Cambridge Orations, 1993-2007: A Selection

C A M B R I D G E O R AT I O N S , 1993–2007 As Orator of the University of Cambridge, Anthony Bowen delivered 121 Lat...

Author: Anthony Bowen

316 downloads 530 Views 954KB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!

Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

C A M B R I D G E O R AT I O N S , 1993–2007

As Orator of the University of Cambridge, Anthony Bowen delivered 121 Latin speeches in the Senate House in praise of a variety of distinguished people on the occasion of their receiving Honorary Degrees. Of these speeches, 52 are presented here, with facing translations. The ﬁfty-ﬁrst Orator in an unbroken sequence going back to 1521, Mr Bowen addresses admirably the challenge of speaking even of modern phenomena in the language and cadences of antiquity, although words such as ‘transistor’ (gen. transistoris, m.) occasionally need to be invented. The honorands include Nelson Mandela, Rowan Williams, Betty Boothroyd, Cleo Laine, Kiri Te Kanawa, Anthony Gormley and a host of others, among them many scientists of international distinction. Anthony Bowen is an Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and was Orator of the University of Cambridge from 1993 to 2007.

ANTHONY BOWEN Photo by Elizabeth Noden

C A M B R I D G E O R AT I O N S 1993–2007 a selection Anthony Bowen Fellow Emeritus of Jesus College

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521737623 © Anthony Bowen 2008 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2009

ISBN-13

978-0-511-50650-5

eBook (EBL)

ISBN-13

978-0-521-73762-3

paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

CONTENTS

Introduction

[vii]

T H E S E L E C T E D O R AT I O N S The Most Revd the Metropolitan A N T H O N Y of Sourozh (1996) [2] Margaret AT W O O D (2001) [4] Susan Jocelyn B E L L B U R N E L L (1996) [6] Quentin Saxby B L A K E (2004) [8] Hans Martin B L I X (2007) [10] The Rt Hon. Betty B O O T H R O Y D (1994) [12] Peter Robert Lamont B R O W N (2004) [14] Sir George Adrian Hayhurst C A D B U RY (1994) [16] Louis C H A (2005) [18] Avram Noam C H O M S K Y (1995) [20] Elias James C O R E Y (2000) [22] Ann C O T T O N (2007) [24] John Philip William D A N K W O RT H (2004) [26] Ray Milton D O L B Y (1997) [28] Clifford G E E RT Z (1997) [30] Antony Mark David G O R M L E Y (2003) [32] Sir John Bertrand G U R D O N (2007) [34] Jürgen H A B E R M A S (1999) [36] Sir Peter Reginald Frederick H A L L (2003) [38] Sir David H A R E (2005) [40] David H O C K N E Y (2007) [42] Gurdev Singh K H U S H (2000) [44] K I M Dae-jung (2001) [46] Sir Aaron K L U G (1998) [48] v

Contents

Dame Cleo L A I N E (2004) [50] David Kellogg L E W I S (2001) [52] Nelson Rolihlahla M A N D E L A (1996) [54] Sir Arthur Gregory George M A R S H A L L (1996) [56] Jonathan Wolfe M I L L E R (1996) [58] Stroud Francis Charles (Toby) M I L S O M (2003) [60] Gordon M O O R E (1999) [62] Sir Nevill Francis M O T T (1994) [64] Sadako O G ATA (1999) [66] Sheila Doris O V E R H I L L (1999: Hon. MA) [68] Bridget Louise R I L E Y (1995) [70] Sir Denis Eric R O O K E (2000) [72] The Hon. Miriam Louisa R O T H S C H I L D (1999) [74] David R U B I O (2000: Hon. MA) [76] Dame Sheila Patricia Violet S H E R L O C K (1995) [78] Dame Margaret Natalie Cross S M I T H (1994) [80] Sir Tom S T O P PA R D (2000) [82] Sir John Edward S U L S T O N (2003) [84] Aung San S U U K Y I (1998) [86] Dame Kiri T E K A N AWA (1997) [88] Sir Keith Vivian T H O M A S (1995) [90] Muriel Claire T O M A L I N (2007) [92] The Most Revd Desmond Mpilo T U T U (1999) [94] Helen Hennessy V E N D L E R (1997) [96] Sir Bernard Arthur Owen W I L L I A M S (2002) [98] The Most Revd and Rt Hon. Rowan Douglas W I L L I A M S (2006) [100] Sir Colin Alexander St John W I L S O N (1999) [102] Edward W I T T E N (2006) [104]

vi

INTRODUCTION

Sir John Edwin Sandys, who served as Orator from 1876 to 1919, published (in two goes1) all the speeches and addresses that he composed. Subsequent Orators, if they have published, have selected, and I follow them. In my fourteen years as Orator, from 1993 to 2007, I presented 116 people (86 men and 30 women) for an honorary doctorate of the University and 5 (3 and 2 respectively) for an honorary MA; I also made a speech in honour of Aung San Suu Kyi, who could not risk leaving Burma to receive the doctorate she was offered.2 From those 122 speeches, I have selected 52 (37 addressed to men and 15 to women). I have had three criteria in selecting them: variety, individuality and repeatability. If any for whom I spoke look here and are disappointed to ﬁnd that speech omitted, I can say only that the omission had nothing to do with them personally; at least they are in the majority. The ofﬁce of Orator goes back to 1521, and there are traces of the job being done earlier than that. Those interested in its creation, use and development should read the excellent account given by my immediate predecessor, James Diggle, in the preface to his Cambridge Orations 1982– 1993: A Selection (Cambridge, 1994). On the composition of speeches he rightly quotes W. K. C. Guthrie, Orator from 1939 to 1957: To produce a good speech of the length customary nowadays3 calls for a kind of gem-cutting in words, a complete picture, not lacking in detail, within the bezel of a ring. This in itself, incidentally, is an allsufﬁcient reason for retaining Latin as the medium, since it provides a material of unexampled hardness and brilliance in which to execute this lapidary work.

1

2

3

Orationes et Epistulae Cantabrigienses (1876–1909) (London, 1910); Orationes et Epistulae Cantabrigienses (1909–1919) (Cambridge, 1921). Other degrees may be taken in absentia, but not honorary degrees. Exceptionally, Nelson Mandela received his at a ceremony in the gardens of Buckingham Palace, seven other universities sharing the occasion. Hence the slightly shorter length of the speech for him. I found it to be from 220 to 230 words of Latin, a speaking time of three and a half to four minutes.

vii

Introduction

The ceremony in the Senate House is a remarkable opportunity for demonstrating the nature and quality of spoken Latin, and the advantages of the language were conﬁrmed for me in Buckingham Palace gardens in 1996, when six of the eight orators presenting Nelson Mandela spoke in English. ‘A complete picture’, yes; a biography, no. One good anecdote will sometimes give much of the portrait; beyond that, the deeds must speak. Somewhere in Punch (I think: I have failed to ﬁnd it), there was a cartoon of an actor taking the applause for a one-man performance. The cartoonist had viewed him from the wings, however, in which he had drawn in addition all those others, stage-manager, lighting men, sceneshifters, without whom the performance would not have been possible. For every speech, I had at least one, sometimes two or three major consultants who read what I drafted and advised further. They are too many to name. One, however, read everything I wrote both in the Latin and in the English, and never failed in improvement of both and in encouragement of me: Neil Hopkinson of Trinity College; very occasionally I stuck to my text, but I doubt I was wise to do so. When I began, the University Draftsman, responsible for getting the texts printed, was John Easterling, also of Trinity College; he too made shrewd comments, allowing amendment in proof. I treasure also letters after the event from the late Guy Lee of St John’s College, my sometime supervisor, noting things that he had liked. The three Vice-Chancellors for whom I worked, Sir David Williams, Lord Broers and Alison Richard, were all strongly supportive. Very differently supportive, but just as valuably, were Constantine and Sibylle Mano, at whose dining-room table in Crete I composed my ﬁrst drafts for many a spring; their interest and hospitality were perfect. My thanks are also due to Cambridge University Press for agreeing to print this volume, and in particular to Michael Sharp for getting it into shape. ‘The text of the compositions here printed [I quote from Sandys’ preface of 1910] has been, to some slight extent, revised. Small matters of spelling have been made more uniform.’ I have exercised the same liberty, and have beneﬁted also from suggestions made by James Diggle, who kindly looked through all the speeches here printed with a true care and thoroughness. When I began as Orator, it was the custom to latinize as far as possible all forenames but to leave surnames alone; from 2000 on, I left all names in their original form. I am comforted in my decision by the increasing number of forenames not apt for Latin.

viii

T H E S E L E C T E D O R AT I O N S

I

S A I A E uerba repetamus: Quam pulchri super montes pedes praedicantis bonum.1 ad animum uero corpusque recreandum quo melius? ibat olim in Alpes eo consilio hic uir; sed ut aliena corpora alienosque recrearet animos, in foro ac plebe uersatus illic ofﬁcium primo medici tum sacerdotis exercet, ﬁtque sapiens non tam theologiae disciplina institutus quam ipsius occursu cultuque Dei. uitam exul inter exules primo apud Parisios tum post bellum Londini quanto ab illis sui desiderio comitatus egit, quanto a se ipso patriae, sed quanta fortuna nostra! qui linguam nostratem ut munus hic expleret e libris sacris sub rege Iacobo uersis plerumque didicisse dicitur; unde disserenti interdum lepos antiquus aliquis et nerui. at quod bonum praedicat? Dei amorem praecipue, qualem Moses acceptis mandatis omni Israheli praecepit,2 quem ex usu studioque, oppositis quos alloquatur uel uocem illam dulcem grauem certam procul e conspectu audientibus, gregi primum suo, mox omnium qui Christo credunt, tum denique maiori illi suorum ex qua est ortus ipse nationi commendat suadet praedicat. illi ecclesiae, per paene totam huius uitam oppressae et corruptae, tamen commeatu et libellis (iam aperte illic magnaque copia circummissis) meditandi precandique sustinuit morem, communionem seruauit, ardorem et probitatem suam praestitit. apparet tandem et in patria non esse sine honore prophetam3, gratiasque agamus oportet si non nobis modo sed etiam multis aliis tanto bono et adiumento hoc huius est hospitium. uirum Dei praesento uobis in Eoque exercitatissimum, Russorum Ecclesiae Orthodoxae et Patriarchalis in Britanniis Caput, Metropolitanum Reuerendissimum ANTONIUM DE SOUROZH 1

Isaiah 52.7. Deuteronomy 6.5. 3 Matthew 13.57. 2

2

I

N the words of Isaiah: How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings. For restoration of body and soul mountains are very good; so this man once trod the Alps. But for restoration of other men’s bodies and souls he strode among the people, ﬁrst as a doctor and then as a priest; his wisdom comes not from a training in theology but rather from personal encounter with God in service and worship. He has passed his life in exile and among exiles, ﬁrst in Paris and after the war in London; the loss of him in Paris, and his own loss of country, has been our good fortune. When he learnt English in order to work here, he learnt it, so the story goes, largely from King James’s Bible. Hence the occasional old-world charm of his speech, and some of its strength. What then are his good tidings? In chief the love of God, as Moses enjoined upon all Israel when he told them the ten commandments: this is what, out of his experience and study, he has urged upon his congregations, whether speaking face to face or broadcasting in that deep, sure, honeyed voice with powerful benevolence, preaching ﬁrst to his own ﬂock, then to a wider audience in Britain, and ﬁnally to that greater congregation of his own fellow Russians. For almost all his life the Russian church has been persecuted and corrupted, but he has visited it, his books circulate in the country in great quantity now, and he has upheld his church’s tradition of prayer and meditation, remaining in communion with it and bestowing upon it his own devout integrity. So now the prophet is not without honour even in his own country, and we must give thanks that his sojourn here has been so precious and helpful not only to us but to so many others as well. I present to you a man of God, well practised in Him, head of the Russian Orthodox Patriarchal Church in Great Britain and Ireland, the Most Reverend Metropolitan ANTHONY OF SOUROZH

3

‘F

A B U L A cum occuparis, omnino non est fabula sed rerum quasi indigesta moles; tantum posthac uel similis fabulae uidetur res esse, tum cum audienti seu tibi narras siue aliis.’ multa bene scribit haec femina et (ut audiuistis) de scribendo quoque bene scribit quippe artis eius scientissima. cuius libros si legis mox intelleges et feminam scribere, non uirum, et Canadensem eam esse. ista tamen si ne uerbum quidem sed uitam modo legisses cognoscere poteras; sin a libris duxisses, melius aestimares utrum magis ualeat. sunt enim quae sexum eius urgeant; praestare mihi uidetur quod puella sex mensis quotannis ab urbe et ludo procul inter siluas lacusque patriae aestiuabat. uox est huius tamquam e deserto clamantis, omnium patrona quibus est aut nulla aut summissa uox, modo feminarum et liberorum, modo uirorum si forte spernuntur, uel animalium – quorum ‘erat Carolus quidam, sed cantherius is quidem, et quamuis bonus auditor idemque solacium magnum, consilio egenti mihi paulum modo profuit’ – uel etiam rerum inanimarum, lapidum uirgultorum caeli aquae et si quid sub aqua latet; quae omnia pari studio curaque commota spectat, narrat, more tesserarum aeque ponit in opus. ut autem ea quae quis sermone plebeio mittat aure notat acutissima, ita apertissima mente intellegit quae quem nescio an puderet se fateri in animo habere. quae optime reddit cum facit carmina. si quod praedicaret haberet, praeconem ait se conducturam; potius inuentione et narratione adeo praecellit ut digna sit quae in numero Homeridarum habeatur. praesento uobis carminum fabularum creatricem potentissimam, M A R G A R E T AT W O O D

4

‘W

HEN you are in the middle of a story, it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion. . . It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all – when you are telling it, to yourself or someone else.’ Margaret Atwood is a ﬁne and proliﬁc writer, and on the topic of writing too (as you have heard) she writes as an expert in the craft. Read her books, and you will soon divine that it is a woman writing, not a man, and also that she hails from Canada. You could have discovered that from blurb and dustcover; got from inside her books, however, it would help you realise which fact matters more. She has been claimed by feminists; more notable in my view is her upbringing, in which she spent half the year far from city and school up country, summering among the trees and lakes of the north. Hers is a voice as it were from a wilderness, a voice for all those who have little or none of their own. Sometimes she speaks for women and for children, sometimes for men of low esteem; sometimes she speaks for animals – ‘there was Charley, but he was a horse, and although a good listener and a comfort, of not much avail when I needed advice’ – or even for things inanimate, sticks and stones, sky and water, and for things lurking in water. Compassionate, dispassionate, she gazes at them all with an equal care, reports them, and lays them levelly in the mosaic of her text. She has a shrewd ear for the cadences of ordinary conversation; she also understands with a penetrating honesty those thoughts one might well be embarrassed to acknowledge. And all these things she does best in her poetry. ‘If I had a message,’ she says, ‘I would rent a billboard.’ Her command of story and language allows us, however, to count her among Homer’s children. I present to you M A R G A R E T AT W O O D , maker of poems and stories

5

A

GRUM uos uelim in animo ﬁngere, aequum et planum et perticarum in agmine sex iugerum quadrato erectarum duo milibus quadraginta octo satum; quarum inter summas aeris Cyprii ﬁla ita internecti ut proximis suis quaque sic coniuncta spectet in stellas nouicium rete quoddam, quo ui electrica immissa radii stellarum uastissimum per aethera scintillantes accipi possint. inter eos qui operam curamque quid rete reperiret adhibebant haec est femina, tum tiro modo in rebus perquirendis sed acuta et perspicaci mente. nam plurima ex aethere nuntia accipiebantur sed breuissima: nuntium enim suum cuique stellae tantum per septingentesimam uicesimam partem diei, dum rotatur orbis terrarum, tempus erat referre. quarum in turba radiare uidentur quaedam paruo impetu sed temporis interuallis adeo consimilibus inter sese ut uix natura ﬁeri possit: nam radii cum rectum per inane feruntur particulis aeris obiectis spatio depellere paulum coguntur: hinc illud exiguum clinamen principiorum1 uel astrorum mos micandi. natura nihilominus ﬁeri mox paret, stellarumque genus aliud compertum habemus cui nomen uenarum imPULSARum percussus dedit. tale inuentum non solet unus homo exquirere et elaborare, sed haec una uidit, uisoque tam sedulo institit (aliasque tris interim stellas eius generis inuenerat) ut inter magos eos habenda sit, qui ‘uidentes stellam, gauisi sunt, gaudio magno ualde.’ nunc physices in ea est uniuersitate professor quae ‘Aperta’ nuncupatur: ibi uero apte inter omnis instituendum id curat et prouidet quod recte dicatur rete doctrinae. praesento uobis Doctorem in Philosophia, Aulae Nouae Sociam honoris causa adscitam, S U S A N N A M J O C E LY N B E L L B U R N E L L 1

Lucretius II 217, 219 and 292.

6

I

MAGINE if you will a ﬁeld, level and ﬂat and planted with 2,048 upright posts in a square of four acres. The tops of the posts are linked by thin copper wire so that when each is connected to its immediate neighbour there is a sort of net gazing up at the stars; when it is electriﬁed, the rays of those stars can be received as they twinkle their way through the vastnesses of space. One of those concerned with the building of the telescope and with examining its revelations was this woman, a mere research student at the time, but a student blessed with an unusually sharp-eyed and pertinacious curiosity. The messages came in great quantity, but also with great brevity, the time for a star to send its news being limited by the rotation of the earth to two minutes each day. Amid the throng of information, certain stars of faint impulse were seen to be sending so regular a radio message that it scarcely seemed natural (as rays travel through space they meet occasional clouds of atmosphere which refract their course; hence a slight swerve of their substance, as Lucretius once put it – the well known phenomenon of twinkling). Natural it was, however, as soon became clear, and now we recognize another sort of star, named by metaphor from the human body a pulsar. Such discoveries are not the work of single individuals, but this is the individual who noticed that pulse. Once she had seen it she pursued it so diligently, ﬁnding three more pulsars in the meantime, that she belongs with the Wise Men who ‘seeing the star rejoiced with exceeding great joy.’ Now she is Professor of Physics at the Open University; you may feel that she is particularly well placed to care for something as vital in that context as a learning network. I present to you S U S A N J O C E LY N B E L L B U R N E L L , p h . d . , Honorary Fellow of New Hall

7

H

E N R I C O Regi uitium nocebat hoc, uti partis redimiculorum manderet. tandem uorat illa quae se complicant nodis stomacho malignis. haud mora: illustres medici uocantur qui rata mercede, Sed huius, aiunt, nulla ﬁt morbi medicina: morti Henricus iam iam dabitur. parentes ad torum stabant subitae dolore sortis afﬂicti

et felis, ut rem depinxit hic uir, cuius in ea parte uoltus quam super stragulum eleuatam uideas aspectus eius est qui quid ﬁat non omnino intellegat sed ualde condolescat. non uni Quinctio nostro haec ars famae fuit – nonne innotuit Ernestus ille pastor, et Iohannes depictor Aliciae (quae Quid sine tabulis, inquit, ualet liber?), et, si cui libellus occurrit Anicula uecta rotis inscriptus, Ericaeus ille Passerinus? – sed huic primo cognomen Liberorum Laureatus datus est. primas tabulas adulescentulus edidit, hortante ea quae Latinam docebat; iam libros CCL amplius ornauit et suos et alienos, quorum notissimus Roaldus ille Hyperboreus: is olim, uiso quod hic pinxerat, uerba in aptiora mutauit. num quem fugit immanis ille sed comis gigas? nuper rogatus hic uir sene ipso in delineando esset usus, risu negauit (nam non quem imitetur ante oculos uelle: magis referre ut id exprimat quod mentis acie percipiatur); sed risu haud dissimili senes saepe facit ut ridere uideantur. Henrico morituro permisit Hilarius extrema uerba; potius haec dixerit: Vos, amici, a me moneamini, nil deesse contento puero nisi una prandia et ientacula Quinctiumque. praesento uobis pictorem et coloratorem, Excellentissimo Ordini Imperi Britannici adscriptum, Magistrum in Artibus, Collegi Downingiani honoris causa Socium, QUENTIN SAXBY BLAKE

8

T

H E chief defect of Henry King Was chewing little bits of string. At last he swallowed some which tied Itself in ugly knots inside. Physicians of the utmost fame Were called at once; but when they came They answered, as they took their fees, ‘There is no cure for this disease. Henry will very soon be dead’. His parents stood about his bed Lamenting his untimely death together with the cat, on whose face, or on as much of it as is depicted peering over the bedspread by this man, may be seen the look of someone who doesn’t entirely understand the situation but does share the concern. Quentin Blake is not the ﬁrst to win fame as an illustrator of children’s books. E. H. Shepard will surely be known, and John Tenniel, illustrator of Alice (it was Alice who said, ‘What’s the use of a book without pictures?’), and if you know this man’s book Mrs Armitage on Wheels, Heath Robinson may also come to mind. But he is the ﬁrst ever Children’s Laureate. He had his ﬁrst work accepted when he was a boy (he was encouraged to submit by his Latin teacher); he now has over 250 titles to his name, some his own and some produced in collaboration, most notably with Roald Dahl, who once changed his text to ﬁt the illustration offered. You remember the BFG? The illustrator was recently asked whether he used himself as the model in creating the giant. He smiled, and said no (he never does draw from life, saying it is more important to capture the balance between what is seen and what is imagined); but a smile much like his may be seen on many of his avuncular gentlemen. Hilaire Belloc allowed Master Henry some dying words. Here is an alternative version: O my friends, be warned by me That breakfast, dinner, lunch, and Blake Are all the happy child should take. I present to you QUENTIN SAXBY BLAKE, o.b.e., m.a., Honorary Fellow of Downing College, Artist and Illustrator

9

‘I

M P E R I U M ciuile, quantouis magis si e ciuium uoluntate pendeat placere uideatur, non tamen quale sit iure gentium praescriptum est. quod utinam ne gentium non intersit: immo, semper magis interest, sed non adhuc ea condicione ut legibus certis sanciatur; iuris potius est iamdiu gentium ut ne quis cuius immutandi causa hostis intercedat.’ uerbis illis, quae paene quinquaginta abhinc annis post studia apud nos confecta conscripsit hic uir, numquid inesse recentioris signiﬁcationis auditis? uirum habemus ratione acuta, accurato sermone, qui diu ciuium suorum minister factus (a peregrinis erat olim) pro gentium omnium salute uitam egit. XVI annos cohorti praeerat cui curae res de ui difﬁssis atomis soluta datur; quo tempore celabant Babylonii quantum ad uim illam armis exercendam processissent. hunc deceptum se confessum postea idcirco ﬁde minus dignum esse censuere quidam. grauissimum tamen is aestimat ut id quod est referatur: si cedas humilis, inquit, multis potes esse saluti. uir probitatis tam praecipuae est ut relictis ofﬁciis publicis, munus uelut Cincinnatus ab aratro adductus acceperit quo quis certior ﬁeret quid Babylonii in armamentariis haberent. suscepto munere instantibus his illis resistentibus rursus iterumque abesse quod inueniret inuenit, idque hi credere illi conﬁrmare nolebant. has res et sermonibus apud nos habitis et libro de armis illis priuandis conscripto non sine dolore quodam cum sale coniuncto exposuit: colloquia sua rogatus hine clanculum audirent, Vtinam exactius, ait, audiuissent. paucis mensibus amplius datis magnam uitari posse caedem arbitratur. praesento uobis Doctorem in Philosophia, cohortibus uariis pro gentibus in UNum conuocatis quo certiores de ui et armis parandis ﬁerent praefectum, Aulae Sanctae Trinitatis alumnum, H A N S M A RT I N B L I X

10

N spite of a certain tendency favouring forms of government dependent upon popular approval, it cannot be said that international law prescribes any particular form of government or constitution. It is not suggested that the international community should be completely indifferent to the kind of governments or constitutions existing in various states. On the contrary, it is certain that it is concerned, and that its concern is increasing, but this concern has not yet become so strong and productive of sanctions as to translate itself into law. Indeed, on the contrary, there has long existed a principle of international law prohibiting intervention.’ Dr Blix wrote those words nearly ﬁfty years ago, after completing studies in Cambridge. Something may be heard in them of contemporary signiﬁcance. Dr Blix is a man of shrewd analysis and careful expression. For many years he served in the government of his native Sweden, being brieﬂy Minister for Foreign Affairs; all his life he has worked for the betterment of nations. For sixteen years he was Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency; Iraq then managed to conceal for some time how far it had advanced towards creating an atomic bomb. Dr Blix admitted he had been deceived; later that was construed by some as grounds for doubting his judgment. Yet nothing matters more to him than reporting the facts; to quote him,

‘I

The noble art of losing face may one day save the human race. So outstanding is his integrity that when fully retired he was summoned back, like Cincinnatus from his plough, to take on the task of verifying what weapons Iraq still had. As one side pressed and the other resisted, he came increasingly to realise that what he was meant to ﬁnd was not there. One side would not believe it and the other would not conﬁrm it. In his Lauterpacht lectures three years ago and in his book Disarming Iraq he has laid out the facts with a certain wry regret. When asked whether his private discussions had been bugged by the Americans, he replied ‘I wish they had listened more closely.’ A few months more, he considers, and much slaughter could have been avoided. I present to you H A N S M A RT I N B L I X , p h . d . , of Trinity Hall, Director General Emeritus of the International Atomic Energy Agency and formerly Executive Chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Veriﬁcation and Inspection Commission for Iraq

11

H

A N C ubi domus communis primam prolocutricem creauit, raro melius et sibi profuit et spes hominum expleuit. ad munus illud uia numquam breuis, feminisque ne ad domum quidem facile peruentum est; sed plebs Ericocampensis occidentalis iam septiens qua est prudentia suffragiis fauit et domus percepto huius erga se amore et cura, quia super pauca fuit ﬁdelis, super multa constituit.1 huic opus est magna uoce incessuque superbo et fastu ingenii cum locuplete sinu,

ut prioris prolocutoris cuiusdam opinionem adhibeam. at series illa quo longior eo ineptior. alii quondam collegae nuperrime uisus est huic tribui matris amor, sed cultus erae, dominaeque cupido. quin nos talem ﬁngimus qualis aestate priore erat, anno postquam Clisthenes in potestatem plebem asciuit quingentesimo bismillesimo, stans celsa in puppi triremis, uere nauis reipublicae (nec sine scientia nostratium restauratae), cuius ansam gubernaculi quis hac aptior ad tenendam, quippe ciuium ui utrimque propulsae? adeone fuit umquam ﬁgura recreata? interea ‘se laeta ferebat,’ ut ait poeta,2 ‘per medios instans operi;’ tum rursus ‘solio alte subnixa resedit; iura dabat legesque uiris, operumque laborem partibus aequabat iustis aut sorte trahebat.’ isto munere moris est nolle cumulari: inerant enim pericula, insunt onera, inter quae collegarum partiumque secessio. sed huic hilaritatem inesse quandam iocumque cognoscite calculum Mineruae omnium ﬁde plausu gaudio libranti. praesento uobis feminam admodum honorabilem, Vniuersitatis quae dicitur Aperta Cancellariam, Domus Communis Prolocutricem BETTY BOOTHROYD 1 2

Matthew 25, 21. Vergil, Aeneid I 503–4 and 506–8.

12

S

E L D O M has the House of Commons better served itself and matched the hopes of the people than in electing our next guest as its ﬁrst woman Speaker. The path to such ofﬁce is never short; for women the path even into the House is not easy. But the wise electors of West Bromwich have now supported her with their votes seven times, and the House has understood her devotion and her skill in serving it, and because she has been faithful over some things it has made her ruler over many. Mr Speaker Yelverton said that the requisites for the ofﬁce were ‘a great voice, a carriage majestical, a nature haughty, and a purse plentiful.’ It is a list of diminishing appropriateness. A recent colleague, Matthew Parris, sees her appeal to the House as a mixture of ‘affection for Mum, deference to Miss, fear of Madam, and a male eye for Mademoiselle.’ Let us take our picture of her from last summer, the 2500th anniversary of the beginning of democracy, when she stood on that tall ship the trireme, truly the ship of state (and reconstructed with some scholarly aid from here): who better than she to hold the tiller of such a ship, driven as it used to be by citizen power on either side? Was ever a ﬁgure of speech so refreshed? Meantime, as Vergil put it, ‘she went her radiant, busy way between them,’ and then ‘throned herself on high, giving her rulings to the men, and distributing tasks in fair shares or putting them to a ballot.’ There is a traditional reluctance to accept the ofﬁce of Speaker: it has had its perils, and it has its burdens, among them separation from colleagues and party. Fear not: with her sense of fun and her wit she wields the vote of Athena amid the conﬁdence, the approval and the delight of all. I present to you the Right Honourable Miss B E T T Y B O O T H R O Y D , Speaker of the House of Commons and Chancellor of the Open University.

13

I

N uitis sanctorum scribendis primum memoriae prodi solet origo hominis, ut designatus ad uirtutem ab initio esse uideatur. hic uir in altera Britanniae insula natus, unde multi sunt labris quasi melle libatis orti, mox Salopiae, insigni linguarum priscarum nutrici, deinde Oxoniae studio rerum gestarum instructus collegi Omnium Animarum socius anno suo altero et uicesimo electus est. quid isto cursu beatius? uitam inde agit sapientis: sermonibus et libellis discipulos docet qua ratione sit mundus ille antiquus Augustorum et Caesarum cultu unius dei crebrescente mutatus in alium. primos sermones qua est uerecundia in cubiculo collegi habebat, sed tanta frequentabat multitudo ut libenter audituri per tecta se funibus demisissent. mox edidit librum primum de Augustino Hipponensi mira doctrina, mira elegantia conscriptum; deinde inuestigatis uiri sacri ortu et ofﬁcio, paginis XX fere studium ultimorum saeculorum antiquitatis omnino in nouum, non tam rebus gestis ducum quam uoluntatibus sententiisque popularibus deditum, unus conuertit. nam moueri et uolgus et duces demonstrauit auctoritate potius eorum qui sibi disciplinam et mentis et corporis grauissimam in nomine Christi imponebant: qui dei uestigia in loca deserta secuti sapientiores consilio redibant. has res altius explorare non desinit, operibus multis editis quibus non minus argumento et ratione persuadet quam rerum leuiorum lepore permulcet: Olympiodorum enim quendam legatum principis commeare comitante psittaco qui puro Attico sermone loqueretur. non dubium est quin sermonibus librisque suis in haec studia multos hic uir adduxerit. praesento uobis Academiae Britannicae Sodalem, Historiae apud Princetonenses in nomine Rollins Professorem, P E T E R R O B E RT L A M O N T B R O W N

14

I

N lives of saints, the ﬁrst item on record is usually the saint’s beginnings, so told that the appointment with saintliness is seen to start early. Peter Brown is a native of Ireland, and many have come from there with lips touched with honey; after schooling at Shrewsbury, good nurse of Latin and Greek, he read History at Oxford and was elected a Fellow of All Souls at the age of twenty-one. That is a progress of great felicity. He has lived the life of scholarship. In lectures and books he shows students how the world of the old Roman Empire was turned into something else by the growing cult of monotheism. With becoming modesty he gave his ﬁrst classes in a small room in College, but so many ﬂocked to hear him that they would gladly have let themselves down through the ceiling on ropes. Soon came his ﬁrst book, on Augustine of Hippo, a work of extraordinary wisdom and extraordinary elegance. Then an article appeared of some twenty pages entitled The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity: single-handedly he had refocussed the study of the period by looking not so much at the deeds of the great as at the thoughts and feelings of ordinary people. He showed that both people and leaders had become more attentive to the word of those who subjected themselves to a very ﬁerce discipline, both physical and mental, in the name of Christ. These men pursued the trail of God in desert places and returned the wiser in good counsel. He has continued to explore the ﬁeld with works as convincing in their evidence and argument as they are beguiling in the charm of their details: there was a certain Olympiodorus, for instance, Byzantine ambassador, who went about his business accompanied by a parrot which spoke pure Attic Greek. It is not too much to say that many have been drawn to this ﬁeld of study simply by hearing and reading Peter Brown. I present to you P E T E R R O B E RT L A M O N T B R O W N , f. b . a . , f. r . h i s t . s . , Rollins Professor of History in Princeton University

15

‘S

U N T quos nauiculis,’ ut paene ait Horatius,1 ‘aequor Olympicum collegisse iuuat, metaque palmulis euitata citis euehit ad deos;’ neue omittamus ‘illum si proprio condidit horreo quicquid de Libyca carpitur arbore.’

alium tamen ab alio disiunxit uates, sed in hoc illos omnis percipimus uno: nam multifariam laudes accipientis huius negotia quid uerbis opus est quam longe lateque diffusa sint, quantaque sapientia moneat rogatus quibus condicionibus probissime commercia agantur? libellos habemus, inter quos illum de societatibus administrandis, plane conscriptos consili plenos. Cantabrigiense nomen olim per niuem ramis per aquam remis actis celebrauit, unde et suum et aliorum ingenia quomodo conferantur didicit; iam praeses alumnorum nostratium est factus, uniuersitatique toti, neglecto nequaquam collegio suo, praesto est; quodsi nunc quidem monumentum requiritis, circumite sodalitatis Accipitrum quae uocatur aedis spectaturi. at uix medietas fuit narrata beneuolentiae: utitur enim illo ut nesciat sinistra tua quid faciat dextera tua, promptissimeque testarentur qui una laborant quanta sit pietate diligentia uenustate. nos igitur oportet, quamquam ipse ‘Sunt honores,’ ait ‘detrimento: uim nouandi subruunt’, honore eum extollere quem tot hodie amore prosequuntur, quem recte ego appellarim ‘Maecenas, atauis nate Trementibus, o et praesidium et dulce decus’: nam de dulcedine egrediuntur uires. praesento uobis Equitem Auratum, Magistrum in Artibus, Collegi Regis honoris causa Socium, G E O R G I V M A D R I A N V M H AY H U R S T C A D B U RY 1

See Odes I i, 1–10.

16

‘T

H E R E are people’, as the poet Horace so nearly said, ‘whose pleasure it is to soak up Olympic spray in little boats, while skimming by the winning post on swift oars lifts them to the gods’. There is also the couplet about the man ‘who stores in his own warehouse the fruits of exotic trees’. The poet, however, distinguishes his various people one from another, whereas in this man we ﬁnd them all united, for he has earned distinction in many areas, and there is little need to spell out the great diversity of his activities or the breadth of experience behind the advice which he is sometimes asked to give on the proper conduct of business. There is his report ‘Corporate Governance’, for instance, and others, all full of sound advice pithily expressed. Once he won Blues for skiing and rowing, and learnt something thereby about developing his own and others’ talents; now he is president of the Cambridge Alumni, and gives his help to the whole University as well as to his own College. If you seek some visible mark of that help, go round and inspect the Hawks’ Club as it now is. Yet the half has not been told of his goodwill; ‘let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth’ is plainly a maxim he observes, and those who have occasion to work with him are very quick to attest his unvarying devotion and charm. He himself has said ‘Respectability is a dreadful thing: it saps initiative’; but for us it is right and proper to mark with our respect a man who brings many here today out of sheer affection, one whom I, almost like the poet again, may rightly address as ‘Maecenas, born of long Quaker stock, president of distinction and sweetness’: for out of the sweetness comes forth strength. I present to you Sir G E O R G E A D R I A N H AY H U R S T C A D B U RY, m . a . , Honorary Fellow of King’s College.

17

L

A P I D I S illam fabulam quis nescit post praematuram mortem auctoris annos XXX latere, famamque ei serius accessisse quam ut frueretur? hic uir, in prouincia Serum australi natus, multa puer audiebat narrare seniores, inter quae bellatorum fabulas et amantium, quas tanta delectatione percepit ut iuuenis, cum ab optato cursu prohiberetur, ad artem narrandi conuersus statim opus primum multorum, Librum et Ensem nomine, conscripserit. his libris equitum amantiumque res gestas celebrat (Aquitanos illos ternos ad regis Arturi mensam ﬁngite inter equites errantis adiectos); artem cum gladio dimicandi praecipue collaudat; stilo autem adeo docte eleganterque conscribit eos, sed idem sermone communi lasciuiisque uariatos, ut et in ludis et in academiis iam legantur, uenierintque numero ter miliens. nam ciuium cum res multa abhinc saecula gestas bene cognouit tum quas adulescentuli gerere cupiant comprehendit; cognouit autem quid per allegoriam fabulae uetustae ferant uirtutis et ponderis. rei publicae quoque studet: quid praesertim apud Seras accidat noui per nuntios papyraceos edidit, addiditque commentaria non modo suo conscripta calamo sed etiam Anglice reddita, ne in insula tunc in antiquam ﬁdem reditura populus unus alterum ignoraret quid uellet; quae commentaria mox in libro sunt edita. multum uero hic uir, qua est prudentia, ad reditum illum parandum profuit. qua de re sic ipse more Solonis: opprobria et laudes quae luce et nocte dabantur, clamores uacuos, non memorare ualet. ut modo centum annis feliciter aut male quicquam eueniat, durum munus id esse puta. praesento uobis Excellentissimo Ordini Imperi Britannici adscriptum, Collegi Robinsoniani honoris causa Socium, scriptorem et editorem LOUIS CHA

18

T

H E Story of the Stone, that famous Chinese novel, languished in obscurity for thirty years after its author’s early death. Louis Cha, born in the Chinese province of Yunnan, used to listen as a child with great delight to tales told by his elders, tales of warriors and lovers, and he listened to such effect that when as a young man he could not pursue the career he intended, he could switch to story-telling, and promptly he produced his Book and Sword, the ﬁrst of many novels. In them he celebrates the gallant deeds of knights and lovers – you may like to imagine the knights errant of King Arthur’s Round Table somehow combined with the Three Musketeers; in particular he celebrates the martial art of swordplay. He writes with such style and scholarship, but also with an earthiness and a sense of fun, that these works are now read in schools and studied by academics, and they have sold 300 million copies. Not only does he know his country’s history very well; he also understands what its young people like to read, and he knows the power for good that old tales can have by way of allegory. He is attentive to politics too. He is a publisher of newspapers which focus on matters in China, and he wrote his own editorials, publishing them in English and Chinese so that in Hong Kong, at that time soon to return to its ancient allegiance, the two communities should understand each other’s aims. The editorials were later published in book form. Thanks to his moderation and common sense, Louis Cha was of great service in preparing for the end of British rule. As he himself in Solonian fashion has written of that time, 1 °

I present to you LOUIS CHA, o.b.e., Honorary Fellow of Robinson College, novelist, editor, and publisher 1

The slander and praise that came day and night do not merit mentioning; success or failure in a hundred years is no easy matter.

19

L

O Q U E N D I cognitio quali est natura? Socratem Menoni dixisse Plato uerba huiusmodi ﬁnxit: immortalis enim mens esse et saepe regigni fertur, et hic illic conspexisse omnia quot sint, omnia item didicisse: ergo aequom si bona norit uirtutemque recordatam si discere possit rursus, et omne aliud quoduis; quin cuncta propinqua natura, cuncta ut mentem didicisse sit aequom.1

at orationem discere parentium imitatione uidemur. uerba tamen simul unum quidque legimus simul quo disponi soleant ordine acquirimus; mox sponte ea dicimus quae numquam dici audiuimus. unde haec uis tam praematura puerorum? quid consili subest ut uerba quo sint ordine adstringenda uel prius apprehenderint quam recte ex ore pronuntiant? mentis alibi peregrinantis huic est ratio nulla, sed uir praestans in mathematica primus rationem edidit et mathematicis probabilem et quae non modo uim nouandi puerorum explicaret sed etiam conexus uerborum quot quales sunt complecti posset. quae prima opinatus est iam multum Platonico more mutauit, sed hanc ferme intellegamus opinionem: hominem natura linguae capacem in eam loquendam annis crescere; non enim tam discere quamlibet linguam quam linguae maturescente ui potentem ﬁeri. ita dicendi facultatem tamquam corporis membrum habendam, et dictorum ordinatione deﬁnita ingeni partis imaginem ostendere. huius rationis nondum omnes sunt explicati nodi. scitote tamen hunc neque in ea altius exploranda taciturum neque in docendo quid in re publica debeat sapiens, unde est altera eius fama uolgata. eum praesento uobis cui maxima debent ei qui linguis, qui menti, qui philosophiae student, Instituti Technologiae de Massachusetts Professorem, AV R A M N O A M C H O M S K Y 1

Plato Meno 81c5-d1.

20

H

O W do we learn what we learn and say what we say? According to Plato, Socrates said to Meno that the soul is immortal, and is reborn many times; it has seen all things in this world and in the other, and likewise has learnt all things. No wonder then if it has come to know good and if it can learn again the goodness it remembers, or anything else too. All nature is akin: hence it is no wonder that the soul has learnt all things. Yet we seem to learn to speak by copying our parents. On the other hand, at the same time as we pick up words we also pick up patterns of words, and soon we are saying things that we have never heard said. Whence comes this precocious power of children? How do they grasp the patterns of grammar before they can even pronounce words properly? Professor Chomsky has no theory of the soul’s preexistence elsewhere: good mathematician (like Plato) that he is, he has been the ﬁrst to construct a mathematically sound system which might both account for the innovating power of children and be able to cope with the very complex systems of grammatical structure. He has (like Plato) changed and adapted his ﬁrst ideas, but they can be summarized as follows: man, born capable of language, grows with time into the speaking of a language; we do not so much learn a language as become competent in one by virtue of our innate faculté de langage. Our ability to speak is thus like an organ of the body, and a generative grammar may serve as a model of one of the organs of the mind. The details of this idea are far from being all worked out, but you can be sure that as he explores it more deeply he will not fall silent on the topic any more than he will on the political responsibilities of intellectuals, an area in which he has a whole extra reputation. I present to you a man who has put students of linguistics, psychology and philosophy very greatly in his debt, AV R A M N O A M C H O M S K Y, Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

21

H

U C accedit uti quid sit molecula dicam. sunt elementa, quibus non ulla minora uidentur esse quibus ﬁeri possit res quaeque gerique, tam uaria forma, tam parua aut magna ﬁgura, conexu tam multiplici quam quaeque monet res se constare, sient hominum genus atque ferarum siue herbae fungique atque horrida frondibus arbor. sunt elementorum tamen illorum usque minora semina, quae quali conexu quodque sit auctum dicere difﬁcilest uerbis; sed qua ratione haec elementorum ﬁeri primordia possint et qua dissolui potis est hic pandere princeps.

qui cum iuuenis compositioni rerum studebat, quamquam paucae componendi tum dicebantur incognitae latere rationes, tamen obscura tam prompte explicabat ut integram rationem rei peteret. solebant eo tempore moleculae quibus intererat studere ab elementis minoribus coagmentari, sed quae deberent ea esse non omnino liquebat; rem forte aliquando potius quam ratione penetratam hic uir euertit: qui, cum moleculas penitus intellegeret quali mutatione obsessae alia in aliam uerti possent, eas quae natura erant multiplici diiungere in simpliciora constituit; habiliore tum fore ut reﬁcerentur modo. haec res usui maximo medicis erat: sic enim ﬁeri poterat ut uenena quae per se rara nascuntur, inter quae id quod prostaglandin nuncupatur, numero multo plura salutis humanae causa crearentur. harum molecularum ego uidi ﬁguras modo lineis adumbratas: apium uidentur opera esse arte ﬁngendi solutiore gaudentium. ipse oratione cum praemium Nobelianum accepit habita conexuum factorum uarietatem decoremque admiratus artem suam conectendi cum arte recte contulit pictoris et poetae. praesento uobis in Vniuersitate Harvardensi Chemiae Professorem, ELIAS JAMES COREY

22

M

Y theme now is the molecule, the smallest unit of matter of natural occurrence, the building block of all the working world. Molecules are as various in shape and size and composition as are the greater bodies they construct, be they human and animal or plants, fungi, and trees of bristling leaf. They are also constructs themselves composed of even smaller units, and it is no easy task to describe what manner of inner coherence each one has. If anyone can set forth the patterns and procedures for combining these lesser units and for undoing them, it is this man. As a student he took a course in synthetic chemistry. They told him there was little in the ﬁeld still to do, but he had a facility for solving problems of synthesis which led him to seek a systematic analysis. At the time most chemists had been trying to prepare the various molecules they studied from smaller units without it being entirely clear what those units should be; chance was sometimes more important for success than reason. Young Corey turned this process back to front: he invented retrosynthetic analysis. Through his intimate understanding of organic reactions he was able to reduce complex molecules back to their simple building blocks; now they could be synthesized efﬁciently. Medicine saw great advantage in this: drugs of rare or restricted natural occurrence, for instance the prostaglandins, could now be made in good quantity, to the beneﬁt of human health. When I see these processes set out in diagram form, I think of bees at work, rejoicing in an exceptional freedom of design. In the speech he made in 1991 when accepting the Nobel Prize for his work, Professor Corey expressed his admiration for the beauty and diversity of the reactions achieved, and justiﬁably compared the chemist’s skill in synthesis with the skills of painter and poet. I present to you E L I A S J A M E S C O R E Y, Professor of Chemistry, Harvard University

23

S

U N T mihi quae narrem – sed ab eis potius narrentur quas sustulit haec femina, puellis Africis quibus more patrio et fortuna uetitum erat ad ea gerenda spectare quibus ipsae sibi opitularentur. dicat igitur Lucia se, cum pater grauiore paupertate opprimeretur quam ut magistro solueret, ope data ita doceri ut nunc alias doceat; dicat Siphelani se post coniugis mortem ope data gallinas uenalis ea mercede alere ut se puerumque sustineat; dicat Spiwe se, primam e gente quae ad ludum iret, ope data textilia emere quibus uestimenta facta ea mercede uendat ut fratribus sororibusque docendis soluat; dicat denique Barbara sibi, cum permitteretur ad ludum ire, inuidere uim illam grauitatis quam uocamus, quod nubes saltu posset attingere. uoces earum audistis quibus ita subuentum est ut non sibi tantum sed etiam aliis sint auxilio. illa spe et quasi lege agendi imposita rem multis commendat haec femina, primum in foro isto nostro (Haecine placentas illas tam dulcis coquebat? haec illas.), tunc apud exteros, eisque recentissime qui Acta Fiscalia edunt: qui huic uni palam suppeditant. non prius intellexit quotiens in ea regione quae Zimbabwe nuncupatur doctrina priuarentur puellae quam egit: primo anno impetrauit ut XXXII ad ludum irent. iam XIII post annis, additis eis quae in regionibus Ghanensi, Zambiensi, Tanzaniensi habitant, numero amplius trecentis milibus subuentum est. magna res est, nisi potius multiplex dicatur: opes enim et misericordiam uni cuique dignissimae disponit intentas.

praesento uobis feminam Excellentissimo Ordini Imperi Britannici adscriptam, in Schola de Judge dicta negoti gerentium proximam adiutricem, negoti de feminis educandis auctorem et ducem, Collegi Homertonensis honoris causa Sociam, ANN COTTON

24

I

H AV E a story to tell1 – but let it be told by the women whom Ann Cotton has helped, young women of Africa prevented by custom and circumstance from contemplating careers by which they could develop a prosperity of their own. Let Lucia speak: her father became too poor to pay for her to stay at school, but with the help of a grant she stayed; now she teaches other girls. Let Siphelani speak: her husband died, but with the help of a grant she started keeping chickens for sale, and now sustains herself and her son. Let Spiwe speak: she was the ﬁrst in her family to go to school; with the help of a grant she bought cloth to make clothes for sale, and now pays for her brothers’ and sisters’ schooling. Let Barbara speak: when she heard she was to go to school, the force of gravity was jealous, because she could have jumped and touched the clouds! In those words you can hear how the help received has enabled those girls to work for others as well as for themselves: that aim, which is almost a rule, has commended Ann Cotton’s enterprise to many, ﬁrst in Cambridge marketplace (‘Is she the young woman who used to make such delicious cakes?’ She is indeed!), then abroad, and most recently to the Financial Times; hers is the ﬁrst charity to have their public support. How frequently girls were losing out on education came home to her when doing research in Zimbabwe. Her reaction was immediate. In her ﬁrst year she raised the resources to pay for 32 girls to go to school. Thirteen years later the number helped has risen, if you add in the girls assisted in Ghana, Zambia and Tanzania, to well over three hundred thousand. It is a big enterprise, perhaps better seen as many, many little ones; she drops her gentle rain precisely where it will do most good. I present to you ANN COTTON, o.b.e., Entrepreneur in Residence at the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning in Judge Business School, founder and Executive Director of the Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED International), Honorary Fellow of Homerton College 1

I have a story to tell is the title of the book which celebrates the ﬁrst decade of CAMFED.

25

A

R I O N Corinthius, citharoedorum aetatis suae princeps, argento multo foris accepto dum domum naue redit a nautis pecuniae cupidis, ut fertur, in mare coactus est desilire. nauem olim conscendebat hic uir: nam postquam studia tibiae confecit (sed iam tibiam alius generis exercebat quod creauit Adolphus ille saxeus), munus accepit quo uectores tibicen oblectaret, sed ipse quotiens Nouum Eboracum esset aduentum eis auditor assiduus intererat qui omnium consensu Iazyge quodam genere musicae nullis secundi habebantur. ita auctis arte et scientia sua mox, symphonia septem musicorum coniuncta, tam bene ludebat ut septiens in ordine uir musicus anni nominaretur. ad symphoniam cantatricem quoque adiunxit, de qua plura posthac. inde paulatim ad alia genera musicae conuersus cantus ipse componebat, ad nouas instrumentorum cohortis accommodabat, uersibus nouam dabat musicam; mox inuitatus musicam creabat quae fabulis per imagines in linteo agendas suppeditaret, quarum maxime innotuit illa cui nomen est Sabbatis uesperi mane proximo. ad alia praeterea adductus genera Caligas cum Fragis composuit, Gemmam cum Ansere. semper autem coniugi cantus uocis nimirum fautor constantissimus uarios parabat et pulchros. tum consilium capit quo facultatem multis musicae cuiusuis generis ipsis gerendae daret: stabulis enim uillae renouatis Odeum aediﬁcat suum aulasque diuersas quo ueniret qui uellet. hic, sicut liberis suis quibus aptissimum ingenium inest, ita aliis, praecipue iunioribus et tironibus, artem musicam scientiorum ope tradit. uirum habetis qui non modo musicissimus ipse sed musicorum auctor aliorum est. praesento uobis uirum musicum, Excellentissimi Ordinis Imperi Britannici Commendatorem, J O H N P H I L I P W I L L I A M D A N K W O RT H

26

A

R I O N of Corinth, the best singer and guitarist of his generation, made a great deal of money on tour abroad but upon sailing home he was forced by the cupidity of the crew, the story says, to jump overboard. This man also went to sea: after ﬁnishing his clarinet studies at the Royal Academy, by which time he was already busy on the alto saxophone, he took a job entertaining the passengers on a transatlantic liner, but when the ship docked in New York he spent all his time ashore in earnest audience of the city’s great players of jazz. His skill and his knowledge grew; back in England he gathered a band together, the Johnny Dankworth Seven, and soon he was playing so well that for seven years in a row he was named Musician of the Year. He also recruited a young singer – but more of her anon. His range of musical activity gradually widened. He turned composer and arranger, and created new music for existing songs. He was invited to write ﬁlm scores; probably the best known is the score for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. He moved into opera, writing Boots with Strawberry Jam and The Diamond and the Goose. At all times he was the most constant admirer of his wife’s voice, and for her he has written a variety of beautiful songs. Then came the Wavendon Allmusic Plan, to offer the chance to many to make music of every sort. He converted disused stables at his own house into a concert hall with suites of other rooms, for all who wished to come. His own children already showed talent; now others, particularly younger would-be musicians, could develop their talents in expert company. This man is not only a maker of music himself but also a maker of music in others. I present to you J O H N P H I L I P W I L L I A M D A N K W O RT H , c . b . e . , f. r . a . m . , Musician

27

C

A R M I N I S illius meministis quod olim de sonis certius imitandis conscriptum est? Me iuuat Alta Fides! ﬁt cantus enim modo summa uoce, modo hac resonat quae chordis quattuor imis,1 nec nimis arguta nec tum grauiore: sed auris non humana potest adeo altam audire; tametsi praeterlabenti placeam uespertilioni.

eodem fere tempore hic uir, trans Atlanticum educatus erudiri in doctoris gradum apud nos cum mallet, se cum eis coniunxit quos duxit Ellis Coslett, Collegi Corporis Christi tum socius. is omnium qui secum studuissent maxime hunc praestare dixit qui conata prospero efﬁceret euentu; hic uero opinatur se potius auctoris opus suscepisse: accepto enim auxilio tamen ad ultimum necesse manus ipsius imponatur. soni natura non simplex: elementa sunt nonnulla quae Magneti ﬁlo si seruaueris sibila ﬁunt. quod ne accideret, non modo inuento quid ﬁeret – sunt ea primum augenda dum seruas, postea comprimenda – ingeni naturam uel adulescens ostenderat, sed etiam edicto iure quominus si quid ab uno sit inuentum usu fruatur alter nisi per inuentorem licuerit. at licet, et accuratissime licet, ut si qui petant, bene intellecto quid faciant felici et sibi et ipsi fruantur euentu. ita sollicitudine liberatus ne perderet operam, elaboratorio aediﬁcato suo in rem subtilem adeo usque penetrauit ut testimonium ingeni delta duplex impressum nusquam non uideas; aut in aula quam Artium uocamus accipias aure monumentum et praesens qua est benignitate et renouata futurum. praesento uobis Excellentissimo Ordini Imperi Britannici honoris causa adscriptum, Doctorem in Philosophia, Collegi Pembrochiani Socium honoris causa adscriptum, R AY M I LT O N D O L B Y 1

See Horace Satires I iii 7–8.

28

F

L A N D E R S and Swann had a song for it, which you may recall: the Song of Reproduction. High Fidelity! Hi Fi’s the thing for me – . . . all the highest notes, neither sharp nor ﬂat: the ear can’t hear as high as that, still I ought to please any passing bat with my High Fidelity.

At much the same time as that was composed, Ray Dolby, after education in the United States, chose to come to Cambridge for his postgraduate training, and became one of those working under Ellis Coslett of Corpus Christi College. Coslett observed that of all those who worked with him this man was the most impressive in bringing his experiments to a successful conclusion. Dolby himself observes that ‘inventing is a bit like writing a novel: there may be a certain amount of collaboration but you cannot subcontract the actual writing.’ Sound is a complicated thing: when you commit it to magnetic tape, some sounds become audible as hiss. Dr Dolby showed his quality of mind early, not only by working out how to prevent the hiss – you ﬁrst boost the signal that causes it as you record and then attenuate it – but also by taking out a patent, that legal means whereby no one else may proﬁt from a bright idea without its inventor’s permission. And the permission in Dr Dolby’s case is given, very precisely given, so that ﬁrms which want to market his good ideas can ﬁnd out exactly what to do. The result is success for both parties. The patent freed him from worry about losing his labours’ worth; eventually he built his own laboratory, and he has continued his work in the intricacies of sound recording to a point where almost every tape for sale bears his double D logo on the cassette. Alternatively, go to a ﬁlm in the Arts Cinema and enjoy sound tracks that are played through equipment donated by him in 1982; that donation is to be repeated in the form of his latest equipment when the cinema is rebuilt. I present to you R AY M I LT O N D O L B Y, p h . d . , Honorary O.B.E., Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College

29

S

O L L E M N I cultu et caerimonia appropinquat alius quem honoremus: quem capite nudato salutamus, orationis antiquo genere laudamus, usitatis uerbis amplexi in altiorem excipimus sedem; sollemnia nostra pompa cantuque ordimur, cantu pompaque perﬁcimus. illa tam breui data tamque tenui ut ita dicam descriptione hic quidem uix stupebit, qui moribus hominum ciuium studet, cuique iuueni in Baliensibus uersari contigit: ibi nobis ciuitatem regum biai÷wß se/lma semno\\n h˚me/nwn1 auspiciis clientelisque multiplicibus seruatam exposuit, eamque ludis et feriis tam superbis munitam ut theatralem appellauerit. commentariis de bello gallorum editis tum primum inter doctos celebratus est. nam cum dixisset quot familiares pugnis adessent, qua cura pullos fouerent, quantum siue cognationis siue inimicitiae causa deponeretur pecuniae, latere sub persona gallorum ciuium dignitatem periculis undique obiectam ostendit: ita ciues suo uota soluere Dionyso seque ipsos in theatro spectare. sed unum est describere, alterum comprehensiones alienas (ut uerbis ipsius utar) comprehendere conari quomodo ipse comprehendas. sunt qui disciplina illa et ratione morum humanorum quasi fonte deducto nouo in studiis suis recreandis et illustrandis niti uoluerint: hic tamen iamdiu animo tam perspicaci et aliena et sua contemplatur ut quid ualeant quid laborent pari comprehendat iudicio. operis quod lepide cum arte mathematica cumque tragoediis scribendis conferri posse dixit (sed his magis oboediens modo esse, illa parcius) is philosophus et custos est factus ut iam Herodotus Herodotorum esse uideatur. praesento uobis in Instituto Studiorum Superiorum Princetonensi Scientiarum Socialium Haroldi Linder sub nomine Professorem, C L I F F O R D G E E RT Z 1

Aeschylus Agamemnon 182–3.

30

A

NOTHER approaches to be honoured in our annual ceremony; we doff square to greet him, we extol him in antique Latin, we pronounce the customary words and promote him to a seat on the dais; our ritual begins with a procession and music, and with music and a procession we complete it. That is a brief – indeed, I could call it a thin – description of events, but Professor Geertz will understand. For he is an anthropologist, and it was his fortune as a young man to work in Bali. There he revealed to us a community constructed from kingships powerful in an august immobility and served by people in criss-cross webs of dependency, the whole so sustained by elaborate festivals that he called it the theatre state. It was his essay Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockﬁght which founded his reputation among scholars. In telling us of the different groups of friends and family who attend a ﬁght, of the cosseting of the birds who perform, of the size and nature of bets made and how kinship and enmities are involved in them, he showed us that the ﬁghting of the birds really dramatises the everlurking threat to the status of the men themselves. ‘It is a Balinese reading of Balinese experience, a story they tell themselves about themselves.’ But description is one thing; it is another (if I may use words of his own) to ‘attempt somehow to understand how it is we understand understandings not our own’. Some have turned to anthropology as if it were a reservoir of insights into the condition of humankind from which they could draw to refresh their own studies. Professor Geertz has been contemplating both his own and others’ work for some time with so shrewd an eye that he has a most judicious understanding of the weaknesses as well as the strengths of his subject. He has wittily compared it with quantum mechanics and Italian opera: it is less extravagant than the former, he says, and more methodical than the latter. Such is his insight and such his oversight that he has now become the anthropologist of anthropology. I present to you C L I F F O R D G E E RT Z , Harold F. Linder Professor of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

31

V

IDIT hic uir cum puer erat in pinacotheca Britannica capitis imaginem Gulielmi illius prophetae poetae pictoris gypso dum uiuit formatam. multum puerilia possunt: nam in eo capite sentire tum se dicit aliquem corpore et mente praeditum inesse qui per cutem superﬁciemque se quasi truderet; mox uelle se totum corpus humanum eo modo tractare quo uiderentur uultum pictores antiqui, quorum Rhenanum illum imagines sui notissimas quis nescit in speculo intuentem depingere? sed non sic statuarii, qui corpora aliena intueri solent, seu Phidias Polyclitusque memorantur seu Michaelis ille Tuscus et Antonius Venetus. nomen tamen hic uir habet quod suo cum statuas creat utitur corpore, idque mirum in modum: nam totus nudatus subtiliore quam Coa ueste inuoluitur, quam deinde gypso tegit madido, adiuuante uxore; tum tectus eo se statu tenet quem optauit donec concrescente gypso ipse teneatur. tandem integumentum non sine periculo serra membratim exsecatur; sed adhuc multiplicando se superest. quid tamen sic agit? ut se glorietur? minime: nam excepto quod marem esse non praeteriri potest, nequaquam se spectanti offert – immo, membra illa exsecata, cum rursus in unum coacta laminis plumbi glutino feruminatis uestiuit, uix iam uidentur cuiusquam esse quem agnoscas – sed nescioquem eum creat a quo tu dum spectas spectari ipse uidearis. hac ratione ars statuaria, admodum ut uidebatur uetustate dilapsa et exhausta, reuiuiscit. monumentum autem si requiris, quid usquam notius quam quod mirantur cottidie dum praetereunt centena milia hominum, septentrionalis uocatus ille angelus? praesento uobis uirum Statuarium, Excellentissimo Ordini Imperi Britannici adscriptum, Magistrum in Artibus, Collegi Sanctae et Indiuiduae Trinitatis Alumnum et honoris causa Socium, Collegi Iesu honoris causa Socium, A N T O N Y M A R K D AV I D G O R M L E Y

32

I

N the National Portrait Gallery there is a plaster mask of William Blake made while he was alive. Antony Gormley saw it when he was a boy. Childhood experiences can be powerful. ‘What affected me,’ he says, ‘was feeling the presence of someone through the skin, of a pressure behind the skin which was both physical and psychological.’ He wanted to treat the whole human body, he says, as perhaps portrait painters in the past treated the face. We may recall the famous self-portraits that Rembrandt made by using a mirror; but it is the bodies of others that sculptors study, as Phidias and Polyclitus are said to have done, or Michelangelo and Canova. Antony Gormley is famous, however, for using his own body when he makes statues, and a remarkable business it is: he strips naked and wraps himself in clingﬁlm; this he covers with wet plaster, with his wife’s assistance; then he holds the posture he wants until the plaster sets and holds him. Finally the plaster is cut off him in pieces with a saw. It is a risky process, but so far he survives his own multiplication. This is no act of self-gloriﬁcation, however; he is not, except inasmuch as he is unavoidably male, putting himself on show at all. When those pieces of plaster are cut off him and re-assembled into one, he covers them with sheets of lead, soldering the lead together, and the ﬁgure looks very little like anyone you would recognize; but for all its anonymity, even as you gaze at it, it seems to be looking at you. Statue-making had appeared to be an art of the past, exhausted and silent; this man has made it live again. If you want a particular icon to remember, best known of his works in any Domain is the one that a hundred thousand people see every day, and call the Angel of the North. I present to you A N T O N Y M A R K D AV I D G O R M L E Y, o . b . e . , m . a . , Honorary Fellow of Jesus College and of Trinity College, Sculptor

33

’E

n panti« panto«ß moi~r’ e¶nestin. eij de« mh÷,

~ ß sa»rx a£n e˙⑂ mh\ sar⑂o/ß, e˙⑂ de\ mh\ trico«ß pw qri«x a£n ge¿noito; panti« ga\r panto\ß me÷roß.1 sic sapiens ille Anaxagoras: nam si frumento fructibusque alimur, unde ﬁt sanguis et ossa nisi iam in cibo insunt aliquo modo? quam rationem sic refutauit T. Lucretius: Quorum nil ﬁeri quoniam manifesta docet res, scire licet non esse in rebus res ita mixtas, uerum semina multimodis immixta latere multarum rerum in rebus communia debent.2 quae res si nobis manifestior est, gratias huic uiro agamus qui generationem animalium ouis tractatis perscrutatur. oua quibus utitur parit Xenopus leuis bufo, cloacarum incola fertilitate libera, paritque perparua. sed hic qua est agilitate digitorum nucleum e cellula sublatum cui potestas propria aut huius aut illius creandi iam tota deﬁnita est in ouum enucleatum inserit. en bono auspicio alterum crescit animal, omnino idem ac prius. sic postea creuit ovilla illa quae uocabatur Plangon; sed tamquam huius uiri parergon habeatur. qui ﬁt tamen ut cellulae istae iam saepius ipsae diuisae cum in oua enucleata restitutae sunt non partem hanc illamue corporis tantum creent sed totum animal? qui ﬁt ut ita se diuidant ut singulis quibusque instruamur quibus opus est ad hominem uel Xenopodem creandum? quando denique potestas illa ceterarum partium generandarum perditur, retinetur huius illiusue discretae? num cuiquam animali ullo tempore suae sit initium uitae disputent philosophi; hic uir uitam ipsam uestigare non desinit. praesento uobis Equitem Auratum, Doctorem in Philosophia, Regiae Societatis Sodalem, biologiae cellularum in nomine John Humphrey Plummer Professorem Emeritum, negoti de cancris biologiaque embryonica instituti olim Praesidem, Collegi Churchilliani olim Socium, Collegi Magdalenae honoris causa Socium et quondam Caput, J O H N B E RT R A N D G U R D O N 1

Fragment 11 (Simplicius, Phys. 164.23) and fragment 10 (schol. in Greg. Naz. Patrologia Graeca 36.911), adapted. 2 Lucretius 1.893–6.

34

H E R E is a portion of everything in everything. Otherwise, how could ﬂesh come of what is not ﬂesh, or hair of what is not hair? A part of all is in all.’ So thought Anaxagoras: if we feed on bread and fruit, where do blood, bones and ﬂesh come from, unless they are somehow there already in the food? Lucretius disagreed: ‘As the facts show that none of that happens, we can see that there is no mixture of things in things like that; there must instead be atoms of many things lurking commingled together, shared around in many ways.’ If the facts are clearer nowadays, we should thank Sir John Gurdon, who investigates the development of animal life in the egg. The eggs he uses are provided by the South African clawed toad, which lives in sewers, ovulates easily and produces eggs about a millimetre across. Sir John is a man of great dexterity: he removes the nucleus of a cell which has become fully specialised, its power of growth to this or that being now limited, and puts it into an egg from which the nucleus has been removed. Lo and behold, with good fortune a second animal develops, absolutely identical with the original. That is, incidentally, how Dolly the sheep was grown, but she is best considered a Gurdonian byblow. More importantly, how is it that those cells, themselves already the product of many divisions, do not create just this or that bit of the animal when restored to an enucleated egg, but the whole animal? How do they divide themselves in such a way that we are equipped with all the particular bits we need in order to become human beings – or South African clawed toads? At what point is the power of generating all the other bits lost and the power of generating only the particular bit retained? Whether there now is a moment when life begins for any living creature is for philosophers to discuss; Sir John continues his research into life itself.

‘T

I present to you Sir J O H N B E RT R A N D G U R D O N , p h . d . , f. r . s . , John Humphrey Plummer Professor of Cell Biology Emeritus, formerly Chairman of the Wellcome Trust and Cancer Research UK Institute of Cancer and Developmental Biology, sometime Fellow of Churchill College, Honorary Fellow and formerly Master of Magdalene College

35

I

U S T U S, ait propheta, in sua ﬁde uiuet. iustum uirum hunc esse e ﬁde apparet; ﬁdem si quaeritis, rationi qua praediti natura sint homines afﬁrmandae et arguendae cognoritis eum totum deditum, idque eis temporibus cum spretam uel detortam uel dubitatam praesertim in patria uidebat. dignum eum esse qui inter eos habeatur agnoscimus qui quasi lumen scientiae quoddam attulerunt ad naturam et mores societatis humanae accurate perfecteque penetrandos; quorum inter Germanos maior exstitisse uidetur numerus quam usquam alibi ex quo primum erupit apud Graecos philosophandi studium. at qua norma ualet mos? quo ﬁt iure facinus iustum? itane efﬁci potest ut ratione potius usi quam ui uiuamus inter nos? talia secum iamdudum reputans hic uir breui quidem sic fortasse respondeat, ingenio quo quid inter nos communicare possimus eo inhaerere rationem, adeoque praeualere posse meliorem ratiocinationem ut consensio ﬁat. sed uia longa reputandi et multiplex est, nec iam in omnibus partibus munita: sed si quis uult sequi, pro mansionibus ut ita dicam et deuersoriis libros inueniet, quorum duos praecipue, de consilio communiter agendi et de perpetua ratione sapientium conscriptos, qui legerit percurrat. multae uariaeque necesse est in opere tanto suppeditent doctrinae, quibus si quando dubitatum est rectene hic pro consuetudine cuiusque utatur, quid mirum? multo magis hoc praestat, quod inter scopulos illecebrasque dubitantium clauum rectum tenet1 seruatque rationem. adhuc uisus procul, et apparebit in ﬁnem et non mentietur. uirum summae humanitatis praesento uobis, Sociologiae et Philosophiae in Vniuersitate Johann Wolfgang Goethe Francofurtensi ad Moenum Professorem Emeritum, JÜRGEN HABERMAS 1

Ennius Annales 483.

36

‘T

H E just man shall live by his faith,’ says the prophet.1 The justice of this man is plain from his faith, and his faith is in the essential rationality of man. He has devoted all his life to asserting it and arguing it, even though he has lived in a period when, particularly in his own country, reason has been variously despised, distorted or doubted. We count him among the thinkers of the Enlightenment, who have sought full and careful analysis of the nature and morality of human society. The German contribution to the Enlightenment is perhaps, in number and quality of thinkers, matched only by that of ancient Greece in the dawn of philosophy. But what makes a norm valid? What makes an action just? Is it possible to fashion a way of living together based on reason rather than force? Professor Habermas has been pondering such questions for half a century. A short answer might be that reason is inherent in our human capacity to communicate with each other: a superior argument can have power to achieve consensus. The path of analysis has been long and complex, however, and is not yet fully prepared; but its waystages are there for followers in the shape of his books, chief among which we note The Theory of Communicative Action and The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: ‘he who reads may run.’1 So great an undertaking must draw on many different disciplines. It will be no surprise, to hear that this man’s interpretations of them are sometimes disputed; far more important, amid siren voices of scepticism, is his steadfast championing of reason. ‘The vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie.’1 I present to you a man of consistent humanity and optimism, JÜRGEN HABERMAS, Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Philosophy in the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main 1

Habakkuk 2.2-4.

37

R

E I theatralis studio tam penitus est hic uir imbutus ut etiam adulescens ad ludos uatis nostri spectandos centum milia passuum binis usus rotis soleret uehi. o tempora, o mores! quid suos liberos admoneat, qui eodem amore sunt praediti? verba quidem quae huic quondam studere hic appetenti dixit dominus ille Thomas sunt digna memoratu: Veronensem procum, ait, egisse nuntiaris. Ita. Age! Quid? Age! surge! territus hic surgit et uersus quosdam emittit. Bene; gratias; uale. o tempora, o mores! in hoc uiro collaudando uereor ne, fabulis quas optime protulit longo ordine notatis, si quam quis maxime admiratus est praetermiserim oriatur inuidia cum certamine: Optime, dicet quispiam, Bella Rosaria. Mea quidem sententia, alter, Somnium. Sed Aeschyline tres illas? sic alius. neque errauerit eorum quisquam. sed et plures sunt numero quam ut sic agam, et momenti paene maioris hoc est, quod primum cohorti regali Gulielmianae deinde theatro gentili condendo praefectus, tantum post siparium quantum in exostra occupatus, totam rem difﬁcultatibus saepius impeditam adeo bene gerendam administrandamque curauit ut uitae ciuilis nostrae bina lumina uiderentur; interea quod in hortis urbanis non egit at rure quanta omnium uoluptate opera musica proferebat! ut uero ﬂorebant illo tempore scriptores histriones interpretes! uix tandem hic, munere publico seposito, ultro cum cohorte sua ad arcana Dionysi etiam altius exploranda discessit. Non mihi placent, ait olim, labores mei: contentus, cur usque laborarem? adeo summam artis scaenicae absolutionem perfectionemque sectatur. praesento uobis Equitem Auratum, Excellentissimi Ordinis Imperi Britannici Commendatorem, Magistrum in Artibus, Collegi Sanctae Catharinae honoris causa Socium, histrionum ducem, PETER REGINALD FREDERICK HALL

38

P

E T E R Hall is so passionately in love with the theatre that as a youth he would cycle across to Stratford, over a hundred miles, simply to see the plays of Shakespeare. Those were the days! What words of warning would he give his own children, who are also committed to the theatre? Words that are worth rehearsal here occurred when he was being interviewed to read English by the famous Tom Henn: ‘They say you’ve done Petruchio.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do it.’ ‘What?’ ‘Do it! Stand up!’ Trembling he rose and recited a speech. ‘Good. Thank you. Goodbye.’ Those, too, were the days! In commending this man to you I am reluctant to give a long list of his famous productions in case I leave out somebody’s favourite and become a cause of contention. ‘Wars of the Roses,’ someone will say. ‘I preferred the Dream,’ says another. ‘But what about the Oresteia?’ asks a third. And they will all have a claim to be right. Fortunately, he has too many successes to list. In any case, almost more important than his productions may be ﬁrst his creation of the Royal Shakespeare Company and then his direction of the National Theatre, where he spent as much time offstage as on it, and though vexed by various problems conducted both enterprises so brilliantly that they shone in the life of the nation like beacons; and at the same time, if the Garden was not his place for opera, the Sussex countryside was: what a joy the productions at Glyndebourne were! And what a time it was for the stage in every way, for actors and playwrights as well as for producers! Finally he laid aside public ofﬁce and set off with his own company on yet deeper explorations of the mysteries of theatre. ‘I’m discontented with my work,’ he once said; ‘otherwise, I wouldn’t go on working.’ That is the measure of the perfection still sought by this prince of producers. I present to you Sir P E T E R R E G I N A L D F R E D E R I C K H A L L , c . b . e . , m . a . , Honorary Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Director of plays, ﬁlms, and operas

39

H

U N C leporem lepore suo Dionysus adulescentem cepit suum: nam etiam dum studet hic uir Roscios aequalis ad se collegerat. ipse partis agebat, proferebat ipse fabulas, uaria adhuc conscribit, sed scribendis praestat fabulis; nec false dicuntur omnium qui se in re scaenica exerceant posterorum memoria maxime teneri nomina auctorum. primo saeua quaedam indignatio uerba faciebat. uis illa manet, cum potestate coniuncta id rectissima occupandi de quo disputari placuerit; sed partes praesertim feminarum iam ampliore sunt intellectu animi ornatae. in fabula quae Copia uocatur, Susannam primum licet oderis, sed causa tota dicta contrarie quoque sentias, nec multo te aliter mouere uideatur Alicia: pendet admodum altera ex altera. in fabula quae Dentes Risusque nominatur, Margarita, cui in uino aliisque fortasse rebus sit ueritas, haec subito: nec quisquamst grauis, pulcherue quisquam, sed senescendi modo sordes tenues sunt. tam poetice raro facit, sed semper politice: nam fabulas, quarum hoc capite praestat ea quae Fit Quod Fit uocatur, informat res publica, per hunc et hunc expressa qui quippe media sapientia homines acutius forsitan dicant quam ipsi intellectum habeant. atque eane posthac legentur quae ex hodiernis rebus oriuntur? at non modo legentur eius fabulae, quae iam in scholis inuestigantur, sed ubique gentium agentur quas histriones amant, quibus inest cum uis tum facetiae: equidem audita Susanna his se interpellare uerbis non risum continui, Nec uero iuuenes quidem me iuuant: quid enim angustius? utriusque enim Musae ditatus est gratia. praesento uobis Equitem Auratum, Magistrum in Artibus, Collegi Iesu honoris causa Socium, fabularum scriptorem, D AV I D H A R E

40

T

H I S is a hare coursed and caught in his youth by Dionysus himself: while still a student he had formed a company of actors. He used to act himself, he used to direct, he still writes a variety of things, but pre-eminently he writes plays. Of all who busy themselves in the world of theatre, it is truly said that posterity remembers best the names of playwrights. When he began, there was a good deal of Juvenal’s scorn and indignation in him. The energy of that remains, combined with a rare talent for going straight for the point at issue and staying on it, but his female characters in particular are now drawn with the sympathy of a larger human understanding. In his play Plenty, Susanna is someone you may at ﬁrst dislike; when she has put her whole case you may also feel the opposite, and the character called Alice may impress you similarly. To a considerable extent each works in reaction to the other. In his play Teeth ’n’ Smiles, there is a character called Margaret (In vino veritas could be her motto, but other substances come into the picture) who suddenly says, ‘There are no great, there are no beautiful, there is only the thin ﬁlth of getting old.’ He seldom writes so poetically, but he is always political (Stuff Happens is the clearest example), in that his plays are penetrated and shaped by the whole wider world in which they happen, and the perceptions of it are expressed by characters who, as people without a privileged intelligence, may well speak with a shrewdness beyond their own understanding. And will plays born of a contemporary concern ﬁnd readers in the future? They will indeed: scholars are at work on his oeuvre already, and his plays will continue to ﬁnd theatres too, because actors enjoy them. With their force goes a wit: I laughed out loud when I heard Susanna say, almost as an aside, ‘And I don’t really like young men. You’re through and out the other side in no time at all.’ The two Muses have endowed him most richly. I present to you Sir D AV I D H A R E , m . a . , Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, playwright

41

I

N huius pictoris secta pictor est unus multiplicesque sectae: nam multis se generibus artis exercet, neque uno titulo comprehenditur. singulorum enim imagines saepe pingit, non neglecta sua, idque primum cum uix moris pictoribus imagines facere erat. spectat recta ad eos, eique plerumque recta ad eum; in media tabula locantur recti uel sedentes, singuli uel bini aliquando – nisi forte coniuges illos recordamini cum fele depictos, tabulam clarissimam solitoque more prae ceteris, dispositione partium quae simplex uidetur esse uiuidisque coloribus, compositam. multas autem calamo cerulisque usus conﬁcit, neque id tum moris nisi ad exercitationes faciendas erat; paret manus oculo sine ullo interpretationis errore. saepe praeterea aqua depicta quomodo reddantur ﬂuctuationes eius et perluciditates, subiti impetus atque otia lente restituta, perquirit; tabulam recordemini precor aspersionis maioris nomine dictam. cum primum inter Americanos incoluit – sed redit, reditque ruris Eboracensis sui semper appetentior – Hogarthianum imitatus exemplum ganeonis cursum imaginum serie exposuit; postea cantico de eadem re proposito scaenas adeo insignis apparauit ut laudum pars maior eis occuparetur, atque opera alia musica magno ingenio et arte ornauit. uirum uideritis uariis artis generibus exercitatissimum, peritissimum, curiosissimum: nam libro conscripto de arcana quae dicitur scientia, pictoribus Europaeis (quorum opera his DCC annis facta optime cognouit) subsidio esse cameram obscuram quam uocamus ostendit; quam rationem urget tabulis multis quas minute lustretis oblatis. argumentum sic ﬁt plerumque conspectu. hoc, ni fallor, opus omnino non obscurum sed uiri sapientissimi est. praesento uobis uirum inter Comites Honoratissimos adscriptum, Regiae Academiae Sodalem, pictorem Musis amicissimum, D AV I D H O C K N E Y

42

I

N the Hockney school of painting there is only one painter but several schools. He is expert in many genres; no one label ﬁts. Portraits are a notable part of his work, including self-portraits, and he took to portraiture when it was not fashionable. He looks at his subjects straight, and most of them look straight back at him; he puts them in the middle of the picture, standing or sitting, singly or sometimes in pairs – unless, that is, you recall Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, a picture which has become a classic, most Hockneyesque of all Hockneys with its deceptively simple composition and its vigorous colours. Then there are his many drawings in pencil and crayon; that too was not fashionable, being a technique more for sketching and practice. Hand follows eye in unerring fulﬁlment of intent. Water is another subject of fascination, with all its undulations and transparencies, its sudden surges and slow restorations of calm. You may recall a painting called A bigger splash. When he ﬁrst settled in America – he always returns, however, increasingly attracted now by the landscape of his native Yorkshire – taking inspiration from Hogarth’s sequence of pictures he created his own Rake’s Progress. Later came the opera of that name at Glyndebourne for which he created the scenery, so brilliantly that it almost stole the show, and other operas have beneﬁted from the genius of his imagination. He is an artist of great expertise, wide study and a strong curiosity: hence a book he wrote called Secret Knowledge. In it he shows how European artists, of whose works over seven centuries he displays a remarkable knowledge, called in aid the camera obscura; he argues his theory mostly by presenting a great number of paintings for close inspection. The evidence is thus largely for the eyes to judge, and it is certainly not obscure. This is a book of considerable scholarship. I present to you D AV I D H O C K N E Y, c . h . , r . a . , artist

43

H

O R D E U M, fabae, siligo, pisa, auena, triticum, crescit in modis occultis omne frumenti genus. sed herbarum ista series nescioquid sapit Europaeum: nunc sata permultis celebretur oportet oryza, qua cum uescatur omnium hominum qui sunt in orbe terrarum pars dimidia, cumque eorum qui sunt in orbe numerus semper augeatur, is qui fructu frequentiore certiore meliore donet nonne maximis est gratiis maximisque laudibus dignus? hic uir inter eos qui ‘maxume quidem gaudent oryza’1 natus iam XXX amplius annos experitur quomodo eius frumenti noua seminum genera in uim messemque magis frugiferam colantur. panici forma plantis est, non multo auenae dissimilis; stirps gracilis, et grano suum cuique stamen. disponitur in paludibus manu, adeoque per annos in hominum usu cogitur esse ut ea fortasse quae nunc coluntur semina nisi in debito solo sata uix ﬂoreant. iam diu per saecula uim cognouimus eligendi, inserendi, coniungendi quo qua largius nobis metatur seges, ita ut quae sit uni uirtus seu resistendi caelo seu bestiolis aduersandi seu Robigo Floraeque supplicandi eam alterum frumenti genus traditam habere possit; sed aliquid adhuc et tempori concedendum fuit et fortunae. quanto nunc subtilius et strictius res agatur ex hoc manifestum est quod hic uir non modo diuersa oryzae genera numero amplius CCC diffudit in terras, quorum unum iam per quadringentiens iugerum seritur, sed etiam nouissimum spondet uel abundantiore fructu genus. pauci sunt quorum opera sedulitate scientia tot esurientibus suppeditari sit coeptum; uirum praesento uobis optime de gente humana meritum, Regiae Societatis Sodalem, in Instituto Oryzae Generandae in insulis Marianis locato Principem et Caput, GURDEV SINGH KHUSH 1

Pliny Naturalis Historia 18.71.

44

O

AT S, peas, beans, and barley grow, oats, peas, beans, and barley grow; do you or I or anyone know how oats, peas, beans, and barley grow?

It is a rather western menu that the old rhyme contains; we need to be singing of rice, truly a world crop: it is eaten by half the people on earth, and since the number of people on earth is always increasing, anyone who can make the rice crop bigger, better, and more reliable earns not only thanks but also admiration. Dr Khush was born in India, where the staple crop was known to the Romans to be rice, and he has been experimenting on new strains of it for over thirty years, seeking to improve its productivity in the ﬁeld. Rice is a panicoid plant, rather like oats; it has a slender stalk, and the grains branch off the stalk separately. The seedlings are planted out underwater by hand; it has become so pliant to human need that probably no cultivated strain could now survive in the wild. Over the generations we have come to learn the effectiveness of selection, grafting, and cross-breeding in order to make plants serve us better, any quality in one variety, whether of resistance to insects or disease or of climatic durability, being transferred to other varieties, but there was a slowness in the process, and some need of luck. These practices proceed more systematically and precisely now, as is clear from the fact that Dr Khush has already delivered to the world over three hundred new breeding lines, one of which has been planted on eleven million hectares, and that now a new plant type of even greater yield is promised. Few men do so much with such sustained research to feed so many hungry people. I present to you G U R D E V S I N G H K H U S H , f. r . s . , Principal Plant Breeder and Head of the Division of Plant Breeding, Genetics and Biochemistry at the International Rice Institute in the Philippines

45

‘Q

U I N Q U I E S quadragenas una minus accepi; ter uirgis caesus sum; semel lapidatus sum; ter naufragium feci; nocte et die in profundo maris fui.’ ita Paulus ille Tarsinus opera sua tormentaque exposuit.1 quid si sua hic uir narraret? qui saepe iterumque constrictus, qui bis pulsus in exilium, semel damnatus capitis, ter caede temptatus, nonne uirtute plenissimus uir tam fortis tamque ﬁrmus habeatur? ‘nec uero,’ ut dicit M. Tullius,2 ‘habere uirtutem satis est quasi artem aliquam nisi utare; uirtus in usu sui tota posita est; usus autem eius est maximus ciuitatis gubernatio.’ qui quidem olim exul hospitio nostro acceptus tum Germanos, bello et suspicione inter se diu diuolsos, rursus in unum conuenire contigit ut ipse perspiceret; cumque magno fuerit ea res documento quid pro suis moliendum putet, cautius agendum lentiusque festinandum constituit ne res liberatione instantiore turbentur. quae quoniam cum potestate deliberat, melius huic euenerit quam ei qui scripsit exul: Vt dolet amissum luscinia semper amorem, nostra mouet simili pectora more dolor. Luciferum testor tenuataque cornua lunae: uos modo me nostis crimina falsa pati. hanc animam tecum saltem si, uita, teneres! fata uetant: maior cui tamen error erat? nec culpae quicquam nec criminis esse locutus mollia uerba dabas: sed mihi pectus abit. iamne mei tam mox oblitus es immemor omnis? uertere et exaudi: semper amatus amem! nam hic redit, etiam dissuadentibus amicis redit, plebis uoluntate conﬁsus; quoque constantior auctor eius est iuris quo qui plebi praesint plebi sciscantur, eo magis ciues uti ratione consuescunt, atque ipse illo praemio Nobeliano ﬁt dignior quo ornatus est pacis. eum praesento uobis qui nomen suum mox commemorandum apud nos permisit, Rei Publicae Coreae Praesidem, KIM DAE-JUNG 1 2

St Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians 11.24–25. Cicero de Re Publica 1.2.

46

I V E times received I forty stripes save one; thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck; a night and a day have I been in the deep.’ So wrote St Paul, in demonstration of his endurance. Kim Dae-jung has a personal history which is not very different. Time and again he has been under house arrest; twice he has been in exile, once he was sentenced to death, and three attempts have been made to assassinate him. This is a man of great determination and courage. And yet, as Cicero observed, merely to have courage is not enough: courage is courage only when it exercises itself, and its greatest exercise is the government of a nation. Kim Dae-jung was in Cambridge, putting some exile to good use, when the reuniﬁcation of Germany took place. He saw for himself what problems arise when people long divided by war and suspicion suddenly come together; the experience has been very useful to him in considering how to approach such an event in his own country. Something more cautious has seemed appropriate, to prevent the destabilization that can follow too sudden a change. At least he makes plans from a position of proper authority, a fortune which may have eluded the author of these verses:

‘F

In tears I long for my love: the mountain cuckoo shares my grief. Only the thinning moon and the stars at ﬁrst light know these charges are false. Would that my soul at least could be with my love. Who was the transgressor? Nor blame nor fault accrues, you said. Words to console. My heart constricts. Ah, ah, love, have you forgotten already? Love, turn to me, listen to me. Love me!1 For Kim Dae-jung came back; even when friends were against it, he came back. He puts his trust in the will of the people, and the more persistent an apostle of democracy he is, the better accustomed his fellow-citizens become to it, and the better he himself merits his Nobel Prize for Peace. I present to you one whose name will soon with his permission be commemorated in Cambridge, KIM DAE-JUNG, President of the Republic of Korea 1

This poem, entitled ‘Jeong gwa jeong gok,’ is by Jeong Seo, a twelfth-century ofﬁcial who was wrongly accused of disloyalty to his king. It is not known whether the poem had the desired effect.

47

T

E , uerruca, cano, uerrucarumque creator icosahedrali forma mirabile uirus cum socio, tessellatum quod nicotianae perdit holus: nam sunt penetralia uestra reclusa huic homini, qui multimodis primordia rerum inspiciens uidit propria crescentia uita. sed

quis potis est dignum pollenti pectore carmen condere pro rerum maiestate hisque repertis?1

dicendus autem is est quem poeta ille stuperet res tam subtilis aut ipsis oculis conspexisse aut mente concepisse. iam paene L sunt anni ex quo primum hic uir apud nos earum rerum naturae studere coepit quas moleculas uocamus, earumque praecipue ingenti corpore factarum elementisque multis, quorum quaedam architecturae molecularum ita intersunt ut moderentur qua sit forma; talique in aediﬁcatione uersatur uirus, sed pro nostra parte praue. nam uitio inducto morbum insinuat, quem uelimus expulsum. inde partim labores huius uiri intellegatis quo tendant. sed oratione perlecta quam praemio Nobeliano accepto habuit, partem alteram laborum cognoueritis: opus enim fuisse ut formam experiretur unius decem annis, ut alterius duodecim, ad apparatus auxiliumque faciendum. o experimenta multiplicia! o Daedalum ingeniosum! ﬁeri uero potest ut pretio maiore quam quae inuenit sint rationes ad inueniendum compertae; nam sunt omnes ad usus alienos aptissimae. nunc digitos zinci quos dicimus esse recludit. inter enim binos dentis suspensa ﬁguris oppositis (hoc se ex helica par alpha uocata proicit, atque illud laqueo qui beta cluetur crinalis) zinci primordia singula monstrat librari; tali ingenio natura gerit res. praesento uobis Equitem Auratum, Ordini insigniter Meritorum adscriptum, Doctorem in Scientiis, Societatis Regalis Praesidem, Collegiorum Sancti Petri Sanctaeque et Indiuiduae Trinitatis honoris causa Socium, Biologiae Molecularis Elaboratori pro Concilio Rei Medicae Inuestigandae quondam Curatorem, AARON KLUG 1

Lucretius V 1–2.

48

O

F warts I sing, and of the wonderful wart-making virus with its twenty sides, and the tobacco mosaic virus too; the game is up: your inmost arts are known to this man, who in many minute ways has seen you pullulating close at hand.

But who has the power in his breast to make poetry worthy of the wonders of nature and of these discoveries? Here is a scientist at whom Lucretius would marvel, so subtle are the things that his eyes and his mind have seen. It is nearly ﬁfty years since he ﬁrst came to Cambridge to study macromolecular complexes. Some elements in these large molecules so affect their structure as to control its shape, and viruses have the same power, but with what we consider an evil effect. The virus sets up a fault, and the fault a disease, which we would like to remove. That will give some idea of the direction of this man’s research. If you read the address he gave upon receiving the Nobel prize for Chemistry, you will develop a second view: he speaks of experiments on this or that piece of viral construction that took ten or twelve years to bring to completion: how complex such research must be, and how inventive the researcher! It may well be that more important than his ﬁndings are the means by which he made them: all have proved very useful in other ﬁelds. Now he reveals zinc ﬁngers: for between two pairs of prongs cysteine and histidine (projecting from an alpha helix one, the other from a beta hairpin loop), he shows the poising of a single atom of zinc. So neat is Nature’s craftsmanship. I present to you Sir A A R O N K L U G , o . m . , s c . d . , p. r . s . , Honorary Fellow of Peterhouse and of Trinity College, formerly Director of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge

49

T

R I A nomina si tibi natae data sunt, eaque omnia carminum nomina, quid facias? quin cantabis? etiam puella, patris exemplo ﬁrmata, cantabat haec femina. sed quali uoce cantat! unica est, nec si audiuisti, si cantanti adfuisti, facile ex aurium memoria labitur. domicilium habebat iuuenis in summo tabulato situm; sursum deorsum erant LX amplius scalae ascendendae, descendendae: hinc facultas ei frequens, intra muros canendo gratissimos, uocis exercendae animaeque augendae. cottidie lentius, id quod scalis metiebatur, animam exspirare conabatur; ita latera sibi et altitudinem illam uocalem colebat. sed aliud est ars cantandi, aliud ingenium. magistra ei olim, Carissima, inquit, nos ut tu cantare non possumus, sed exercendo fortasse tu ut nos; aliquid diligentiae coniugis debet; sed quae cultu et usu assiduo se ipsa docuit optime in eo libro legatis expressa cui nomen est Tu cantare si uis potes. nonnulla ibi sunt oratori notanda. Musas theatrales quoque coluit, sed prae ceteris interpretatrix est carminum, quae siue ipsius in usum siue in aliorum creata omnia arte uoce studio fecit sua. sed altius inquirere oportet. nam praeter ea quae Aristoxenus in ruqmo¿n et me¿loß diuidit,1 quae cantando modulatione canore sonis eduntur, syllabae cuique uerborum suum datur pondus, sua subtilis expressio, ut audiatur in primis quid dicere poeta uellet. bacchatur amore iuuenis, uentum inspirat hiemalem, alia uatis nostri carmina multo amore reddit; sed eheu, iam lusum est nobis. praesento uobis cantatricem et histrionem arte singulari praeditam, Excellentissimi Ordinis Imperi Britannici Dominam Commendatricem, Clementina Dinah Campbell, uel potius CLEO LAINE 1

See Quintilian 1.10.22.

50

I

F you receive at birth three names which each make the title of a song, what are you to do but sing? This lady has been singing since childhood; her father was her ﬁrst example. And what a voice it is that she sings with: unique, and, if you have ever heard her or been to a concert of hers, unforgettable. She lived in her youth in a ﬂat at the top of the block. There were sixty or more steps to scale, ascending and descending, and the walls of the stairway had a most receptive acoustic; it was all very good for warming up the voice and increasing breath control. Every day, measuring her success by the steps, she would try to make her breath last longer, developing thereby not only her lungs but also that remarkable vocal range of four octaves. Technique is one thing, however, and talent another. A teacher once said to her, ‘My dear, we couldn’t sing like you; but you could probably sing like us, with training’. Her husband’s attentiveness has counted for something, but you should read her book entitled You too can sing if you want to ﬁnd an excellent account of what she has taught herself by constant, careful practice. There is advice there for an orator to heed. She has acted as well as sung, but she is supremely an interpreter of songs; whether they were written for her to perform or for others ﬁrst, she makes them her own by her skill, her devotion, and her voice. Analysis of her success must go further, however: more important than the essentially musical qualities of her vocalization is the attention she gives to the words, where each syllable has its own proper weighting and its own precise articulation, so that the meaning of the text is paramount. We may think of ‘Mad about the boy,’ or ‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind,’ and other of Shakespeare’s poetry which she has delivered with passion. But alas, our revels now are ended. I present to you Dame C L E O L A I N E , Vocalist and Actress

51

H

U I U S mundi, ut C. ait Plinius,1 extera indagare nec interest hominum nec capit humanae coniectura mentis, furor est, profecto furor, egredi ex eo et scrutari extera, quasi uero mensuram ullius rei possit agere qui sui nesciat aut mens hominis uidere quae mundus ipse non capiat. ecce qui sic furit, sapientiae multorum euersor. huic enim quippe philosopho bene conuenit multitudo mundorum quo confugiat: nam coniectura illa capta, dummodo ea probabilitate qua noster habentur esse, ea quae solitis condicionibus difﬁciliora esse uideantur ﬁeri potest ut his aliis disceptata soluantur. quae ratio mundorum possibilium nuncupatur. sic optime de argumento Anselmi conscripsit, quod in propositiones tam iustas redegit ut nihil clarius, nihil aequius uideretur esse, easque tam cottidiano sermone distinxit ut uis ratiocinalis paene incautum corripiat. exempla undique excerpit: nam querela inuenta, quam admodum barbare effutiuit praedo quidam australis, ad illud explorandum utitur obstringine ita iureiurando probus homo possit ut mentiri coactus improbus esse uideatur. philosophorum qui nunc sunt nemo tam multa tam uaria tractauit eaque tam inter se concinentia ostendit, quorum multa quae iunior posuit si cui sunt improbata probat senior. qui si non in hac aula nunc esset, mallet fortasse in tertio eo ordine esse ubi per speculum transgressa Alicia carro publico uehebatur – nisi quod illa eiecta est, sed hic nescio an usque quadratum circuire uel circulum quadrare potius uellet, sermone locuplete salibusque uariis incitatus et occasionibus ratiocinandi inﬁnitis. praesento uobis Philosophiae apud Princetonenses Professorem, D AV I D K E L L O G G L E W I S 1

Naturalis Historia 2. 1 & 4.

52

‘T

O hunt for things outside this world,’ said the elder Pliny, ‘holds no interest for man, nor can man’s mind hypothesise appropriately. It is madness, yes, madness, to transgress our bounds and look beyond, as if anyone could get a measure of anything who knows no measure of himself, or as if the human mind could see what the world itself cannot grasp.’ Well, here is such a madman, who has overset much conventional wisdom. As a philosopher David Lewis is very happy to summon up a multitude of worlds; if the hypothesis can be made, and if those worlds can be held to exist as concretely as ours does, then problems of philosophy which seem too difﬁcult to solve on the usual terms can nevertheless be solved when discussed on the new terms. This is called the theory of possible worlds. On this basis he has explored Anselm’s ontological argument, reducing it to premises of unsurpassable justice, clarity, and equity and sorting them out in language so straightforward that the force of his analysis then takes the reader by surprise. He draws his instances from a wide range: coming across Ned Kelly’s somewhat illiterate Jerilderie letter (in part a rant against the police), he used it to work out whether a good man can be so bound by an oath that he is compelled to lie and so must appear a bad man. No living philosopher has worked in so many different ﬁelds with such a fundamental coherence of approach; hypotheses he formed in his youth he has reinforced when they were challenged in his maturity. Suppose he were not in this Senate-House now: what other possible world might he prefer? Perhaps it would be that third square through the looking-glass, when Alice was travelling by train – except that she got out, and he might rather stay circling the square or squaring the circle, stimulated by abundant conversation, all sorts of wit, and unlimited analytical possibilities. I present to you D AV I D K E L L O G G L E W I S , Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University

53

M

U LT U M hic uir terris iactatus ui potentiorum dicere cum Aenea Salue potuit, Salue, fatis mihi debita tellus.1 sed hic quidem post uincula et inopiam, post siliquas panemque secundum,2 post annos uiginti septem tum demum in rem publicam est pariter cum re publica restitutus.3 nam nobili et ingenuo genere natus, abdicato munere patrio ofﬁcia maiora suscepit, quae esse in ciui ac uiro debent qui sit rem publicam afﬂictam et oppressam miseris temporibus ac perditis moribus in ueterem dignitatem et libertatem uindicaturus.4 iuris consultus factus causam suorum ita dixit ut accusator ﬁeret ipse dominorum: qui quamuis in insulam relegatus neque odio istos esse sibi persuasit et amorem patriae uindicauit suum. desiderium huius nominis renouari et rerum gestarum memoriam usurpari3 ne in carcere quidem abditi desitum est. algam quondam inter phocas sumebat; nunc ordinum doctissimorum sumit togas, quibus ﬁngamus eum, cum in patriam redierit, dissectis ad libidinem atque in camisias sui generis consutis adeo felici se exemplo uestitum, tamquam Irim arcus spargentem, praebere ut omnis iuuentus amore discendi aemula concitetur. uirum prae ceteris fortem strenuum iucundum praesento uobis, Nobeliano praemio ornatum, Reipublicae Africae Australis Praesidem, NELSON ROLIHLAHLA MANDELA 1

Vergil Aeneid VII 120 Horace Epistulae II i 123 3 Cicero Oratio post reditum in senatu habita 36 & 37 4 Cicero Epistulae ad familiares II v 2

54

T

H O U G H long tormented by superior might, this man has been able at last to echo the words of Aeneas, pledging a good health to the land of his destiny; except that for him, it is restoration to his own land and his own land’s restoration that he hails, after twenty-seven years of prison and husks. He was born of royal stock, but laid aside privilege to take on a greater task, one that a brave citizen must who is determined to raise his country from the afﬂiction and corruption of evil times to liberty and self-esteem. He studied law, and turned defence of his people into prosecution of the oppressors. He was banished to an island; yet there he learnt not to hate the white man, and there he preserved his patriotic hopes. He was kept out of sight; yet his name was never forgotten, and the memory of his achievements was constantly cherished. On Robben Island there was seaweed to gather; now he gathers weeds of Academia. Shall we picture him, upon his return, cutting them up and patching them into the shirts for which he is famous, to present himself like Joseph in such rainbow attire that all the youth of his country in sheer emulation is spurred to learning? I present to you a man of rare courage, strength and charm, NELSON ROLIHLAHLA MANDELA, Nobel Prize-winner, President of the Republic of South Africa

55

V

NIUS aetatis spatio num magis umquam mutata sunt tempora? nam quo anno hic uir natus est, in caelum se primo sustulerunt fratres Fabri, machina spe lignoque conglutinata; iuuenis ipse secutus est, ea quae liceat Cleopatra blattaria nominetur; tum LXXV natus annos id genus machinae gubernare didicit quod aere sucto se tollit: quod facilius ait esse quam priora gubernatu, sed quo celerius eo magis pertinere quanta celeritate ipse prouideas. illa meminisse iuuerit tempora, cum ab hortulo suo tolli, muliere fortasse comitante uolare, quouis descendere et excipi solebat; sed alia quoque memoranda sunt, cum gubernatores ad bellum cum tyranno Germanorum gerendum Daedalus Icaros multos instruxit, perdidit nullos, uel cum recentius adeo XV diebus effecit ut machina cui Hercules nomen est suco dum uolat repleretur ut in Atlanticum usque australe uno perueniret itinere. Idem uero sibi suisque idem urbi uniuersitati patriae prouidit consuluit subuenit: semper enim, ut poeta paene dixit,1 sperauit ﬂexae circa commercia metae. . . anticipasse uiam. nec uiam modo Iesu dictam reputo, unde e commercio illo curruli res est prouecta ad hortum in portus usum uertendum, ad rostrum ﬂectendum Concordiae, ad uincula cum societatibus transatlanticis constituenda. his aliisque consiliis augetur urbs et obicitur multis quid mercede faciant; miraculum Cantabrigiense quod dicitur hic uir impetu praecessit suo, nec noluit sodaliciorum plurimorum qua est liberalitate patronus esse. uerbis tribus tituli gentilicii totidem addamus: Felix tam longa qui prosperitate laborat. praesento uobis Equitem Auratum, Ordini Excellentissimo Imperi Britannici adscitum, Magistrum in Artibus, Collegi Iesu honoris causa Socium adiunctum, A RT U R U M G R E G O R I U M G E O R G I U M M A R S H A L L 1

Statius Thebaid VI 440, 442.

56

H

A S there ever been so much change in the course of one man’s lifetime? In the year this man was born, the Wright brothers ﬁrst ﬂew, in a machine of glue and timber. As a young man he took to the air himself, in machines such as the Gipsy Moth, and then at the age of 75 he learnt to ﬂy jets; they are easier than piston or propeller aircraft, he says, but one must anticipate more quickly: they move rather faster. Those were the days when he would take off from his paddock and ﬂy, perhaps with his wife for company, and land where he liked to a sure welcome; but there are other achievements to record, such as his pilot-training programme for Hitler’s war: so many an Icarus this Daedalus prepared, and lost not one; or the in-ﬂight refuelling of the Hercules, a programme put through in a fortnight to enable non-stop ﬂight to the Falkland Islands. His powers of anticipation, advice and assistance have served his city, his university and his country no less than they have served his family and his company. To misquote the poet, he has always hoped to run a quick-footed business in the leading lane, and I do not just mean Jesus Lane, where the original garage still stands. There has been such expansion: that paddock has been developed into an airport where Concorde’s nose was given the nod and where ﬁrms such as Lockheed of America are proud to work in close collaboration. Such is the success that has beneﬁted our city and brought employment to so many. The so-called Cambridge phenomenon owes much to his trail-blazing energy. He has been a generous patron of many local clubs and associations. To his family motto ‘Happy the man with work’ let us add as many words again: ‘and with such prolonged prosperity.’ I present to you Sir A RT H U R G R E G O RY G E O R G E M A R S H A L L o.b.e., m.a., Honorary Fellow of Jesus College

57

N

O N nudis pedibus hic uir, ut olim in aulis collegi, appropinquat, nec uero in sella sedens, ut olim cum partis adulescens agebat, digitos inspiciebat. hoc tamen scitote, ab eo nos inspici qui mores hominum multorum uidit,1 et quo quisque sermone incessu gestu se praestet auet intellegere. consilium illud et Apollini tribuatis adnuenti – nam perturbationes mentis ab hoc usque perquiruntur – et Dionyso: interdum enim (nisi melius huic deo cedere ille dicatur), dum fabulas oratione uel cantu agendas parat, histriones tam sincere docet suum cuique personae a poeta ﬁctae principium et exemplum quamuis nouum et necopinatum tamen subesse inter homines, ut nihil in theatro ueri similius, nihil integritate maiore ualeat. ad unguem doctus homo, sed ut commune cum Rosciis suis facit opus ita promptus est ad motus sensusque eorum minus explicatos. inter rem conceptam et actam libere commeat; theatro tamquam Chironis antro utitur; graui est animo sed hilari ad iocandum. tempora et loca studio Herodoteo, formam mente Phidiaca, proprietates et imbecillitates humanas Hippocratica cognouit cura. inter ea quae MILLE Renouauit opera, ﬁat sane Ioculatoris mentio et Aesymnetae et Tempestatis. equidem etiam post XXX annos Aliciae non obliuiscor: ueritus ne quid repugnare memoriae libri a puero mihi cogniti uideretur, omnia meliora inueni spe. fabulae quas stare per saecula dicimus tot ab hoc repraesentantur ut immutata deﬁnitione non iam stare dicantur nisi ab hoc repraesentatae, maximorum maximo interprete interpretum. praesento uobis Ordinis Excellentissimi Imperi Britannici Commendatorem, Baccalaureum in Artibus, in Medicina, in Chirurgia, Collegi Sancti Iohannis Euangelistae honoris causa adscitum Socium, J O N AT H A N W O L F E M I L L E R 1

Horace Ars Poetica 142.

58

I

N the courts of his college he used to walk barefoot, but not today; on the Footlights stage he sat and inspected his toes, but not today. Today you may be sure he is inspecting us; he has seen a gallimaufry of human behaviour in his time, and he is fascinated by every little detail of speech and gait and gesture. Ascribe the fascination if you will to his study of medicine (he is research fellow in Neuro-psychology at Sussex University); ascribe it also to his love of the theatre. In between his bouts of medicine (or should it be the other way round?) he produces plays and operas, and he does it by faithfully showing the actors that every character however extreme created by writers and composers has its original on earth. Hence the compelling verisimilitude and wholeness of his productions. He is a scholar to his ﬁngertips, but in working with his actors he is very ready to use their more instinctive perceptions. He moves easily between ideas and their realization; he treats the theatre like a surgery; he is utterly serious but quick to ﬁnd fun. He has the historian’s sense of time and place and the artist’s sense of shape to add to his clinical understanding of human foibles and individuality. Amongst his many productions, all so fresh in their achievement, mention must surely be made of his Rigoletto, his Mikado and his Tempest. Thirty years after it was shown I still remember well his Alice in Wonderland; I feared I might be disappointed at the performance of a book well known to me from childhood; but it exceeded my best hopes. Now a classic has a new deﬁnition: it cannot be called a classic until this man has presented it. He is the prince of producers. I present to you J O N AT H A N W O L F E M I L L E R c.b.e., b.a., m.b., b.chir., Honorary Fellow of St John’s College

59

S

I uiam pergatis a Romanis stratam, quas omnis in rectum scitis munitas, est ubi relicto priore itinere paulo ﬂexam inueniatis (id quod non procul hinc uidete, ad uicum Terrae Litus appellatum), nec tamen quare sit ﬂexa percipiatis: iam enim antiquior est causa deuerticuli quam ut memoria retineatur. uiae deuersae elusaeque difﬁcultatis ﬁguram ab hoc ipso uiro accepi, quo nemo est legum nostrarum antiquissimarum peritior. nam ut iter munitum ne quid eunti sit impedimento saepe renouatur, sic litigantibus si uetere sententia non statum erit noua quaerenda uia. sed ut nos si praeterita uestigamus ea quae nunc ad nos pertinent ex animo aegre deponimus, ita tamen hic uir qua est ui mentis ea cura diligentiaque tempora illa penetrauit ut quid tum ualeret rediuerit intellecto. testimonia plerumque sunt causae, in quibus iudicium inueniatis cum nominibus ordinibusque partium de usu terrae factum; sed deesse saepissime litis causam. e tam paucis et obscuris elicit hic uir quid tum uellent nollent Radulphus Willelmus Thomas, qui proximi uidentur Seiis illis et Titiis in opere Triboniani citatis esse; et quo stilo res elicit! Atticum dicerem, neque usquam redundare, sed sermone puro, presso, subtili explicare rationem. in omni hac collaudatione adfuisse ﬁngatis licet umbram eius qui primus illas leges inuestigatas edidit: quem declarauit orator abhinc CXII annos iuris Anglici antiqui interpretem felicem. hunc uirum, sapientia pari omnino aliter interpretatum, eisdem celebremus uerbis, adnuente nimirum magistro illo. praesento uobis Reginae Consiliarium, Magistrum in Artibus, Academiae Britannicae Sodalem, Legum Professorem Emeritum, Collegi Sancti Iohannis Euangelistae Socium, STROUD FRANCIS CHARLES MILSOM

60

I

F you walk a Roman road, and as you know, they were all built straight, sometimes the line is abandoned, and you ﬁnd a change of course (just such a change may be seen at Landbeach, north of Cambridge); and yet you cannot see why the alteration was made: the cause of the diversion has passed beyond the memory of man. This image of a route redirected, of a problem circumvented, I take from Professor Milsom himself, a man without peer in understanding of our most ancient laws. Roads may be re-aligned when difﬁculties develop; so too litigants must look for a new line if judges’ opinions block the old way. In exploring the past, however, you and I may have some trouble in abandoning contemporary preconceptions; this man has such a power of imagination and explores with such care that he can penetrate the past and report back with thorough understanding of what mattered then. The evidence consists mostly of some cases in which you ﬁnd a judgment, together with names and status of those concerned, upon a question of landholding, but there is seldom a word about the initial dispute. And yet, despite the slightness and obscurity of the evidence, out of it this man draws all the current hopes and fears of Messrs Ralph, William, and Thomas, characters remarkably similar to Messrs Seius and Titius who people the pages of Justinian’s Digest. And with what elegance he draws it out! Professor Milson’s English is classical: nowhere a word too many, and all of it plain, compact, precise, and lucid. Throughout this encomium you may rightly have felt the ghostly presence of F. W. Maitland, the man who ﬁrst explored these laws and set out his understanding of them. 112 years ago the Orator described him as one who had made most happy interpretation of our ancient English law. Professor Milson matches him in learning; he differs wholly in interpretation: yet if we celebrate him with the same phrase, I think Professor Maitland would say, Placet. I present to you STROUD FRANCIS CHARLES MILSOM q . c . , m . a . , f. b . a . , Fellow of St John’s College, Emeritus Professor of Law

61

E

R A N T olim, ut fortasse quis a puero recordetur, ualuae quae nuncupantur, quibus ad auris uoces quamuis procul emissae transferrentur. nunc sunt transistores ut dicuntur, inauditum atque insolens uerbum quod non tamen fugio.1 eis est materies silicea natura in formam crystallinam magnae integritatis educta, deinde in segmenta diuisa, tum coriis alio alius generis operta sed partim rursus detecta. segmentis nomen est assula: iniecta ui electrifera, nuntii innumerabiles summa celeritate perturbatione nulla mitti possunt. potestas earum ut semper augetur, ita minuitur magnitudo: iam partes interiores una luminis unda diuiduntur. L iam sunt anni post primam ornatam assulis machinam computatricem. ut Romani imperium dicuntur L modo annis instituisse suum, ita eodem tempore iam dominantur in nostram rem assulae, quo tempore cursum et euentum earum animaduertit hic uir. primum rerum natura et materia eruditus, unde interiores partis qua facultate cuiusque rei quoque ordine disponerentur cognouerat, mox in assulis uersabatur ea constantia eo pretio ea multitudine fabricandis ut in promptu uenum irent. tum legem illam clarissimam fabricationis edidit: transistorum quos in assulam insereres numerum quotannis duplicari; qua lege, paulum modo emendata, ex eo tempore gubernatur tota res forensis assularum. futura quis audeat dicere? apte ostendit hic uir, in essedo fabricando si res ritu assularum processisset, fore ut in urbem eo usus puncto temporis, non horis, aduenires, et redires usus altero: nam maiore pretio staret essedi mansio quam emptio. uirum praesento uobis tam prudentem quam doctum, Societatis Intel inter Conditores et Praesidem Emeritum, GORDON MOORE 1

See Aulus Gellius I. x. 4.

62

O

N C E upon a time, as some may remember from their childhood, there were things called valves. They brought within earshot sounds made far away. Now we have transistors, a portmanteau word, from transfer and resistor. They are made with silicon, which is grown into crystals of great purity, cut into slices, and covered with layers of various materials, then partly stripped away again. The slices are called chips; add an electric circuit, and countless messages can be imparted at enormous speed with no confusion. The chip’s capacity has grown in inverse proportion to its size: in its inner organisation we already use measures of one wavelength of light. It is now ﬁfty years since the ﬁrst computer was equipped with chips. Polybius observed that the Romans established their empire in the space of ﬁfty years: in the same space of time the chip has established its dominion with us, and its progress through this period has been the special interest of Dr Moore. He took his doctorate in both Chemistry and Physics; hence his knowledge of the potential in materials like silicon. Soon he turned his attention to the engineering of chips. A mass commercial future for them depended upon the quantity that could be made both cheaply and reliably. Then came Moore’s Law: the number of transistors that a chip can take doubles every year. That law, recently revised, has governed the making and marketing of chips ever since. It would be a bold man who looked far ahead. As Dr Moore has neatly pointed out, if the design and manufacture of cars had gone ahead as fast as that of chips, you would drive to London in seconds, not hours, and you would come back in a different car, because parking the ﬁrst would be more expensive than buying a second. I present to you a man of equal foresight and scholarship, GORDON MOORE, Co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of Intel Corporation

63

I

N elaboratorio Cavendishiano sunt multa digna memoratu. aderant quondam illic sponsus et sponsa, huius uiri parentes futuri: ecce professorem Cavendishianum paene porphyrogenitum! illic et ipse iuuenis naturam rerum inuestigabat, statimque percepit rem talem non sine collegis bene geri posse: mox non ex sese modo rationes sed e ceteris etiam generabat, felix hortator aliorum. ‘sufﬁcit haec’ ait olim ‘quanta est sapientia: sed tamen instat plus sapere.’ cum uero placebat eum praemio illo Nobeliano afﬁci, dubitabatur non meritone donarent sed quidnam praecipue ex tot tantisque conceptis nominarent. ex illa copia hoc unum memoremus: cum minime luceret qua ratione lux per uitrum transuolet uel elementa quae electrifera dicamus per materiem perturbatam aut fortiore motu aut longius spatium transferantur, legem hic uir quae T ad quartam uocatur constituit saltandi pede uno quousque expediat – cuius exemplar haud scio an ipse uideatur esse cui quocumque penetranti optime euenerit. crediderunt uero nonnulli huic esse (Manili uerbis1 liceat utamur) ‘ipsum penetrabile caelum’; quem dicamus nos potius sympathia quadam potuisse et consensu quo sit simplici non modo naturam rerum penetrare sed etiam hominibus multis siue collegis siue aliis amicitia beneﬁciisque opitulari. studia quae abhinc LXV annos Cantabrigiae iniit uiribus indefessis non ille quidem confecit. nobis tamen iam serum est ut uiri docti titulo donemus. uirum praesento uobis iam ter nouiens huius modi honore cumulatum, Equitem Auratum, Magistrum in Artibus, Collegi Gonuilli et Cai Socium, Collegiorum Sancti Iohannis Euangelistae et Darwini honoris causa Socium, Professorem Cavendishianum Emeritum, NEVILL FRANCISCVM MOTT 1

Manilius, I. 543.

64

M

A N Y things of note have occurred in the Cavendish Laboratory. Once an engaged couple worked there, the future parents of this man. Behold a Cavendish Professor virtually born to the purple! There as a young man he too began his research into the nature of things, and quickly realized that science was essentially a social activity. Theories soon began to emerge, from his colleagues as well as from himself: he has been a great stimulator of ideas in others. ‘I never did think the world needed more science,’ he once said, ‘but research is a thing which compels you.’ When they were deciding to award him the Nobel prize, the question was not whether he deserved it but which of his many brilliant ideas to name him for. One in particular may be mentioned here. It was far from clear why glass is transparent to light, or why electrons shift position through disordered solids either with great energy or over great distance; this man established the T1⁄4 law, called the law of variable range hopping. The model for such optimized travel, you may well think, is his own research career. Some have even concluded (the words of Manilius are appropriate) that he has a direct line to God. Let us say rather that he has been able to penetrate the secrets of nature, and also to be most generous to many of his fellow men, both colleagues and others, with friendship and with material aid, because of the depth and warmth of his understanding. He began his doctoral studies in Cambridge sixty-ﬁve years ago; his vigour is unwearied, and research compels him still. For us it is high time to make acknowledgement of his learning. I present to you a man of thrice nine other doctorates, Sir N E V I L L F R A N C I S M O T T, m . a . , Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Honorary Fellow of St John’s College and of Darwin College, Cavendish Professor Emeritus

65

A

D Babyloniacos capti consedimus amnes, suspensamque salix fert aliena lyram. sedimus, et tristes lacrimas demisimus ultro: nam memori numquam patria mente cadit. quo magis insultant qui nos egere ruina: fundere nos aliquot carmina laeta iubent. cogamurne tamen ludo uictoribus esse? nostrane in externis Musa sonare potest? uae miseris! quid uero in hoc quidem saeculo non ipsi ante oculos per tabulas repraesentatum conspeximus, plebem uel olim Belgarum cum plaustris in luto uel nunc Illyricorum in montium asperitatibus longo ordine inopia summa laborantem? conspeximus, inquam, sed passi perpauci sumus. multitudo tamen eorum qui fame bello ui patriam deserere coguntur semper augetur, quorum pars maior pauper ad pauperes effugit, nec sufﬁcere potest hospitium. iam paene L sunt anni ex quo primum rerum tam difﬁcilium curam accipiendam censuere Gentes Consociatae, iam XXX ex quo primum haec femina ofﬁcium inter eas suscepit. doctrina studio constantia se semper adeo commendabat ut ofﬁci alicuius summi capax uideretur esse: numquid cuiquam difﬁcilius mandari poterat quam cura ista miserrimorum? sed optime et de cohorte paucissima quam ducit est merita et de eis quotquot sunt quibus opem ferre conatur: illos iubet exacte et diligenter munus efﬁcere, hos ubicumque uagantur ipsa appropinquat, utrosque hortatur fouet sustinet. laboris dubitandum est an umquam sit ﬁnis; sed non magis dignus is labor qui ﬁat quam digna haec quae tanto consilio tantisque uiribus faciendum curat. feminam admirabilem praesento uobis, a Gentibus Consociatis Summam Refugientibus Praepositam, S A D A K O O G ATA

66

B

Y the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?1

Pity the refugee! What pictures of their sufferings have we not seen in this century – the people of Flanders over eighty years ago toiling through the mud with their carts, and now the people of Kosovo trudging across rough mountainside, stripped of all they possessed! We have seen these things, but very few of us have suffered them. Yet the mass of those forced out of their countries by famine or war or violence grows and grows, and for the most part it is the poor who ﬂee to the poor, whose hospitality cannot sufﬁce. It is now nearly ﬁfty years since the United Nations ﬁrst accepted the burden of this desperately difﬁcult problem, and it is thirty years since this lady ﬁrst took on a role with the United Nations. Her scholarship, her care and her determination made her always a likely candidate for some high ofﬁce in the organisation; it is hard to think of a trust more demanding than care of the world’s most miserable. She has earned the strongest approbation nevertheless both from her own slender team of workers and from all those she seeks to help. Of her team she demands the highest standards; the refugees she visits herself wherever they may be; she shares with both her gifts of encouragement, support and hope. It must be doubtful if such work will ever end; but the worth of the work to be done is no greater than the worth of the lady who sees it done with such thoughtfulness and such energy. I present to you an admirable lady, S A D A K O O G ATA , United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 1

Psalm 137 vv. 1–4.

67

T

I TA N U M suboles, ut ferunt, nuper Scholis Veteribus praesidebat argentaria, non mas profecto nec magna altitudine, neque dum ferox, sed mitium mitissima, sed disciplinae exemplum et ingens et bonum eius modi cui quale nunc scholis genus est eruditum posse uix ﬁdem daret tot res in uno capite commemorarier. aestas enim hanc tantummodo quinquagesima non uidit alto sepositam palatio transtra inter capreolosque sub fastigio seruire sex hominibus quos ﬁsci labor urgebat, et mox plura habere cognita quoquam: ita pol, et si quando quaesitum foret Quonam hoc? Vbi illud? Ista res unde exiit? ab hac petendum cuncta, quae minima mora, uel quindecim si condita obsoleuerant annos, recludit omnia omnium memor. moris apud Athenienses hoc erat ut numquam uel rarissime ciuitas cuiquam permitteretur qui non usque a puero adepturus esset. sed unus praecipue memoratus est Pasion quidam. is, qui natu non Atheniensis erat, tamen, quod tam ﬁdeliter et feliciter rem pecuniariam magistri curauerat aliisque bene fecerat ciuibus, in ciuitatem Atheniensium aetate matura liberatus est. rarius apud nos hic traditur quem hodie proponimus honor; quo tamen hanc honore dignissimam esse cum non dubitet quisquam, praesertim eorum qui constantiam iucunditatem ﬁdem eius in munus siue actuarii exercendum siue familiae nostratis ACUAntur iam diu cognouerunt, in academicam nostram liberare ciuitatem iuvat, SHEILA DORIS OVERHILL

68

I

T was a giant, so they say, who lately attended the Treasurer’s desk in the Old Schools: not so much a giant as a giantess, it is true, and not a very tall one, nor indeed a ferocious one, but the very gentlest of giants, and a gigantically good example of learning well aimed, a very prodigy of memory. More recent generations of school leavers would hardly believe that one small head could compass all she knew. For forty-nine years Sheila Overhill worked amid the beams and rafters of the top ﬂoor of the Old Schools; she was secretary to six University Treasurers, Parnis, Macpherson, Gardner, Shone, Halstead and Womack. Soon she knew more in that ofﬁce than anyone. ‘Where does this belong?’ the question might be; ‘Where’s that?’ ‘What’s the origin of this?’ You had only to ask Sheila, and in no time at all, even if the ﬁle had lain undisturbed for a decade, she would ﬁnd it: she remembered. In Athens it was very rare for anyone to be given Athenian citizenship who had not come to it from childhood. There is record, however, of one, a certain Pasion, not an Athenian born, who attended to his master’s banking business with such devotion and success and served the wider community so well that he was eventually liberated into Athenian citizenship. The honour that we propose to confer today is an honour that this University seldom grants, but one that is peculiarly well deserved by this candidate: such is the judgment especially of those who have come to appreciate over the years the steadiness, the charm and the loyalty which she has shown, whether ofﬁcially in the Treasurer’s ofﬁce or less formally in the Association of Cambridge University Assistants. It is our pleasure and our delight that the freedom of our academic community be conferred upon SHEILA DORIS OVERHILL

69

H

U I U S aediﬁci columnas artiﬁces striis et quadris, antiquo more freti, ornauerunt, quo sol diurno ambitu ita lucem et umbram diffundit ut non e mortuo lapide factae esse sed uiuo apricoque uideantur. quae iampridem Phidiae Ictino Callicrati, eadem huic fere cognita sunt, nisi quod non solido lapide sed tabulis planitieque operata demonstrat. praemia huic artis multa, quorum non minimum fuit illud a Venetis olim datum; sed his prioris quoque temporis agnouit gratias cum in foro stare fertur, marmore uario constrato; pluere, et dum pluit uideri non aquam modo, quae huc illuc super lapides diffunderetur, sed etiam pauimenti subiacentis speciem tremere et moueri. quo uisu elata formas rerum ui quadam Academica tractabat et albo nigroque tantum usa coloribus ita constrinxit ut non stare qua quidque sit forma sed ideo turbari spectantis oculo uiderentur. hinc hausit artem suam. sed colores paulatim redierunt, et qui colores! quam puri, quam dilucidi! quos Thebis Aegyptiis primo conspexisse in sepulcris artiﬁcum dicitur, qua per multa saecula nullus nisi minii ochrae uitri ueneti uiridis mos fuerat. his saepe usa est in uirgas iuxta dispositis, non multo dissimiles columnarum quas supra memorauimus striis et quadris ornatarum; recentius autem lineis nouis additis, iisque obliquis, ad oculum diuersius excitandum rectas secuit. in oculo spectantis pulchritudinem ferunt inesse. haec ipsum spectantem commendat oculum, ipsum intelligentem docet. ultro spectanti uelut obuia cedit imago: tum penetrare tibi perque meare licet, Aliciana quadam uso sorte. praesento uobis Commendatricem,

Ordinis

Excellentissimi

Imperi

B R I G I T TA M LV D O V I C A M R I L E Y

70

Britannici

T

H E columns of our Senate House were made to a classical model: their ﬂutes and ﬁllets take on the light and shade of the passing sun in such a way that their stone seems not inert but alive and basking. The craftsmen of the Parthenon had come to know these things, and so has Bridget Riley, except that she needs only two dimensions to achieve the effect. Her art has won many prizes, not least one at the Venice Biennale in 1968; but she can be grateful to Venice for an earlier moment of inspiration. She was standing, it is said, in a square which was paved with stones of various shapes and colours: it was raining, and it seemed that not only the rainwater as it spread across the ﬂags but even the pattern of the pavement beneath the ﬁlm of water was quivering and shifting. The vision was exciting; she started to work at form and shape with a Platonic intensity, and set them forth in bare black and white till those who gazed on her pictures saw movement stirring in the patterns displayed because of their very formality. In this way she found her art. Little by little colour has returned to her palate, colour pure and clear such as she ﬁrst saw at Luxor, in the burial chambers of the craftsmen: for centuries no other colours were used there than red, ochre, blue, turquoise and pale green. These she has frequently used in stripes, side by side, something which may remind us of the ﬂutes and ﬁllets of the columns I mentioned earlier. More recently still, her verticals have been crossed by vigorous diagonals, further to divert the questing eye. Beauty, we are told, is in the eye of the beholder. For Bridget Riley the eye is itself the beholder, the true place of visual perception; that is her message. ‘When you look,’ she says, ‘the picture comes to you. Then you can go right through to the other side.’ Shades of Lewis Carroll. I present to you B R I D G E T L O U I S E R I L E Y, c . b . e .

71

L

U X calor uis nobis effosso carbone oleoque exhausto his temporibus expediri solent; recentius in usum uenit materies primo aliquantum neglecta, putribus ex herbis iam pridem excocta meﬁtis. nec mirum si neglecta erat ea quae non facile in usum e fonte uehi posset nisi tanto frigore affecta ut in liquorem uersa esset; tum uero paulo expeditius commearet. sed uasa quali metallo quanta arte diligentiaque conﬂata id frigoris sustinebunt? quomodo in uas immittetur liquor, haurietur e uaso? quae denique corbita onere tam leui accepto ﬂuctibus et uentis afﬂicta recto malo sospes euadet? aderat uir multum in eius modi rebus expertus, sagax, consili potens: nauem alueis alteris intus ornauit, quo et tutius ab externo periculo onus esset et grauius quid inter primum et alteros alueos pro saburra ueheretur; feruminandi autem ingenti labore curauit ne noceret aliquid metalli uitium. inter nautas tunc cietur metus, ne ‘quassatis undique uasis difﬂuere umorem et laticem discedere’1 posset. Ego nauem, inquit, sic ornaui: ego uos in naue comitabor. ﬁt cursus ille primus sine tumultu nisi quod tempestates non paruas Oceanus excitauit. quid multa? in re meﬁtica gerenda usque ad summam ascendit potestatem atque in pretio rem esse auctoritate et constantia multo maiore coegit quam iis placuit qui tum rem publicam gerebant: quibus tamen haudquaquam cedit, sed potius ludiﬁcat una cornix uolturios duos.2

idem cum multa alia pro re publica gessit tum fabrorum academiam regiam, fama dignissimam, ipse Daedalus inter fabros instituit. praesento uobis Equitem Auratum, Ordini insigniter Meritorum adscriptum, Excellentissimi Ordinis Imperi Britannici Commendatorem, Regiae Societatis Sodalem, Vniuersitatis de Loughborough Cancellarium, Rei Meﬁticae Britannicae olim Praefectum, DENIS ERIC ROOKE 1 2

Lucretius III 434. Plautus Mostellaria 832.

72

I

N coal and oil we have well established sources of our light, heat, and power; natural gas, the product of long rotted plants, is a rather more recent resource, and its initial neglect was not surprising: techniques for conveying it to a point of use were undeveloped – unless it could be made so cold that it went liquid; only then might carriage be easier. But what sort of metal and what degree of craftsmanship were needed for the containers to withstand so low a temperature? How would the liquid be put in and got out? What sort of boat could take so light a cargo and stay upright in a storm? Fortunately a true expert was on hand, full of shrewd ideas. He equipped a boat with second holds inside the ﬁrst, so that the cargo would be better protected from external threat and something solid by way of ballast could go in between; he also examined every joint with the greatest of care to eliminate any risk from faulty welding. Then the crew expressed a worry: the containers might crack, and the liquid escape. ‘I designed the boat,’ he said, ‘and I shall be sailing with you.’ The maiden voyage of the Methane Pioneer passed without incident, apart from force-10 gales in the Atlantic. To be brief: he rose to be Chairman of British Gas, and promoted what gas could give with far more effectiveness and spirit than suited the government of the day. He gave them not an inch; a queen and her bishop were comfortably checked by a rook. Among his very many public works we may note especially the establishment of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a very proper achievement for a prince among engineers. I present to you Sir D E N I S E R I C R O O K E , o . m . , c . b . e . , f. r . s . , Chancellor of Loughborough University and formerly Chairman of British Gas plc

73

D

I C I T U R Socrates, acutissimus homo, pedes inuestigauisse quot suos saltare posset pulex. non modo quot saltet sed etiam qua machinatione cognouit haec femina: ostendit enim inesse cruribus uim maximam saltandi sed altera subueniri ui, ab apparatu alarum (quae iam ipsae omnino desunt) tradita quo potentior ﬁat impetus surgendi et ascensus ocior; quam uim in arcu laterum esse congestam. nempe si cui crura et apparatus is esset qui pulici, surgere ad summam tabellariorum posse turrem, idque triciens miliens sine intermissione. haec se ipsa docuit et multa alia eius modi, domi potius quam in academia. nam et auunculo, cuius uitam alacri pietate conscripsit, et patri naturae studium simile fuit, illi maiorum animalium, huic pulicum; quorum genere uario et frequenti ab eo collecto Museoque Britannico legato indicem haec sex omnino libris edidit. si more uidetur praeterito rem agere, caue te fallas: non enim modo partibus uelut exploratoris actis multa in praetorium refert omni philosophorum acumine perscrutanda, sed ipsa nouissimam secuta uiam indagatur quo pacto et consuetudine animalium plantarumque genera diuersa in una consocientur terra: cur non pariat cuniculi pulex nisi hospite praegnante, uel cur creato in herbis ne deuorentur ueneno bestiolae tamen ingesto inuicem tueantur sese. pulex an pedis uter praestet non referre opinatum uirum doctum haec refellit, argumentationibus sapienter elaboratis eleganterque conscriptis. quale interim domi familiaribus et propinquis hospitium, id iam horti papilionibus ex copia naturae sicut antiquae Cereris uice functa largitur. feminam honorabilem praesento uobis, sermone lepido benignoque ingenio, Excellentissimi Ordinis Imperi Britannici Commendatricem, Regiae Societatis Sodalem, M I R I A M LV D O V I C A M R O T H S C H I L D

74

T

H E distance a ﬂea can jump, measured in ﬂea feet, is a question said to have interested that sharp-minded man Socrates. This lady knows not only the answer but also the means: most of a ﬂea’s saltatory power resides in its legs; but a secondary source of energy is derived, as she has shown, from the residual wing apparatus (ﬂeas no longer have actual wings), which increases the power and accelerates take-off. The energy is stored in the pleural arch. A man equipped as a ﬂea could jump the Post Ofﬁce tower, and he could do it thirty thousand times without a break. Miriam Rothschild has been in these researches, as in much else, essentially self-educated; she learnt at home, and never went to university. Family sufﬁced. Both her uncle, whose biography she has written in loving and lively fashion, and her father had an interest in natural history. Uncle collected large animals; father collected ﬂeas, a collection of great size and variety which he left to the British Museum. The six-volume catalogue is his daughter’s contribution. Natural history may seem a rather outdated activity. Far from it. Not only is there still plenty to do in the ﬁeld anyway, observing what to bring back to base for detailed investigation, but Dr Rothschild is as good a scientist as a naturalist; she has been engaged on a topic of great contemporary interest, the close relationship of certain plants and animals in shared territories. How, for instance, is procreation in the rabbit ﬂea linked to procreation in its host? How do insects which feed on plants with a toxin in them meant to ward off predators use that very toxin to protect themselves in turn? ‘Sir,’ said Dr Johnson, ‘there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a ﬂea.’ We refute him thus, with the shrewdness of this lady’s research and the elegance of its expression. Her house at Ashton Wold is well known for its hospitality to family, friends and neighbours; its garden is now a sanctuary for butterﬂies, and there she presides like some Ceres of old, mistress of nature’s bounty. I present to you a lady of wit, warmth and wisdom, the Honourable M I R I A M L O U I S A R O T H S C H I L D , c . b . e . , f. r . s . , Research Scientist

75

I

THACENSIS illius memoriam repetatis uelim, quem domum reuersum arcum suum ne quid damni cepisset perscrutari mirabantur ei qui coniugem appetebant. ‘Telorum studiosus adest,’ inquiunt, ‘totumque retractat haud secus ac facturus idem, sic undique temptat ipse manu.’ sed cum multum uersatus Vlixes uirtutem teli sensisset inesse priorem, tum facile, ut si quis cantu citharaque peritus a clauo chordam tendit subtiliter, arcum restituit, doctoque explorat pollice neruum: is sonat haud alio sonitu quam cantat hirundo.1

quid sonet hirundo nunc quidem omittamus, cithara uero quomodo dulcissimum edat sonum id constat hunc uirum prae ceteris curae habere, qui inter Apollinis artes prius medicam secutus forte consequitur musicam: nam in Hispania cum eis coniunctus quos uocamus Aegyptios non modo arte citharoedica ﬂoruit sed etiam citharae formam fabricamque explorabat. mox faber scientissimus factus instrumentorum quae chordis personant genera uaria si quae manca et antiqua erant reﬁcit, noua idem creat. qui si musicis non adfuisset, uix audiri denuo coepta esset Musa maiorum. instrumentorum quae Antonius ille Cremonensis creauit praeclara uirtus est. qua in uirtute inuestiganda physicis nostris occupatis subuenit hic uir. nam cum perscrutantibus appareret inter resinae cutem exteriorem et ipsum lignum puluerem aliquem quasi puteolani generis illitum resinam occlusisse quin altius ipsa penetraret, instrumentum eadem ratione curauit creandum; quo quidem sic parato (artine in hac re plus tribuas an fortunae quis sciat?) iuuenis quidam triduo post usus in certamine superauit. uirum tam physicis nostris quam musicis notum uobis praesento, utrorumque fautorem sapientissimum et artis suae iam per annos triginta decus et ornamentum, D AV I D RV B I O 1

See Homer Odyssey xxi 393–411.

76

T

H E R E is a scene in Homer’s Odyssey which you may recall: the hero sat testing his bow, in case it had come to harm in his absence, and the suitors were full of wonder. ‘Quite a connoisseur of bows, it seems,’ they said. ‘He looks it over as if he meant to make one himself, feeling it so with his ﬁngers.’ The muchtried Odysseus soon knew that the weapon was as good as ever; like a master of song and guitar who stretches the gut to its peg with the utmost ease, so he restrung the bow. Then he tested the string with expert thumb, and the twang was as clear as the song of a swallow. What song the swallow sings we may leave for the moment, but the sound of a good guitar is by common consent supremely this man’s business. He set out to be a doctor, but chance brought him to skill in music, Apollo’s other art. He joined some Spanish gypsies, and became not only expert at playing the guitar but more and more interested too in the form and construction of the instrument. Soon he was a most learned master craftsman, repairing and making anew stringed instruments of many sorts, lutes, lyres, harpsichords, violins, and cellos. Without him the revival of early music could scarcely have happened. Most famous of all stringed instruments are those of Stradivari. With the help of Mr Rubio our Department of Engineering has investigated their excellence. It seems that between the wood and the varnish a layer of paste was laid, which may have prevented the varnish from penetrating the wood too deeply afterwards. Then came the test of the observation: he made another instrument to the same formula. It is probably no coincidence that a young musician in a competition used an instrument so constructed only three days after Mr Rubio had ﬁnished it, and won. I present to you a man as well known among some of our engineers as he is in our Faculty of Music, for thirty years the ornament and glory of his craft, D AV I D R U B I O

77

I

ECUR si quis penitus cognitum habere dicatur, aut haruspex aut Apicius quidam, ﬁcato gauisus, putetur audire. sed ‘hariolos, haruspices, mitte omnis:’1 haec femina ‘non hariolans ut illa cui nemo credidit sed coniectura prospiciens’2 inter uisa et coniecta artiores aliquanto nexus petit; Apicius autem iecur quod huic curae esset potius gigneret quam comesset. nam per annos iam plus L, ex quo nomismate aureo donata pro opere de morbis iecinoris ad medicinae doctoris gradum conscripto ab Vniuersitate Edinensi Londinium migrauit, studia iecinoris et bilis tam discipulis quam libro (iam nouiens sua manu edito), tam remediis datis quam rationibus excogitatis ita promouet et adiuuat ut unius in aeuo morbi quem h˚pati√tin uocant pars maior e gentibus ﬁeri possit ut omnino expellatur, nec fere quisquam his rebus studeat cui non huius praeualuerit auctoritas. etenim fere prima uiuentis hepatici iecur acu longa tenuissima terebrata pupugit, cuius per tubulum altera etiam tenuiore et hamata immissa offam quam inspiceret excerpsit. sic rursus dat signa iecur, at multo certiora, patiturque Prometheus uulnera, at multo salutariora. nulla prior medicinam est femina professa; nulla in collegio Regali Medicorum prior praesedit censor, nulla prior pro praeside; omnium consensu dux est hepatologiae, et cum omnibus laboris operaeque suae communicat gaudium. praesento uobis Ordinis Excellentissimi Imperi Britannici Dominam Commendatricem, in Vniuersitate Londinensi Medicinae Professorem Emeritam, S H E I L A PAT R I C I A M V I O L E TA M S H E R L O C K 1 2

Plautus Amphitryo 1132. Cicero ad Atticum 8.11.3.

78

S

O M E O N E said to take a keen interest in liver might be thought to be either an ancient reader of entrails or a gourmet who relishes foie gras. Soothsayers and their ilk may be dismissed at once. Dame Sheila Sherlock is no purveyor of dubious hariolations: she likes a more scientiﬁc relationship between observation and conclusion. As for gastronomes, they are more likely to supply the liver that is her concern than to consume it. Over ﬁfty years ago she left Edinburgh, where her M.D. thesis on the diseases of the liver won a gold medal, to go to London; there she pioneered the clinical study of the liver and the biliary system. Her book, now in its ninth edition, her pupils, her scientiﬁc research and her clinical practice have had a remarkable effect: within one generation the scourge of hepatitis has been brought close to its end, and there is hardly a hepatologist who does not bear to some extent the mark of her inﬂuence. She was a pioneer in liver biopsy, a great improvement on autopsy; as in ancient times, the liver again gives signs of things, but rather more precisely, and the patient Prometheus endures the probing, but with hope of a much better life to follow. She was the ﬁrst woman to be a professor of medicine; she was the ﬁrst woman in the Royal College of Physicians to preside as senior censor and as vice-president; she is by common consent the virtual founder of hepatology, and the joy that she takes in her work she spreads to all around her. I present to you S H E I L A PAT R I C I A V I O L E T S H E R L O C K , d . b . e . , Professor of Medicine Emerita in the University of London

79

‘N

O N isto naso tu quidem in scaena rem ages.’

sic huic olim ﬁliae mater. o parentum licentiam! sed Violam puella apud Oxonienses egit, ex quo plus annos XL in theatris nostris et alienis summo amore et gaudio excipitur per quam sunt uxor Mauri atque Hedda Noruegica repraesentatae uel Aetatis Brodianae Flos et Itinera Augustae Amitae. et uetustiorum auctorum opera praestitit et recentiorum, quorum unus opus huius causa, Lectus inter Lentes quod dicitur, ﬁnxit. ipsa tamen auctores omnis melius esse dixit si mortui sint: nam tum praeparantibus minus obstare. in parando non sibi parcit, in agendo non collegis; quacum ut agas una tu, aliquid incommodi potest inesse: nam quodcumque adest in scaena, siue tu siue Oscarianae dominae umbella, ﬁt tamquam huius incrementum. oculos autem audientium ad se unam conuertere maiore furto fertur quam Perseus Graiarum. hanc libentissime agnouit Comoedia nostra reginam; nam non ei modo calliditas est quaedam uerborum gestuumque aptissimo quoque tempore exprimendorum sed ars ipsa, eaque Musis dignissima: personam huic induit Thalia, Melpomene alligat, unde audaciore proditur pede. ‘ut melius partis agere est quam uiuere pro se; qua sis persona tum modo nosse potes.’ publici iuris histrio, ipsa secretior: ne praeter aulaeum persequamur sed re gesta gaudeamus, eoque MagiS MYTHos increscat. tali par nulla puellae. praesento uobis Excellentissimi Ordinis Imperi Britannici Dominam Commendatricem, M A R G A R E TA M N ATA L I A M C R O S S S M I T H

80

‘Y

O U ’ L L never make it on stage with a nose like that,’ said her mother. Parents can be so damping. Yet since playing Viola at the Oxford Playhouse more than forty years ago, Maggie Smith has been, among theatregoers here and overseas, and among ﬁlmgoers too, an object of affection and delight; those who saw them do not forget her Desdemona and Hedda Gabler, or The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Travels with My Aunt. She ranges from the classics to the moderns; Bed among the Lentils was written especially for her. She has said, nevertheless, that all authors are better dead: they cause less trouble at rehearsals. She does not spare herself in preparation, nor her fellow actors in performance. It can be rather hard to share a stage with her. You may become, like Lady Bracknell’s parasol, a mere extension of herself. Her ability to steal a scene was once declared grand larceny. She certainly is the grande dame of British comedy, and for her it is no mere skill of timing and gesture, but high art itself, and her comedy is underpinned by that sense of the serious which makes it all the stronger. ‘Acting is better than real life,’ she has said; ‘brieﬂy you do know who you are.’ Inside this actress is a very private person. We will not pursue her across the footlights. Let us be glad for her achievement, and celebrate the legend of a lass, as Shakespeare put it,1 unparalleled. I present to you Dame M A R G A R E T N ATA L I E C R O S S S M I T H , d . b . e . 1

Antony and Cleopatra V, ii, 319.

81

V

E R S U M a Thoma quodam ﬁctum hunc habemus: non ego sum princeps, nec sors praecepit ut essem, qui modo sum dominis principibusque comes.

qualis satelles is esset talem habemus ab hoc confectum. fabulam enim in scaenam agendam petebant iuuenes; scriptam, sed tum quidem spretam, habebat hic uir. conuenit fabula, agitur, placet. quid plura? postero die surgit homo tota subito narratus in urbe. ex quo primum enim mortuum esse par illud satellitum uisum est, inuentionis scaenicae hic non caret fontibus, siue ex Abona Sabrinaue cum Camo hausit lymphaue ferociore, siue ex Ilisso, Danuuio, Indo. ex noto ﬁctum carmen1 componere mauult, atque in unum ita alienas personas Arcadia testudine2 non omissa coniungit ut alteram uitam, eamque probabiliorem quam priorem, explicare uideantur. qui sub Mercurio quippe natus quisquiliarum et nugarum quasi correptor est. sunt qui haec incusent; bene monet Q. Flaccus: rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in actus quam si proferres ignota indictaque primus.3 praeterea ut salibus et facetiis abundat ita non tamen grauiora neglegit; est enim illa lux breuis, a dextra penetrans mortalia rerum, quae uidetur apertissime cum satelles unus, obuiam alteri simillime togato factus, tum demum ipsum se quis esset inuenire potuisset: heus tu! mane dum, neu mihi – em, iam tempus est ex quo – sed ubi te uidi? iam sum in me redux. sed nonne te cognoui? numquam memoria fugit os, nisi tuom. pol uidebaris modo ignoro omnino. uereor ne in errore sis qui forte me esse nescioquem alterum autumas. nunc tamen eum praesento uobis qui re uera Eques Auratus est, Ordini insigniter Meritorum adscriptus, Excellentissimi Ordinis Imperi Britannici Commendator, Regiae Societatis Litterarum Sodalis, fabularum inuentor, T O M S T O P PA R D 1

Horace Ars Poetica 240. See Statius Siluae 5.3.93. 3 Horace ibid. 129–130. 2

82

W

E owe to T. S. Eliot a self-perception of Mr Prufrock: No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord . . .1

We owe to another T. S. the realization of such a lord. Some students wanted a play for the Edinburgh Festival; young Mr Stoppard had a play, written but rejected. They took it and acted it, to applause; very simply, on the morrow he awoke and found himself famous. Ever since that ﬁrst performance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, plays have bubbled up in him from very diverse sources, from Shakespeare, and Housman, and waters yet more Wilde, and even from Philosophy, communist Europe, and colonial India. He does as Horace advised: he makes his plays off something known, putting other people’s people together (not to mention the tortoise Lightning) so that they seem to display a whole new life that is almost more real than the original. Surely, like Autolycus, he was littered under Mercury, to be a snapper-up of unconsidered triﬂes.2 Some cry plagiarism; they should read Horace: ‘You do better to put on a tale from Troy than innovate, presenting things unheard of and untold.’ Sir Tom is moreover as serious as he is witty. For there is that ‘thin beam of light that, seen at the right angle, can crack the shell of mortality’,3 and it is most clearly seen when Rosencrantz comes face to face with one of the troupe of actors dressed exactly as himself; at that moment he really could have discovered his real self: ‘Well, if it isn’t – ! No, wait a minute, don’t tell me – it’s a long time since – where was it? Ah, this is taking me back to – when was it? I know you, don’t I? I never forget a face . . . not that I know yours, that is. For a moment I thought – no, I don’t know you, do I? Yes, I’m afraid you’re quite wrong. You must have mistaken me for someone else.’3 The man that I present to you now, however, is the real Sir T O M S T O P PA R D , o . m . , c . b . e . , f. r . s . l . , playwright and novelist 1

T. S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Shakespeare A Winter’s Tale, act iv scene iii. 3 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, act ii. 2

83

I

N principio erat uermis. hoc de uerme, cui nomen est caenorhabditis elegans, non nunc primum in hac curia dico. paruulus est, uix tam longus quam lata est pars dempta unguiculi. hermaphrodita pars plurima eorum, sed nonnulli sunt mares, unde uariari potest genus. mouentur, procreant, comitantibus aliis ita se gerunt ut pari motu nare uideantur. cellulae sunt adulto (atque adoleuit triduo) DCCCCLIX; homini autem sunt termiliens centena milia. iam profecto uideritis quanto se commodius uermis ad totam suam inuestigandam naturam quam homo praebeat. non tamen uermem honorandum praesento sed hunc uirum, qui dum fere XXX annos ei studet cellularum omnium origine patefacta aliquas ipsis oculis animaduertit eo fato esse ut ortae mox morerentur: unde ﬁt tabula fatalis ut dicunt. deinde paucis adiuuantibus totam uermis seriem indicare pergit: quod animal primum omnium seriem suam cognitam totam habet. sed opere nondum confecto, cum iam multo magis instaret hominis series ut ea quoque nosceretur, plurimos aediﬁcio ad rem quasi consecrato praefectus fouebat, regebat, hortabatur. de quibus dixit inueniendum esse quid quis melius quam ipse posset; id tum tradendum munus. ita paulatim – nam scientiam cum liberam esse uellet eis semper fortiter resistebat qui in sordidam mercedem auellere gestiebant – tabulam seriemque cellularum humanarum ad tertiam partem exposuit. haec series cognita immane quanto erit usui ad causas morborum et debilitatum quibus afﬂigimur intellegendas. tantum elementa queunt permutato ordine solo.1 litteras nostras habemus: legamus nostra uerba. praesento uobis Equitem Auratum, Doctorem in Philosophia, Regiae Societatis Sodalem, Praemio Nobeliano ornatum, in Elaboratorio Biologiae Molecularis pro Concilio Rei Medicae instituto quondam Inuestigatorem, Elaboratorii in nomine Sanger creati olim Curatorem, Collegi Pembrochiani honoris causa Socium, J O H N E D WA R D S U L S T O N 1

Lucretius I 827.

84

I

N the beginning was the worm. I have spoken of this worm in this place before: it is called Caenorhabditis elegans, and it is tiny, scarcely as long as the breadth of a nail-clipping. Most of the worms are hermaphrodite, but a very few males are produced, which allows for genetic variation. They move and they procreate, and in company they do a sort of synchronised swimming. The adult (they are adult in three days) has 959 cells; a human being has three billion. That shows you how much more convenient the worm is for total analysis than a human being would be. It is not the worm, however, that I am presenting for an honorary degree, but Sir John Sulston, its most notable explorer. In nearly thirty years of study he determined the lineage of all its cells, discovering on the way that some are programmed to die; this acute observation of his naked eye enabled a fate map to be made. Then, with a few helpers, he set out to map the worm’s genome and to determine its whole sequence; it was the ﬁrst complex organism to have its genome determined. Before that was done, however, mapping of the human genome became an ever more urgent task, and, in the Sanger Centre built for the purpose, he became manager, guide, and enthuser of hundreds. Of colleagues he said, ‘You ﬁnd out what they can do better than yourself, and hand that over.’ And so, little by little – for Sir John believes in the free circulation of knowledge, and he resisted with great determination certain attempts to scoop the information for commercial gain – he laid out a full third of the whole human genome. When it is understood, we shall know where the diseases and defects that afﬂict our species begin. ‘Only change the sequence, and see what the letters can do!’ said the poet Lucretius. We have our alphabet: now for the language. I present to you S i r J O H N E D WA R D S U L S T O N , p h . d . , f. r . s . , Nobel Laureate, formerly Staff Scientist in the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology, sometime Director of the Sanger Centre, Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College

85

N

U M Q U A M post memoriam nobis moris erat ut gradum honoris causa tribueremus absenti. collocatam in sella quam uacuam uidemus eam uisuri eramus quae caput reipublicae ciuium suffragiorum quattuor partibus creata munus exercet suum nullum, sed ui tyrannorum armisque prohibetur. hic ut adsit igitur ipsa sibi non permittit. at enim licet: abeat licet, excedat, euadat, erumpat!1 accepta tamen ista facultate, num liceret ut rediret? ut lupa quae dicitur esse, quae amphisbaena, maga, alieno nupta uiro rediret? quin me paenitet illa dixisse, sed talibus opprobri nominibus obiurgatur, Andromede tamquam monstris deuota marinis2 (uel potius Myanmarinis). ut tamen illi prae timore non eam perdere, ita ne qui Perseus audeat expedire: coniugis enim ﬁliorumque quamuis orbata praesentia summum ante oculos suos hoc habet, ut magis ciuibus quam sibi consulat et optatae libertatis constantissima testis adsit. comitem se saepe ne fortibus quidem comprobat uirtus. pater, uir fortissimus, cum pro libertate suorum strenue pugnauisset, clandestina morte trucidatus ﬁliae duo modo natae annos ereptus est. mater legati munere apud Indos olim est functa. ipsa non modo nostrati apud Oxonienses instituta doctrina sed etiam in moribus est educata patriis: decalogo illo in uita utitur quem docuit Indicus sapiens, ut probitate et integritate sis uitae, ut austero et benigno sis animo, ut ueniam des et stipem, ut uim ponas et iram, ut ipsum te posthabeas nec uoluntati plebis obstes. tali uirtute et ingenio femina, excellentissime Cancellari noster, utinam hic eo posset honore honorari quo uolumus, quo decet, quo optime meretur, Pacti et Conuenti Gentilis pro Democratia sponsor, Nobeliano praemio pacis ornata, AUNG SAN SUU KYI 1 2

Cicero in Catilinam i 1. See Propertius 2.28.21.

86

I

T is the custom of this University that no one is granted an honorary degree in absentia. Seated in the chair that we see empty we were to have seen a lady who was elected leader of her country by four-ﬁfths of the people; yet the ofﬁce she should be holding is null: a military tyranny continues to keep her out. Hence her absence today, an absence self-imposed. For she could be here. Indeed, they heartily wish she were. But if she exercised that freedom, would she be free to return? They call her whore and snake and sorceress, and revile her for wedding a foreigner: would she be free to return? Those are ugly words, almost better not said, but such are the waves of abuse that crash upon her, like some Andromeda on the rock, self-sacriﬁced to ogres from the depths. They do not dare destroy her, however, and no Perseus can intervene to release her: it is her own high purpose to endure separation from husband and sons in order to serve the needs of her fellow-citizens, abiding with them in constant witness to the freedom that they chose. Courage is not always a welcome spirit, even to the brave. Her father, a man of great courage, fought vigorously for his people’s freedom, but was assassinated when she was two years old. Her mother later served as ambassador to India. She herself was educated in the western tradition, graduating at Oxford, but she was also brought up in an eastern tradition: she practises the Buddhist decalogue, of morality, integrity, austerity, kindness, forbearance, liberality, non-violence, non-anger, self-sacriﬁce, and non-opposition to the will of the people. That is the cast of her courage, most excellent our Chancellor. It is a matter of great regret that we cannot honour here as we would wish and as she most rightly and richly deserves AUNG SAN SUU KYI, Co-founder and General Secretary of the National League for Democracy, Burma, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

87

E

C C E uenit magno diues Philomela paratu –

nisi diua potius appelletur; sed Nasonem ulterius sequamur – quales audire solemus Naidas et Dryadas mediis incedere siluis, si modo des illis cultus similesque paratus.1 uicem mirabilem quandam (nisi uocem potius dicam?) enarrare nunc contigit. erat olim in terra remotissima puella gente praestanti orta; inter enim maiores erat dux Maororum ut dicuntur, quem ferunt ardere amore Dryadis, nec uero frustra; sed illam prima quaque luce cum fugam peteret per tuguri culmum radio solis ascendere. ecce uenit quae illa fuit puella. uoce iam sexennis in cantando utebatur, ita ut mox matri uideretur esse digna quae disciplina et exercitatione vocale munus extolleret. itum est igitur Londinium. qua uoce exaudita dicitur optimus quidam musicorum nostrorum primo non auribus credidisse sed iterum iterumque audire uelle ne somnio forte caperetur. ex quo tempore nos capti gaudemus omnes. nam limpidum canorum purum haec sonat, atque optime quiduis Mozartianum canit. sed facilius est personas memorare quas egit: Boiaene praeferres Margaritam, an utrique uxorem ducis Mauri, qua maiore gaudio et ardore cum cor tum aures fouere dicitur nulla? an Fabulam Ausoniam audire malles? nam et popularius genus canendi colit. equidem tamen e primis laudibus haec uelim: Dulce uoluptatis quo iam mihi tempus abiuit? fallacis linguae quo mihi lapsa ﬁdes? si mihi iam multo sunt omnia plena dolore, gaudia cur pectus sentit inesse tamen? o utinam cor ingratum conuertere possem illius! aeterno constat amore meum. praesento uobis Excellentissimi Ordinis Imperi Britannici Dominam Commendatricem, Collegi Wolfsoniani honoris causa Sociam adscriptam, K I R I J E A N E T T E T E K A N AWA 1

Ovid Metamorphoses vi 451–4.

88

‘C

A M E Philomele in raiment very rich, –

a nightingale indeed, but we will follow the poet a little further – . . . even like the Fairies which reported are the pleasant woods and water springs to haunt, so that the like apparell and attire to them you graunt.’1 The remarkable translation of a remarkable voice is now our theme. Once upon a time, in a country far, far away, lived a little girl who was quite a princess; for among her ancestors was a Maori chieftain. He, so they say, fell in love with a fairy, and his love was not in vain; but every morning at dawn the fairy left him by climbing up the sunbeam which shone down through the thatch. Here is the little girl that was. She began to sing to audiences when she was ﬁve; soon her mother realised professional training was needed to develop her talent, and so she came to London. When Sir Colin Davis ﬁrst heard her at audition, he demanded to hear her twice more. ‘I had to make sure I wasn’t dreaming,’ he said: ‘her voice seemed much too good to be true.’ Ever since then, we too have experienced that delight. Her voice is clear and melodious, and perfectly in tune, which is particularly good for singing Mozart. But let me remind you of other rôles in which she has starred, Mimi in La Bohème, Margaret in Faust, and Desdemona in Otello; as Desdemona it was said of her, ‘No one can caress both the heart and the hearing with such intensity of joy and passion.’ You may prefer, however, West Side Story: she has extended her repertoire into more popular genres. For my own part I would recall her early triumph as the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro: ‘Dove sono i bei momenti di dolcezza e di piacer? Dove andaron i giuramenti di quel labbro menzogner? Perché mai, se in pianti e in pene per me tutto si cangiò, la memoria di quel bene dal mio sen non trapassò? Ah! se almen la mia costanza nel languire amando ognor mi portasse una speranza di cangiar l’ingrato cor!’ I present to you K I R I J E A N E T T E T E K A N AWA , d . b . e . , Honorary Fellow of Wolfson College 1

Arthur Golding’s translation, of 1567.

89

C

L I O N I S e famulis alios latius scribere alios minutius sunt qui dicant. huius modo recensitis librorum titulis quid latius scriptum ﬁngi potest, qui priorem de cultu dei et derelicta re magica conscripsit, alterum (e sermonibus Trevelyananis editum) de ratione quae inter homines et ceterum mundum naturalem intercedit? quid autem minutius quam testimonia et exempla undique collecta quibus rationes et argumenta corroborauit? haud mirum quod in Bodleiana plostellum est huic suum dicatum. non canit hic reges nostros et proelia,1 sed quid sentiret et crederet plebes, ea praesertim quae tum uiuebat cum uis carbonum oleique subterranei deerat. spes metusque eorum hominum tam lucide lepideque ostendit ut doctos stimularet, delectaret alios: scilicet opportunissime ad haec tempora scripserat. is Clionis est famulus ut Musarum hanc summam, ceteras complexu eius fouendas et ordinandas habeat. praeses Academiae Britannicae disciplinas diu institutas cum recentioribus ordine iusto conciliandas, debitum opus et anceps, sollertia et iucunditate curauit; inuitatis autem ad annuam cenam nonnullis eorum qui aerariis reipublicae praesunt, fabellam olim de silua narrauit: arbores, uisis aduenire eis qui securibus usi ligna et materiem auferrent, contremiscere; sed unam tandem, quae senior esset, hortari ne timerent: capulum enim securis unum e sese quidem esse. Musarum propugnator quo est robore curaque pastorali ex agricolarum ortum se genere demonstrat. uobis eum praesento qui ﬁliam nobis educandam poliendamque permisit, Equitem Auratum, Collegi Corporis Christi apud Oxonienses Praesidem, Academiae Britannicae Praesidem, KEITH VIVIANVM THOMAS 1

See Vergil Eclogue vi 3.

90

H

I S T O R I A N S are sometimes divided into those who use the broad brush and those who work in miniature. The titles of this man’s two great works might suggest the broad brush: ﬁrst there was Religion and the Decline of Magic and then, developed from his Trevelyan lectures of 1979, Man and the Natural World. Yet the thinking and the reasoning in both are based on a remarkable range of the minutest source material. It is no surprise to learn that he has his own trolley in the Bodleian Library. The barons and battles of English history are not his theme, but rather the mental attitudes of the nation, in particular in its pre-industrial generations. In setting forth their hopes and fears with a charm and clarity that challenged the scholar and fascinated the layman, he also touched contemporary concerns. History Sir Keith sees as the discipline that embraces all others and sets them in their proper context. His presidency of the British Academy has been marked by a delicate but necessary re-ordering of its subject groupings, a task he carried out with great resource and amiability. At the Academy’s annual dinner, to which ministers with spending power in the arts can be invited, he once told the tale of a forest. The trees were much alarmed at the arrival of the woodcutters, but eventually a senior tree bade them not to worry: ‘The handle of the axe,’ it said, ‘is one of us.’ Sir Keith is a doughty champion of the arts, and his pastoral care for them bears witness to the farmer’s son that he is. I present to you one who entrusted his daughter’s further education to us, Sir K E I T H V I V I A N T H O M A S , President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and President of the British Academy

91

V

ITAS aliorum qui conscribunt uiam notam terunt studioque populari respondent; pauci tamen artem supra sermones fabulasque aniles extollunt. inter eos haec femina, rebus inauditis sed pertinentibus inuentis, rebus tum temporis gestis lucide perspectis, uario suo muliebri consensu, eximia denique arte narrandi, laudes cum praemiis maximas accipit. primo libros aliorum lectos quam bene conscripti essent discernebat; mox, libello de iure feminarum uindicato inuento, primum librum edidit suum. secuti sunt iam sex, omnes inuestigationibus diligentissimis ornati. de feminis plerumque scribebat – ad Catherinae illius antipodensis uitam exponendam aptiorem idcirco sese praebuit quod femina esset – sed recentius non modo alia tempora sed etiam uiros elegit: Samuelem dico in collegio Magdalenae honoratum, et Durotrigem illum Thomam. ille tamen auctore uitae caret? nonne in se ipsum commentarios uir singularis reliquit satis? annorum reliquit modo nouem: permulta alia, partim diu abscondita partim ualde disputata, addidit haec femina, praecipue de muliere uix cognita Maria – tritum illud est iter – sed etiam de classe administranda, de re publica tum turbata, de re omnium difﬁcillima, cur ille quae fecit omissa re nulla cuncta memoraret. de Thoma quoque rursus inuenit noua, praesertim de uxore priore: rem domesticam eorum quo frigore gereretur prorsus depinxit. illius uitam ipsius carminibus subtilissime perquisitis illustrauit; quae si quando ipsa ediderit, ut fama est, opus sapientia plenissimum habebimus. aliquid maius quam singulorum uitas egit haec femina. re enim cuiusque familiari cum ipsis rebus nostris moribusque gestis coniuncta mihi quidem uidetur alter esse Plutarchus. praesento uobis Magistram in Artibus, Litterarum Regiae Societatis Sodalem, Collegiorum Newnhamensis Luciaeque Cavendish honoris causa Sociam, Collegio Magdalenae honoris causa adscriptam, MURIEL CLAIRE TOMALIN

92

B

IOGRAPHERS follow a well-trodden trail and answer an evident public interest, but only a few raise their art beyond the level of anecdote and fable. Among those few is Claire Tomalin; her research is apt and original and her understanding of history is clear; she applies her sympathies as a woman and she excels in lucid narrative. Her work has earned both prizes and high praise. She began as an editor assessing the worth of other people’s books. Then she lit upon Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman and published her own ﬁrst work. Now there are seven biographies, all distinguished by the excellence of their research. At ﬁrst, women were her usual topic – in dealing with Katherine Mansﬁeld she made a point of her suitability for the task as a woman – but more recently she has picked not only different historical periods but also men: I think of Samuel Pepys, ‘the unequalled self’, and Thomas Hardy, ‘a time-torn man’. Does Pepys need a biographer? Didn’t he leave enough of his unequalled self in his own diaries? In fact, they cover nine years only; there is a great deal else (some of it long undiscovered and some of it matter for scholarly debate) which Claire Tomalin has brought to her narrative, in particular concerning Mary Skinner, a woman little known before (Tomalin territory, this!), but also on Pepys’ work with the navy, on the troubled times then prevailing and on that most puzzling of questions, why the diarist committed all his doings to paper without any inhibition. Original research also marks her work on Hardy, especially concerning his ﬁrst wife; their frozen life in Max Gate is starkly rendered. The poet’s career is illuminated by precise and delicate use of his own poems; if an edition of them is coming, as is said, we shall have a work of real scholarship. Claire Tomalin is much more than a biographer; her works are a considerable contribution to our social and moral history. The line goes back, I think, to Plutarch. I present to you M U R I E L C L A I R E T O M A L I N , m . a . , f. r . s . l . , Honorary Fellow of Newnham College and of Lucy Cavendish College and Honorary Member of Magdalene College, writer

93

Q

U A L E M uirum hodie commendo et qualem ante biennio binos talis uiros eiusdem populi principes raro fortasse contigerit ut idem collaudarit orator. incipias hunc, Musa, uelim laudare secundis a petaso, qui olim Sophiae sublatus in urbest. ibat forte uia puer hic cum matre; salutat sublato petaso quidam albus homo isque sacerdos. matre salutata puer admiratur ab albo. post patitur morbum: per tempora longa iacentem is uisit ﬁrmatque bono sermone sacerdos. quid tradat senior iuueni exempli bene dicat is cui mox eadem doctrina probata sit et mos. huius uiri memorari tempora poterant cum pro concilio ecclesiarum ab epistulis factus, cum prouinciae praefectus, cum Nobeliano praemio pacis ornatus est; reputemus potius quid sit ab eo diligentiae et laboris exspectandum cui tanta mandentur munera, et qua spe, qua patientia sua, quo amore et approbatione praesertim iuniorum hic agat. omnia deo commendat precibus: hinc et a familia ﬁducia uiresque sunt omnes. Pastor sum, aiebat; in forum descendere nolo. sed eis prohibitis qui pro parte suorum acturi fuissent, uix alius supererat qui domi foris oraret obsecraret, ut de omni rei publicae ratione quaereret is qui Christum conﬁteretur istane quadrari cum hoc posset, ut et deum ames et idem uicinum; nam non pro uno sese conﬁteri Christum quemquam. suauis autem est et uehementer saepe utilis iocus et facetiae;1 in periculo qui risu utatur fortis sit ualde necesse est. fortiter hic rem gessit et strenue. uirum reuerendissimum praesento uobis, eundemque quam maxime amandum, Capitis Ciuitatis Archiepiscopum Emeritum, Collegi Dominae Franciscae Sidney Sussex honoris causa Socium, DESMOND MPILO TUTU 1

Cicero de Oratore II 216.

94

I

T falls to very few to present honoris causa both of a pair of men such as have been Archbishop and President of one and the same people. Let us begin the praise of Desmond Tutu propitiously, my Muse, with a hat: a hat once raised in Sophiatown. Young Desmond was walking with his mother, and she was greeted in the street by a white man, a priest, who raised his hat to her. Such a greeting from a white man was amazing. Then came a time of sickness; the boy lay long abed, but he was regularly visited and cheered by that same priest, Father Trevor Huddleston. What model the older man was to the youth is best left to our guest to say: he found his own vocation in that pattern of conviction and discipline. One could record the high points in his career: secretaryship to the South African Council of Churches, election as bishop and archbishop, the award of the Nobel Peace Prize. It may be better to ponder the long laborious diligence which is the prerequisite for such honours, the passionate, patient hope of the man and the affectionate support he has enjoyed, especially among the young. All that he does he commends to God in prayer; that and his family are the source of his conﬁdence and power. ‘I am a pastor,’ he would say, ‘not a politician.’ But the politicians who should have argued their people’s cause were all shut up: who else was there to plead and pray, both in South Africa and outside? ‘A Christian must ask of any political system,’ he used to say, ‘how it squares up to Christ’s summary of the law, of loving God and loving one’s neighbour.’ And ‘Christianity can never be a merely personal matter.’ And then there is his sweet sense of fun, something long known for its virtue in oratory. It takes a brave man to make jokes in the face of danger. This is a brave man, and a true model of the Church Militant. I present to you the Most Reverend, and also the most loveable, DESMOND MPILO TUTU, Emeritus Archbishop of Cape Town, Honorary Fellow of Sidney Sussex College

95

Q

U A M paenitet me, paenitet, pro di boni, ne nostra in orbe uitia concurrant suo.

sed enim haec in se multiplici cursu reuertetur ut orbis oratio: eam salutamus quam docuit in Vniuersitate Harvardiana collegi Sanctae Mariae Magdalenae socius Ricardi ﬁlius dictus; eam salutamus qua iustioribus laudibus nemo eum extulit qui oratorium ornauit hoc munus Georgius poeta. cuius ex orationibus Latine conscriptis quae restant tres quam paenitet uero ad hodiernam rem pertinere nullam: carminum igitur temptemus aliqua; haec enim gaudet carminibus.1 Luce serena dies et dulcis frigore, terrae coniugiumque poli, hac te ros lacrimis plorabit nocte cadentem: nam tibi ﬁnis erit. quo de carmine uelim omnia quae scripsit haec femina audiatis uos, ego proponam. nam par est quae eius uerba coniunctiones facetias intellegat, numeros tempora formas percipiat, uersus David relatos et preces Cranmeri agnoscat; argumentum doctum promit, formosum, plenum ui et luce. item de ceteris eius ac de aliorum quae explicuit carminibus: semper ipsam animaduertit poesin. opera Sapphoum aetatis ciuitatisque suae multarum in lucem prodidit; recentius duos Hiberniae uates euoluit, Dublinensem illum, hunc Vlidium: illius formam non neglegentia quadam corruptam sed arte consilioque renouatam sermone meditata Parnelliano probauit suo. mox autem Gulielmus noster quo ipse successu egerit audituri sumus. Cesserit is numquam maturi roboris instar qui probus est animo, sed quamquam in cinerem terrarum uerterit orbis, denique tum superest. praesento uobis in Vniuersitate Harvardiana Anglicarum litterarum sub Kingsley Porteri nomine Professorem, Collegi Churchilliani peregrino iure olim Sociam, Collegi Sanctae Mariae Magdalenae honoris causa Sociam adscriptam, HELENAM HENNESSY VENDLER 1

See Horace Odes iv 8.

96

‘S

O R R I E I am, my god, sorrie I am, that my offences course it in a ring.’

I quote Herbert at once in apology for a speech that will come round upon itself in multiple ring formation: for we salute a lady who was a pupil at Harvard of I. A. Richards, Fellow of Magdalene College; we salute a lady who has written the best critical analysis of the poems of George Herbert, sometime Orator (1619–27). Sorry I am indeed that none of his three surviving Latin orations serve today’s purpose. We will try his poetry therefore; like Censorinus, Professor Vendler delights in poetry. ‘Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, the bridall of the earth and skie: the dew shall weep thy fall tonight; for thou must die.’ I wish that you could hear and that I could set forth all that she has written about that poem. She understands Herbert’s language and syntax and wit, she feels his rhythms and pace and form, she notes his phrases from the Psalms and from the Prayer Book, all with equal authority, and the fashion of her demonstration is lucid, elegant, and typically passionate. So it is with her interpretation of all his other poems, and with the poetry of others, as she concentrates her attention upon the making of the poems. She has done much to promote the poetry of contemporary American women. More recently she has studied two Irish poets, W. B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney. In her Parnell lecture two years ago, ‘Yeats at Sonnets,’ she showed that his variations on the sonnet form were not the result of carelessness but deliberate and skilful renewals of the sonnet itself. And soon comes her study of Shakespeare’s own achievement in the form. ‘Only a sweet and vertuous soul, like season’d timber, never gives; but though the whole world turn to coal, then chieﬂy lives.’ I present to you HELEN HENNESSY VENDLER, Kingsley Porter University Professor of English in Harvard University, Honorary Fellow of Magdalene College, sometime Overseas Fellow of Churchill College

97

Q

U O M O D O sit uiuendum eam maximam omnium quaestionem primus rogasse Socrates dicitur, necdum conuenienter ei est a philosophis responsum. hic uir tamen, philosophus quo nemo sapientior hoc saeculo esse habetur idemque munerum publicorum peritus, inter eos acceptus est qui plurimum ad deﬁniendum locum elaborauere. illam enim philosophiam quam ethicen uocabant Graeci, cuius hic se praecipue dedidit studio, totam ab antiquitate ad recentissimos disputatam non modo penitus intellexit sed sententias de ea habitas quo quis recentior urget eo minus suadere arbitratus hoc memorat, non de opinione cuiuspiam sapientis utra acutius arguatur agi sed potius interesse cuiusuis hominis quomodo ubique se gerat: non enim sapientium tantum id studium esse sed hominum qualiumcumque. ethicen dixi; nam appellatione illa usitata qua philosophia moralis uocatur aliud fere signiﬁcari ostendit, neque oportere rem tam anguste coercere. sunt autem qui sic disceptauerint, si cui quid aequum esse uideatur, ei quid aliud esse faciendum? sed hic inter illud aequum esse et faciendum esse hoc quaerit, num cui uoluntas sit ita se gerendi; praeterea ﬁeri posse ut duarum rerum facienda sit neutra: tali necessitate deuinctum coactum esse Agamemnona; cui tamen magis fratris et sociorum quam coniugis pudere placuisse. sed ibi latet altera philosophia, atque hunc talia refellentem legatis ipsum licet. nunc tamen munera illa forensia commemoremus quae de rebus aleatoriis suscepit, de aequitate ciuili, de uenenorum abusu, de eis censendis quae in medium prolata displiceant; neque immerito dicamus hunc principum principem esse sapientem. praesento uobis Equitem Auratum, Magistrum in Artibus, Academiae Britannicae Sodalem, Philosophiae in Vniversitate Californiensi ad Berkeley in nomine Monroe Deutsch Professorem, Philosophiae in nomine Knightbridge olim Professorem, Collegi Regalis Socium et quondam Magistrum, B E R N A R D A RT H U R O W E N W I L L I A M S

98

H

O W should life be lived? Socrates put the question ﬁrst, we are told, and it is a supremely important question, to which philosophers have not yet found a good answer. Among those who are reckoned to have done most to deﬁne the ground is counted this man, unsurpassed in his generation as a philosopher and one with a notable record of public action. In philosophy he has devoted himself chieﬂy to the ﬁeld which the Greeks called Ethics. The debate began in antiquity, it has continued ever since, and this man is thoroughly familiar with all of it. More recent views are not those that persuade him most: he observes that it is not a topic in which the intellectual sharpness of this or that philosopher’s theory should prevail; rather, any man should mind how he conducts himself in this or that context. Not just philosophers, but men of all sorts should be concerned about ethics. Ethics, I said; Sir Bernard argues that its common name of Moral Philosophy means something a little different, and that its limits should not be deﬁned so narrowly. There are those who have argued that what a man thinks right he is bound to do; Sir Bernard has a clause to add between thinking something right and doing it, which is the question whether the man desires so to behave. Besides, it can happen that of two deeds neither should be done. Yet the necessity of choosing one once constrained Agamemnon; he decided there was more shame in disappointing his brother and their allies than in disappointing his wife. At this point in the argument another theory of Ethics is looming; for refutation of that you may read the man himself. Let us not fail to mention the public inquiries he has undertaken, on gambling, on social justice, on the misuse of drugs, and on obscenity and ﬁlm censorship; even Plato himself might have acknowledged in this man a philosopher king of kings. I present to you Sir B E R N A R D A RT H U R O W E N W I L L I A M S , f. b . a . , m . a . , Monroe Deutsch Professor of Philosophy in the University of California, Berkeley, formerly Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy, Fellow and sometime Provost of King’s College

99

T

H E O L O G I A E scientiarum reginae qui studet difﬁcili paret dominae; nempe errare promptius solent homines quam uera discernere. sed is qui iuuenis amore Dei instinctus rem diuinam altius intellegere latiusque disseminare cupiebat, quid libentius faceret? primo suo libro, theologia praestanti, Scientiae Volnus titulum dedit, uerba a poeta et sacerdote illo Ordouicum mutuatus (neque ipse ab opere poetico abhorret); tunc Arii cuiusdam studio, haeretici uiri, tam periculoso quam utili suscepto librum edidit doctrina densissimum, luce sapientiaque clarissimum. tot numero libros, libellos, orationes edit, omnesque bonis uerbis boni uiri plenas, ut eum semper philosophari credideris. sed ex aulis bibliothecisque in episcopatum Silurum electus prouinciam illam tanto amore adeoque ipse rursus amatus coluit ut dux omnium Anglicanorum aliquando ﬁeri deberet. et factus est, ingenti cum spe multorum. quae tamen in Ariano libro scripsit forsitan meminerit, ex ambagibus multiplicibus quae potestati apud Christianos exercendae obstent ultimam uideri esse nullam fugam. nec uero ut opinor hic uellet esse, qui si quid ambigitur minime quid sibi, quid cuiuis placeat sed quid bono sit ecclesiae tota re subtilissime et amantissime disceptata petit. habet episcopis quibus praeest permulta quae tradat, sed plura etiam, qua est auctoritate sapientiae, omnibus eis qui Deum illum unum Abramicum cultibus tam diuersis uenerantur. magnum profecto hoc opus; quo suscepto, uersibus poetae quo nullus in hoc loco magis idoneus qui citetur benedicamus: me diuinus amor toto comitabitur aeuo, qui quod numquam aberit laudibus usque colam. praesento uobis Magistrum in Artibus, Academiae Britannicae Sodalem, Reuerendissimum atque Illustrissimum Archiepiscopum Cantuariensem Metropolitanum et Totius Angliae Primatem, Collegiorum de Clare et Christi honoris causa Socium, R O WA N D O U G L A S W I L L I A M S

100

S

T U D E N T S of Theology, the Queen of the Sciences, serve a difﬁcult mistress; error is much easier than perception of truth. But for a young man inspired by the love of God, eager to understand it more deeply and to spread word of it more widely, there could be no happier study. His ﬁrst book, outstanding for its theology, is called The Wound of Knowledge; he took the title from R. S. Thomas, poet and divine (Rowan Williams is something of a poet himself at times); then he undertook the perilous but valuable investigation of one Arius, a heretic, and produced a book which is as packed with learning as it is bright with understanding. So numerous are his books, essays and addresses, all of them full of the good words of a good man, that you might think he had pursued an academic career throughout. Election to the bishopric of Monmouth took him away from academe; as bishop he served his diocese with such affection (an affection fully returned, it should be said) that he was surely bound for the leadership one day of the whole Anglican communion. And so it came to pass, amid the great hopes of very many. He may remember perhaps a sentence from his book on Arius: ‘There seems no ﬁnal escape from the manifold ambiguities surrounding the exercise of power in the Christian church.’ Nor do I think he would wish for one: when a problem arises, he puts before his own or anyone’s opinion the good of the Church, and he seeks that good through most careful, loving and thorough debate. He has much to give to the bishops whom he leads, and even more, such is the authority of his knowledge, to all those who worship the one God of Abraham with such diversity. It is a huge task. Let us bless him on his way with a verse from a poet supremely proper to quote in this place, George Herbert: Surely thy sweet and wondrous love shall measure all my days, and as it never shall remove, so neither shall my praise. I present to you the Most Reverend and Right Honourable R O WA N D O U G L A S W I L L I A M S , m . a . , f. b a . , Honorary Fellow of Clare College and of Christ’s College, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England

101

G

E O R G I O tertio eius nominis rege mortuo bibliothecam Museo Britannico ea condicione legatam tradidit ﬁlius ut a populo inspici posset. nouam Britannicam librorum aedem cum hic uir parabat condiciones erant innumerabiles et ab ipso ad opus apte et eleganter exstruendum et ab aliis impositae, sed regia illa princeps fuit. nam libros eius in aede media spectare licet in turri uitrea conditos rubro giluo nigro colore spinarum auroque tenuissimo refulgere. totum est artis summae consilium, opus summae patientiae. sermonis egestate praecisus hoc a uobis peto, ut ipsi cum exteriores tum interiores partis uisum eatis. nullum magniﬁcentius hoc saeculo dicitur aediﬁcatum aediﬁcium. omittite insciorum conuicia, sordes senatus si potestis despicite, inuenite potius monumentum aere ligno lapide uitro latere exactum quo nullum aptius ad munus est, nullum amplius spatiis formaque concinnius. eius fortasse misereat qui proxime sancti Pancrati mansionem aediﬁcet, sed etiam ad istam uicinitatem congruenter facit. ‘in usu ratio.’ sic dixit uir sapiens quem citare hic solet. quibus usus est bibliothecae laudes gratesque agunt. sed ex uno tamen eoque tam multiplici difﬁcilique opere famam laudesque tantas mereri paene mirum esset, nisi mereretur uir non modo in arte exercenda proﬁtenda illustranda tam promptus sed etiam pictura philosophiaque recentiore tam eruditus. Bibliothecae Britannicae nimirum dicetur a posteris auctor: maturitatis opus est. est et amoris opus; iam enim architectum citare oportet quem admiratur ante omnis: ‘fenestram cum parabis ﬁnge prospectantem’ is ait ‘puellam tuam.’ praesento uobis Equitem Auratum, Magistrum in Artibus, Architecturae Professorem Emeritum, Collegi Pembrochiani Socium Emeritum, Collegiorum Corporis Christi et Churchilliani honoris causa Socium, COLIN ALEXANDRUM ST JOHN WILSON

102

I

N 1823 George IV handed over to the British Museum the library bequeathed it by his father on condition that the public should be able to see it. The building of the new British Library was subject to countless conditions, some of the architect’s own making to satisfy criteria of good design, and some imposed by others, but George III’s will came ﬁrst. You may see the royal collection at the heart of the building kept safe in a tower of glass, the bindings resplendent in red, cream and black, and gleaming with gold-leaf. The whole design is a piece of the highest art, its achievement a piece of the highest determination. Words will not sufﬁce. You need to go and see it, inside as well as outside. People are calling it our greatest building of the century. Forget the jibes of the ignorant, overlook if you can the meanness of governments, and ﬁnd instead a monument of brick, bronze, glass, stone and wood all directed to their purposes with admirable judgment, all shaping space with beauty. To build beside St Pancras was no small challenge, and yet even that juxtaposition is brought off with tact. ‘The meaning lies with the use,’ said Wittgenstein, and Sir Colin accepts that doctrine. The Library’s users are loud in gratitude. It may seem remarkable that a single building, especially one of such complexity and toil as this, should have won its author the extensive praise that it has; but then, this architect is a remarkable man. His skill in practice, in profession and in discussion of his art is well matched by his knowledge of contemporary painting and thought. He will be remembered of course as the architect of the British Library: it is the work of his maturity. It is also a work of love. In the words of the architect whom he most admires, Alvar Aalto: ‘When you are designing a window, imagine your girl-friend looking out of it.’ I present to you Sir C O L I N A L E X A N D E R S t J O H N W I L S O N , m . a . , r . a . , Emeritus Professor of Architecture, Emeritus Fellow of Pembroke College, Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi and Churchill Colleges

103

G

R A D U M primum assecutus est hic uir rerum gestarum studio. a rebus gestis ordiamur. unde sit ortus mundus quaesiuere philosophi Graeci: Thales ex aqua creatum uisus est dicere, Anaximander ex eo quod inﬁnitum uocabat, Anaximenes ex aere, atque in hoc quidem consensere, ex uno ortum et creatum esse. tum Democritus rationem protulit elementorum quae atomos appellauit: quae cum multo postea inuestigari poterant, ipsa ex aliis particulis etiam minoribus componi uisa sunt. rursus inde peruentum erat ad alteram rationem eorum quibus nihil minus esse potest, quae ﬁla uel chordae appellantur – nisi illam rationem etiam alia superstringeret. haec ﬁla ea magnitudine habentur esse quae uix credi potest: in puncto quod super litteram I minusculam ponitur atramenti sunt atomorum paene quadragiens miliens numero: ut cum mundo atomus, sic cum atomo comparatur ﬁlum. res tam exigua inuestigarine potest? at non experimentis, sed rationibus mathematicis uestigatur, quarum sunt quas hic uir tanto ingeni acumine inuenit ut mathematici ipsi, parcum genus, praemio suo praestantissimo donauerint. librum autem cum duobus sociis de ﬁlorum superiorum ratione conscripsit, in quo uerba sunt huius modi: Manubrium si superﬁciei addideris, idem habebis ac si ﬁlorum clausorum laqueum. unusne dubito num eadem signiﬁcentur quae dicuntur? rationes mathematicas in hoc loco omnino omiserim. sed ﬁla quid faciunt? uibrantur, ita ut ex uibrationibus uis tota generetur qua geruntur omnes res; qua ratione probata, quattuor illae potestates forsitan ad unam tandem redactae sint, mittaturque harmonia illa caelestis quam posuere Pythagoras Platoque. praesento uobis uirum in Instituto Studiorum Superiorum Princetonensi rei physicae mathematicalis in nomine Caroli Simonyi Professorem, E D WA R D W I T T E N

104

E

D WA R D Witten took his ﬁrst degree in History. Let us begin with some history. What the world is made of was a question pursued by early Greek thinkers. Thales appears to have said that water was the basic matter; Anaximander refused to deﬁne his matter, and Anaximenes said it was air. They agreed on this at least, that it was one thing and only one. Then Democritus put forward the theory of basic units called atoms; but when the powers to investigate them became available, they turned out to be made of even smaller particles themselves. So we track back to a further theory of things ultimately small, called strings – except that now we have the superstring theory by way of improvement. These strings are so small as to be barely believable. In the dot on the top of the little letter I there are nearly four billion atoms of ink. A string is to an atom as an atom is to the universe. Can something so tiny be investigated? Not experimentally, perhaps, but it can with mathematics, and this man has invented some of the necessary mathematics with such penetrating brilliance that mathematicians themselves, a chary set, have awarded him their highest honour, the Fields Medal. He has with two colleagues written a book on Superstring Theory; I quote a sentence from it: ‘Adding a handle to a surface is equivalent to adding a loop of closed strings.’ Am I alone in wondering whether words and meaning quite equate? The mathematical equations in this context I omit entirely. What do the strings do? They vibrate, and from their vibrations all the energy that works the world is generated. If the theory is established, perhaps at last the four forces of modern physics will be uniﬁed in one theory, and that music of the spheres will be released which Pythagoras and Plato once imagined. I present to you E D WA R D W I T T E N , Charles Simonyi Professor of Mathematical Physics in the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

105