No . 131 The Trusty Servant
Southern Campus Update
The site ‘ bottomed out ’ ( reached the lowest point of excavation ) in November and the buildings have since been rising from the foundations . Much is now at first floor level and Kier remain on track to complete the project in 2022 .
Sen Don
Sir Bryan Thwaites ( C , 41-42 ; Co Ro , 51-59 ) became the senior Winchester don , having received the baton from John Dancy ( Co Ro , 48-53 ). At 97 and 4 months at the time of writing , he is we think the second-oldest ever , having recently surpassed CE ‘ The Bin ’ Robinson ( Co Ro , 09-45 ), who reached 97 and 2 months in 1981 . We wish him all good health , as he attempts to knock off the final few runs required to overhaul his good friend the mighty centurion Raymond Humphrey ( Co Ro , 53-79 ; VMT , 79-95 ), who reached 100 years and 4 months in 2017 .
New acquisitions
Thanks to generous grants from Friends of the National Libraries and the Friends of Winchester College , the Fellows ’ Library has acquired a late 15th-century copy of the Shareh Mulakhas Al-Jaghmini fī al-Hay ’ a ( Commentary on the Compendium of Cosmology ), an Arabic textbook of medieval astronomy . The acquisition broadens the Library ’ s rich holdings in the history of science to include non-Western material , exemplifying the flow of knowledge between cultures . The text was written in 1412- 13 by the Turkish astronomer Qadi Zada al-Rumi , working in Timurid Persia , commenting on the work of an early-13 th -century Arab astromer al-Jaghmini , which was based in turn on the work of the 2 nd -century Greek astronomer Ptolemy . Our manuscript is one of the earliest surviving copies , made within a few decades of the author ’ s date , probably in or near Samarkand . The volume is richly illustrated with numerous diagrams of astronomical phenomena , including planetary orbits , lunar phases and solar eclipses , and complements the 15 th -century edition of Sacrobosco ’ s De Sphaera Mundi , written around 1230 , which was acquired in 2019 .
Art Bequest
Sir Richard Storey ( H , 50-55 ) commissioned his favourite artist , Emily Patrick , to do four pictures of our environs , including the young London plane trees which he funded two years ago . Sir Richard has generously donated the painting of Meads to the school . High-quality prints can be obtained via the artist ’ s website , www . emilypatrick . com .
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