These are values that will always be shared in different pathways, but along one journey, no matter where we are from or where we end up, and no matter whether that knowledge is gained from the library, or on the road.
In the middle of 2016 I felt oddly compelled, for the first time in a long while, to read the Headmaster’ s message in The Trusty Servant. I had just returned home from my latest stint in the Middle East, where the focus of my study, work and personal life in the years following Win Coll had led me. In an era of the region’ s long history where the concepts of internal values, identity and confidence have never been subjected to so much pressure, it was both personally, and professionally, cathartic to return to a place where these aspects of knowledge are still as powerful as ever. In Dr Townsend’ s message, I found something of a trigger. From afar, all I could see of home was a crisis in the NHS, junior doctors on strike, student riots, a crumbling relationship with our European neighbours, and our judges and barristers, the pinnacles of my own chosen profession, having their roles violently called into question. The institutions that had once held value enough to form some part of the identity of the country, and my own identity, had fallen into serious question. In the face of a troubled job-market, the millennial crisis, an unstable economy, political and psychological shifts, Instagram, Facebook, and all in between, this was the first time in a while that I had read anything wholesome from home about the glue that binds our many paths into one journey- values. The value of values is one of those legacies of Win Coll that I never took for granted whilst at the school, but whose inherent communal strength I never knew until my experiences of living and working in the Middle East. At school it lies in personal day-to-day diplomacies, in the quiet solace of Cloisters, in the diversity of different media, in self-empowerment through audacity, and in the historic philosophy that the school has successfully enfranchised into the body of its pupils that we are all part of something larger than ourselves. It lies in the physical and mental environment quietly curated for 600 odd years, and shared with the wider world out of love. In the Middle East it does not lie very differently. I will for ever be grateful to Winchester, for a great many reasons. But in terms of real education, there is one particular story I would share. I had seen 9 / 11 unfold on the television screens whilst in the school gym( compulsorily) as a 14-year-old. The very next day, I asked the Headmaster at the time for permission to start the Muslim Society of Winchester College. Whilst I sat on the couch in his study usually reserved for those who were personae non gratae, it was not the support he gave formally, but the pride he took informally in investing in such an endeavour, that in many ways defined the values that underpinned my education, and my life thus far. The endeavour was greeted with nothing less than full praise and support, from a man who knew the value of patience, and of tolerance, and that knowledge, in the end, was power. These are values that will always be shared in different pathways, but along one journey, no matter where we are from or where we end up, and no matter whether that knowledge is gained from the library, or on the road. I am extremely lucky to be able to say that Wykehamists tend to be, or at least
16 The Wykeham Journal 2016