Army career beckons

Nathanael Jackson, who was School Captain in 2011–2012, is now heading for a rank of a different kind, as he heads off to Sandhurst early in the New Year to join the commissioning course.

“I am currently visiting different regiments, but am hoping to join the infantry,” he wrote to the School recently.

It is a new departure for Nathanael (OE 2005–2012), who was neither a member of the QE CCF nor of the University Officer Training Corps at Durham, from where he graduated with a 2:1 in History in the summer.

Characteristically, he threw himself fully into university life. “I had a great time studying History. I kept up playing rugby and played football for college, but mainly I have been playing lots of music, especially trombone with the University Big Band, with which we have been performed at gigs in Durham, Darlington, Newcastle, Manchester and as far south as London, at the Pizza Express Jazz Club in Soho. We even won the Great North Jazz and Big Band Festival last year.

“I have been heavily involved with the Christian Union and my local church up in Durham, leading small group Bible studies for the last couple of years. Last year I was also fortunate enough to have been chosen to lead a charity expedition to Tanzania, where we climbed Kilimanjaro and completed the construction of a local school, as well as relaxing and enjoying what the country had to offer.

“Somewhere amongst all this I have also managed to fit in my History degree, which I have loved! In my final year, I worked on changes in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, the fall of Roman Gaul and the rise of ‘barbarian’ successor states, and wrote my dissertation on the emergence of the newspaper in the years preceding the English Civil War.”