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THE OXFORD UNIVERSIT Y SOCIETY
SWISS BRANCH
From the Branch President
ND-03/03
20 May 2003
Dear Members,
To avoid repetition, would you, please, refer to my circulars of 21st October and 7th February
last, for pre-view of the 2003 Spring Fixture.
1. Montreux, Saturday 3rd May
The Branch’es Twentieth Anniversary Celebrations centred on our Spring Fixture programme
at the Eurotel in Montreux, to wit – Sir Timothy Garden’s lecture on Global Strategy, followed
by Apéritif and dinner. We were a party of forty Oxonians and three Extra-murals, with our
next of kin, and seeing the hours spent together that evening as a Birthday present from each
one of us for all the rest, this paragraph is spelling out only a minimum number of individual
thank-yous to:
Tim Garden (St Cat’s) – whose RAF career began when he was nineteen and closed when
he was Air Marshal, who is consulted at home and afar as an expert on Global Defence, who
– for us at Montreux – gave a survey over time and geography of the area most recently
involved, of present trends, of – so help us – a possible world theatre in development. We
were grateful to him for his knowledge and clarity and the courage of his convictions. Indeed,
our earnest questioning only ceased when Graham Simons stemmed the flood with his vote
of thanks and his usual – quite atrocious and yet as always acceptable – light relief.
Basil Eastwood (Merton) – British Ambassador to Berne, who introduced the Speaker, took
the head of the table for dinner and will have found a number of us coming back with points
raised at his Islam and the West last year at Interlaken. We are very grateful to Alison
Eastwood for finding time to join us.
Sue Garden (St Hilda’s) – Lady Garden, OUS Trustee, Branch President/London, who
brought greetings from Oxford and shared her own experiences of ‘branch building’ at her
table with Jane Fox (St Anne’s) Hon Sec /Swiss Branch and Frédéric Chappuis (Templeton)
and Marko Blazekovic (St Peter’s), now launching a Swiss Chapter for OBA, concerning
which, after contact with us in 2001, our Branch Officer was invited to a first business lunch in
Fribourg last March.
Ian Crees, the C.G., who has been a father to all the U.K.-based bodies in his area for the
past four and half years, with Betty at his side and the heart of their hospitality inside and
outside their home.
Sandra Darra, Hon. Consul / Montreux, who continues to comfort and revive us, not only
when in unexpected distress.
Apart from the Branch’es 1982 convenor, the only Founder Member present was Sven-Erik
Bergh (Worcester), whose unfailing support and participation stand stable in Society affairs.
At Montreux, he was escorting his wife and two (Worcester) daughters, one of whom had
flown in from Morocco to be with us and was hastening back there next day. Other Founders
– Nicholas de Gren (Christ Church) – (“no weekend flight from Irkutsk”), David Lawson
(Magdalen), Frank Versaci (Christ Church) were professionally prevented; Jim and Jean Flux
(St. John’s and LMH), passing through Switzerland a week later, stopped in Geneva and
drank a glass of local Rosé to the Branch’es future.
2. The Branch Meeting for Aris
Except for Magda Lola, suffering from pneumonia, and Ann Cashmore who had driven out to
France to fetch her home, I think all those who had agreed to meet in the Eurotel small
boardroom on Saturday p.m., managed to get there: Sven-Erik with Liselotte, Bettina and
Sylvia, John and Petra, Peter S. and Andrea, Peter K and Samar, Hywel and Lucette, James
and Catriona with Jane and me. We first remembered Members who left us late last year, my
letter of 7th February, pages 4 and 5, concerns Roy Jenkins, our President and James
Freeman (St John’s). A few days ago, we also learnt of the death of Michael T. Quin (New
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College) on 6th April, after a long life of service – first in India, then the Army, then teaching in
Malta and the Sudan, finally at the International School of Geneva, where he gave Philosophy
and Latin from 1955 to 1977. Juanita, his wife for 45 years, is left in Geneva; we remain in
touch. Turning to Aris, our first subject was the website he built for the branch; remembering
how he had it open in time to cover the Millennium Autumn Fixture, on September 30th 2000,
we spoke yet again of that fabulous Fixture – planned, programmed, operated in toto by Aris
and CERN Oxonians, including the Director of Research. It had closed with a Banquet, after
lasting the complete day, while they instructed us and explained to us and took us down to
see the outgoing LEP, a hundred metres below the ground where Voltaire once grew his
garden and may well have sat scribbling, making notes for Candide, devising object lessons
for use in fiction. James has taken steps to ensure the survival of our website. He has agreed
to be its Manager and to keep it updated thanks to liaison with Jane. He now read us the brief
paper we had asked him for, on Aris’ life and work. It was all at once factual and precise,
sensitive and vividly evocative of the man we knew. Its few pages, appended as an
Addendum, are an integral part of this report, which like the rest or my circulars, homely as
they are, constitute the records of the Society’s Swiss Branch.
Maybe it was at Cointrin, waiting with Alexander Angelis for the plane that would take his
son’s body back to Athens, meeting the – identical – dark directness of his eyes – and
ourselves the useless bystanders to his anger and irreparable grief, that we were most aware
of any possible comfort given, most grateful to the givers. Aris had neither sister nor brother,
he had sired no child. James and Catriona with their wee girl, Gemma, were the family who
saw him through his last Round.
In 1992-93, the London Hellenic Cultural Centre, - through Sir David Hunt, an Oxford Society
Vice-President – invited our participation in celebrating “the Birth of Democracy in Athens
2500 years ago”. The Swiss branch contribution was a lecture by Aris on the Cleisthenian
Reforms and the events leading up to them, given on St. George’s Day 23 rd April at the 1993
Spring Fixture in Lugano. When thanking the Athenian Oxonian who had been presented as
‘local talent’, Sir Peter Smithers (Magdalen) mentioned that, under Rome, it was the Greek
Legion, stationed at Como that was responsible for security throughout the Lake System of
the Ticino area. One keeps guessing at a pattern. However tight our containment in Time and
Space, we stand aware that it is the unending forward searching – and also the sudden
glimpses of a still uncalculatable confirmation, that make life livable – lovable indeed, to our
heart’s extreme. Quoting from memory, “we shall not cease from exploration until we reach
the point whence we started and know the place for the first time.”
3. St. Maurice in Agaune, 4th May
Hard-driven at the Eurotel by me, smoothly guided on the road by Jane, the OUSSB party
was waiting punctually at the Abbey door at - or before – 10.30 am. Since we had been asked
to come “at the end of 10 o’clock Mass” when last there in 1988, I now wrote suggesting a
visit at 11. Canon Stucki wrote back saying that nowadays Mass was at 9 o’clock and so he
would meet us à l’entrée de la Basilique at 10.15. He followed this up with a telephone call to
tell me that the train from Montreux got in at 10.25 and he would therefore expect us as from
10.30. He would wait (!). This was agreed and, so I believed, written down… Uninformed to
date as to why we were forgotten, we still can take comfort in our Style – everybody waiting in
perfect composure, while I alone stood distraught. At least, we were finally shown the strongroom and its vase, the elaborately decorated, heavily bejewelled merovingian and carolingian
domestic ware, the silver reliquaries of every size, the small stand, a few inches high, that
supports a shiningly translucid crystal holding a thorn – the gift of Louis IX the Saint, when he
halted at the Abbey on his way home from Jerusalem, carrying the Saviour’s Crown. We saw
the Cloisters and the baptistery, ancient epitaphs and inscriptions set out and explained in the
coloured lights of the stained glass, the chastened lines of stone or wood, as offered by the
artists of today. We went on to the Café du Philosophe and found that the tables I had
reserved for 12 o’clock had been safely kept. We did not particularly reminisce on the old
Geneva Café des Philosophes; we were glad there was one left. Our waiting time outside the
Abbey, with people bending back to gaze up into the beetling height, may have thrown more
light on its ratio – regularly crushed by falling rock, regularly replacing what is destroyed, such
as the Organ in 1952, or else rebuilding the whole, with at most some optimistic change in
orientation, but always in the same place, always keeping faith through the centuries with the
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men who wrestled there, always continuing for their unseen Lord in the singing of perennial
praise.
(Notes I had made in the hope that there would be time for more than the Abbey, are
appended as Addendum 2 to this circular.)
4. Branch events ahead
i) We have asked Members to tell us of things they do that might also interest others in the
Branch:
- From May 30th to June 15th, Offenbach’s much-loved Opéra bouffe La Belle Hélène is billed
at the Vernayaz Usine CFF, where the Swiss Federal Railways once built and repaired their
rolling stock and where the acoustics in the main hall are considered particularly well-suited
for its present use. Alina Darbellay (Trinity) is in the chorus and will be singing every night.
Travelling westwards, Vernayaz lies some ten kilometres beyond Martigny, its
http://www.vernayaz.ch/bellehelene tells us that there are seats left for Sunday night
performances, but the Friday and Saturday seat-plus-supper package deals are almost fully
reserved. People who live near enough might even think of contacting one another and
making a party of it….
– In Geneva, Bettina Bergh’s violin may be heard in a concert given by the Orchestre
Symphonique Genevois of Magie Tzigane with music by Brahms, Liszt, Kodaly and sundry
Bohemians at the Victoria Hall on Tuesday, 10 June at 20h30. Tickets are available from the
Service Culturel Migros, 7 rue du Prince and Globus, 48 rue du Rhône.
– And in Fribourg, Jane Fox’s soprano will ring through Rossini’s Petite Messe Solonelle
(the version for two pianos and harmonium) at the Tour de Belluard on Saturday June 14th at
17h30 and Sunday June 15th at 11h00. Tickets available at the door.
ii) The Brandon Law Scholarship – judging by age groups in the families I know here, this
would be a point for possible consideration rather later, but perhaps it is worth mentioning
now. The Brandon Law Scholarship, a Testamentary Foundation, established in the Vaud
(Lausanne) last Autumn as a charitable organization of indefinite duration, grants Swiss
citizens one-year or two-year financial support for the study of English Law at one of nine
English Universities including Oxford. There are further details if individually useful.
iii) The 2003 Autumn Fixture - Peter Arengo-Jones, Branch Organizer for this event, is
taking us to Neuchâtel on Saturday, October 4th where his local contact and partner in
planning is Professor Rémy Scheurer, who was Ordinarius for Mediaeval and Renaissance
History and subsequently – until 1991 – the Rector of a University associated in one’s mind
with such things as the treasure in its Library or, more recently, solar energy research at its
Institute for Microtechnology. As a parliamentarian, Councellor Scheurer has fought hard,
over his past twelve years on the National Council, for Research and Technology credits, for
improved training prospects to meet an overall need. For all of us, except Jane, - who is
supporting Peter with logistics and also, I suspect, quite a bit of prospecting on the ground,
the content of the Neuchâtel programme will be a surprise, now expectantly awaited in good
time for individual planning prior to dispersal through the summer months.
Technicalities – for the sake of easier retrieval, my circulars will henceforth be coded with my
initials, the calendar year and a number. Thus, today’s missive is the third out this year and
although its posting mailing date and that of electronic forward transfer cannot be identical it
remains identifiable as ND-03/3.
– Members of the Society, albeit registered in Oxford, are reminded that we need their
matriculation date and College together with a POSTAL mailing address in Switzerland (in
addition to their email address, if they have one) if they wish to be included on our mailing list
and to receive on-going information on events.
I think all of us continue in gratitude to all the rest of us, who “make” the Branch. This carries
greeting and good wishes and good hopes – for all our travelling and returning “until next
time.”
Nancy