You are reading the online edition of the Old Camdenians Newsletter, June 2023.

Dear Old Camdenians,

I would like to share some highlights of the term with you by celebrating the Sports Bursary given by the OCC to Melina in Year 9, a very talented badminton player who played to a very high level in her native Iran. This bursary will help her with much needed equipment and travel to badminton competitions. Many thanks to Bill Wood for organising this.

Conference Day in April 2023 was our third annual event organised by Mrs Dufael (Deputy Head) and it was, once again, a huge success. Our inspirational keynote speakers were Claire Dove OBE https://www.gov.uk/government/people/claire-dove and John Agard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB_7R_jECWk. You can get a flavour of the day from one of our Keynote speakers here: https://twitter.com/Beacon_High/status/1662052224644595713?s=20. We have also hosted our inaugural LORIC Awards evening organised by Mrs MacDonald (Deputy Head). It was one of the most impressive events we have hosted at Beacon High. It is always good to celebrate our students’ achievements but to do it alongside our parents and carers makes it particularly special.

We have had an extremely busy term with trips to the Emirates stadium, rowing trips with LYR in the Olympic Park, BAM workshops, a workshop run by ICM Stellar Sports. With Conference Day and GCSE exams added into the mix, I am amazed how we manage to fit it all in and keep the learning and development at the heart of everything. I am extremely proud of all of the opportunities that the staff at Beacon High create for our learners. A huge well done to our year 10 students who completed a very successful week of work experience. The reports from the employers have been outstanding. Our Sports Leaders (in their OCC sponsored kit) continue to be extremely busy hosting primary schools’ sports days. As always they are tremendous ambassadors for Beacon High and they constantly demonstrate what an amazing group of young people we have at Beacon High.

Our year 11 GCSEs have now been completed and we are extremely proud of our learners who despite a disrupted education over the last five years have been focused and diligent in their preparation for and their application in the exams. We now wait for the outcome of all this hard work on August 24th for Results Day.

As the weather hots up there is a lot to celebrate, particularly in the sporting arena. As Bill Wood notes below, the school’s female football teams have enjoyed impressive runs in several competions, while they and Beacon High’s Sports Leaders, who help to spread word of the school’s achievements, take pride in wearing the Old Camdenians branded kit (see the pictures) donated by the club. The OCC is also sponsoring a new Old Camdenians Sporting Award. See details below.

More of you have been writing in to our ‘Where are they now” spot. Look at the pictures below and see if you can help.

Sadly we have to record the passing of a number of Eminent Old Camdenians. Tributes appear below to Howard Embleton, Charles Fullbrook, Tony Leonard and Brian Lofts. I know they had many friends among you and they will be much missed.

Dear Old Camdenians,

I hope that you’re well. Everything is running smoothly at Beacon High and we are working on plans to amalgamate our two primary schools in September. I hope to see some of you at the Annual Lunch.

I welcome Panos Nicolaides as my assistant Honorary Secretary and School Liaison, recognising all his support on the Committee these past few years and offering some much needed business resilience with running the day to day affairs of the club. Indeed, Panos joins Martin Quilter, John Maskell and me as a trustee for the Bill & Nora Wraight Old Camdenians Memorial Fund too – welcome aboard, Panos!

The Committee have been busy supporting the girls football team and Sports Leaders with dedicated outfits that they are proud to wear that carry the club’s logo and ‘Old Camdenians’. Sports Leaders are chosen from years 8 and 9 and are seen by many outside the school, especially primary schools and parents who have yet to decide which school their children should attend. Sports Leaders relinquish their role in year 10 to concentrate on their exams. They get to keep their ‘Sports Leaders’ tops as a memento. I do hope they treasure them in the way that Howard Embleton’s collection showed. The club has been thanked by Bill Wood and all those involved at the school and features in ‘The Beacon’, the school’s weekly newsletter that you can view online – please see below. Also, we have donated £1000 to the school to be used to support pupils in their chosen sport: it is to be known as the ‘Old Camdenians Sports Bursary’. This will be reviewed annually by the Committee.  In addition, the club has donated £208 as a reward to the ‘Build Up’ group for their dedication and achievements – see below.

Denis Piggott, Panos Nicolaides and I have been invited to attend Year 11’s exam results day in August. We will have an opportunity to talk to many new Old Camdenians who will be leaving school, including the Headteacher’s Ambassadors, about the club and the Bill & Nora Wraight Old Camdenians Memorial Fund. Hopefully, some of them will join us for our Annual Lunch.

Lastly, I am looking forward to seeing you again at our 96th Annual Lunch at the school, on 27th October 2023, I am keen to hear Laurence Marks transport us to the beginning of what is now known as “The Swinging Sixties”. So, please ensure that you have booked your place. Just send me an email to confirm and state with whom you would like to be seated. Have a great summer!

‘Build Up’ Group

I am very grateful to the Old Camdenians Club for funding a rewards trip for the Beacon High students who have been attending ‘Build Up’ sessions, three times a week for the entire academic year 2022-23. The Build up project is a set of 12 modules based around developing life skills that students can use inside and outside of the school environment.

Students were selected for a number of reasons, such as Pupil Premium, the ‘forgotten middle’, low commitment to learning averages and general disengagement in learning. The group was split 50/50 girls/boys, however, due to poor attendance or external factors the group is now seven girls and nine boys.

The group has worked incredibly hard this academic year and the sessions have been well attended and engagement has been high. The reward trip to the local Odeon cinema will take place on 18th July.

Sports Leaders

The Beacon – Vol 19. Issue 19 9th June 2023.

The Sports Leaders were at Finsbury Park this week to support the Islington Quad Kids competition for years 3 and 4. Twelve schools attended with their 10 pupils each taking part in 50m sprint and 400m races on the track and standing long jump and howler throw in the field.

The leaders did an excellent job running the events and supporting the young participants. It was also the first time they were able to wear their new Sports Leader tops generously sponsored by the Old Camdenians, which they wore with pride and in which they looked exceptionally smart. Well done to them all.

Our Leaders are: Teighan, Haruun, Mohamed, Sean, Lok, Matian, Celino, Ayyub, Samiul, Ecem, Eowyn, Kiera, Taliya, Frankie, Mateo, Sky, Albie, Jeobeni, Faith and Tia.

Beacon High Community Quiz

The date for the next quiz night is being decided. I will let you all know soon.

Girls’ Football

The Beacon – Vol 19. Issue 18 26th May 2023.

The girls’ football season ended this week as the team’s impressive National Cup run in the New Teams cup finally came to an end at the hands of Meopham school from Gravesend in Kent. The team reached the last 16 of both this and the Small Schools National Cup where they lost to The Marist school from East Berkshire. With the U14 team winning the District 7-a-side and the U12 team coming second in the equivalent competition for their age group, it has been a hugely successful first season for the school’s female footballers. Hopefully they can build on this success to go on to achieve even more next year. Thanks once more to the Old Camdenians for providing the kit for the teams to be proud to wear.

The club is very grateful for any and all donations that we receive to make our donations to the school. However, since we do not have a members’ subscription fee our only other source of income is through the George Ives 50+ Club membership. Please help us to realise future causes and help change a life by joining the George Ives 50+ Club, which is £60 per year or a standing order of £5 per month. A number between 1 and 59 is selected and that is entered into a monthly draw which is determined by the first two numbers drawn in the National Lottery. Prizes are £100 (£200 in November) and £20 (£50 in November).  For more information contact us here.

I have finished my first exam season at uni and it was quite challenging for me but I am really proud of myself for going through it and doing my best. I decided to reward myself with some vacations this summer. I am currently in Paris with my family and having a great time. Next stop will be Portugal, and then Spain. I hope that everyone is also able to enjoy summer in their own special way. Please look after yourselves, especially with the current heatwave. Many thanks and wish everyone a lovely day. Kindest regards, Marta.

Towards the end of 2021 I was asked to chair a session at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, and so doing I met one of our most eminent modern historians, David Kynaston. After the session we went to the Green Room and discussed this and that, before he learned I was a committed diarist, and had been so since March 1963 – in the playground of Holloway County School. David said to me, “It is every historian’s wish to meet a proper diarist, and may I ask you a favour?”

We met again for lunch and David said he was preparing his next tome, which covers the period from the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962) to Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral (January 1965), and if he sent me a list of topics would I go to my archive in the University of York and check out what I wrote for his specific areas of history. And so I did, and what I found I shall present to the annual lunch as a sort of after-dinner speech. The entries made by a 14- and 15-year-old schoolboy are revelatory read now, some 60 years later. I have no doubt you will find them amusing and it might even transport the more senior among you to the beginning of what is now known as “The Swinging Sixties”. Furthermore, I think they will be of interest to the students of Beacon High.

You too can request details from our members to locate friends from school – just ask!

Richard Bielicki with the Archbishop of Katowice and his wife, Alexandra, taken after receiving the award

Richard Bielicki KSG is a composer, pianist and Chopin scholar and an Eminent Old Camdenian. He received the Papal award of a ‘Knight of St Gregory the Great’ at a special 90th Anniversary Mass celebrated on in September 2020 at the Polish Catholic Church of Our Lady of Czestochowa and Saint Casimir in Devonia Road, Islington. This is the same church where Richard has been Parish organist for 50 years.

Despite finding this information I haven’t yet been able to make contact personally. All my efforts have come to nothing. I would be grateful to any OC who maybe able to assist. Bob Hartley

Peter Eden is trying to contact any ex Prefect from this 1957 school photograph.

Peter said, “I can remember all the faces but unfortunately not all the names. Front row centre is the then headmaster, Mr Brown, and to his left is his deputy, Mr Griffiths. Also front row, 2nd left is Ben Barker, with whom I went on one of the Aldermaston CND marches, and at the far right is Fransman, given name forgotten. On the back row, left, is Desmond Fanning, then Tony Tapping, me, and far right, Harry Levy. I left Holloway School in 1958 to study at Guy’s Hospital and ended up as a specialist in maxillo-facial surgery in Northamptonshire, where I now live – can anyone help?

Prefects and staff 1957

Keith Moir is trying to contact a former classmate, David Knight. Keith and David were initially in Mr. Williams form, he had a cycling accident and our class was taken over by Robin Chambers, we were there from 1966 until 1970/1971ish. Our class was QW, White House – can anyone help please?

Also, Ron Poole is trying to contact Laurence Myers and any former classmates from 1946 -51.

Howard Embleton, an Eminent Old Camdenian and a stalwart supporter of the club, died peacefully on 16th April 2023, in his nursing home, with his wife Mary and daughter Alex and her husband Chris by his side. Howard was aged 75 years.

Howard was born on 4th October 1947 in University College Hospital, London. He enjoyed his time at Holloway School (1959 to 1965) where he worked with Brian Lofts who wrote, directed and produced the award winning silent film ‘The Prefects’, which was last shown at our AGM via Zoom. An account was published recently in our quarterly newsletter in three instalments. Mary Embleton attended last year’s OCC’s Annual Lunch and presented items of memorabilia that Howard had treasured, including the clapper board used in making ‘The Prefects’. Howard loved his cricket and collected a vast record of club results. In 1989, both Howard and Mary toured the West Indies with the Camdenians Cricket Club team. Howard served on the OCC Committee for many years. He worked for the Ministry of Defence and was proud of his time on the Harrier Jump Jet project – indeed his favourite poem ‘Harrier II’ was read at his funeral, which I attended representing members who could not be there. Howard became the Finance Director, British Forces Post Office Agency (BFPO). Howard will be sadly missed by all who knew him. Ray Rowe

The death has been announced of the extraordinary timpanist and percussionist Charles Fullbrook, aged 72, on Monday 16th May 2022.

He had spent much of his time at Holloway in and around the music department, and left in 1968 after completing his A-levels in Music and German.

Although Charles was a versatile musician, it was to be timpani and percussion that he studied while at the Royal Academy of Music, with the renowned Professor Jimmy Blades, going on to become one of the busiest British timpanists and percussionists. He played for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Academy of Ancient Music, Arditti String Quartet, Bach Choir, Canzona , Capricorn, Maddy Prior’s Carnival Band, the Cambridge Singers, Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, Choir of New College, Oxford, the City of London Sinfonia, Collegium Musicum 90, English Baroque Soloists, English Chamber Orchestra, Ex Cathedra, His Majesty’s Sagbutts and Cornetts, the King’s Consort, the King’s Singers, London Brass, London City Brass, London Sinfonietta, the Parley of Instruments, Monteverdi Choir, the Milton Keynes City Orchestra, New Queen’s Hall Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the Sixteen, Stuttgart Barockorchester, Westminster Abbey Choir and many more.

One of his early stage credits was in the orchestra pit for a production of ‘The Beggar’s Opera’ under the baton of Carl Davis at the Theatre Royal in Stratford. Then he went on the road with the Prospect Theatre Company for mountings of ‘King Lear’ and ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ as far afield as Australia. Charles sometimes played in rather unconventional venues performing concerts at HM prisons, Korolevu Beach, Fiji, and the Leeds-Liverpool canal.

Charles will most be remembered for being a specialist player of his beloved Baroque Timpani but was also very adept at playing a vast array of the other percussion Instruments, anything that could be hit, shaken or even blown, and known affectionately in the profession as ‘the Kitchen Department’.

Charles was immensely organised and ever inventive, and to address airline weight limits he designed his own touring fibreglass timpani and cases, which supplemented his huge collection of percussion instruments.

His discography is massive. Here are some highlights: ‘Benjamin Britten Presents John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera’ with the City of London Sinfonia; Berlioz: ‘Grande Messe des Morts’; Gavin Bryars: ‘ Henry Purcell: The Complete Anthems and Services, Vol. 7’; ‘Der Messiah’ with the Monteverdi Choir; ‘Modern Times’ with London Brass; ‘Music for His Majesty’s Sagbutts and Cornetts’ with Alistair Ross; ‘Music from the Time of Civil Wars’; ‘Shepherds Watched: Christmas Music from English Parish Churches, 1740-1830’; ‘Sing Lustily and with Good Courage and Tapestry of Carols’ by Maddy Prior & the Carnival Band (Percussion & Vocals); Thomas Arne: ‘Six Favourite Concertos with the Parley of Instruments’; and, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: ‘Les Symphonies Vol. 4’ by the Academy of Ancient Music.

Charles also taught at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama and was appointed Timpani Professor at Trinity Laban in 2001. He also examined at the Royal College of Music, London, and Glasgow’s Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

Charles was a kind and considerate colleague and family man; the simplest pleasures in life brought him great joy. He had various non-musical hobbies and interests, including cooking, travelling to sunny places, the environment and DIY. Charles is survived by his wife, Chrissie; their children, Hermione, Ben, Imogen and Phoebe; his siblings, Richard, William and Lizzie; as well as three grandchildren. Bob Hartley

My father, Laurence Anthony (Tony) Leonard died on 18th September 2022, at the age of 94. Dad was born on 8th October 1927 in Kentish Town. In his later years he suffered from Alzheimer’s, and one of our great pleasures was to show him the photos of his Old Camdenians football team, which would always spark some deeply held memories. I’m delighted to see him mentioned in Dickie Bird’s obituary. Richard Leonard

Richard’s eulogy to his father is ‘In Memoriam’ on our website.

Brian Lofts died peacefully on 28th February 2023, aged 79.

Brian was born on 3rd April 1943 and was Head Boy at Holloway School. He wrote, directed and produced the award winning silent film ‘The Prefects’, which was last shown at our AGM via Zoom. An account was published in 2020, in our quarterly newsletter in three instalments. Brian will be sadly missed by all who knew him.

Brian’s eldest daughter, Korenne Lofts (Denison), said, “Dad had lived an inspiring, generous and full life. Even though he knew that he had cancer for over two years, his determination and sunny optimism kept him a joy to be around as ever. Dad loved being part of the Old Camdenians through the years. I have seen that precious film so many times and so have Brian’s grandchildren. We are all so proud of him and thankful for the huge caring, loving part he played in all our lives. Dad was one of life’s givers and encouragers. He loved his summertime cricket and also his opera, particularly Puccini, and of course his long time love of Venice ever since his first trip when he was 15 years old with his school”

Ray Rowe

The 114th AGM, followed by our 96th Annual Lunch under the stewardship of Ann Tennant and her team, will be held on Friday 27th October 2023 at the school.

We do need your support to keep this yearly tradition that includes a tour of the school, followed by a reception with drinks, the AGM and then a sit-down meal with friends.

Laurence Marks, one of our school’s most celebrated alumni, has agreed to present  a sort of after-dinner speech, which he has no doubt that you will find amusing and it might even transport the more senior among us to the beginning of what is now known as “The Swinging Sixties”. So, please let us know if you would like to attend via ‘Contact Us’ or drop me an email.

Also, if you are interested in attending an evening event during the year, such as the quiz night, please let us know and we will see if we can organise something for you.