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A new podcast series from The Queen’s Library starts with a look at the contemporary challenge of climate change, while Library staff have also put together a lavishly illustrated historical account of a Londoner facing a pandemic even worse than the present one.

Both the podcast and the account – about Samuel Pepys and the Great Plague of 1665 – are part of an extensive selection of content curated by Head of Library Services Surya Bowyer for boys to access during the pandemic lockdown.

The 27-minute first episode of the podcast series, entitled Roundness, looks at the issue of climate change, examining evidence from around the world and taking as its starting point President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. It features audio clips and music, as well as a commentary from Mr Bowyer.

The podcast, which is available on subscription from online providers including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, quotes experts from a range of disciplines, including investment bank Morgan Stanley’s chief executive, James Gorman, who recently told a congressional committee: “If we don’t have a planet, we’re not going to have a very good financial system.”

The podcast may also be accessed from the Library’s pages on eQE – the School’s portal for boys, parents, staff and other members of the Elizabethan community.

The Library’s extensive eQE section includes a Book of the Week, as well as a host of other recommended reading on the Lockdown Reading page, some of it recommended for particular age groups, some suitable for all.

“There are quick links to huge selections of free e-books and to free audiobooks. And there is our own Virtual Culture guide to virtual museums and galleries for lockdown and beyond,” says Mr Bowyer.

The Arabella magazine, a publication produced by pupils and featuring pupils’ own written and visual contributions, is hosted by the Library’s eQE section.

Mr Bowyer adds: “One coping strategy when we face a crisis like Covid-19 is to document our experiences in some way. More than 350 years ago, that was exactly what Samuel Pepys, a young civil servant living in London, did in his diary when the capital was hit by the Great Plague in 1665 – the worst epidemic in England since the Black Death of 1348. His reaction, and that of his fellow Londoners, is set out in our Pepys and the plague page.”

The page features 12 illustrations, most of them contemporaneous drawings, as well as extracts from Pepy’s diary detailing what he saw and heard – “so many poor sick people in the streets full of sores” – and the gradual recovery over many months until, in February 1666, London was deemed safe enough for King Charles II and his court to return.

Head of Library Services Surya Bowyer has been making sure that boys are aware of the wealth of resources that are available online – both for study and for leisure.

He is using the shutdown to develop the way the Library team uses technology. And, as a result, they are not only supporting the boys in the holidays and in their remote learning during term time, but also deriving benefits that will long outlast the current crisis.

“When it became clear that schools would be forced to close as a result of Covid-19, our first thought was: ‘What does a library do when its doors are locked and lights turned off?’” Mr Bowyer says.

In the first few days, a small number of boys whose parents were designated key workers used the library to continue their studies. Meanwhile, for boys at home, the Library team has shared audiobooks and e-book databases, and they are recommending a Book of the Week, which is made available to read free online. The first recommendation was Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.

“We have also released a list of activities of things you can do with the book you are reading, that go beyond simply reading… for example, designing a map of the book’s locations, or designing a new book cover.”

Mr Bowyer and Library Services Assistant Corinna Illingworth have also put together their own guide to digital galleries and museums that are available to browse online. “There’s a wealth of art and history out there on the internet: it’s our job, as librarians, to publicise and share these resources throughout the QE community.

“This is a key issue with the internet more widely – there is a lot of information, so much so that it’s often difficult to get a sense of what is worth your time. This is a key job of The Queen’s Library during these increasingly digital times,” said Mr Bowyer.

A number of activities and competitions have taken place to stretch the boys and encourage them to use their imagination and be creative. These included a ‘blackout’ poetry workshop, during which boys had to black out the majority of a piece of text, leaving only a handful of words to make a poem. Head of English, Robert Hyland, launched a Brave New World poetry competition, which was followed by an art competition on the same theme.

Just before the sudden start of the shutdown, the editorial team were able to put together the second edition of the Arabella – the pupils’ own magazine, open to contributors from Years 7-13. Included in this online edition, which may be viewed here on eQE by current QE families, are poetry, prose and art.

Editor-in-chief Josh Osman, of Year 13, said: “Sadly we were unable to put out a print edition. But the Arabella has been our way of uniting the School through creativity, taking in submissions from all year groups.”

Josh also heralded the success of the blackout poetry workshop: “It allowed people who would not otherwise have ventured into poetry to try their hand at something accessible yet deceptively complex.”

School Captain Ivin Jose’s imaginative short story, looking at climate change through the eyes of an elderly, world-travelling balloonist, has won him the top prize in the national Science Challenge Competition 2020.

Ivin’s 1,200-word feature took both the top prize in its category and the Overall Schools Winner Award, judged by Lord Robert Winston, in the annual Royal College Science Union (RSCU) competition. The RCSU is the student union for students at Imperial College London from the Faculty of Natural Sciences.

Feedback from the competition markers lauded Ivin’s “unique” style in a “gentle yet captivating” essay. One marker wrote: “The message is delivered subtly, but without detracting from its importance.” A second marker told Ivin: “It is clear that you are very talented at scientific writing, which is generally a very tricky thing to do!”

Ivin, of Year 12, was shortlisted as one of the three finalists for his category and was invited to the awards ceremony in the Royal Society of Chemistry Library.

Unfortunately, the event coincided with QE’s Senior Awards Ceremony, at which Ivin not only won several prizes, but was also scheduled to deliver a vote of thanks as School Captain. His father therefore attended the competition ceremony in his stead, where scientist, doctor and TV presenter Professor Lord Winston presented the prizes. Lord Winston has been the ambassador for the Science Challenge for 12 years.

Ivin said: “I was delighted and surprised to learn that I had won the awards for both the feature category and the Overall Schools Winner Award.” He won £500, with the prize package also including a visit to the House of Lords.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “My congratulations go to Ivin on this exceptional achievement. He is an exemplary pupil, achieving high academic standards and contributing fully to extra-curricular activities, while showing great dedication to serving QE in his role as School Captain.”

Ivin was alerted to the competition by Academic Enrichment Tutor and Physics teacher Gillian Deakin. There were four categories: video, essay, feature and freestyle. Ivin chose the feature category, for which entrants had to cover “what good climate means to different people, and what this means for how we respond to climate change”.

“I chose to do the feature article question, as the blend of creativity and scientific fact appealed to me.”

The guest judge for this category was Mun Keat Looi, a science writer, who was awarded the silver Rising Star Award at the 2015 British Media Awards. He is the author of two books, Big Questions in Science: The quest to solve the great unknowns and the Geek Guide to Life.

Ivin said: “I wrote my feature article titled Memories of an Old World Traveller. I decided that it would be interesting to explore the feature article question from the perspective of an older narrator in order to explore how much the earth’s climate has changed over time, as well as my desire to motivate and inspire readers to action.”

The article tells the story of a 92-year-old hot air balloonist reflecting on happy memories of travelling the world and “witnessing the stunning peaks of the Himalayas, tasting the spices of Asia and beholding the beauty of the Alaskan Northern Lights”.

One of the marker’s commented on this aspect of the feature: “It is very interesting to introduce so many different cultures’ approaches to climate science, and you have done this very well.”

Realising in his old age that the climate is rapidly changing, the traveller-narrator gets out his balloon for one final journey to investigate humanity’s response to the crisis. The essay finishes with the narrator’s thoughts on the comprehensive measures that will be necessary to resolve the problem of global warming.

• Read Ivin’s winning entry, Memories Of An Old World Traveller.

Underne emerged as victors in the close-fought inter-House World Book Day quiz, defeating the boys from Stapylton on a tie-break question.

And the competition was equally ferocious among the staff teams, with some (not entirely serious) dark mutterings being heard from teachers when their own result was announced!

Simi Bloom, of Year 7, Hamza Mohamed, of Year 8, along with Year 9’s Aryan Patel and Year 10’s Amin Mohamed, formed the winning team, with Hamza first off the mark for the all-important tie-break question: Who was the poet Laureate before Simon Armitage? (Answer: Carol Ann Duffy).

The questions covered a gamut of authors from Charles Dickens to Ruta Sepetys, and from Chaucer to J K Rowling, with a special Shakespeare round included for good measure.

The House teams were joined by five staff teams and one Sixth Form team in the event held in the Main School Hall, which was organised by English teacher Panayiota Menelaou.

QE’s Head of Library Services, Surya Bowyer, paid tribute to her work and reflected on the event as a whole: “What struck me was how universal the event was. There were boys from Years 7 through to 11 in the House teams, along with teams comprising sixth-formers, teachers and non-teaching staff. It was brilliant to see how literature can be such an effective unifier. The universality of the event was reflected also in Ms Menelaou’s careful curation of the questions, which produced a real mix of niche versus populist, and ensured that every participant knew at least one answer.”

When the winning staff team of Dr Corinna Illingworth, Mr Robert Hyland, Ms Audrey Poppy and Mr Jonathan Brooke was announced, there were rumblings from other competitors. Helen MacGregor, Head of History, said: “The History department was robbed of victory! We are already in training for next year…” while Mr Bowyer added: “With Mr Hyland’s team claiming victory, there is some chatter among the staff body that perhaps the contest was fixed….” Ms Menelaou countered she had distributed the English department staff and two librarians as evenly and fairly as possible among the staff teams!

Below is a selection of the questions and answers:

1. Which two cities provide the setting for Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities?
2. Which book by Ruta Sepetys won the 2017 Carnegie book award?
3. How many Canterbury Tales were written by Chaucer?
4. Who split his soul into horcruxes?
5. Which Shakespearean play features the characters of Goneril, Regan and Cordelia?
6. Which two Shakespeare plays are translated into Klingon?

Answers

1. London and Paris
2. Salt to the Sea
3.  24
4. Voldemort
5. King Lear
6. Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing

QE’s has a new literary magazine, The Arabella, showcasing the writing and artistic talents of the boys.

After putting out a call for submissions, an editorial team drawn from pupils across the year groups met on Tuesday lunchtimes to decide which of the many contributions they would include.

The 18-page launch issue, which has been published both as hard copies and digitally on the School’s internal eQE web portal, features prose and poetry, as well as art, contributed by boys from Year 7 to Year 13. The artwork shown here, right, is by Sai Sivakumar, of Year 9.

QE’s Head of Library Services, Surya Bowyer, said: “The Arabella is a really important artistic outlet. All the boys involved – both those who submitted work and those on the editorial team – were able to showcase their creative talents. They should be immensely proud of the result: a brilliant inaugural issue.”

Mr Bowyer oversaw the editorial team, together with Clarissa Tan and Samantha White, interns from the University of Connecticut working at the School this term.

Editor-in-chief Josh Osman, of Year 13, wrote in his foreword of the “abundance of creativity flooding the halls of QE” and said the magazine would provide an additional platform for boys who wished their work to be seen. “For the first issue, we received an overwhelming number of fantastic submissions, with impressive themes ranging from memory to social equality,” he said.

Ms Tan said: “When envisioning a creative literary magazine, we hoped to engage our studious QE boys with their more creative sides. However, we soon discovered that The Arabella harvested further meaning: walk into any Tuesday meeting, and you would find infectious smiles and a constant stream of ideas; you would find great minds coming together, young men taking initiative to build something that mattered.”

Ms White added that she was proud to have worked on the project and excited to see how the magazine would evolve.

“Students should keep their eyes peeled next term for news about how to get involved in issue 2 of the magazine,” said Mr Bowyer.

The magazine is named after Arabella Stuart, a noblewoman with connections to the School’s early history, who died a tragic death in the Tower of London.

As a cousin of James I (James VI of Scotland), a niece of Mary Queen of Scots and a distant cousin of Elizabeth I, she had a strong claim to the English throne. When, instead of her, James became King of England in 1603, she was initially well received at his court but then, in 1610, incurred the king’s wrath by secretly marrying William Seymour, who himself had a distant claim to the throne.

Placed under house arrest and committed to the care of the Bishop of Durham, she in fact fell ill en route to the north and spent some months in Barnet at the home of Thomas Conyers, a governor of the School, while Rev Matthais Milward, also a governor and subsequently Master of the School, attended to her spiritual needs. She attempted to escape to France dressed as a man, but was captured and imprisoned in the Tower. Falling ill and refusing medical treatment, she died there in 1615, aged just 39.

Two-and-a-half years after he founded it, sixth-former Ryan Ratnam’s website and online journal has stood the test of time as a platform for young people to write about what really interests them.

Many QE boys and pupils from other leading schools have taken the opportunity to express themselves through the Scope Project. And, with no word limits imposed and considerable editorial freedom allowed, the range of topics explored is eclectic indeed, from Venezuelan hyperinflation to Was Thomas Hardy really a feminist, from Are we living in reality? to Facebook’s currency, Libra.

Ryan was inspired to start Scope when he was part of a joint academic symposium with North London Collegiate School (NLCS) in Year 10, where he and his friends relished the experience of sharing ideas. He wanted to create a channel through which young people could share their interests and make topics digestible to others: “news for young people, by young people”, as he says.

The scope of Scope has now broadened, as Ryan also runs an affiliated society – Microscope – for QE boys in Years 7 & 8. The society allows them to investigate the topics that interest them, to share their perspectives on news and issues and to gain writing experience. Ryan meets with them fortnightly, when they discuss the news (in different sectors) and work on writing techniques. The boys then produce pieces each half-term for a dedicated section of the website.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “My congratulations go to Ryan for his leadership in creating the Scope Project and for the persistence and hard work he and his team have shown to ensure its success over time.

“What he has done coheres very well with our aim as a School of nurturing free-thinking scholarship among the boys, encouraging them to go beyond the confines of their classroom syllabus, pursuing their own genuine academic interests.”

Ryan, who is Chief Editor, received some help early on from his then-Head of Year, Kimberly Jackson (now an Assistant Head at The Henrietta Barnett School (HBS)) and Nisha Mayer, QE’s Head of Academic Enrichment, who helped him set up the project and promote it through the eQE portal.

The project was developed collaboratively, with pupils from NLCS, HBS and Westminster School all involved alongside QE boys with taking the concept of the symposium and translating that to an online editorial platform.

The website covers a broad range of areas. The designated menu areas are: current affairs; entertainment; history; literature; languages; philosophy/psychology; sport; science and technology. The ‘languages’ tab features writing in foreign languages including, to date, French, German and Spanish.

The main goal is for people to write about what really interests them personally. Ryan, for example, has written on Japanese history – “Something I would be unlikely to talk about in the playground!

“For me, free-thinking scholarship is about being open to new ideas and perspectives, going beyond the curriculum”.

The articles and features are looking to test opinion and challenge it, he says, citing as an example a piece on feminism, accompanied by a survey to interrogate young people’s knowledge an perceptions of this subject. “Opinions shape your character; figuring out what you think is part of maturing.”

Scope gives young people the opportunity to learn about new things and a place to share their ideas, slightly removed from the pressures of social media. “Lots of people get their news from social media, with the flashy headlines and fear-mongering.” Scope seeks to avoid the dangers of ‘sound-bite’ journalism through its long-read format for the main articles, although there are also bite-sized snippets in monthly digests on the website too, as a shorter snappier way in for some new readers.

Where social media does come in is through its use to broaden the reach of the Scope project website, with accounts currently being set up to help drive traffic. Scope’s readership has grown largely through ‘word-of-mouth’ and it is now being read in countries across the world, according to the analytics.

Ryan noted the editorial challenges around how subjective articles should be, particularly regarding politics. The editorial team, which includes a number of senior QE boys, look for some balance to arguments, but do not require impartiality, and many articles are, in fact, comment pieces.

However, he stresses that using evidence is crucial: “It is really important to ground your arguments in evidence – this is the only way someone can make what they say valid.” This is emphasised to the younger boys involved in Microscope, ensuring that the principles of scholarship are maintained.

Here is a small sample of Scope articles contributed by QE boys, all of whom are currently in Year 13:

• How the sun set on the British Empire – Chris Hall
• The cultural and historical significance of historical epidemics – Sparsh Sutariya
• The Tunguska Event – Senan Karunadhara
• Captain Marvel review – Josh Osman
• Buy an army for just $285bn – Alistair Law
• How should central banks take the quantity of money into account when determining policy changes? – Rishi Shah
• Crisis of the European Centre-Left – Alex Beard
• Thomas More’s Utopia – Ryan Ratnam
• Macron sous pression – Oscar Smith
• Do humans understand infinity? – Nikhil Handa
• The distribution of money in cricket – Adam Hassan
• Medical ethics – a guide – Deniz Kaya
• Strides in HIV research – Vithusan Kuganathan.

Microscope articles include:

• Brexit – An opinion – Ameesh Doobaree (Year 8)
• E-books – the future of reading? – Ady Tiwari (Year 8)
• Usain Bolt and football – Kiaron Lad (Year 8).

The next edition, which is due out imminently, will be the fifth edition of Microscope and the tenth of Scope overall.

The editorial team also includes Alex Beard, Vithusan Kuganathan, Rishi Shah and Alistair Law.