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Best-selling author Tim Marshall told A-level Politics and Geography students about the worldwide renewed rise of nationalism and identity politics in a talk on his latest book.

The former diplomatic editor and foreign affairs editor for Sky News was visiting South Hampstead High School, which invited QE to send along boys with an interest in the subject.

In an early-evening event, he spoke for 45 minutes on Divided: Why we’re living in an age of walls to an audience that included 11 QE boys, as well as QE’s Head of Geography, Emily Parry, Head of Politics, Liam Hargadon and Geography teachers Helen Davies and Nilisha Shah.

Miss Parry said: “In his talk, Tim discussed how we feel more divided than ever and how nationalism and identity politics are on the rise once more. Thousands of miles of fences and barriers have been erected in the past ten years, and they are redefining our political landscape.

“He highlighted how the proposed wall between Mexico and the USA isn’t the only wall which should have our attention, but how many walls and other physical divisions exist throughout the world, such as the wall between Israel and the West Bank and the fence separating India from Bangladesh.

“He argues that understanding what has divided us, past and present, is essential to understanding much of what’s going on in the world today.”

Miss Parry added that he also told a few Geography-themed jokes, including: ‘Where do all pens come from? Answer: Pennsylvania!”

In the Q&A session following the talk, there was a discussion about topics such as whether the rise of nationalism means we are seeing an end to some forms of globalisation. Mr Marshall was also asked whether, in the context of the mass migration movements seen around the world, open borders should exist: he felt that they should not.

At the end of the event, he signed copies of his books, including his 2015 best-seller, Prisoners of Geography.

In a colourful life, triple BAFTA-nominated Martyn Day has enjoyed an illustrious television career that ranged from working on much-loved children’s programmes to making documentaries in locations as disparate as the Arctic and India.

Martyn (OE 1956–1963) has socialised with the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards. He has played at Glastonbury.

And, in 1965, in one never-to-be-forgotten evening, his mod band supported The Who – then just on the brink of international stardom.

Yet before all that, it was two teachers at QE who inspired this artistically inclined Leicester House pupil and helped set him on to his preferred path in life – although not everyone at the School was so supportive of his ambitions, as he recalls.

“The QE that I went to was very different to the School today. Under Ernest Jenkins’s rather stuffy headship, the place was not geared up for us off-beat souls who did not want to become accountants, lawyers or colonial administrators. I was told that I was not suitable for university (i.e. Oxford or Cambridge) but ‘Not to worry!’ There was an ‘interesting future’ for me in: a) the City, b) the Armed Services or c) the Church. This was of little use as I wanted to work in TV.

“Fortunately, there were two teachers who helped me out: ‘Jerry’ Reid, my English teacher, who introduced me to a world of literature way beyond the School curriculum, and Kaye Townsend, Maths, who heard my complaint and introduced me to a film production accountant. Maybe not lunch with Stanley Kubrick, but a welcome step in the right direction.

“I left QE in summer 1963, just as the Beatles released She Loves You, and started work as a wages clerk at MGM Studios in Borehamwood.”

Alongside his career, he was also regularly taking to the stage with a beat group called The Trekkas, based in Welwyn Garden City. “We were only an amateur band but good enough to be regularly booked to support established acts like Manfred Mann, Amen Corner, Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck. We even got to play alongside Elton John when he was plain Reg Dwight.”

But the most memorable night of all came on 17th June 1965, when The Trekkas (pictured here at around the same date) had been booked to play support at Bowes Lyon House in Stevenage. “What we didn’t know was the name of the band we were supporting. All we knew was they came from West London.

“We got there about 6.00pm to set up and were surprised to see that the other band – the unknown ‘stars’ – had already been into the hall, set up their own equipment and left. There was a drum kit and two huge amplifiers, bigger than anything that we had seen before.

“Everything was battered. The drum kit looked like it had been dropped off the back of a lorry. One of the amps, the one on the right, was missing the cloth covering the speakers. This had been replaced by a union flag. The gear looked expensive but it had been trashed.”

As a local band with many fans in the audience, Martyn and his bandmates were initially confident that “we’d blow them off the stage” – until the main act [The Who] actually walked on.

“The guys coming on after us weren’t neat at all. There were four of them and they didn’t bother with matching outfits like most other bands at the time…One [Keith Moon] wore a t-shirt with an RAF roundel on the front. Another, the singer [Roger Daltrey], had an arrow point-striped shirt. The bass player [John Entwhistle] was wearing a jacket covered with military insignia. The guitar player [Pete Townshend], carrying a beaten-up Rickenbacker, had a jacket made from a Union Jack.

“There was definitely something about them – a kind of ‘flash’ arrogance perhaps – but they were certainly cooler than us, sharper than us, angrier than us. In 1965 there was a word for people like them. They were ‘faces’ – out in front setting the trend.

“They didn’t bother with any of that ‘Hello, Good Evening’ nonsense. They just plugged in their guitars, looked at each other and let rip.

“They didn’t play their music, they attacked it. The volume was incredible. The bass line thudded against you, rattling your entrails. The drummer, RAF roundel man [Keith Moon], ignored most of the percussion niceties, and set out to beat his kit to death. On top of all this turmoil the guitarist in his Union Jack jacket [Pete Townshend] was chopping and hacking at his guitar, his arm windmilling in the air and slashing down to punch out chords.

“This wasn’t the usual ‘beat group’ crisp solos and chanky-chank rhythm. This was six-string Armageddon with every frustration they had ever felt compressed into three-minute musical hand grenades.”

“…And just at the point when it couldn’t get any crazier, it suddenly did. The guitarist started bayoneting his amplifier with his guitar, smashing the neck against the speaker board. Every rule about caring for your instrument disappeared in a screeching, splintering, crashing, cracking tsunami of sound. Then the drums went too, kicked forward and over off the stage. Tumbling, clanging into the audience. No ‘Thanks and goodbyes’. No “Goodnights and see you agains’. Just noise and fury and destruction – and then they were gone, leaving us, the audience and the world of pop music changed forever.”

The photo here shows a gig Martyn played at Goffs Oak while still at QE. He is pictured with fellow Elizabethan colleague Guy Hewlett (1954-1962), backing Tommy Moeller. Moeller later became the lead singer with Unit 4 plus 2, who had a No. 1 hit with Concrete and Clay.

Away from his music, Martyn’s television career was progressing well, as over the years he moved into special effects and then trained as a film editor, working in this era on the second and third series of Dr Who and, in 1973, as a researcher on the children’s TV magazine, Magpie.

By 1982, Martyn was a producer at Granada TV, where he worked until the early 1990s, finishing his period there as a writer/producer/director.

He spent two years in Macedonia producing a teen drama written to reduce ethnic tension to prevent the war in Kosovo spreading south (“It did – and it didn’t!”). He retired in 2010 after producing two series of the BAFTA-nominated game show, Jungle Run.

Reflecting on this career, Martyn says: “I have researched, set up and filmed fascinating stories all over the world, from the Giant Pingo [a mound of earth-covered ice] in Tuktoyaktuk in the Canadian High Arctic to the three-eyed Tuatara ‘lizard’ in the Cook Straits in New Zealand. On the way I have also met some really interesting people – the Waorani in the Ecuadorean rain forest and the Garos who live on the border between Burma and India are just two. I’ve also ridden an elephant in the wettest place on earth – Cherrapunji in Meghalaya, India – faced down a very miffed alligator in the Florida swamps and ‘borrowed’ a giant tortoise in Mauritius.”

Today Martyn, who lives in Twickenham, retains his keen interest in music, playing bass guitar in a band performing 1950s rock’n’roll. He writes a regular local history strand for the St Margarets Community Newsletter and St Margarets Magazine. He is also a warranted Cub Scout Leader.

In October, he was among the OE guests who came to the School to pass on their expertise at the Year 11 Careers Convention.

The first Elizabethan ever to go to California’s Stanford University sang the praises of studying stateside when he returned to speak to senior pupils at QE.

Stanford comes at or near the top of most global university rankings, with Times Higher Education naming it as one of its six world ‘super-brands’, together with Cambridge, Oxford, Berkeley, Harvard and MIT.

Valavan Ananthakumaraswamy OE (2009-2016), who chose to follow a mixed Liberal Arts programme for the first two years of his degree, told the current QE pupils that he had been particularly attracted by the wide range of subjects available through the US university system and by the closer relationships with professors.

He appreciated the excellent facilities and also the flexibility available to students when choosing classes, giving them more control over their own workload.

Valavan applied to Stanford after winning a place on the Sutton Trust’s US Programme – a scheme delivered by the educational charity in partnership with the US-UK Fulbright Commission to give bright British state school pupils a taste of life in American higher education. His profile for the programme recorded that his family originally come from Sri Lanka, but were displaced by the civil war.

The report also stated that Valavan saw his community service as “the most important part of him”. In 2014, Valavan helped found The Youth Project, a global movement of young people striving to make the world a better place, which now operates in 14 countries.

Extensive extra-curricular opportunities are a feature of the American system, he told the QE puipls on his recent visit, recalling his involvement with charity work while at QE and saying that this is something he has been keen to continue with at Stanford.

Palo Alto’s 300 days of sunshine each year were undoubtedly another attraction, as was the campus culture and the sense of community that this fosters. Valavan said he has been enjoying ‘dorm life’, adding that in his first year, he went on a skiing trip that was actually funded by the dormitory.

Valavan offered guidance on the application process, covering the nature of the aptitude tests, including SATs and ACTs (the two different tests that applicants are required to take for admittance to a US university). His main piece of advice was that applicants should just keep practising!

He advised boys to look into the possibility of financial aid for study in the US, covering the difference between ‘need-blind’ and ‘need-aware’ – terms used in the US, with the former meaning a university admission policy under which an applicant’s financial situation is not considered when deciding admission. A big advantage for those able to secure such financial aid was that, unlike in the UK, there was then no need for a student loan, Valavan said.

When asked about challenges he had faced, Valavan spoke about how he had to adapt to the culture of America. TV shows, shops and sports are all different there. He mentioned that President Trump was elected in first the two months of his studying there. He added that he likes the challenge of adapting and finds it exciting.

A team of five Year 12 QE economists was the only one to turn a profit in an auction at a prestigious conference attended by over 200 delegates from a number of leading schools.

More than 30 QE boys attended the Economics Conference at Woodhouse College in North Finchley, which aimed to offer pupils a unique opportunity to hear directly from academics, researchers and policymakers.

The event was jointly organised by the college and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR); it was supported by supported by blue-chip organisations including The Bank of England, The Royal Economics Society, The Government Economics Service and several top universities.

QE’s Head of Economics Shamendra Uduwawala said: “This type of event not only allows our boys to hear directly from both leading academics and those who shape policy, but it also enables them to mix with their peers from other schools. There is no doubt that a conference such as this exposes boys to high-level thinking while reinforcing what they have been learning in the classroom.”

Professor Jagjit Chadha, the Director of NIESR and a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, delivered a truncated version of his recent Brexit talk to the Commons Select Committee on Brexit.

QE pupil Rishi Shah, one of the joint Presidents of the School’s Economics Society said: “For me, this talk was the highlight of the day; it was about forecasting and the role it plays in predicting the outcomes of Brexit. Professor Chadha used the metaphor of rolling a dice to show how forecasts can be rational, accurate yet wrong. He gave an insight into the work that NIESR conducts in forecasting and mapping out the likely outcomes of Brexit and the rationale behind the effects of business uncertainty.”

In her lecture, Financial Stability: a fine balancing act, Dr Rhiannon Sowerbutts described her role at the Bank of England as a Senior Economist and advisor to the Financial Policy Committee. She spoke about the importance of identifying potential risks to financial stability, such as household debt rising faster than incomes.

Dr Babak Somekh, from the University of Bristol. led an auction activity in the afternoon, involving food items. The delegates were split into teams of five. Year 12 pupil Hanif Gofur, who is the other joint President of QE’s Economics Society said: “We didn’t know in advance which food item would be auctioned next, so all the teams were kept on their toes. The atmosphere became electrified and chaotic as bids between schools intensified – often beyond the bounds of rationality.” Hanif and his QE teammates held their nerve and turned a healthy £250 profit on their £2,500 budget – the only team to make a profit.

Sarah Billingham, an Assistant Economist at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, promoted a new Degree Apprenticeship offered by the Government Economics Service in her lecture, How can economists influence policy? She suggested to delegates that this programme could be a good option for aspiring economists aiming for a higher education qualification who wished to avoid student debt and the loss of three to four years of potential earnings.

The day was concluded by Dr Lea Samek, of Kings College London, and Dr Michela Vecchi, of the University of Middlesex, who respectively looked at the UK’s productivity performance since the financial crash of 2008 and the impact of automation on the UK labour market.
Rishi said: “Overall, it was a phenomenal experience to hear from many different renowned speakers and it most definitely piqued my interest in Economics.”

In addition to delegates from QE and the hosts, Woodhouse College, there were pupils from Dame Alice Owen’s School, Highgate Wood School, The Camden School for Girls and Fortismere.

Two senior QE teams have qualified for the national finals of the VEX EDR robotics competition after convincing performances in the regional rounds.

The teams are aiming to build on the School’s success last year, when QE junior boys competing in the parallel VEX IQ competition not only reached the World Championships in the USA but were crowned the UK’s first-ever world champions. A VEX EDR team from QE also qualified for the World Championships, where they achieved the best-ever result for a UK team.

In this year’s competition, Team Hybrid (pictured top), comprising boys from Year 10 and 11, stormed through to the national finals after being crowned Teamwork Champions and losing only one of their nine matches when they competed at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire.

Cobra, a new team comprising Year 12 boys competing in their first-ever VEX EDR event, have also qualified for the nationals, which take place in Telford in March. They performed strongly throughout the round held at St Olave’s Grammar School in Orpington, where they finished third in the Skills Challenge. And in the next round, at The Henrietta Barnett School, they successfully reached both the knockout stage and the final, where they lost by a mere three points.

A third QE team, Apex, all from Year 10, still holds hope of qualifying for the national finals in the coming weeks. In the tournament at St Olave’s, Apex won the Judges’ Award for the design and construction of their robot and reached the semi-finals, where they lost out to the team which went on to win the round. Apex also performed strongly at HBS: like Cobra, they reached the knockout stages, where once again they were eliminated by the eventual overall winners.

The boys were accompanied at the tournaments by Technology teachers Alexander Vaughan and Charlie-Maud Munro. Mr Vaughan said: “My congratulations go to all the boys for their accomplishment. Hybrid and Cobra and are now looking forward to the national finals, with the latter team’s feat in reaching them particularly impressive, given their inexperience in VEX.”

The VEX EDR system has elements designed to fit each other easily, thus enabling seamless integration. The competitions typically feature a series of games in which teams’ robots are given points for accomplishing tasks such as stacking items, scoring goals and parking successfully. Teams are required to collaborate, as well as compete against others.

Several regional events are held, with the qualifying teams then going through to national finals and, ultimately, the World Championship, where the very best from almost 8,500 teams worldwide battle it out. There is a variety of prizes at each level, including awards for design, teamwork and all-round excellence.

This year’s QE VEX EDR teams are:
Team Apex: Swattik Das, Nirmay Jadhav, Ansh Jaiswal, Lucas Lu, Siddh Patel and George Sewell, all of Year 10
Team Cobra: Akram Ahmad, Mahdi Dhirani, Jimmy Ou and Leo Yang, all of Year 12
Team Hybrid: Dillan Shah and Alex Woodcock both of Year 10; Deshraam Ganeshamoorthy, Devin Karia, Daniel Radzik-Rahman and James Tan all of Year 11.