Winter 2017

From Sea to City

This edition of Concordia shows the extraordinary range of activity OMTs undertake. Our front cover features Rory Gullan, who rowed 70 kilometres from the North Sea to the City for charity – the first man ever

to undertake this. Peter Whiskerd, Zain Khawaja and Neil Henderson write of vastly differing careers, in humanitarian work, driverless technology and media production respectively. My sincere thanks to them all for their contributions.

As ever, we remain indebted to you all for your regular contact and feedback. Please do continue to let us know of your successes and ideas for articles; we are keen to showcase as full a range of alumni activity as possible.

Jon Rippier Editor

Dear reader

Gordon Brown speaking about his new book ‘My Life, Our Times’ in the Great Hall, November 2017

Sandy Lodge, Northwood, Middlesex, HA6 2HT

Telephone: +44 (0)1923 820644

Email: alumni@mtsn.org.uk

www.mtsn.org.uk

Editor: Jon Rippier

Contributing editors: Nick Latham, Lucia Hull

Photography: Ian Rudling, Patricia Rayner, Lucia Hull

Designed & produced by: 3Sixty Creative www.3sixty-creative.com

Front cover photo: Rory Gullan OMT, who rowed 70 kilometres from the North Sea to the City for charity

Concordia

Do you know a missing alumnus? Add a friend to Concordia’s mailing list alumni@mtsn.org.uk

Welcome

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On October 31st 2017 The Times published a story regarding the infl uence of independent schools in Britain. The article asserted: “A group of only nine public schools are still producing a large share of the

country’s most powerful people, with their former pupils 94 times more likely to reach the top than anyone else.” Merchant Taylors’ is one of those nine schools. Some will celebrate this news; others will take the opportunity to suggest that we are a bastion of privilege, guilty of perpetuating an unjust social order. In what is my fi fth year as Head Master of this school I am absolutely convinced that such criticism is misplaced. On the contrary, we are doing everything possible to promote social mobility and nurture a socially conscious school community from which our boys will go on to excel in their chosen profession.

As you may remember from your time here, the school works closely with local state primary schools, bringing their pupils to the school on Field Days for music, maths, science and PE activities, or travelling to them and spending time reading with young children. Charity work is at the core of what we do, last years Charity Drive raised over £10,000 to support those displaced by the Syrian confl ict. Many OMTs will recall our annual Phab Week – the amazing residential activity programme to unite disabled and able-bodied teenagers on the basis of equality. We were the fi rst school to pioneer this extraordinary scheme and it has now been extended to offer a fortnightly club, run by our boys, for local disabled children to enjoy. These are just a few of the extra-curricular activities that continue to be on offer to the boys here at the school that make this such a remarkable learning environment.

We strive to ensure that the offer of the very best education here at Merchant Taylors’ is available to all bright young men, regardless of their parents’ fi nancial standing. Through the school’s bursary scheme – which has been at the heart of the school since its founding – 10% of our boys are supported by bursaries; our ambition is to be able to offer needs-blind admission. We have a way to go, but the recent examples of incredible generosity from OMTs as well as current and former parents who have made this possible are well documented within these pages.

Our ethos is to imbue our charges with far more than a set of grades: we want them to be leaders in their fi elds, examples of such OMTs follow in the pages of this magazine. From meeting many of you during my time as Head Master of this school, I know that you wear your success lightly and do so without any sense of entitlement. You are deeply impressive men who carry yourselves with enormous humility.

As alumni we are proud of your achievements and hope that the next generation of Merchant Taylors’ boys will follow in your footsteps. At a time when the challenges faced by an uncertain world are growing ever more pressing, we feel that the country’s best schools must unapologetically offer the highest quality education and we propose to continue to do so.

Simon EversonHead Master

IntroductionAn introduction from the Head Master:

04 Peter Whiskerd (1969-1973) writes of his career in fi nance

and latterly working for Médecins Sans Frontières

08 Rory Gullan (1998-2003)

writes of rowing from the North Sea to the City

for charity

12 Zain Khawaja

(2007-2012) writes of driverless technology and his

new start-up Propelmee

16 Neil Henderson

(1993-1998) writes of his experiences living and

working in Dubai

20 The Jon Gabitass Reunion Dinner

25 Class Notes

26 Development

34 Obituaries

In this issue

We have made every attempt to locate copyright ownership of archive

photography but have not always succeeded in doing so. Any owner of

copyright of individual images is invited to contact the editor.

Supporting MTS To fi nd out more about

how you can support the school, please go to:

https://development.mtsn.org.uk/supporting-MTS

A Merchant Taylors’ education is more relevant than ever

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different place the world is today, compared to September 1969 when I started at the school. I found a quote in the Guardian from 2009 which sums up rather well how it feels to be looking back almost 50 years:

“Consider even the briefest summary of how much has happened on the global stage since 1969: the Vietnam war ended; the cold war escalated then declined; the Berlin Wall fell; communism collapsed; Islamic fundamentalism surged. And yet nothing has quite the power to make people in their 30s, 40s or 50s feel very old indeed as refl ecting upon the growth of the internet and the world wide web” (Guardian 2009). The changes since 2009 are possibly even more dramatic, and life in 1969 was truly incomparable to today.

My fi rst memories of Merchant Taylors’ were via my brother who joined the school two years before me, and it made me determined to follow in his footsteps. Moving from Westminster Abbey Choir school with its 36 pupils and seven-day a week schedule singing in the Abbey meant that the transition to the discipline of life at MTS was easier than it might have been (apart from maths, where the curriculum was completely different and I was confronted with long tables for the fi rst time!).

Looking back, I realise how privileged I was to attend such a school and I am grateful to my parents for giving me the chance. With the Head Master of the day, Brian Rees, they pioneered the music bursary for my brother and I, enabling them to afford the fees.

Peter WhiskerdPeter Whiskerd (1969-1973) refl ects on his time at Merchant Taylors’, his career as a fi nance professional and, latterly, as a manager at Médecins Sans Frontières

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Given that music was the main reason I got into the school, it is only appropriate to start with my memories of the school orchestra and the passion that Jonny Varcoe tried to instil into not just the musicians among us but also some of the other more reluctant pupils. In the era of Hendrix, Joplin and the Beatles, and with pop and rock music becoming embedded into youth culture, classical music was definitely not considered “hip” by the majority of students at the school at that time.

As if in anticipation of a growing trend, and to engage more pupils, the inspirational John Steane organised music classes where we could bring our favourite pop music to play on the condition that we were able to explain why we thought it was good. I still remember giving a discourse on Emerson, Lake and Palmer. I also interviewed Al Stewart (of “Year of the Cat” fame) for the school magazine of the time, The Promethean – this was thanks to the fact that Al happens to be a distant cousin.

John Steane was an inspiration in many ways for nurturing my ongoing love of the arts. He directed the 1973 school play – Indians by Arthur Kopit – in which I had the lead role, and throughout my life since, I have been involved in music and drama.

Sport was also a big feature of my life at MTS. I played for the 1st XI cricket team in 1972 and 1973, and feature in Wisden in both those years, alongside a couple of outstanding cricketers (P.J. Hill and Phil Evans, with whom I also represented Middlesex at under-18 level). I was also privileged to be part of a squad of rugby players that went three seasons unbeaten without conceding a single try. The mastermind behind this squad was of course a Welshman, Tim Beynon.

The CCF is another lasting memory, with the “fearsome” Mr. Hawkey leading the senior service, the Navy. I actually really enjoyed this activity, despite the fact that army uniform and the long hair fashion of that time meant finding ingenious solutions to hiding hair under berets, including double-sided sellotape! At one stage, the length of my hair was even deemed by the school to be the acceptable “benchmark”

Academically, the most influential teacher I had was Mr. Bingham, who taught German and instilled in me my love of languages. For this reason I chose to study German Literature and Languages at Warwick University. A unique feature of the syllabus at that time was that a year abroad was obligatory as part of a four-year degree course, so I spent a year in Munich, which made a lasting impression on me and had a major influence on my career. I

“I was based in Austria and responsible for helping Mars develop its business in Central Europe just after the fall of communism.”think my love of languages and the confidence I developed, thanks to the broad school curriculum, are the two things for which I am most grateful from my time at MTS. My only regret is that I lost touch with all of my contemporaries. There is no such danger today with the arrival of social media; my children are in touch with all of their alumni from school, 15 years after they graduated.

Having graduated with a BA in German, I decided to pursue a business qualification, and became a member of the Institute of Management Accountants. This led me to a successful career in the finance industry, but my love for languages remained strong. And so it was that, partly due to my fluency in German, I was given the opportunity in 1990 to join Mars Incorporated as Finance Director for Central and Eastern Europe. I was based in Austria and responsible for helping Mars develop its business in Central Europe just after the fall of communism. This was an extraordinary time in the region – the queues to buy a pack of M&Ms in Moscow in 1990 were longer than for the first McDonald’s restaurant, which was opened at the same time. Consumerism arrived with a bang in

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these countries and I fell in love with cities such as Budapest, Prague and Krakow.

Having established four local offices in the Central European region, I was then lucky enough to spend three years with Mars in Italy, and discovered another country to savour. I learnt Italian during my three year stay, and still go back as often as I can to this beautiful country. However, the pull towards Central Europe was too great and I returned to Warsaw in 1996, where I spent 16 years working for a number of businesses as a Director, helping companies with the transition to a free market economy. And yes, I learned to speak Polish to a level where I made TV and radio appearances with my opera singer Polish ex-wife!

My last role in Poland coincided with the crash of 2008, so I had to make some painful reductions to the Polish team where I was working. However, I had such an excellent group of young professionals that I was able to help nine team members transfer to the European HQ in Amsterdam. The company was clearly impressed with my efforts, such that I was also asked to move to the Netherlands as Head of Human Resources for Europe. I never expected to be on the move again and to face the challenge of learning another language but that is what happened and that is what led me eventually to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

After 25 years as a corporate director, I decided it was time to do something where I could give back

and we are working with teams on the ground in Iraq, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Haiti to try to improve quality of care for patients in cooperation with the local Ministry of Health responsible for the hospitals. MSF is now involved in more than just emergency relief, so we try to help to build capability and capacity in each project, with the ultimate aim that such hospitals can become self-sufficient in providing adequate quality of care for the patients. Conditions for the local people and for our staff are often very challenging but the passion of the people who work for MSF, often in excess of ten years, is very humbling for me. I have already spent time in Sulaymaniyah, in the Kurdish region of Iraq, helping the local Hospital Director to better organise his time and management team, and I visited our hospital in Baraka (DRC) to help establish a hospital management team structure. To get to Baraka, I had a spectacular three-hour road trip along the DRC-Rwanda border, followed by a beautiful three-hour boat trip across Lake Tanganika.

By the time of publication I will have been to South Sudan to review our hospital activities in Bentiu, where we provide medical aid to 140,000 people inside a UN camp. I am very grateful to have been given the opportunity to work with such an incredible organisation – to be able to give back while still learning and experiencing new things is something I never expected at this time in my life. And, of course, to round things off linguistically, I have been living in Holland for nearly five years and can now speak my sixth European language.

It has been a wonderful journey since 1969 and I have no intention to retire any time soon – I ran the Berlin half marathon in April this year, I sing in a choir and a band, and I love discovering new places. Merchant Taylors’ was instrumental in opening up the possibilities of languages, sport and music for me, so I have to say a big thank you to all the people mentioned above, many of whom have passed on. You were an inspiration.

some of the experience I had gained working for some great companies across Europe to MSF, an organisation in need of professional management to complement its extraordinary track record in alleviating human suffering across the globe. MSF has grown very rapidly over the years since its foundation in the 1970s. Today, MSF is a worldwide movement of 21 sections, 24 associations and various other offices. They are bound together by MSF International, based in Geneva, Switzerland, which provides coordination, information and support to the MSF Movement. Some 35,000 health professionals, logistical and administrative staff – most of whom are hired locally – work on programmes in 71 countries worldwide.

My role is to help improve the effectiveness and efficiency of health care management, with a focus on our hospitals and complex medical programmes. I head a team of specialist advisers

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The Solo Sea To City Row

Following the death of his mother, Rory Gullan

(1998-2003) decided to row 70 kilometres from the North Sea

to the City to raise money for Cancer Research UK

It’s a couple of weeks since I took on the first ever solo row of 70km from the North Sea to Tower Bridge, in aid of Cancer Research UK

and in my mother’s memory. It’s also only six months since I first strapped myself into a single racing shell. With my hands finally healing, muscles mostly recovered, and £13,500 raised so far, I can now confidently say it has all been worth it. I will admit, however, that right up until the minutes before I set off on what would be a seven-hour row on the hottest August Bank Holiday on record, there was still a small part of me that questioned why I would ever do such a thing.

Two years ago my mother died, having fought cancer for 22 years. I say fought, but she actually took it in her stride gracefully and with a great deal of humour. Not many people knew she had cancer, as she didn’t want it to be something that defined her, and it never did. Her attitude, which she instilled in my brothers and me in all we do, was that worry and stress don’t particularly help any situation. The worst that could happen is failure. That’s it. So why worry? I carry this sentiment with me, and at times an unfortunate side effect of this is a stubborn determination to do whatever I’ve set my mind to. Take this underlying mindset and add to it a chain of events a year after my mother’s death, and the idea of The Solo Sea to City Row was born.

We are all, unfortunately, affected by cancer. Whether it’s ourselves or a relative, a friend or a colleague, it is something that touches us all. My mother had such a strong character and handled everything with such apparent ease that despite having various forms of cancer for so many years, it was not something that controlled

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her life. As my brother put it best when he spoke at her funeral, she didn’t lose a battle to cancer. She won. She lived an amazing life and is still with me in everything I do.

I wanted to celebrate this and raise money for Cancer Research UK by setting myself a huge challenge, and although at the time I didn’t know what the challenge would be, I knew it had to be something that would test my mental and physical strength in a way that nothing had before. By chance, on a run along the Thames, I came across a sign for a charity that organises team cross-channel rows. Having rowed in my fi rst year at McGill University, Montreal, this resonated with me, but further research showed that the French authorities have now banned ‘unorthodox crossings’. Undeterred, I set my sights on a different challenge: I would row from Southend Pier, where the Thames meets the North Sea, to Tower Bridge – a total distance of 70km.

The challenge was not only the distance but also the reality of taking a racing shell into relatively open tidal waters and unpredictable weather conditions. With enough people, rowers and non-rowers alike, telling me that this probably shouldn’t be attempted, I felt that this was the right challenge for me. I met with Cancer Research UK, set myself a £10,000 fundraising target, and got to work. At the time, I had no contacts in rowing and no access to a club or boat, so I began by contacting as many London-based rowing clubs as possible, asking for support. One club responded.

The response wasn’t overly positive, but it was a start. I was due to meet with the rowing club when I received a late night email from a committee member who was emailing on his own behalf, not the club’s, and who wanted to help. We spoke on the phone that night, and before long we had set a time the next morning to go sculling in his boat. His was the fi rst positive feedback I had received from anyone in months, and it really struck a chord with me. It still does. He and his wife took me out on multiple sessions, gave me advice on technique, training, and kept me motivated. To this day I still think they don’t quite realise how pivotal they have been to this row; this has all been possible thanks to people who simply wanted to help.

My girlfriend is the strong infl uence in my life. She will never quite understand just how supportive she has been to me and how much she kept me going through the early mornings, sleepless nights, and, at times, injuries that shook my confi dence. She has inspired me in the way she has done so much – all of it behind the scenes and unseen by others – and took it upon herself to make my success in completing the row her responsibility as well. Many have told me that what I did is brave or inspiring, and I thank them for that, but really I just think I created a common ground for a lot of other amazing people to raise a considerable sum for charity. The real

inspiration is the overwhelming support that has been offered by so many people, both friends and strangers, and this continued to motivate me throughout my training.

As The Solo Sea to City Row was a relatively unprecedented challenge, I based my training on multiple infl uences: strength training from my McGill rowing days, marathon endurance training, discussions with ocean rowers, and simply getting on the ergometer and rowing.

I trained for nearly six months, and at the peak of my training I was on the water, on the rowing machine, or in the gym every day. Throughout my training there was a huge physical demand but as I started to reach the longer distances, I began to realise the mental strain that comes with such a challenge.

Training solo on the water is, by defi nition, solitary. It was extremely solitary. Crews would come and go for their training sessions, and four hours later I would be the only one left on the water. There was a wavering tension between the loneliness of the silence and the peace that comes with it, and it was often unclear which would prevail. There was also the unknown – the safety aspects, weather, everything that I could only prepare so much for and only the fi nal row itself would tell what would happen.

Sure enough, on the morning of the row, unexpected heavy mist delayed the launch and put us dangerously close to missing the tide. As I carefully rowed out to the end of the pier,

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however, the mist started to clear and revealed conditions that could be described as nothing other than perfect. There I sat in the North Sea in a boat just 30cm wide and 14kg in weight, on a day chosen months earlier, and I was fl oating on water like glass, under clear skies.

Aside from a couple of testing moments due to passing commercial ships, thanks to these conditions I maintained a pace in line with my training. Every hour I was averaging 10km and taking a couple of one or two-minute pauses for food and water. That’s not to understate how exhausting it was, particularly in the heat, but it was truly an indication of how well my training had prepared me. The anticipated ‘wall’ came at 40km – somewhere near the Dartford Crossing – but once the London City skyline appeared on the horizon, my pace picked back up as I prepared for the home stretch.

Reaching the Thames Barrier, however, and with only 15km to go, the increasing river traffi c drastically slowed my pace as I struggled to keep rowing while preventing the boat from capsizing. It was at this point that I began to think that those who had warned me against the row may have known what they were talking about after all. I’d come all the way from the North Sea, rowing for six hours straight, and in the fi nal hour I was doubting whether the row could be completed at all.

With the boat almost entirely submerged, the fi nal 30 minutes became more of a test of my ability to keep the boat upright, but as Tower

Bridge very slowly came into view, the waters calmed enough for me to pull through and cross under the fi nish seven hours after I’d set off that morning. Relieved and emotional; with six months of training and planning coming down to that moment, it was only on crossing the fi nish line that I learned that I had smashed my fundraising target.

In the short time since setting myself this challenge, I’ve met the most amazing and generous people. I’ve pushed myself harder than ever before, I’ve felt aches and pains in areas I didn’t even know possible, and I’ve hopefully managed to maintain some level of humour over it all. I’ve also rediscovered my love for rowing, and I know that will stay with me.

As for my mother, I know she would be proud. She would also probably have told me to stop making such a fuss and just get on with it.

*You can fi nd see more at sea2city.org and donate at justgiving.com/sea2city

Photo credits: Francesca Mundy

“With the boat almost entirely submerged, the fi nal 30 minutes became more of a test of my ability to keep the boat upright”

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Driverless Cars: Past, Present and FutureZain Khawaja (2007-2012) writes about his new start-up which is at the forefront of the revolution in driverless cars

A view of the future of mobility

Imagine a future where driving licences and road accidents are a thing of the past, and driverless vehicles can shuttle you around in towns or in high-speed platoons on highways. This future may seem like something out of science fi ction, but it is closer than you think. There is signifi cant research and development taking place all over the world in pursuit of this vision, but the ultimate goal of fully autonomous cars has yet to be met.

Self-driving robotics – recent history

Self-driving cars have only gathered mainstream interest in recent years, but autonomous mobility has been an active area of research within the robotics community for the past three decades. The advent of driverless cars began with the 2004 DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) Grand Challenge, in which research teams from around the world competed to develop an autonomous car capable of navigating through diffi cult desert terrain. This challenge sought to promote the development of self-driving ground vehicles with potential military applications. An

eclectic group of world-class universities and desert car junkies submitted entries, but not a single car managed to fi nish the race. Most vehicles met their unfortunate end colliding with cacti, running into rocks, or falling into ditches during their fi rst few minutes in the rough desert terrain. The best performing car, Carnegie Mellon’s entry, veered off the dirt path at the 12 kilometre mark, 228 kilometres short of the fi nish line.

DARPA held the challenge a second time in 2005, and for the fi rst time, fi ve teams were able to complete the challenging 240km course through the Mojave desert. Stanford University’s entry claimed fi rst place, followed closely by Carnegie Mellon. The Stanford car, known as Stanley, was able to fi nd a safe path through the dessert while avoiding ditches, rocks and plant life, which ended the runs of most of the challenge’s entrants. In the year between the fi rst and second challenges, self-driving cars went from crashing into ditches to completing a course most humans would fi nd challenging to drive through.

Following the advancements prompted by these DARPA competitions, driverless car technology

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“The venture capital industry on both sides of the Atlantic is very actively deploying funds to create large portfolios within autonomous mobility.”then moved on to meet the challenges posed by urban environments. Lane markers, pedestrian crossings, traffic lights, and moving vehicles became the newest frontiers for autonomous vehicles to conquer. In 2007, DARPA began a new “Urban Challenge” in which driverless cars would compete to navigate through a controlled urban environment while complying with California driving rules. The world’s autonomous car researchers and enthusiasts were ready once more for the challenge. Carnegie Mellon claimed first place, with Stanford a close second. Both team’s vehicles were able to successfully yield, park, overtake, re-route, and safely drive the course.

The DARPA challenges demonstrated that autonomous cars had the potential to address large-scale transport problems, ranging from overcrowding in cities to drunk drivers. Early autonomous car R&D began taking place at Google (now Waymo), soon followed by

automotive manufacturers (OEMs) such as Tesla, Ford, Daimler-Benz, and Nissan, as well as Tier-1 suppliers such as Bosch and Delphi. With continued progress in the field today, many OEM’s have set 2020 deadlines to deliver full driverless car technology on certain road networks. The driverless car industry is now attracting significant investment interest. The headline M&A deals this year include Mobileye’s acquisition by Intel for USD 15 billion, and Cruise Automation’s acquisition by General Motors for USD 1 billion. Traditional large players are acquiring the specialist technological capabilities they lack in-house in the race to full autonomy. The venture capital industry on both sides of the Atlantic is very actively deploying funds to create large portfolios within autonomous mobility.

Despite the progress made up until now, driverless car technology is far from ready for the roads. There are many challenges that remain in delivering

Autonomous delivery pod Go4 which was recently unveiled.

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safe and ubiquitous autonomous mobility at a reasonable price-point. While autonomy can soon be realistically achieved on highways, because all cars go in one direction and there are no junctions and traffi c lights, it seems highly unlikely that full autonomy within urban and rural environments will be delivered within the next ten years. Low speed urban mobility in pedestrianised environments is more challenging because of the variety in types of obstacles, complexity of road networks, and uncertainty in predicting human behaviour in close proximity. Technical gaps in achieving this goal become smaller by the day but have not been completely met.

“Despite the progress made until now, driverless car technology is far from ready for the roads.”

Detailed environmental mapping is used extensively across the driverless car industry. To achieve autonomy through a mapping-based approach, a car must fi rst be driven through a new environment manually, several times, to build up a representation about the structure and appearance of the environment, recording the path that was manually driven by the vehicle. Autonomy is then achieved by matching live sensor data to pre-surveyed data, and this matching is used to guide the vehicle along the previously driven path. In a large part, this approach takes the burden off live perception of the environment, as a vehicle already knows what the environment looks like and where it should drive. While such an approach

allows for quick demonstrations of autonomy, the autonomous vehicle remains constrained to operate only in pre-surveyed areas. This means that these autonomous vehicles can only go where they have gone before. Additionally, these pre-surveyed environmental maps are sensitive to weather and lighting changes, meaning that fog, rain, snow, or even too much sun could prevent a car from accurately applying the information collected in the survey-mapping run. Fusing data from several mapping runs in different environmental conditions can minimise this problem, but this approach cannot account for all possible weather extremes and the approach remains less adaptable than pure perception-based autonomy. While pre-survey approaches could be practical and performant in small and enclosed environments, they cannot scale to larger road networks or cities, as it is simply not feasible to constantly survey and re-map road networks.

My entrepreneurial venture - Propelmee

During my years at Merchant Taylors’, I excelled in mathematics and physics and decided to pursue engineering at university. I successfully secured my place to read engineering at Oxford and went up to St Anne’s College in 2012. Throughout my time at Oxford, I focused on developing a well-rounded set of core engineering skills, and by the end of the third year, my specialism became Computer Vision and Robotics. I was fascinated by the fi eld and its focus on making machines “see”, “learn” and “react” to changing environments. My capstone thesis work focused on magnifying imperceptible motions in video, such that the subtle vibration of a car turning on, or the small pulsations of veins, could be clearly visualised. I graduated from Oxford with a MEng in 2016 and immediately began working as a software engineer at a driverless car technology start-up. I had the opportunity of working fi rst-hand on a driverless car platform and gained an insight into practical autonomous vehicle systems. I also had the opportunity to work as a part of the team delivering driverless shuttle trials

Technological building blocks of autonomy

Autonomous mobility is based on three interlinked and interdependent capabilities: perception, planning, and control. Various competing approaches to providing autonomous mobility place a different level of emphasis on each component, which forms the basis of differentiation of one autonomous software system from another.

Perception is the ability of autonomous machines to interpret raw sensor data and create scene understanding. Perception allows machines to ‘see’ the world, to know where they can drive, and detect all obstacles. Whether a self-driving machine is intended for navigating roads or mowing golf courses, perception is the single most important capability for enabling autonomy.

In the planning stage of autonomy, vehicles analyse perception data to identify a local path, which both avoids obstacles and calculates motion trajectories to get them closer to their fi nal goal. As the vehicle moves, it continues to create intermittent goals as parts of a string of goal points leading to a fi nal desired destination.

Control is the process by which an autonomous vehicle executes mobility commands to follow this planned pathway and reach its intended goals. This entire process of perception, planning and navigation happens in a repetitive loop, several times per second, and the output is autonomy.

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at Greenwich and the LUTZ driverless pod trials at Milton Keynes. This experience allowed me to develop a passion for perception, and I began to think about how I could solve this challenge.

At the start of 2017, I left my job to set up my own autonomous vehicle start-up, Propelmee, with the vision of “enabling machines in motion, understand the world”. I am the Lead Technologist of the company, and Propelmee’s co-founder Sabdezar Ilahi, CFA, leads on intellectual property protection, market intelligence and business strategy. We believe patent fi lings will be a key determinant of commercial success in this industry, which has already seen over 5,000 patent fi lings by major players in automotive and software sectors. Propelmee aims to enable autonomy not just for driverless cars, but also for applications in low-speed urban transport, last-mile delivery, assistive mobility, agriculture, and fi eld-and-service robotics. Autonomy is synonymous with driverless cars today, but we believe that off-road applications can have signifi cant social and economic impact for businesses and regular people, with immediate applications. Current approaches for driverless cars involving complicated, multi-sensory approaches do not translate to off-road use cases, in unstructured environments, where a low price-point is a requirement for any practical and useful system.

Off-road autonomous applications can offer tremendous societal benefi ts. For example, an autonomous wheelchair could be used to enable mobility for the visually impaired; a low-speed pod could help transport people in airports, malls, shopping districts and travel both indoors and outdoors; and autonomous lawnmowers and vacuum cleaners could be used to mow an entire golf course, or clean an entire school with no manual intervention. Such use cases require a different and generalisable approach to autonomy, which Propelmee aims to deliver.

Propelmee’s Autonomy Demonstration

At Propelmee, we are developing a low speed last-mile delivery pod which will operate autonomously without any pre-surveying of the environment, relying on only a navigation map, just like the way humans navigate using a map in their smartphone while looking at a road. We aim to demonstrate

our autonomous delivery pod on public footpaths and roads in real-world environments near the end of this year, where it will encounter pedestrians, cyclists, and other road users. We have an ambitious demonstration time-line and aim to also show autonomous capability on a lawnmower platform, a wheelchair, and a two-person passenger pod before the end of 2018. Our core software is patent-pending and can identify obstacles of any type, size, shape, appearance, position and orientation, and can also locate the drivable free-space for the robot to navigate on urban roads, highways, indoors, off-road, and on footpaths. Our perception technology is generalisable across environments, and works on any vehicle with any set of sensors.

Autonomous mobility is an ever-growing fi eld with signifi cant potential to change people’s lives. Machine perception is the most critical step in creating safe and ubiquitous self-driving vehicles, and it is our vision to see Propelmee answer this challenge. If you are interested in the driverless car industry and wish to get in touch, you can reach me via email at zain@propelmee.com

“At the start of 2017, I left my job to set up my own autonomous vehicle start-up, Propelmee, with the vision of “enabling machines in motion, understand the world.”

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Neil Henderson

Neil Henderson (1993-1998) moved to Dubai in his mid-twenties. Having initially worked as a teacher he now works in digital media production. He writes about his varied career path and the different facets of life in the Middle East

O n leaving Merchant Taylors’ in 1998 and heading off on a gap year to Paris, the US and Spain, I had no clear idea of where

I would end up heading. I entertained flights of fancy that I would be a film director and tell stories that would impact people and provoke change for the better. After completing my degree at Oxford, I spent a couple of years working in the television and film industry in London. With the exception of a job working for Ridley Scott, director of epic films Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator, my experiences left me mesmerised but dissatisfied, not quite reaching the directorial heights to which I was aspiring, despite the free film-school training my work granted me. That impatience of youth drove me from job to job, from Viking documentary to bawdy Ealing-comedy script development, to music promo and beyond. Yet, in my impetuosity, I felt exasperated at the lack of returns I was seeing, let alone felt I deserved, and I was getting no closer to landing my first assistant directorship, let alone a directing gig.

With a heavy heart, non-existent funds and four years of student debt hanging over my head, the offer from a university friend to get me an interview at his old school for a languages teaching position

was too good to pass up. Thanks to the toils of Messrs McGinley, Bingham, Turner and Moon, I would actually start using my degree in some direct fashion, which was no bad thing I thought. I would like to say having a tangible impact on young people’s lives drove me. In truth, the combination of regular pay against my debt, and the prospect of establishing a film club at the school to continue my dream, convinced me to sign. In almost a blink of an eye I found myself having spent five years teaching in various schools around the country. I gained a place on the Graduate Teacher Programme, became an examiner and head of department, and taught many hundreds of students the difference between ser and estar (in no small part thanks to Mr Critchley’s GCSE Latin). While I did manage to teach film amidst the business of teaching, gradually my film directing aspirations passed into the background until I found everything I was doing failed to really scratch the itch, and the increasing stresses, in what is such a noble yet draining calling, only made the fit iller as time went on.

Towards the end of my time teaching in the UK, my future wife and I heard from a colleague of her experiences living and teaching in Dubai.

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“Before we knew it we were on an Emirates flight and I found myself in a British-curriculum school classroom working with a more diverse and eclectic group of students than I had ever experienced.”

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“For some reason the first time you do an activity in Dubai feels a little sweeter than elsewhere; that glimmer in the eye, like a toddler in a sweet shop, reignites.”

The sun-baked lifestyle and the travel-hub the city offered sounded incredible fun to us twenty-somethings looking for an escape from the S.A.D.-laden lives of an increasingly dour London existence. A move to somewhere as exciting and progressive as Dubai was a prospect too great to pass up and before we knew it we were on an Emirates flight. I found myself in a British-curriculum school classroom working with a more diverse and eclectic group of students than I had ever experienced. The first year was, for us – and is for many – a real honeymoon experience: the intoxicating heights and sights of Burj Khalifa, cocktails At The Top, roof-deck beers Up Town in the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, a lifestyle of smiles, activities and warmth so distant and different from London in every way possible.

For some reason the first time you do an activity in Dubai feels a little sweeter than elsewhere; that glimmer in the eye, like a school-boy in a sweet shop, reignites. The first Friday brunch gorging yourself in the Chocolate Room, with five cocktails stacked up on your table amongst palatial surroundings feels deliciously scurrilous

and indulgent. The 4x4 desert trips off-road to dune-bash in convoy, letting the air out of the tyres as you leave the road for the roller-coaster climbs and dips of the sand, ahead of a faux-local campfire dinner. Sunbathing on the beach a few steps from your front door, an abra across the Creek for a cup of local rich coffee in the souq, traipsing around Bastakiya’s old-town with school students learning about the Palm Tree’s ‘Tree of Life’ qualities for nomadic natives, Steven Berkoff performing his monologues during the Dubai Literature Festival. These and more are all ridiculously good, enjoyable and often unique and different opportunities from the UK’s offerings, no matter how thin the smattering may be compared

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with the inexhaustible array of British cultural hubs. Dubai’s brand new majestic Opera House and the forthcoming launch of Abu Dhabi’s wing of the Louvre extend cultural opportunities in very positive directions, while theme parks and London Eye-fashioned, The Wheel, further broaden the range of activities available.

Dubai is also arguably the safest city you could wish to live in. In eight years I have only heard about one actual crime of a car being broken into last year. Even if only anecdotal, and who knows what isn’t reported by the press, you really can forget your camera in the boot of a cab and get it back fully intact the following day from an incredibly helpful driver. Despite the total lack of nature, the superficiality of it all and the environmental issues resulting from the entirely man-made city-in-the-desert (forget Ski Dubai, it’s the desalination plants that really put the carbon boot in), it all really does make for a near perfect city for so many who build their lives here.

The city’s segregation of both culture and industry can make for a difficult place for true diversity-lovers. The indisputable improvements in working and living conditions do not assuage the feeling many carry of the injustice for the droves of economically enslaved labourers driven in their bus convoys on Sheikh Zayed Road every day. Their buses and Al Quoz/Marabea living quarters have always been a stark reminder of the inequalities resulting from the materialism on which this city thrives, and indeed in which everyone here plays some part in perpetuating. All told, however safe the city and country feels, its location in the heart of centuries-old-rooted geopolitical instability and all its current flavours, makes for a place where one colleague described having a stash of cash under his bed should he ever need to flee at the flick of a switch. He may have been exceptionally neurotic, but the sentiment has some credence to it.

As for the city’s leader and his vision, you hear that Sheikh Mo, as he is affectionately referred to, proclaims his availability on the phone, that every Emirati has his number and can call him about anything they like. Driving his Mercedes AMG G63

SUV with the simple and primary number plate “1” he presents himself as a fiercely visionary and approachable leader who has arguably implemented some of the most progressive, socially effective, aspirational and impressive policies and missions for his country in the world. For my part it seems you can look at the city in one of two ways, either relishing and admiring its grandeur, progressiveness and intentions, or reviling and rejecting its materialism, superficiality and questionable methods. It just depends on your own personal priorities.

After a few years in Dubai, I rediscovered the passion for film and production that I’d almost lost and took steps to become a Digital Multimedia Producer. Wielding all the various skills and training I’d kept up over the years, I managed to land a job producing video and photo content for the inaugural PSA Squash World Series Finals in May 2016. This somehow, miraculously, led to an explosion in bookings and clients – both a huge compliment and suggestion I may at last be heading in the right direction.

My working days now involve as broad a range of production duties as you can imagine. Interviewing the likes of Game of Thrones cast members, filming behind the scenes on televison commercials at Abu Dhabi’s F1 race track, covering Fatboy Slim’s DXBeach gig for a local nightlife magazine, and shooting stills of a prototype speedboat zipping around the waters of the Burj, among many others, make for a pretty thrilling and highly privileged line of work and lifestyle that is leading somewhere very exciting indeed, even if I still have no clear idea what that is quite yet. Bizarrely, none of it would have been possible quite like this were it not for Dubai and all the opportunities it has on offer. If you’d like to get out here then feel free to get in touch – I’d love to help in whatever way I can.

“After a few years in Dubai, I rediscovered the passion for film and production.”

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The Jon Gabitass Reunion Dinner

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‘It is hard not to look back on my time at Merchant Taylors’ as anything other than pretty unbelievable. Being part of the Phab team is still up there with one of the most rewarding and memorable things I have ever done. Winning the duologue competition (back to back just in case that isn’t recorded somewhere officially) and being in amazing productions like ‘Oh What a Lovely War’, the weirdest promenade play with St Helens and my favourite, ‘The Roses of Eyam’, when Ian Roberts and I played the comedy characters in a desperately depressing play about an entire village dying, was a huge amount of fun.

But most of all, I loved playing sport for Merchant Taylors’, and being in the 1st XV during both 6th form years with Mr Pallant as our caring, sharing coach and Mr Laithwaite guiding me whenever JP decided to drop me to the 2nd XV as a punishment, was absolute class.

Numerous teachers at the school made a significant impression on my life and quite a few of them are here today. Whether it was Mr Roseblade, who managed to fine tune one of the oddest acting groups ever assembled, or the immensely powerful and inspirational history double act of Mr Booth and Mr Taylor, who instilled a lifelong passion of history in so many of us, 5th form history classes with Mr Booth were genuinely awesome. And then there was Mr Taylor who magically brought to life so many different eras of history with great humour and so much enthusiasm for the subject. I still remember the epic trip to the Somme Battlefields nearly 25 years ago as a seriously important moment etched into the memory bank.

My favourite memory from my time at MTS was actually on my last semi-official day at the school. It was A-Level results day and having achieved CNN in my mocks I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the results, but on my way down the long drive, Mr Mash was driving towards me slowly. As only as he could – talking to you over his glasses with a deeply mischievous tone that was hard to read – he said to me ‘you have really done it this time old boy’. My word. Not sure what to say. Bye then. That was the last time I ever saw him. Clearly my heart sank and I thought I was in deep trouble.

In fact, he had seen my grades and just loved a wind up. My enjoyment of the joke grew and grew as I realised there was never going to be a pay off on the joke and it was all for him. He gave so many years to this school and I am pretty certain it gave him so much joy back.

Finally a message to you, Mr Gabitass. Thank you for making such a positive impression on so many thousands of boys, lives. The last thing you ever said to me on results day in 1997 was ‘Caplan, you are an enigma to the end, an enigma to the end’. Unfortunately I had no idea what you were trying to say, and still don’t, but based on your smile, I assumed it was a compliment. Thank you for asking me to say a few words. It is great to be here to pay tribute to you and recognise your immense contribution to this incredible school.’

Tom Caplan, Head Monitor (1992-1997)

Robert Keane, Head Monitor (1985-1992)

‘Twenty-five years ago this month, I was ending my time at Merchant Taylors’ and Jon Gabitass was ending his first year as Head Master. At Speech Day, he described me as looking cherubic, which is not an epithet sought by 18 year-old boys. To be fair to him he did allow me a right to reply as Head Monitor, albeit that it was in Latin. Finally, I have the chance to speak in English.

Three of us here this evening started school together as third formers in 1985. As perhaps the oldest OMT here, it is incumbent upon me to describe a little of the school which Jon inherited. In truth it probably had more in common with the school of the 1930s than the school today.

Architecturally, one could argue that the school had faced some years of underinvestment, with the notable exception of the sports hall. For those of you who don’t remember the Undercroft before Jon updated it, its singular purpose seemed to be to accommodate the unlikely requirement of one hundred and twenty boys needing the toilet at exactly the same time, as long as this occurred in a menacing semi-darkness.

These were formative years with much etched into the memory. I can still recite the surnames in alphabetical order of my third form and yet often cannot remember the names of the two or three people around the table by the end of a business meeting. I can recall the 800m route I needed to take to get from my maths lesson (in, of course, the CCF block – where else?) to my history lesson on the far side of the school, to be rebuked for arriving late. Seb Coe would have struggled to please that particular master.

My year as Head Monitor came at a turning point for the school. I was appointed by David Skipper, but served my year under Jon. I have great admiration for both as Head Masters. David Skipper had transformed the fortunes of the school with an emphasis on creating a pastoral and rewarding environment. Jon approached his task with an energy and determination I have not seen since. I think the school found new purpose and drive without losing its unique spirit.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak this evening, but most of all I am grateful to this school for the opportunities it gave me. Thank you.’

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In June this year, Jon Gabitass, Head Master of Merchant Taylors’ from 1992-2004, hosted a reunion dinner for OMTs who attended the school during his tenure. OMTs, former staff, current staff and their partners journeyed from around the world to join their Head Master and peers for an evening back at Sandy Lodge.

The highlight of the evening was the speeches delivered by former Head Monitors, Robert Keane (1985-1992), Tom Caplan (1992-1997), Hitesh Chowdhry (1996-2001) and Jon Gabitass himself, excerpts of which are printed here for all to enjoy.

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‘A few weeks ago I woke up on a Saturday morning to an email from Jon Gabitass. I felt a familiar chill down my spine – it’s Saturday morning, it’s Gabitass, it must be another detention!

Most of you will be familiar with the hierarchy of punishment at Merchant Taylors’, in the 1990s. There were, in ascending order: work parties, detentions, Saturday morning detentions; and then…a Head Master’s Saturday morning detention. The latter – much like the correspondence before today’s event, came with a special invitation; in those days of course with a sealed envelope addressed to “Mr and Mrs Chowdhry”. I had tried – and failed – on a number of occasions to argue to my parents that these were blessings in disguise…three hours of one-to-one time with the Head Master…at no extra cost!

And so when I opened the email and saw that Mr Gabitass was asking me to share some anecdotes about my time at school I immediately thought of the series of relatively-innocuous yellow cards that I received during my time here. Nobody forgets the first time they received the infamous Gabitass hairdryer treatment. For me it was on a hot September afternoon walking down the Long Drive; my tie had been loosened and my shirt slightly dishevelled. Suddenly, a camouflaged sniper jumped out from behind a tree: “Chowdhry what on earth do you think you’re doing?!”

And there it was: my first ever out-of-body experience! And it was the classic Gabitass bait-and-switch: just when you’re coming to terms with the fact that he knows your name even though you’ve never spoken to him before, he douses you in the cold water of senior school reality.

I realised in the coming years how symbolic the journey down the Long Drive was of a career

Hitesh Chowdhry, Head Monitor (1996-2001)

at Merchant Taylors’. 250 metres of luscious greenery and it was yours if you just savoured it with the requisite patience. And yet, on a daily basis, students faced that eternal conundrum – the ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ of walking to the tube station from Merchant Taylors’… “Shall I cut across the grass?”

The ‘cutting across the grass paradox’ as it came to be known was no easy decision. If you got caught in the act you got sent back to the flagpole with a work party to boot. But if you made it across unscathed – if you just dared to dream for a few moments, then the holy grail of the 3:47 Aldgate Fast on the Metropolitan Line awaited you. Moor Park to Baker Street – in under 20 minutes!

But of course it was those inane, tedious attempts at shortcuts at Merchant Taylors’: cutting across the grass; over-exaggerating an ankle injury to wear trainers in uniform; arguing that you shouldn’t have to come to school clean-shaven because you’re genetically pre-disposed to having harder stubble than your peers; the daily identity fraud to skip the lunch queue through the JCR door. All those wasted battles for hollow victories, completely missed the point. That Merchant Taylors’ much like the journey down the Long Drive, is not an opportunity to get to a destination, but an experience to savour in itself.

On A-Level results day we lined up outside Mr Gabitass’s office to thank him. “A very happy ending for you, then Chowdhry,” he said. And what I wanted to say then, and I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to say now, is that happy ending notwithstanding, it was a much happier journey; thanks in no small part to Mr Gabitass’s constant reminders to take the longer, more virtuous journey towards the exit.’

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It’s really lovely to see you, and even lovelier to see your wives, partners and girlfriends. I’ve been looking forward to this occasion for a long time. I know that some of you have travelled a long distance to get here. I’d like to thank the Head Master, Simon Everson, for his kind hospitality. Those of you who took the tour will have seen that the school is in tremendous health, and is set to go on growing as a vibrant community with its own strong ethos, the one that we knew. Wherever I go people seem to know of Merchant Taylors’ and its formidable reputation. Head Master, thank you.

As we’ve heard, there are moments from school which are deeply engraved in our memories, and they somehow encapsulate our personal experience. Over time they can become enlarged, exaggerated, while other things slip out of focus. In my experience there were times when some very

difficult issues rose to the surface. There were also times when I made mistakes, or made the wrong decision, or when I’d like to do it all differently if I had a second chance. I’ll share with you a few of the more comfortable memories of my own, my overall memory is of enormous fun, and of a hugely talented and diverse community, so here are some of the lighter, or more bizarre or revealing moments that never found their way into assembly, or into my reports to governors, and the first is ….

How did I become Head Master of MTS?

This is a bit of the hidden side of school that you don’t always see. To become the Head Master, I had to go through a series of interviews which ended with a phone call from the Clerk to the MTS Company offering me the job, which I instantly accepted. But then he said, “We want you to come for a further interview – and please bring

Jon Gabitass

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your wife”. This was bewildering – was he offering me the job or not? It turned out that we had to win the approval of the Master, Wardens and Court of the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors and when we got to Threadneedle Street I was told that this meant an interview with around 30 people seated at the edges of a room while Fiona and I were parked in the middle. “It’s just a formality” the Clerk said – that really was the understatement of the century – and he advised us to keep our answers very brief indeed and to one sentence if possible, and added that if I stood up to answer a question, that would go down well. “Don’t worry,” he said – he must have noticed the expression on my face, “They’ll tell you to sit down straightaway, and that’ll be that”. That was not that. We were ushered in to the Parlour, where there were two chairs in the middle of the floor. Not only did the questions demand long answers, but having jumped to my feet to answer the first question, no-one asked me to sit down again, so I kept popping up for every question like a one-man Mexican Wave. Fiona was asked if she liked flower-arranging (what they call nowadays a gender-discriminating question, I think), then “what do you think of the national curriculum?” Not easy to respond in just one sentence.

Everyone in the Manor was crazy:

I remember a conversation I had very early in my time at MTS with one of the housemasters, who very kindly confided – I think I remember his words – that half the boys in his house were “unusual”. That intrigued me. “What about the other half?” I asked. “Oh, they’re crazy” he said. As you’ve probably guessed this man’s name was Cole. True to his word, a little while later I was driving back into school one Friday afternoon, down the drive from the road outside, when I saw in the cow pasture on my right hand side someone’s bottom poking out just above the height of the grass. I stopped, got out, and

watched this character as he crawled closer and closer to the back of the Biology labs. It looked suspicious, – was he a burglar, or a terrorist, or some loony from the CCF on a solo mission? So I went across and challenged him. It turned out to be a boy from the Manor. What was he up to? He told me – with great passion – that he was on a mission to liberate all Dr Stubbs’s animals and insects from their cruel and enforced captivity. There followed some strong criticism of the cruel regime in the Biology Department. To say he was vocally disappointed when I sent him off would be an epic understatement.

This confirmed my growing suspicion that every boy in the Manor was mad. But it was a kind of madness that I grew to like very much.

Another memory was the day we had a fun day for charity and I sat tied to a chair while boys paid good money to pelt me with wet sponges. One boy paid a fortune to pour a vat of warm custard all over me, which had the effect of dyeing my clothes, my skin and my hair yellow. This required some explanation to the parents I had to interview that afternoon.

There are so many memories, but please stand and join me in a TOAST to MTS, to friends and to fellowship.

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Class Notes

China Meet-up Ed Gawne (OMT 1999-2004) writes: I’m an OMT living in China and was hoping to put together an OMT China group. I own very nice hotel we could meet at (wuyuan skywells), and it seems a great opportunity for OMTs in China to get together and know one another. You may have seen the hotel featured in Concordia a year ago.

The school’s OMT records show only one other OMT living in China. However, we’re sure there must be many more that we aren’t aware of. If you are interested in being part of an informal group and possibly getting together from time to time as OMTs do in Sydney and New York, please do get in touch as I’d love to set this up. Please email alumni@mtsn.org.uk with your details and we’ll see how many OMTs we actually have in this part of the world.

OMT Squash The OMT squash section participates in the annual Londonderry Cup, one of the oldest and most prestigious squash competitions, in which alumni from a select group of schools compete.

This year the format is a straight knock-out, although in future there are plans to have several small groups, guaranteeing more matches. The OMTs are therefore looking for a larger playing squad, so if you are interested and play competitive team – standard squash please contact Raf Shergold (OMT 1991-1996) at raf.shergold@pendragon.co.uk.

Ciaran Chivers-ProctorCongratulations to Ciaran Chivers-Proctor on his marriage to Colleen Monaghan on 19th August at Osbourne House on the Isle of Wight. He is pictured here on his wedding day with school friends from the Class of 2006.

Wallaby Foundation Scholarship All OMT students and recent graduates interested in taking a gap year and travelling to Australia are invited to apply for the Wallaby Foundation Scholarship. The aim of the scholarship is to make it possible for a suitable candidate to spend time in Australia with the aim of ‘increasing independence, cultivating life skills and assisting in the development of character’. The scholarship covers a return plane ticket to Australia, insurance costs and £250 ‘seed money’. To apply, you’ll need to write a letter outlining your plans for your time in Australia. The length of your visit should be between 3 and 12 months, you’ll be given OMT contacts across Australia, and the offer of working on a farm in Darkan, Western Australia. Applications should be sent to Andrew Brown (OMT 1976-1981) at andrew63brown@btinternet.com before the 31st January 2017.

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The 2016-17 academic year was an extremely busy and, I’m pleased to report, successful year for Development and Alumni

Relations. Over the course of the year you gave a total of just over £1.4 million to the school – far more than ever before in a single year. This takes the campaign total past the £5 million mark in terms of cash and pledges. We have also had our busiest events programme ever.

As a former hockey player and OMTHC member, starting the year by joining the Club’s celebrations of their 50th anniversary was a real honour. In the same week we held a sell-out City Network event at Deloitte; an event that has always been well supported by OMTs, parents and friends. We hope the fifth gathering in March 2018 at the Oriental Club will be just as popular. Martin Rowson (OMT 1972- 1978) hosted the third in our series of networking events for those in the arts and creative industries – a lively and entertaining evening at the Cartoon Museum.

The OMT Dinner at the Honourable Artillery Company – another sell-out – was a great evening

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and was one of many events over the course of the year with a remembrance theme to it.

In addition to a number of well-established events, there were many new events. Among these were the Bulstrode Whitelocke Dinner, the West of England OMT Dinner, the OMT Classic Car Club’s inaugural lunch, the Lashings vs MTS cricket match (with commentary from the boundary by Henry Blofeld!), and our evening of rugby at Allianz Park, hosted by John Pallant, when we comfortably beat Haberdashers’.

We are so grateful to all the OMTs who have helped us with our careers events. A huge number have been involved, and in so many ways, giving

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small groups of boys help with university interview preparation, or coming along as speakers at our careers events.

One of the real highlights of the year was the Jon Gabitass Reunion Dinner in June. You can read more about the event on page 20, but it really was a superb evening, and lovely to see nearly 200 OMTs from Jon’s era enjoying drinks in the Inner Quad, before dinner in the Dining Hall.

The list goes on, but I must mention the fact that we have had both a former Prime Minister and a former Deputy Prime Minister speaking at the school. Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown spoke to a packed Great Hall at events just months apart.

This academic year started with the Recent Leavers’ Lunch – now well established and regularly drawing in over 100 of our youngest OMTs for a barbecue and beers in the Head Master’s garden. This was followed by the Triennial Service at St Paul’s – an incredible event – which many OMTs attended. Just a few weeks ago, we held our 1561 Foundation Lunch

in the Head Master’s House which was a lovely occasion and a chance to thank some of our loyal supporters.

As well as these events, it has been great to play a part in shaping our new strategy for outreach to local state schools, which complements the bursary programme that is at the heart of the school and its fundraising ambitions. Equally exciting is the level of ambition our Head Master has for capital projects. Involvement in the development of plans for sport and performing arts has been, and will continue to be, a real privilege and an exciting fundraising challenge for the years to come.

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Legacies and the

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In the last few years, as well as a doubling of the number of OMTs who have made provision to support the school in their Will, we have

also seen the impact that a major legacy can have. In August 2017, a gift of £450,000 was left to the school for the endowment of bursaries. This legacy will establish a fund that will exist in perpetuity with only the income from the endowment being used each year to support boys at the school. This amount is enough to fund 80% of a full bursary. It is likely that the school will augment this award each year so that a full bursary is available.

Among those who have told us they intend to leave the school a legacy, some have given us an estimate of its value. Currently this combined pledge figure is enough to endow three full bursaries, so our legacy supporters are playing a significant role in securing the school’s future ambitions in terms of access.

The majority of our legacy supporters join our 1561 Foundation. This is our way of thanking them and involving them in the life of the school. The group has grown to 28 and our most recent 1561 Foundation lunch in the Head Master’s house had 16 in attendance. We were delighted to see so many wearing their new 1561 Foundation ties.

If you would consider leaving a small share of what is left once your family and friends are taken care of, please do get in touch. You can do so in the knowledge that it will be a lasting legacy, offering future generations of Merchant Taylors’ boys the opportunities that you were afforded when you were here. There is more information on our website, but the best thing you can do is to get in touch – with Development Director Nick Latham: nlatham@mtsn.org.uk or call 01923 845589 – and have a conversation about what you would like to achieve.

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Merchant Taylors’ Fund

When giving to the Merchant Taylors’ Fund, supporters may designate their gift to either bursaries, sport, the arts, or

they may leave it to the Head Master’s discretionary fund and let him decide where to allocate their support. Each year the fund overall raises around £100,000, and the proportion of people making unrestricted gifts has increased in recent years. During the Easter Term of 2016, the Head Master decided to set aside a portion of his discretionary fund and allow school clubs and societies to bid for funding for their initiatives from it. A committee of pupils, OMTs, parents and staff then decided which projects to support. Some really exciting projects were given the go-ahead in this first round of funding.

Studio 72, the school’s film society, were awarded money to buy a new camera and audio equipment. They were able to use this to film the Triennial Service at St Paul’s Cathedral and the ultra-high-definition results were stunning to see. An edited version of the service will appear on our YouTube channel soon.

The Bursar and his team of volunteers have been able to repair and fit out the school’s fleet of 25 kayaks and five canoes in preparation for CCF and watersports activities on our lakes and local rivers. The grant paid for the ropes, buoyancy bags, throwlines and spare parts required to complete this work during the summer, bringing the fleet from a state of disrepair to a really good standard. The boys have already made good use of the boats during the summer term and the most hardy of our Watersports boys have continued their activities on the lake during the Autumn Term. Next summer, the boys will have an opportunity to take the British Canoeing 1 and 2 Star awards in both canoes and kayaks and participate in

river trips and expeditions. One group of boys are planning to complete their Duke of Edinburgh’s Bronze expedition in the newly refurbished canoes.

The Virtual Reality Film Club were given a grant to buy three 360° cameras. These have already been used to create footage of all aspects of school life. They will be of particular use to the geography department, for whom the practical application of virtual reality in their teaching is very exciting.

The Aeromodelling Club were given support for their challenge of building a remote controlled aeroplane for entry into a competition run by the British Model Flying Association. The team did fantastically well to complete the project, given how little prior experience they had. They said they wouldn’t have been able to learn as quickly as they had done – sometimes from mistakes – if they hadn’t had the support of the fund.

The Senior Geography Society and history’s equivalent, the Bulstrode Whitelocke Society, both received grants to enable them to produce their annual review publication. Both of these showcase the best of the academic output of the departments, and give pupils the opportunity to learn about what it takes to write articles for this sort of publication.

An External Links group were supported in their ambition to increase our outreach and engagement with local state primary schools. The funding will enable more schools to come to Field Days at Merchant Taylors’ by offering them transport, lunches when they are here, as well as supporting the costs of the various exciting activities on offer during the day.

Many other groups were supported, including 4x4 in Schools, the Debating Society, the Islamic Society, and the Sustainability Committee. In all, grants of £26,000 were made. The committee considered the impact each could have on the school as a whole, and the number of boys that could benefit – directly or indirectly – as a result of funding. We were delighted with the quality of applications from the boys and look forward to the next round of funding applications.

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Forthcoming Events

Developm

ent

Presidents’ and Vice Presidents’ LunchSunday 28th January 2018, 12.15 The OMT War Memorial Clubhouse

The OMT Society Chair and President invite all former Society Presidents, Vice-Presidents and their partners to lunch at the OMT War Memorial Clubhouse. Tickets cost £47.50 and include a sparkling wine reception and three course lunch with wine.

OMT Society West of England DinnerFriday 23rd February 2018, 19.00 The Clifton Club, 22 The Mall, Bristol, BS8 4DS

The OMT Society West of England Dinner will take place at the Clifton Club, right in the heart of Bristol’s Clifton Village. All OMTs who live, work or study in the area are invited to an evening of fine food, fine wine and the opportunity to meet and catch up with fellow OMTs.

Tickets for the dinner cost £67.50, with a student concession price of £50 to include pre-dinner drinks followed by a three course dinner with wine.

Merchant Taylors’ City NetworkTuesday 13th March 2018, 18.00-21.00 The Oriental Club, Stratford House, 11 Stratford Place, London, W1C 1ES

The City Network event is for all OMTs and parents working in the city to meet up over drinks and canapes. There is a £10 ticket price to contribute to the cost of the event.

OMT Society East Anglia DinnerFriday 19th January 2018, 19.00 Pembroke College, Cambridge

The popular OMT Society East Anglia dinner, which used to be held biennially, alternately in a Cambridge College or a far-flung part of Norfolk, is being revived. The OMT Society has secured, on favourable terms, the elegant Old Library in Pembroke College.

We plan a drinks reception, three course meal with wine and port, accompanied by a few well-chosen words. All are invited to join the occasion, particularly those who live, study or work in the area, or who have previously. We hope to welcome OMTs of all vintages as well as former and current MTS staff to ensure the evening is a rewarding experience for all.

Tickets cost £65 per head, with a concession price for students of £49.50. Partners are warmly invited to attend.

Career InspirationsFriday 9th February 2018, 8.15-11.00 Merchant Taylors’ School

Whether you are a recent graduate or further along on your career, you are invited back to school to talk to pupils about your experiences so far. Career Inspirations is the first opportunity the boys are offered at school to think about their own career path. The event takes place just before the boys make their GCSE choices and we hope that the conversations you have will get them thinking about their futures.

The morning takes the format of group speed dating. You do not need to prepare anything in advance, just be willing to talk about your career and answer questions. We hope to have representation from a broad range of careers. If you would like to volunteer or have any questions please do get in touch: lhull@mtsn.org.uk, or 01923 845 545.

Afternoon TeaWednesday 21st March 2018, 14.00-17.30 Merchant Taylors’ School

All OMTs who left the school in 1973 or before are invited back to school for tours from current sixth formers followed by a delicious cream tea in the Great Hall, accompanied by some of the school’s most talented musicians. Partners are warmly invited to join and there is no charge for tickets. Simply contact Lucia Hull in the Development Office to book – lhull@mtsn.org.uk / 01923 845 545.

https://development.mtsn.org.uk/events

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Developm

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Earliest Vintage LuncheonMonday 9th April 2018, 12.00 Merchant Taylors’ Hall

All OMTs who left School in 1973 and before are cordially invited, with their partners, to attend the OMT Society Earliest Vintage Luncheon. The Luncheon will be held in the unique and magnificent Merchant Taylors’ Company Hall, Threadneedle Street, in The City of London. Luncheon will comprise a three course meal and the ticket price includes wine. This is a wonderful opportunity meet many other OMTs and enjoy a delicious meal in splendid surroundings. The dress code is lounge suits and OMT tie. The tickets cost £77 each, or £79.50 if you pay online. The cost of the online ticket includes a £2.50 booking fee. If you would prefer to pay by cheque or BACS please email events@mtsn.org.uk for the booking form.

OMT Classic Car ClubSaturday 5th May 2018, 11.30 OMT War Memorial Clubhouse

The Spring Meet of the OMT Classic Car Club will be held at Merchant Taylors’ School on Saturday 5 May 2018.

Join the Cavalcade of Classics down The Long Drive, enjoy the display of classic cars owned by Members, and sit down for a fantastic lunch in the War Memorial Clubhouse. Further details will be available nearer the event, together with registration and ticket details. Contact the OMTCCC on omtccc@gmail.com for more information about joining the Club.

University ChoicesWednesday 28th March 2018, 13.45-16.00 Merchant Taylors’ School

All OMTs who are currently at university are invited back to school to talk about their courses and universities with the Lower Sixth. We hope to have a wide range of universities represented, giving the sixth formers the opportunity to find out first-hand about student life in a relaxed, information setting. Following the session with the Lower Sixth, OMTs are invited to the SCR for a drink with their former teachers.

If you would like to take part in this event please email Lucia Hull – lhull@mtsn.org.uk.

To book tickets for any of these events please visit https://development.mtsn.org.uk/events. For more information please email events@mtsn.org.uk or telephone 01923 845 545.

Medicine and Dentistry ConventionSaturday 23rd June 2018, 10.00-13.00 Merchant Taylors’ School

The Medicine and Dentistry Convention is a careers guidance session and networking opportunity for OMTs, parents and pupils, working in, or interested in working in either of these fields. If you would like to attend as a guest or a speaker please email Lucia Hull in the Development Office – lhull@mtsn.org.uk.

OMT Society DinnerFriday 16th November 2018 Middle Temple Hall

Save the date for the Society’s showpiece event taking place this year at the exclusive Middle Temple Hall. Tickets will go on sale in summer 2018.

https://development.mtsn.org.uk/events

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Roll Of BenefactorsThank you to everyone who has supported the school since September 2016 and to the members of our 1561 Foundation who have made provision for the school in their will. You make a wonderful difference to the lives of pupils and staff, and we are extremely grateful.

Neeta and Billy Ahluwalia

Fahid Ali (2005)

Zamin Ali and Iram Pirbhai Zamin

David Allard (1949)

Louis Allen (2011)

Gina Allum and Simon Gruselle

Andrew Allwright (1981)

Henry Amar (1956)

Ramses and Viviane Andraous

Kenneth Armour (1984)

Hari Arora (2004)

Kenneth and Melissa Bailey

Ravindrasingham and Shanthini Balasingham

Mark and Briony Barnett

Peter Beckett (1965)

Jeremy Berenzweig (1990)

Tom Berryman (2000)

Adrian and Jennifer Bettridge

Alan Blackwell (1985)

Tony Bland (1956)

Simon and Catherine Bland (1987)

Hugo Blom and Yvonne Blom-Huibers (1982)

John Blumsom (1951)

Nadeem Boghani (1997)

Martin Boothman (1955)

Tim Bottoms (1979)

Gerard and Rebecca Boyle

Rachel and Aidan Brennan

Peter and Sarah Brook

Bing Brown (1973)

Lorraine and David Burling

Nicholas Butterworth (1954)

James Cadman (1994)

Iain and Simone Cameron

Victor Campbell (1998)

David and Jane Carter

Richard Cartwright (1963)

Colin and Kate Castelino

John Chapman (1982)

Colin and Fiona Charlott

Alan Charters (1954)

John Chatham (1944)

Jacques and Jillian Cohen

John Collis

Alexander Cooke (2004)

Caroline and John Cooper

Rabinder Cox-Sehmi

Clive and Linda Crocker (1983)

Mark Crowther (1979)

Nigel Curzon (1985)

Michael Cuthbertson (1967)

Jonathan Dale (1984)

Leif Davidsen (1985)

Howard Davies (1959)

Michael Davies (1950)

Neil and Joanna Davies

Nigel Davies (1983)

Beric Davis and Tanya Morris-Davis

Piers Dawe (1977)

Thomas Drewell (2000)

Philip Evans (1973)

Caron and Anne Evans-Evans

Simon and Ginny Everson

Brian Farr (1949)

Andrew Fenning (1969)

Graham Field (1959)

Michael Finch (1973)

Robert Finney and Melanie Hamilton

Peter Foster (1955)

Lynn Gadd

Michael Gadsdon and Victoria Cook

Robert Gardner-Hopkins (1961)

Max Genock (1953)

Daniel Gibson

Jonathan Gibson (1971)

Nadaraljah and Sivajini Gnanamurali

Satbir and Yasmin Golar

Ray and Nicola Gordon

Duncan Grant (2000)

Richard Grassly (1978)

Linus Gregoriadis (1990)

Bajee and Rose Gunnoo

David Hamilton (1967)

Kevin Hamilton and Adrienne Stewart

Anne Harding

Deepak and Bina Haria

Michael Harris (1979)

Christopher Harrison (1967)

Joe Harrison (1988)

Raymond Harrison (1957)

Cyril Hartigan and Karen Fletcher-Hartigan

Daniel and Katy Hassell (1983)

Brian Henson (1950)

Peter Henson (1955)

Nicola and Gabriel Heskin

Christopher Hilditch (1986)

Charles Hind (1974)

David Hiom (1954)

Steven and Anna Hoare

Mark Hobbs (2002)

Kester Fielding and Jane Hodgson

Brian Holt (1952)

Julia Honigsberger

Alexander Horsley (1995)

Bob Hurran (1963)

Vernon Hurst (1948)

Morenike and Gabriel Ige

Barry Ingate (1959)

Mary and Rodcachchan James

Kathirgamathamby and Sumathini Jegeswaran

Paul and Amanda Jellicoe

Brian Jenkins

Robert Jennings (1957)

Mark Johnson (1987)

Alykhan and Salima Kassam

Charles Kavanagh-Brown (2004)

Bob Kay (1955)

Rob Keane (1992)

Patricia and Carlos Keener

Richard and Alex Keisner

Robert Kilborn (1964)

Graham Kimber (1954)

Christopher Darbyshire and Mary Kohlhase

Vahan Krikorian (2000)

Jonathan and Phillipa Lack

Robert and Siobhan Lalor-McTague

Brian Lascelles (1947)

Nick Latham

Damian and Monica Lavelle

Anthony and Dawn Lawes

Spencer Laycock (1972)

James Leahy (1956)

Spyridon Leoussis (2000)

Simon and Joanne Lewis

Ronald Lowry (1951)

Nicholas Lowton (1972)

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Peter Magill

Adama Magona

Bergen and Suzanne Merey

David and Ilana Metzger

Ciara Miller

Robert Moore and Lorraine Softleigh-Moore

David Morgan (1988)

Roger Morris (1966)

Michael Moryson (1963)

Andrew Moss

Michael Moxon (1960)

Margaret and Chris Murphy-O'Connor

David Naumann (2000)

Caroline Ng and Richard Lambert

James and Theresa Nicholls

Richard and Debbie Nichols

Alastair Nixon (1969)

Rod O'Donoghue (1956)

Lutfy and Yvonne Ossman

Sean O'Sullivan (1992)

Timothy Owen and Veronica Chamberlain

Ibukun and Olayinka Oyenuga

Geoff and Gabriele Parfitt

Dilip and Catherine Patel

Piyush Patel and Adiba Ghauri-Patel

Prasam Patel (2002)

Christopher Peacock (1955)

Alex and Giles Pemberton

Richard Perkins (1967)

Stephen and Karen Phillips

David and Judith Philpott

John Pickup (1962)

Chris Pollard (1975)

Alistair and Susan Poole

Barry and Christine Porter

Jonathan Price (1979)

Adam and Elizabeth Rabin

Salman Rana (1998)

John Randall (1974)

Martin Reed (1980)

Kieran and Lynda Regan

Mark Rookledge (1984)

Jason Roston (2007)

Christopher Russell (1958)

Simon Ryder (1973)

Tony Sargent (1953)

Sanjeev and Meera Sarin

Simon and Helen Savage

Julia Seddon

Rajesh and Anjli Sennik

Amar Shah (2000)

Dipesh and Annie Shah

Kirtesh and Anjana Shah

Nimesh and Bijal Shah

Pradeep and Geeta Shah

Sanjiv and Gemini Shah

Aftab and Kaneez Sham

Nirmalan Shanmuganathan (1994)

Sen Shanmugasivam (2001)

Hina and Rajesh Sharma

Waqar Sheikh

Alan Sherwell (1969)

John Sichel

Ciaran Singh (2007)

Michael Skinner

Tom Sloan (2005)

Tony Smee (1993)

James Smillie (1946)

Adam Solomons (1988)

Nicholas Stebbing (1994)

David and Alison Steene

Derek Stevenson (1951)

Robert Stewart (1983)

Tim and Joan Stubbs

Graham Summers (1953)

Anthony Sutcliffe (1997)

Ashan Taha (1992)

Richard Taylor (1964)

Ashit-Roy and Neha Thakkar

Martin Thomas (1967)

Andrew Thomson (1956)

Andrew Todd (1990)

Jonathan Tong (1989)

Christopher Urmson (1965)

Sarju and Yasmita Vakil

Sarah Vawda

Ramamurthy Venkataraman and Soumya Ramamurthy

Andrew Voysey (2004)

Simon Walsham (1998)

Tom and Kate Weisselberg

Benjamin Weitzmann (1999)

Matthew and Deborah Whalley (1979)

David White (1956)

Charles Williams (1979)

Ian and Debbie Williams

Philip Willoughby (1957)

Kevin Wong (2005)

Stephen and Penny Wright

Thomas Wrigley (1954)

Regina Wu

Mohammed Zaman and Penelope O'Donnell

The Acworth Foundation

The Dudley and Geoffrey Cox Charitable Trust

The Lebara Foundation

The Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors'

The Woodroffe Benton Foundation

1561 FoundationJohn Blumsom (1951)

Richard Brooman (1974)

Gavin Brown (1951)

Giles Browne (1959)

Nigel Carter (1959)

Michael Christie (1955)

Martin Clarke

Neil Eckert (1980)

David Fraser (1957)

Jeremy Gaskell (1959)

Michael Grimsdick (1966)

Allan Henchoz (1964)

Peter Henson (1955)

Bob Hurran (1963)

Barry Ingate (1959)

Christopher Keville (1963)

Robert King (1947)

Graham Morgan (1964)

Michael Moryson (1963)

David Parry (1959)

Richard Perkins (1967)

David Pollock (1975)

Tony Sargent (1953)

Andrew Todd (1982)

Christopher Urmson (1965)

Andrew Voysey (2004)

Alan Williams (1963)

Christopher Williams (1983)

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John Dishman

John Dishman spent twenty-eight years teaching Chemistry at

Merchant Taylors' School before leaving to take up the post of

Head of Science at St. Leonard’s School, St. Andrews

This was not, however, an expedition to an unknown and remote region of Britain, for after spending his own school days at Quainton Hall and Ashville College, Harrogate, he was an undergraduate at St. Andrews University. Those four years left their mark and during his years at Merchant Taylors’ John showed an affectionate loyalty to the town and was regularly to be seen wearing the University tie and congratulating others who had done the same. At St. Andrews he played squash for the University and finally captained the team. He was still to be seen on the squash courts of the school until just a short time before leaving. In those later years, however, his technique relied more on the accuracy of his aim than on any especial agility or speed of movement around the court.

When he left St. Andrews it was back to Yorkshire, and there he undertook some research at Leeds University before he began his teaching career in Bradford. This was a comparatively short stay, however, and in 1963 he was appointed to Merchant Taylors’ as an assistant Chemistry master. At Merchant Taylors’ John developed the teaching methods which in those days still seemed rather daring and even dangerously progressive. This now seems rather obvious but he was determined to emphasise the intellectual and rational foundations of science and to encourage pupils to think logically rather than recalling lists of facts. He loathed the dictated note and the definition which was learnt by heart but never understood. For John, chemistry was a subject which consisted of conclusions to which certain experimentally-demonstrable facts inescapably led. The pupil who could see why a particular procedure produced the correct answer, or how a certain concept had developed, had learnt something of value and had been educated. This view explains one of his most memorable classroom trade-marks: shouting “Don’t write!” at any pupil who attempted to write down what had already been said before the explanation was finished. It was only rarely that one managed to walk along the corridor outside the chemistry laboratories without hearing it at least once. It was a method that was valued and understood, for in 1973 John became the Head of Chemistry and was able, with even greater enthusiasm, to ensure that chemistry was well taught and properly approached throughout the school. This, however, was all accomplished without any hint of the overbearing fastidiousness

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which his own high standards could have provoked. With John as head of department, individuals were free to find their own methods of ensuring that the fundamentals of the subject were properly explained to pupils.

This approach led John to help introduce the Nuffield Physical Science course to the school, and with him as an early proponent of its methods the school was monitored very carefully and John’s observations and ideas were included from the earliest stage.

John considered that intellectual achievement was the backbone of the school; a commitment that was manifested in John’s actions and words. It was not just an idea to which lip-service was paid on public occasions; it was the basis of his whole educational philosophy. Every aspect of school life had to be capable of a rational justification and those who appealed to tradition or intuitive feelings when discussing some feature of the school could expect an unsympathetic reception.

It was, then, for entirely rational reasons that John attached such importance to those areas of school life which lay outside the academic curriculum. He was the master in charge of tennis for all of his time at the school, and under his guidance it became a major and very popular summer sports option. His expertise in squash was also of great value and he helped run the sport at the school in the early days before more time-consuming responsibilities were assumed. When the field-day visits to France looked as though they were about to lapse into desuetude, John volunteered to take over the administration and he piloted many hundreds of fourth-formers to Calais or Boulogne and back, and in the days before the Channel Tunnel coped with the effects of storms as well as strikes, lost passports and similar occurrences. This was effected with little fluster or apparent concern even when the disasters came in battalions. Solace was found, however, in particularly favoured fish restaurants where a four or five-hour lunch would be followed by a high-speed dash through the hypermarket.

He was very knowledgeable about music and on special occasions sang in the school choir. He was a keen member of the Concerts Club and a member of the committee. Many former pupils will remember him, primarily, as the Housemaster of White, which was a position he held for seventeen years. Again, it was a role which John filled in an individualistic fashion, for he wished to deal with pupils separately and as individuals themselves. A given pupil would only be expected to contribute to the House what was in his best interests. It was in the same manner that he conducted himself as Senior Tutor when he was appointed to this post in 1985. This was a difficult position as he tried to ensure that a careful but remote eye was kept on Sixth and Lower Sixth forms and the Sixth Form Common Room In this role, he undertook administrative tasks such as maintaining a regular succession

of interesting and thoughtful speakers to give the lecture and arranging the conferences at the end of the summer term.

John remained in contact with Merchant Taylors’ throughout his time at St. Leonard’s and very commonly used the time when he was overseeing the pupils’ Aesthetic Hour to make his phone calls; a phone call from John rarely lasted less than an hour and very often extended beyond two hours. When John wished to find out some fact or other he invariably asked directly rather than hinting gently and hoping that the hint would be taken.

John taught at St. Leonard’s right up to his retirement and continued to live in Anstruther for many years. Shortly after retirement John and Audrey visited family in Australia and took the opportunity of circumnavigating the world whilst doing so. They travelled out through Los Angeles and New Zealand where they toured North Island. On their return, they stopped in Singapore for a brief period. John remained active for as long as he could and was very commonly seen at concerts at the Younger Hall in St. Andrews. At various times, he was president of the St. Andrews Probus Club and the Bridge Club.

"John considered that intellectual achievement was the backbone of the school; a commitment that was manifested in John’s actions and words."

As John grew older, his family felt that he and Audrey needed to be nearer to them and so they moved to Eastbourne where they lived for four years. One morning, however, John simply said to Audrey “I want to go home.” The reply was the very straightforward “So do I” and so they returned to Scotland and to Pittenweem, a fishing village on the East coast of Fife which is only a short distance from Anstruther. In more recent years, John and Audrey have been regular attenders at the Dunino Church and where, during the services, John often read a lesson. John’s last year was, very sadly, marked by degenerating health and he was not able to go out in the way that he had previously. When the end came, however, it was sudden and quite unexpected. John is buried near Dunino Church. At this very difficult time, Audrey is in our thoughts and prayers. She will continue to live in Pittenweem.

Nigel Blight MTS SCR 1978-2012

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When Tom Isaacs received his diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease he looked around him in the hospital waiting room and realised he was the youngest person by 40 years. “Some shook so badly the whole room seemed to reverberate,” he recalled.

Still only 27, he stumbled across an atlas as he was browsing medical dictionaries to understand his condition. Recalling a boyhood school project on the coastline of Britain, he resolved to walk it and raise money to find a cure. He covered 4,500 miles in 365 days and received more than £350,000.

By the end he had courted such a following that he co-founded the Cure Parkinson’s Trust. With self-deprecating humour that was typical of Isaacs — who began the walk on the Millennium Bridge in London because it was “wobbly” like him — the charity was initially dubbed “the Movers and Shakers”. Isaacs often found himself welcomed into cities by several thousand people. He was offered free accommodation in homes and hotels. Strangers volunteered to drive his rucksack to the next stop. And once, as he crossed a field near Hadrian’s Wall, a farmer pressed two pound coins into his hands.

His back-up team were a band of friends and family, including his mother — who spent a year studying Ordnance Survey maps with him — and the woman who would eventually become his wife. One of their earliest dates was a leg of the Scottish Borders. Many kept him company along the way, including one friend who suggested that they pause for sustenance at Hay’s Galleria on the first day. “But I still have over 4,499 miles to go!” Isaacs protested. On the road, he lived

Founder of the Cure Parkinson’s Trust who embarked on a 4,500-mile charity walk to fund medical research

Tom Isaacs

largely on family-sized bars of Galaxy and pints bought for him along the way.

Once, arriving in an Essex pub, he found a large chalkboard sign outside, “Man walking around Britain in pub tonight. Come and support”. He was disappointed to think someone else was following the same route — until he realised the encouragement was for him.

He took run-down housing estates and seedy dockyards in his stride. Then there were craggy hills, peaceful fairways — and the occasional field full of bullocks. He got lost often. Joined for the day by the presenter Clare Balding for a BBC radio programme, he took wrong turning after wrong turning with the production crew following him. “Apparently getting lost made good radio,” he quipped.

There were also many bleak moments. Crossing a gushing river, he began to feel his body shaking. “One moment I am a fully functional human being, the next, almost totally incapacitated,” he said. “My journey time to the centre of the river had been about three seconds. The second half of the trip probably took 60 times as long.” At a Birkenhead ferry terminal he had another attack. “The only thing to do was to just ignore it and keep shaking.” To his grief, his father also died during the course of the year.

However, friends recalled that the most frustrated they saw him was struggling to open a tomato ketchup sachet for his chips after a long day.

By the end of the coastal walk he had generated “Coastin’ “ T-shirts, and headlines. He was met by the actress Liz Hurley as he arrived in London. She marched with him to the finish line.

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“I felt like a seaside attraction — a sort of X-rated glove-puppet show.” One of the 5 per cent of Parkinson’s sufferers diagnosed young, he realised he could no longer live in denial — as he joked, he was entering “the Kingdom of Shakes”.

A PR friend drummed up support, patrons and coverage for “Coastin’ “ — although Isaacs was horrified when the friend insinuated that Muhammad Ali would be walking with him.

Shortly before he began the walk in April 2002, he met Lyndsey, a nurse from Glasgow, at a party. At their first date, a coffee in Islington, he told her that he was ill and about to spend a year walking around the country. On their first weekend together, trudging from Skipsea to Bridlington, he sang her Meat Loaf’s Bat out of Hell album. She joined him at Berwickupon-Tweed to introduce her parents. They got engaged in 2004 while walking in the Southern Uplands in Scotland. Isaacs was singing Hotel California and suddenly changed the words and got down on one knee.

From their house in Croxley Green in Hertfordshire, Isaacs worked full-time for the Cure Parkinson’s Trust, only dropping to four days a week a year before his death. Office days

Sir Peter Blake, to create pieces for a charity sale. In 2012 he was a torchbearer at the London Olympics, and three years later was given a personal audience with Pope Francis.

His eclectic tastes ranged from sport to karaoke and dancing round the kitchen table. He was more than happy to discuss the wine list with the sommelier in a Michelin restaurant — but also swore by TV suppers with James Bond or Friends.

He also continued to walk, whether it was the Leeds-Liverpool canal or, more recently, a short distance near his home with his dog. He liked to quote Martha Washington, wife of the first American president: “The greater part of our happiness ... depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.” He could only smile when, arriving home after his diagnosis in 1996, he had picked up a juice carton from the fridge to see the words, “Shake well before use”. It became the name of his memoir.

Tom Isaacs, co-founder of the Cure Parkinson’s Trust, was born on 2nd April, 1968. He died from Parkinson’s disease on 31st May, 2017, aged 49 Republished by kind permission of The Times; this first

appeared on 5th July 2017.

Thomas William Isaacs was born in 1968 in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, and grew up in Hertfordshire. His father was a solicitor in London and summers were spent in Suffolk.

Always small in stature — he joked in speeches that at 5ft 8in he knew how to keep things “short and moving” — Isaacs existed on a diet of “cheesy Wotsits” and Edam cheese after being diagnosed with coeliac disease aged six — something his schoolfriends considered exotic in 1970s Chorleywood. With a penchant for Eighties rock ballads, he never lacked confidence. Attending a single-sex prep school, he was the only person prepared to play the role of Alice in Alice in Wonderland. And he enjoyed his schooldays at Merchant Taylors’ partly, as friends joked, because he only did things he liked.

Starting work at property agencies, he moved to investment companies and then became a chartered surveyor. He was so personable that he was best man at five weddings.

In 1996 Isaacs was living in a basement flat in Pimlico when his first symptoms of Parkinson’s began. On a bus he was overcome by shaking.

in London were spent responding to emails and writing speeches; often he would dictate them from the floor, where he was most comfortable waiting for his drugs to work. It could take 30 to 60 minutes in the morning before he could move.

The trust began in 2005 after Isaacs joined three older men with Parkinson’s, Sir Richard Nichols, a former lord mayor of London, Air Vice-Marshal Michael Dicken and Sir David Jones, the chief executive of Next. In his own words, they were “Three Big Cheeses and One Dairylea Triangle”.

At the time doctors accepted without question that Parkinson’s was incurable and strove only to alleviate the symptoms. “The word cure was never used ... you know it was forbidden,” Isaacs said. The treatment was largely a drug that caused more side-effects.

Once described as “the most expert patient”, Isaacs focused on funding clinical trial programmes with new drugs. “I still maintain that one day I will be able to insert the words ‘used to’ when I say ‘I have Parkinson’s’. “Smooth and persuasive, he managed to get Damien Hirst and other artists, including Grayson Perry and

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Obituaries

Peter Cawdron (1956-1961) died on 25th June 2017 after a brief illness. He was a much loved friend and generous host to so many and will be missed by all who knew him

Ian Forrester (1949-1952) died on 21st September 2017

Lancelot Grimke-Drayton (1937-1942) died on 14th June 2017

Derek Herriott (1950-1953) died on 30th July 2017

Philip Housden (1945-1949) was, among many other things, one of the most concerned and active members of the OMT Society, at one stage Honorary Secretary and then Vice President. This modest, thoughtful and kind man will be much missed by family and friends. Philip died on 2nd June 2017

Philip Ketteringham (1969-1973) died on 7th September 2017

Reverend Hugh Lee (1954-1960) died on 21st May 2017

Geoffrey Legge (1974-1978) was heavily involved with the OMT cricket from a young age, and although he never reached his century, he led a good life and 90 is a pretty good innings. He died on 20th June 2017

John Lock (1948-1951) died on 17th June 2017

Ian Posgate (1945-1950) died on 7th July 2017. He was a major benefactor of MTS, his obituary was published in the Telegraph on 13th July 2017

Gordon Sapstead (1939-1945) died on 16th October 2017

Ian Posgate (1945-1950) photographed at Merchant Taylors’ Hall by Tom Westford (2006-2011) for Concordia’s City edition in 2011.

Excellence, integrity and distinction since 1561 For boys 3 - 18

www.mtsn.org.uk

Tel. +44 (0)1923 845514 Email. admissions@mtsn.org.uk

Merchant Taylors’ School, Sandy Lodge, Northwood, Middlesex HA6 2HT

Scholarships and Bursaries available

Moor Park (Baker Street 35 minutes)

Open Morning 12th May 2018

Tel. +44 (0)1923 845545 Email. alumni@mtsn.org.uk

Merchant Taylors’ School, Sandy Lodge, Northwood, Middlesex HA6 2HT www.mtsn.org.uk