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stand and watch and work out what might be improved. I like rugby( sorry). I like cricket. I like Gaelic hurling – which I believe may have some similarities with Winchester football. And that’ s the sport to which I’ m most looking forward.
7. From the‘ Rhodes Must Fall’ movement to calls for triggerwarnings about potentially offensive views, free speech is under great scrutiny in our universities. How should we balance the need for robust debate with the responsibility to protect young minds?
I feel rather strongly about this one. So does the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, Louise Richardson, in conversation with her gratuitously offensive interviewer on the Today programme recently. Educational institutions are‘ places where we should hear any legal speech, and we should teach our students how you confront any speech which you find objectionable.’
8. Spencer Leeson once described Winchester as a school which‘ should be a powerhouse radiating energy into all the rest’. What role do you think we should be playing on the wider educational stage?
I guess that role should be one of substance, of integrity, not persiflage( as it perhaps can be elsewhere). Winchester does – and should – have a certain humility, yet also a confidence sired out of experience. Dr Townsend expressed it very eloquently last year:‘ The wonderful thing about Winchester is that it really understands what tradition is – not a static hanging on to the past, but a dynamic carrying the best of the past into a new vitality.’
9. What do you do in any spare time?
I like listening to music, and watching sport. I also like writing. That’ s mostly been about Victorian literature, or about educational issues. A long-term
project is a book about Shakespeare; I’ m teaching VI Book 2 using the rough draft of the first part of a book about English poetry. At some stage I think I might like to write something about Winchester. ■
Adam Crick( E, 71-75 and Co Ro, 89-92, 93-98 & 00-01):‘ You were a rare coat cut from a very limited silk …’
Laurence Wolff( Co Ro, 82-) writes:
To those reading this article, Adam Crick might be remembered as a pupil, a fellow Old Wykehamist, a don who taught them, or as a colleague. To his friends and acquaintances, he was a particularly distinctive person. His character is conveyed in the extract below from the address given by Richard Robinson( E, 71- 76) at his funeral. With his bequest of watercolours, he has become a significant benefactor to the College. There are works by Francis Place, Francis Towne, John White Abbott, Thomas Rowlandson and Peter de Wint, among others, that amplify the already comprehensive collection of English watercolours held by the College. Adam also donated to the Fellows’ Library a copy of the Book of Common Prayer( Oxford, 1683) with a fine Restoration binding by a craftsman known as Queens’ Binder A. In Common Time 2017, most of the Crick bequest will be on display in the wonderful new Treasury; simultaneously, there will be an exhibition of paintings in the Art School with the title In Memoriam APSC by his friend and contemporary Christopher Twigg( K, 71- 75). On Saturday, 7th January, 2017 a poetry reading in Mob Lib from Bound in a Nutshell, the volume of Adam’ s poetry published after his death, will follow the openings of both exhibitions. If you would like to attend this event, which will begin at 6.30pm in Art School, please contact wincollsoc @ wincoll. ac. uk. Copies of Bound in a Nutshell will be available that evening, but may also be ordered from Wells.
An extract from the funeral address:
‘ In these last days and weeks, indeed over these several months, all of us who knew Adam was dying have played and replayed in our minds the memories of our special times with him. Time with Adam was always special. He made it so. Indeed, CRICK, the very word, means special. For his 21st birthday I gave him the complete Oxford English Dictionary and I was delighted then to find, when I looked up his name, the reference, 1663, to“ a merry Crick and boon companion …” And so you have been, to us all, a‘ boon companion.’
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