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Dr Frederick Baker has won a major EU cultural award for an innovative, large-scale digital project telling the story of the run-up to the 1938 Nazi annexation of Austria, the so-called Anschluss.

He led a team of filmmakers, historians and programmers involved in the project, which reached thousands of users via the internet, radio, television, and mobile phones, as well as through analogue media such as postcards, lectures, and print. In addition, it was the first digital exhibition on the website of the new Austrian Museum of History in Vienna.

And, in a move of political significance marking the 80th anniversary of the events, the work was projected on to the walls of the current-day Chancellery on the Ballhausplatz in the centre of Vienna in a presentation that included films, photographs and sound recording. During the annexation, this building was the scene of a power struggle between the local Nazis (following orders from Berlin) and the last Austrian President.

“The work is called the History Radar ‘Zeituhr 1938’ and is a web platform describing the key 24 hours in the Nazi invasion of Austria in 1938,” said Fred (OE 1976-1983), who added that the Chancellery was the Austrian “equivalent of Number 10 Downing Street”.

Born in Salzburg but brought up in London, Fred studied Anthropology and Archaeology at St John’s College, Cambridge, Tübingen and Sheffield universities and went on to gain a PhD from Cambridge in 2009. He was a Producer Director for the BBC, working for the corporation from 1994 to 2006. He is the owner of the Austrian film company, Filmbäckerei, and a College Research Association at the Centre for Film and Screen Media, Wolfson College, Cambridge.

Following the success of the project during the 80th anniversary period last year, it was announced this year that it had won the European Heritage Award/Europa Nostra Award in the Education, Training and Awareness-Raising category. The project was one of only seven to be named as one of the awards’ Grand Prix.

Fred received his award and a cheque for €10,000 from Placido Domingo, President of Europa Nostra, and Tibor Navracsics, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, who co-hosted the recent major awards ceremony.

In his acceptance speech, Fred said: “This [project] was 100 per cent Austrian-funded…and I think that says something for the right side of Austria and the correct side of Austria and those who… stood up and are the winners in the end. Thank you very much for this really amazing prize which will help us a lot to carry on and give us support in difficult times.”

In their citation, the awards jury praised the project’s “impressively designed, interactive, web-portal that enhances the user experience and which is especially attractive for young users.

“This project has used innovative media to cast new light on pivotal historical moments in which crucial political decisions were taken. Curiosity was the driving force that provoked this historical storytelling, evoking the collective memory of eyewitnesses. The project’s pioneering technology allows for the constructive mediation of historical events.”

“This innovative approach enables a more nuanced understanding of individual responsibilities in securing democracy and the common values of society. It expresses the dangers of organised propaganda, which, in combination with a compliant media system, can encroach on democratic values and foster unfounded cultural and social bias,” the jury stated.

In a speech at the awards ceremony, Guillaume Poitrinal, President of Fondation du Patrimoine (France’s Heritage Foundation) highlighted the significance of the event: “We all believe here that Europe is not just about economics, Europe is not just about a single currency, Europe is not just about a common market: Europe is also about a common culture.”

The History Radar ‘Zeituhr 1938’ project was produced by Filmbäckerei, in co-operation with Dr Heidemarie Uhl, Dr Michaela Raggam-Blesch, Dr Eva Gressel and Pauli Aro at the Academy of Sciences in Vienna, with digital engineering by Thomas Prieler (Web-Tech) Christoph Kovacs/ Gernot Huber (Sensotix) and design Raimund Schumacher (Lost in the Garden).

Funding came from the Memorial Year 2018 fund of the Austrian Federal Chancellery, the Austrian National Fund of the Victims of Fascism, Austrian Future Funds, City of Vienna Student Research Scholarship funds, the Academy of Sciences and the Haus der Geschichte Österreich.

Fred is the winner of numerous awards – including a previous Europa Nostra Award for work done with Cambridge University – and is renowned for his work as a pioneer of immersive reality. A virtual reality experience based on the work of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt last year proved immensely popular with experts and the public alike. Having first won a Silver Medal for Cinematic Virtual Reality at the European Virtual Reality Halo Awards in Amsterdam, its run at Vienna’s MAK (Museum of Applied Arts) was extended by nearly six months and it was then staged at the Palais des Beaux-Arts (also known as BOZAR) in Brussels.

Former Headmaster Eamonn Harris, who is widely credited with saving Queen Elizabeth’s from closure and then overseeing its transformation into a successful grammar school, died last month. He was 76 and had been unwell for some time.

The School is planning to celebrate his life and contribution by hosting a commemorative event on Saturday 21st March 2020, to which all alumni are welcome. Further details will follow in the New Year, but if you are interested in attending, please click the button now to let us know by email – remembering to include your full name.

At the start of his headship in 1984, Mr Harris inherited an underfunded comprehensive school with falling rolls, poor academic results and demoralised staff. Over the next 15 years, he set about introducing change into almost every aspect of School life, often in the face of fierce political opposition.

By the time he retired in 1999, QE had become one of the finest state grammar schools in the country, providing a platform from which his successors were able to take the School to the position of pre-eminence it enjoys today.

Current Headmaster Neil Enright said: “It is no overstatement to say that without Eamonn’s unwavering commitment and redoubtable leadership, the School may have ceased to exist and would certainly not have flourished in the way that it has since.

“His tenure was characterised by the bold decisions and high expectations which are the foundations of the School’s present success.

“Of course, Eamonn had a considerable impact on the lives of so many Old Elizabethans – a fact that has been underlined by the many messages and tributes we have received in recent weeks from alumni living all around the world.” A private family funeral has already taken place.

Mr Harris was appointed in October 1983, having taught for ten years at a tough school in Croydon and then at Samuel Whitbread Community College in Bedfordshire, where he was deputy head.

It was only after his appointment – but before he took up his post in January 1984 – that he learned that the local authority had scheduled QE for closure in two years’ time.

The School at the time was badly undersubscribed, with a mere handful of parents actually requesting it as their first choice. In September 1984, only 133 places out of the 180 available were filled. Not only were academic results poor, with few boys going on to good universities, but behaviour also left a great deal to be desired, and QE pupils had acquired a reputation in Barnet town centre for being rowdy and noisy.

He set to work with his customary energy, and the transformation quickly began, with one of his first measures being to ensure boys stayed on site at lunchtime while the behavioural issues were tackled.

Within just two years, the School was effectively oversubscribed, as, in September 1986, the number of successful parental appeals against refused places meant that the intake exceeded the School’s official roll.

One major challenge that quickly emerged was the state of the School’s finances. The School was not getting its fair share of the Local Education Authority’s budget.

Mr Harris therefore pressed hard to take advantage of the new freedom schools were given in 1988 by the Conservative government to opt out of LEA control and become Grant-Maintained Schools, funded directly by a grant from central government. It was a controversial move, opposed by the local Conservative-run council.

Mr Harris, however, was tenacious and the School achieved Grant-Maintained status in 1989. He explained why to his successor as Headmaster, John Marincowitz, in an interview conducted in 2015 as part of Dr Marincowitz’s research for a forthcoming history of the School. “I believed that I was responsible for my patch, my school, and to do all I could to make it a successful place. If all heads did the same schools would improve and standards rise.”

He took a holistic approach to the transformation of the School, combining vision and drive with clarity of thought, a willingness to try new ideas and considerable attention to detail. While there was certainly a focus on teaching and monitoring of performance, ostensibly smaller matters were not neglected, either: uniform policy was, for example, properly enforced, and the School campus was better maintained, with shrubs and flowers planted.

The result was a cultural sea-change, with staff re-energised and motivated, and expectations raised. It was Mr Harris who reformulated the School’s mission: “to produce boys who are confident, able and responsible”.

Professional standards were introduced into areas such as staff development, IT and finance: the School acquired Investors in People status in 1996, while in 1998 QE was named Supreme Winner of the National Training Awards.

Extra-curricular provision received considerable attention, with notable successes achieved in national Young Enterprise competitions, rugby and water-polo.

In the early 1990s, taking advantage of another new freedom for schools, he drove the process which led to the Secretary of State granting the Governors’ petition to allow the School to apply a fully selective admissions policy once again in September 1994, thus reversing the move to comprehensive status some three decades earlier.

Following an Ofsted inspection in 1995, the Education Secretary, Gillian Shepherd, wrote to Mr Harris informing him that the inspectors had found QE to be “an outstandingly successful secondary school”.

The Friends of Queen Elizabeth’s (FQE), which had remained loyal during the School’s decline, was reinvigorated, and fundraising reached hitherto unseen heights in the last years of his headship. Without recourse to either local or central government funding, an amount of nearly £3 million was spent on new buildings – a Sixth Form block (the Heard Building), five Science laboratories and a Music block.

By the time he retired in 1999, after suffering ill-health following a bout of pneumonia, the School had in very large measure been transformed, with examination results strongly in the ascendant and the School’s reputation fully restored.

At his retirement, a Governors’ tribute penned by Dr Marincowitz said this of Mr Harris: “He inherited a school which was struggling to fill 150 places. He leaves his School one of the most sought-after and outstanding boys’ schools in the country. It is so because of his leadership, courage and commitment.”

With an increased number of talks this year, and standing room only in many of them, the 2019 Year 11 Careers Convention has been hailed as a great success – thanks largely to the support of Old Elizabethans.

Representatives from 35 different companies and organisations, featuring a good mix of alumni and other visitors, met boys and their parents as Year 11 were starting to consider their future career paths.

Professions represented ranged from medicine to app development, and from chemical engineering to the law.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “It was another tremendous evening and we are always very grateful to all those OEs who give up their time to come back and help out our current students. The boys benefit immeasurably from the advice that they receive, not least because seeing alumni thriving in their various careers is in itself a source of inspiration and confidence to them.

“At this stage in their education, it is as important for the boys to develop the soft skills they will need when planning for life after school – in order that they can actually achieve their desired outcomes – as it is to provide insight into the many different options available to them.”

The main Careers Convention was held in the Shearly Hall, while the nine talks – several of which were repeated three times during the course of the evening – were delivered in classrooms. The talks included popular career areas, such as Dr Nirmal Wilwaraarachchi (OE 1996-2002) on dentistry and Joseph Vinson (OE 2007-2013) on Getting a job in Tech.

There were, however, talks giving more general advice about topics such as studying abroad and about choosing and progressing a career, such as the presentation by Kam Taj (OE 2004–2011) on How to find your ideal career.

Alumni had a chance to catch up with each others at a reception hosted by the School before the event.

The evening also benefited from experts attending from organisations with which the School has strong partnerships, such as the National Citizen Service (whose summer programme is always popular with Year 11 boys), the STEM Ambassadors programme and the RAF.

• For more photos from this event, go to QE Connect.

Former pupils from across the generations came to the annual Old Elizabethans Association Dinner – with a strong turn-out from the ‘ten-year leavers’, the class of 2009-2010.

During an evening marked by much convivial chatter and by lively speeches, the diners also observed a silence in memory of former Headmaster Eamonn Harris, one of the great figures in the School’s recent history, who passed away only a few days before the dinner.

Current Headmaster Neil Enright welcomed Elizabethans of all ages – attendees included Brian Gilbert, returning to the School after a gap of 50 years – while reserving a special, if somewhat piquant, greeting for the ten-year leavers, pointing out that Assistant Head David Ryan had described the group “as his most challenging in all his years in the Sixth Form”!

“I’m not, though, surprised to see a good turnout, as they have actually proved to be one of the more actively engaged alumni cohorts and are doing lots of good work in support of the School. They were, and remain (on this evening’s evidence), a very sociable and enthusiastic group, and it is always a great pleasure to have them here at School events.

“We have a former teacher’s son (Adam Kuo), a governor’s son (Prashant Raval), former governor’s son (Josh Wagner), those who have spoken at school events (Matteo Yoon, Kane Evans, Tommy Peto and Prashant); Alex Goring’s brother is now teaching here, while Kunal Mistry is often in School auditing us (so I had better point out to Kunal that the School hasn’t paid for the wine because that wouldn’t be compliant with clause 1.22 on page 140 of the current Academies Accounts Direction).”

The event in the Main Hall was the first dinner to be hosted by the new President of the Old Elizabethans Association, Eric Houston, who taught at the School from 1976 until he retired, as Second Master, in 2010. Mr Houston is both a Governor and a Foundation Trustee of the School.

Another change this year was the reading at the dinner of the Queen Elizabeth’s School Prayer before grace was said.

In his speech, Mr Enright paid fulsome tribute to Mr Harris (HM 1984–1999): “Few can have had such a profound, transformational and lasting impact on Queen Elizabeth’s as Eamonn Harris, without whom we, quite simply, may well not be sitting here this evening.

“His bold decision-making, in making the School independent of the local education authority and then restoring academic selection, and the high expectations he had for all in the School community are the bedrocks of our present pre-eminence.

“We all owe him a debt of great respect and gratitude.”

Mr Enright reported on significant developments during the year, including “the exciting news that we have secured £2.2m of government funding…for our new Music School”.

To prepare the site, the Mayes Building was demolished during the summer. This facility was named in honour of Harry ‘Curly’ Mayes who “spent a full 60 years (from 1902 to 1962) as butler, porter, steward and then caretaker”.

Alluding both to Mr Harris and to Mr Mayes, the Headmaster said: “The present fortunes of the School have been built upon the foundations of the great service given by so many.”

He reported on the start of a project to digitise QE’s archives, beginning with photographs.

And, he said, with the School’s 450th anniversary in 2023 approaching, his predecessor as Headmaster, Dr John Marincowitz (1999–2011), was well on the way to completing his book on the School’s history.

“Recording and giving access to the School’s history is important so that the contributions of people such as Eamonn and Curly Mayes are remembered and so that generations of Elizabethans to come are able to learn about their place in the long and fascinating narrative.”

Mr Enright concluded his speech with a report on QE Connect, the School’s recently launched online community for alumni, which has gained more than 450 members in the space of just a few weeks.

“Whilst we want to help OEs connect to the past, we also have QE Connect to help enable connections in the present and the future,” he said.

• For more photos from this event, go to QE Connect.

Akash Gandhi, who is now working as a Junior Doctor, urged current boys not to forget the values and ethos of QE when he returned as guest speaker to this year’s Junior Awards. 

Akash (2005-2012) threw himself into life as a pupil, playing cricket, getting involved in debating, helping younger boys through peer mentoring, supporting the Sai School Appeal and serving as a Senior Lieutenant, then one of the leading positions within the prefect team.  

On leaving, he went up to Queens’ College, Cambridge, to read Medicine, taking a first-class degree with prize & honours. From there, he went to University College London, for his clinical training, again excelling in his studies. Akash is now a Junior Doctor in Northwick Park Hospital, Harrow, but carves out time every year to support QE’s aspiring Sixth Form medics with their UCAT (University Clinical Aptitude Test) preparations.     

In his speech to the assembled audience of younger boys, parents, staff and VIP guests Akash recalled the message instilled in him by his father: “It is not about what you do, but who you become by what you do.” It is, he said, more important to be concerned about what will be said in your eulogy than what is written in your CV. 

And Akash had three specific areas of advice. The first was to find and follow your passions. “During my time at QE, my passions were my culture, cricket, charity work and football. And so, at university I found myself as the Vice-President of Cambridge University’s India Society. I also captained my college’s cricket team all the way to the final of the cup tournament – despite only ever representing QE’s C team.” 

The second area was to find your mentors and to remember to thank them. “You are not alone, and you’d be a fool not to seek advice from those around you, especially in an establishment like this one. 

“Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, embrace the power of true friendships – trust me on this one,” Akash told the boys. “From my experience, boys of this School look out for each other long after they have stopped sporting its badge. Joining Stapylton House with Mr [Mark] Peplow at the helm, little did I realise the everlasting friendships that I would go on to make. With some of them, I have travelled across central America, Asia and Australia. With others, I have worked together to help provide treatment for patients attending emergency departments across London. 

“I can safely say that I am still surrounded by the values, ethos and ethic that I felt whilst studying at QE. I suppose that’s easy to say when I got to work last Friday to find that four out of the five doctors on my team were also QE boys. And as for the fifth? She’s a proud mother of a son who currently goes to QE! 

“Congratulations on your achievements, keep working hard, and the best of luck for the future,” Akash concluded. 

Civil engineer Karan Dewnani is relishing being part of one of Europe’s most high-profile projects, while also making time to contribute to society both through his career and through sport.

Karan (OE 2006–2013) first began working in the rail industry on internships while taking a Civil and Structural Engineering Master’s degree at Sheffield, which he completed in 2017. He works for the American civil engineering giant, Jacobs.

A project manager on the High Speed 2 railway, he says: “I have received great exposure to all the disciplines that are required to deliver the construction of a state-of-the-art railway. I look forward to seeing the day when the first passenger trains run between Euston and the West Midlands.”

His prior projects included a range of tube upgrades for Transport for London: “These have already been installed on the District line, improving the frequency of the service.

“In the medium term, I am working towards achieving Chartered Engineer status and Membership of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE). This is a process that has required me to demonstrate my competence as a civil engineer and is achieved by writing progress reports and having a professional career review day, typically achieved around five years after graduation.”

Karan gave early notice of his engineering prowess, winning the ICE QUEST Award in 2013, while in his final year at QE.

“I have fond memories of my time at QE and made some great friends in the seven years. I particularly enjoyed my time in the Sixth Form. I’m sure other alumni will say this too, but you realise how far ahead QE is, in terms of developing students into well-rounded and intelligent individuals, once you go to uni and compare your school life with other students.”

Karan tries to stay in touch both with the School and with fellow alumni. Last year, he gave a talk to current pupils; he recently attended Founder’s Day and the QE Careers Convention, and he is looking forward to the new University Mock Interview Evening later in the year. “Such events  provide a great opportunity to meet old friends and network.”

Other volunteering activities include his work as a STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics] Ambassador through the national, Government-backed scheme. “I take part in some events encouraging younger students to take up STEM activities and careers – most recently, at this month’s open day at the London Transport Museum aimed at primary school children, taking questions about jobs and careers in transportation and engineering.”

He remains a keen graduate member of the ICE and has been in touch with the School recently about the possibility of pupils participating in the #ICanEngineer competition run by ICE’s London region, which is sponsored by his employer, Jacobs, and is this year themed around the creation of new flood defences for the capital.

“In my spare time, I play tag rugby,” he adds. “This started off as a corporate league and I have continued to play with work colleagues for over a year.” He also works for the organisation, Try Tag Rugby, as a referee in its Hyde Park leagues. “I’d like to think that playing rugby in QE helped massively in me taking this up as sport, which is upcoming in the UK.”