St Edmund's

Catullus

At this time of year (exam season), I remember my old Headmaster Mr Ham.  He was a brilliant, Oxford educated classicist who had the misfortune of teaching me Latin 1:1 for five years.  It was a powerful way for me to learn and I loved the subject. However, I do still remember Mr Ham wincing in intellectual pain whilst I mistranslated Catullus (this is risky exercise by the way as some Catullus is quite racy) or mangled my verb conjugations.  One morning in June 1988, after five years of 1:1 teaching, I was having a lie-in at home during GCSE study leave when the phone rang.  I got up and shambled downstairs to find Mr Ham at the other end of the line politely reminding me that my Latin Language GCSE examination had started twenty minutes ago and he was on his way to collect me.

Now, 37 years on, Latin is the only GCSE content I can still remember clearly and it has been a huge help to me in study of History and in my professional writing career – so thank you Mr Ham!

At St Edmund’s, we are also lucky to have a brilliant Oxford educated classicist in the form of Dr Burrell.  He now reports on a recent Classics Society trip…

“On May 7th, students of Latin and Classical Civilisation in the Lower and Middle Fifth and Lower Sixth visited the University of Kent’s Classical and Archaeological Society on the campus on St Thomas’ Hill. We visited for an afternoon of sessions to demonstrate the wide variety of ways in which the ancient world can be studied at university level. The first session focused on the archaeology of the site of St Edmund’s School, complete with authentic artefacts found from nearby on the hill. The Lower Fifth students were intrigued to discover the presence of an Iron Age settlement within walking distance of where they had learned about these hillforts, while the Lower Sixth applied their knowledge of Greek pottery to the more local varieties we were able to handle. The second session introduced the Greek alphabet to our eager students, and we were excited to discover how quickly we were able to translate the sentence “Zeus is beautiful, Zeus is evil” with a relatively small number of letters. Several students showed considerable eagerness to learn more, transliterating their own names and messages into Greek script. Finally, the Society had put together an interactive quiz covering much of our learning from all three year groups; technical challenges aside, this was a fun and competitive way to end the afternoon.

Our thanks must go to the Classical and Archaeological Society for their warm invitation and gracious hosting; to the academics and tutors who gave up their time to come and share their knowledge with us; and to the students and accompanying staff (Dr Burrell and Dr Masterson) from St Edmund’s. We look forward to further illuminating and exciting exchanges with our neighbours on the hill.”