No.129
Michlā Update
The refurbishment is now very nearly
complete, although COVID-19 has
hampered efforts to deal with some
final snags.
Pupil Achievements: Academic
From the now-customary clutch
of gold-medal winners in various
olympiads, the following pupils have
qualified for the national selection
round (top 20 or so): Sean Jaffe
(Coll, 16-) in Maths; William Leung
(Coll, 16-) and Ben Fawcett (Coll,
15-) in Biology; Max Wong (F, 15-) in
Physics; and Peter Brealey (Coll, 15-)
in Linguistics. The preliminary round
in Chemistry has not yet taken place,
but Rtvik Patel (Coll, 16-) will be
hopeful, having obtained the top UK
mark out of 9187 entrants in round
one. Geographer Sam Barwood (C,
15-) will be one of four members of
the UK International iGEO team.
In the previous edition we reported
the school’s best-ever performance
in the Senior Team Maths Challenge
(9 th ). It has been immediately
surpassed by Sean Jaffe, Reuel
Armstrong (H, 15-), Max Wong and
Rtvik Patel, who came 3 rd out of 1,200
schools this year.
The Trusty Servant
Doubles and Harry Coombs (B, 17-)
has been selected for the U16 London
Irish rugby team.
Book review
Nick Townson
(History, since 2016)
writes: A new
biography of Frank
Ramsey (Coll,
1915-20) has been
written by Cheryl
Misak, describing
the experience and
achievements of this extraordinary
Collegeman, who died in 1930 at
just 26. She takes a dim view of
Ramsey’s time at Winchester, turning
the spotlight on boarding-school
brutality and conservatism – it ‘nearly
unmade’ him – and provides a vivid
account of the austerity of College
life during the Great War. Ramsey’s
keen intelligence and independence
of mind shine through: he thought
LM Milne-Thompson (Co Ro, 1915-
21), his Mathematics don, a poor
teacher and ‘a bad explainer’, though
he appreciated being lent recent
works by Louis Couturat. Amidst
this bleak picture, Misak does record
Monty Rendall praising Ramsey for
his ‘eager intellectual outlook’ and
genuine concern for social questions,
perhaps offering a glimpse of some
Wykehamical sympathy and broad-
mindedness. Oxford University Press;
ISBN 978-0198755357.
Treasury & Fellows’ Library
Anthony du Boulay (C, 43-46) has
donated to Win Coll about 30 pieces
of Chinese pottery and porcelain
from his own collection. The gift
includes examples of Chinese
ceramics not well represented in the
Duberly Collection, particularly some
superb pieces from the Song Dynasty
(960-1279 AD). There will be a special
exhibition of Anthony’s donation
early in 2021, after which it will be on
permanent display in Treasury. A full
article on the collection will follow in
a future edition of The Trusty Servant.
To celebrate the 250 th anniversary
of William Wordsworth’s birth, the
Fellows’ Library has recently acquired
a copy of the 1802 third edition
of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth
and Coleridge. The blank leaves at
the end of both volumes contain
silhouette illustrations by an early
reader of moments from the poems.
Pupil Achievements:
Extra-Curricular
Kassian Meier (I, 19-) went undefeated
in school fencing fixtures and will
represent Germany at the European
Championships in Croatia. Felix
Townend (B, 19-), Max Lee (G, 18-)
and Michael Pan (G, 18-) won golds at
the HMC Schools Judo Competition,
in which Win Coll finished 2 nd
overall. Mario Gianni Garcia (B,
19-), Chris Batten (A, 18-) and Will
Cresswell (A, 16-) have been selected
for their county hockey teams.
Not content with excelling merely
at the sports offered at Winchester,
Henry Nicholls (A, 19-) and Bertie
Vallat (F, 19-) have won the Public
School Real Tennis U14 National
Richard Foster and Anthony du Boulay
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