No. 141 The Trusty Servant for Caliban, and sold at Eton Match that year. Bollard was edited by AAS and designed by Richard Williamson( I, 62- 66) who also made the line drawings.
In it, alongside poems by Andrew Sclater and Tim Hodgkinson( see above), were Betjeman’ s‘ The Wykehamist’, Stevie Smith’ s‘ Dear Child of God’ and, uniquely, the following poem by R. S. Thomas which I can find nowhere in his published work:
was once told by a Marxist historian at a feast in Jesus College, Cambridge, there really is something different about Winchester.
What struck me most forcefully was the determination to live a different sort of life, not the one scripted by parents and grandparents. I was talking to Claude Willan( C, 97-02), now a lecturer in 18 th-century literature at Durham, about Wykehamists and creativity, and
It is certainly true that Andrew Sclater has lived up to his own creed. He calls his route to his first poetry pamphlet a‘ 45-year apprenticeship’: from selling newspapers in Paris with a French girlfriend in’ 68, through LAMDA, acting, gardening in Hyde Park, from thence through day-release at the Working Men’ s College to Botany A level and academic plant research, garden history and restoration( he was a co-founder of the National Botanic
Decline and Fall
It is not that In intelligence they gain, A comfortable compensation For the lack of Muscle power. Not only Must they endure the dark At the table ' s bottom, be laid Flat on their backs in rings, Come in last when the cheers Have died. They must see art, Science, too, in recession From their borders, while nations, Who have not yet begun To cut their teeth, show them The muse and calculus in Serene wedlock.
All they master
Now is amiable Decency, which, if not overtaxed, Can adhere still More or less to its own standards.
R S Thomas
Like the Brian Patten connection with which I started, it says something extraordinary about the persuasive powers of Sclater – even perhaps about the power of poetry – that Thomas, then 53, living in a Welsh-speaking community and implacably opposed to England and its institutions, was willing to associate himself, in print, with an English public school. Perhaps, as I wondering how many of them follow their youthful dreams to fulfilment. Claude was wondering rather wistfully what had happened to the men in his‘ brilliant’ year; Ben Cunningham( K, 07-12, CoRo, 18-), when asked the same question, came up with a string of adventurous Wykehamists who have made a life – and a living – out of their talents and enthusiasms.
Garden of Wales) and now, at last, published poet( see OW publications).
What do you think? Is the spirit of creativity alive and well and living in Winchester? I certainly hope so.
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