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A QE team has taken first prize in a local competition designed to test pupils’ knowledge of literature.

The five-strong team, all from Year 7, successfully fought off competition from eight other schools to win the 2017 Barnet Kids Lit Quiz. It was QE’s first-ever entry in the Barnet quiz, although the School has won the regional North West London heat of the international Kids Lit Quiz competition for the past two years.

The Barnet quiz involved six rounds of questions, including author anagrams, picture clues and trivia about literary award-winners. The QE boys finished five points ahead of the next-placed school, Mill Hill County.

They won book tokens as well as a cup, which the School has the right to retain until the competition is run next year.

QE Librarian Ciara Murray said: “I’m consistently impressed by the boys’ breadth of knowledge – the questions were really quite tough! Their success bodes well for the regional competition in September.”

The team comprised: Abdur-Rahman Ismail, Heemy Kalam, Leo Dane-Liebesny and Vedaangh Rungta and Divyam Shah. Leo was also in the combined Year 7 and 8 team that won the regional competition heat in November 2016.

Ms Murray added that, between them, the Barnet competition team have borrowed more than 300 books from The Queen’s Library so far this year, with Divyam single-handedly accounting for 112 of these.

The boys trained with English teacher Alex Ulyet and Year 10 pupil librarian Kieran Dhrona on Wednesday lunchtimes, testing their knowledge of a range of books and competing against the Year 8 boys who took part in the regional and national finals of the Kids Lit Quiz last year.

In addition to QE and Mill Hill County, the competing schools were The Totteridge Academy, The Compton, St James’ Catholic High, Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’, Copthall, JCoSS and East Barn et.

The 2017 Founder’s Day Fete brought 444 years of QE’s history to a successful, if sweltering, conclusion – and raised nearly £20,000 for the School.

The traditional climax of the QE year, Founder’s Day provides an opportunity to celebrate the School’s anniversary, with the fun of the fete in the afternoon complementing the formality of the morning’s Thanksgiving Service in Chipping Barnet Parish Church and of the Roll Call and the Reading of the School Chronicle.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “It was a most enjoyable day and I must convey my congratulations and thanks to the tireless Friends of Queen Elizabeth’s, whose hard work made it all possible. As ever, hundreds of our parents and supporters visited the fete, and this year I was also pleased to welcome a good number of our alumni there, especially from the younger generations.”

In his address at the service, guest speaker Ashley-James Turner (OE 2001–2008) highlighted the roles played by parents, teachers and boys in the School’s success. He told boys in the congregation: “On your shoulders rest the legacy and heritage of all those boys who sat where you are today and of all those boys who are destined to attend. Your dedication, hard work and inevitable success carries the reputation of this School onwards one year after another – so no pressure!” Ashley, who went up to Oxford to read Geography after his A-levels, is today Director of Business Development at CoreAzure, a leading Microsoft UK Partner specialising in Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

The service featured anthems from composers including Vaughan Williams, Tavener and Rutter performed by School musicians and the School and Chamber choirs. Bible readings were given by current School Captain Oliver Robinson, and h is predecessor, Varun Vassanth, while the Headmaster led the prayer of remembrance for old boys who had died recently.

The boys and staff then processed to Stapylton Field, where the Headmaster made the Roll Call in front of the Main Building. Next followed the reading of the School Chronicle, a regularly updated account of QE’s history. Its reading is a tradition inaugurated by Headmaster Ernest H Jenkins in 1930.

The afternoon fete represented the culmination of many months of planning by the dedicated FQE fete sub-committee. Stapylton Field was transformed into a vibrant and colourful scene of festivities, with parents helping to run many of the stalls. The fete was enlivened by performances from School musicians and many other attractions.

The afternoon also brings the annual Stanley Busby Memorial Cricket Match between the present First XI School cricket team and an XI of past pupils, which takes place on the Third Field at the rear of the School.  This year, the Old Elizabethan team carried the day, with a century by Kushal Patel (OE 2009–2016) contributing significantly to the victory.

Boys relished the opportunity to sample the unique natural attractions of Iceland during a Key Stage 3 Geography trip.

During the five-day tour, pupils explored a geological environment which does not exist in the UK, visiting natural wonders including boiling mud pools, a volcanic crater, geysers, a canyon formed at the meeting point of two tectonic plates, a volcanic fissure and a geothermal power plant.

A trip to the Solheimajokull glacier even gave the boys first-hand evidence of the impact of climate change: the glacier had retreated several hundred metres since the previous QE visit three years ago.

Geography teacher Helen Davies said: “It is fantastic to be able to offer our boys the opportunity to visit such exciting and unique environments as Iceland. Throughout the trip, we heard many of the boys applying knowledge they had learnt back in the classroom at School to help them to explain the features that they could see in front of them in the field. They were clearly engaged with the subject matter, as well as having a wonderful time enjoying themselves and getting out in the great outdoors.”

Having flown in to the island’s Keflavík International Airport, the boys wasted no time before enjoying a swim in the Blue Lagoon, a natural geothermal pool, with steam rising off the water.

From then on, the trip involved packed days stretching from 9am until 9.45pm. Highlights included visits to:

• • Selijalandsfoss waterfall, where boys walked behind the cataract. “Despite getting soaked in one place by the waterfall, the boys were so wet from the rain all day that it didn’t make much difference!” said Miss Davies

• • An exhibition about the Northern Lights, during which boys learned about the chemistry of this colourful phenomenon

• • Reynishverfi black beach, with its volcanically formed basalt columns

• • Hellisheidi geothermal power plant, where a very knowledgeable guide explained to the boys exactly how such power stations work

• • A series of geothermal features seen on a single day, including mud pools where the water temperature topped 100C and a spectacular fumerole (an opening in the earth’s c rust), which was spewing out a huge amount of steam

• • Laugardalslaug geothermal swimming pool, where there were many pools heated to different temperatures, as well as slides and a basketball ring by the water

• • Reykjavik for a few hours’ sight-seeing in the world’s most northerly national capital on the final day.

Miss Davies, who led the Iceland tour, was accompanied by four other members of staff. Reflecting afterwards on the boys’ experiences, she said: “I think that memories of the trip will stay with them for many years to come.”

Pupils from Key Stage 3 pitted their knowledge of English against each other in QE’s House Scrabble competition.

Cheered on by members of their forms, competitors from Years 7, 8 and 9 faced each other across the board over three consecutive weeks in lunchtime contests organised by the English department.

The highest scorer overall was Pearce player Sheikh Mohiddin, of Year 8, who amassed 161 points. The other year group winners were Year 7 Leicester House competitor Victor Angelov, with 104 points, and Year 9 player, Preet Patel, also from Leicester, who scored 63. “I enjoy scrabble because it really tests your English knowledge in a fun way,” said Preet.

The organiser, English teacher Sarah Snowdon said: “Well done to our winners for their impressive scores. Scrabble is such an enjoyable way to help improve vocabulary and spelling. I was delighted with our enthusiastic players and the support from their forms.”

Each form provided one pl ayer. For Years 7 and 8, each player was paired with a boy from another form for a half-hour match, with the pairings decided by pulling form names out of a hat. The Year 9 boys were organised differently, since there was no player present from Stapylton House. The Year 9 scores are consequently lower than those for the other two years.

The boys were allowed to use Scrabble dictionaries and were overseen by pupil librarians Hector Cooper, of Year 10, and Ivin Jose, of Year 9. “Thank you to Hector and Ivin for supervising the event and doing a great job of keeping us organised,” said Ms Snowdon.

The full results were:

• Year 7: Leicester – 104; Pearce – 89; Stapylton – 79; Harrisons’ – 74; Broughton – 64; Underne – 54
• Year 8: Pearce – 161; Leicester – 132; Harrisons’ – 124; Broughton – 116; Underne – 103; Stapylton – 91
• Year 9:  Leicester – 63; Broughton- 51; Harrisons’ – 43; Pearce – 42; Underne – 40; Stapylton – did not compete.

Seventy-three years after Mervyn Kersh took part in the D-Day landings, he came to QE to tell boys about his experiences on that pivotal day of World War II.

By turns moving and humorous, his talk had the whole of Year 9 entranced, with several boys staying behind afterwards to look more closely at the medals, photos and other artefacts he had brought along.

Head of History Helen MacGregor said: “Mr Kersh gave us a fascinating insight into a remarkable time and into his own remarkable life. He proudly showed us his Order of Légion d'Honneur medal – the highest French honour, which was awarded to hi m only two years ago for his services in the liberation of France from Nazi occupation.”

Born in December 1924 and therefore still a teenager at the start of the war in 1939, Mr Kersh was evacuated and stayed near Exeter, squeezed into a small cottage with his aunt and uncle, two cousins and two German refugee children, as well as the women who normally lived there.

When he was called up, he went to train in Scotland in six inches of snow. He did not find the training especially hard since he was very fit, having previously been the boxing champion at his school. His training complete, he was posted to the army ordnance unit that dealt with supplies.

Shortly before D-Day, and with the country in lockdown to prevent leaks to the enemy, he was sent to an undisclosed location on the south coast, where his preparations for the big day got off to an inauspicious start when he was arrested for not eating his meat rations, accused of trying to render himself unfit for active duty. It took him an hour to convince the officer of the truth – that he was a vegetarian!

On D-Day itself, 6th June 1944, he landed on the British beaches to be welcomed by French girls and old people blowing kisses and offering flowers and wine. There was, however, no time to enjoy the celebrations: he was shot at by a sniper so had to keep moving and pushed on further into France in a lorry with orders to procure a headquarters for his unit.

He found a chateau, but had to deal with the fact that items including a piano and books had been booby-trapped with explosives by the fleeing Germans. He was, in any case, thrown out of the chateau by a colonel who ‘pulled rank’ on him, so he carried on in the truck. At night, he slept under the vehicle or in ditches to avoid the Luftwaffe bombings.

Reaching Germany, Mr Kersh, who is Jewish himself, saw first-hand the terrible state of those coming out of the Bergen Belsen concentration camp and tried to help the starving by collecting chocolate rations from other soldiers.

Mr Kersh moved around the continent for several months and was on a 36-hour train journey to Bruges when war in Europe was declared over – he was therefore one of the last people to know, as he did not find out until his journey was over!

The army then told him he was to be sent to Japan where the war continued, but in fact he was sent to Egypt.