead following a heroin overdose. The excitement of youth looks rather different when viewed from the pews in the chapel of a suburban cemetery.

Roller coaster ride

WATCH out for CH references in this novel by Zoë Higginson (Brickel, Hertford & Col A 83-90). (It's also available via Amazon and other online book stores.)

Lonely goatherds

THE three Extreme Cellists - the middle one's Jeremy Dawson (La B, La A 87-94) - perform "Climb Every Mountain" on the summit of Ben Nevis in July 2008 (2½ minutes):

At Number 10

CHRIS BURNS (Md B 72-79, Governor) meets the Prime Minister at a Downing Street reception to launch the Rugby Football Union's Injured Players Foundation.

Chris, who broke his neck playing for the CH 1st XV against the Old Blues in 1978, is a long-serving senior official of the RFU.

Gordon Brown lost the sight in one eye as a result of a rugby injury in his youth.

Pooh Two

DUE for publication in October, Return to the Hundred Acre Wood is the first authorised sequel to A A Milne's Winnie-The-Pooh books.

Its fearless illustrator - stepping into the shoes of E H Shepard - is Mark Burgess (Md B 68-75).