Drama features for the first time in the 12th edition of The Arabella – QE’s pupil-run creative magazine.
Drama joins art, music, poetry & other creative writing, politics, science and foreign languages & linguistics as areas covered, with the latest edition focusing on an overall theme of Expression.
The theme has been widely interpreted by the boys. Their hugely diverse contributihassanons range from a poetic exploration by one of the School’s younger pupils, Huy Bui, of the famous opening line of Hamlet’s soliloquy, ‘To be or not to be’, through to a coruscating take on the Democrats’ performance in the recent US election written by another Year 7 pupil, Hassan Omer.
The boys were assisted by a staff team including Library Services Assistant Corinna Illingworth. She said: “The student editorial team have once again produced a high-quality publication. There is surely something to interest everyone in its 54 pages: in exploring the theme of Expression, the boys have expressed themselves creatively and in very diverse ways!”
The magazine is named after Arabella Stuart, fourth in line to the throne, who in 1610 secretly married William Seymore, a descendant of Henry VII and himself sixth-in-line to the throne. To prevent any chance of a Tudor attempt to seize the crown from the Stuarts, James I sent Seymore to the Tower of London and committed Arabella to the care of the Bishop of Durham. Her connection to the School is that she stayed for some months in Barnet in the house of Thomas Conyers, a QE Governor, after falling ill en route to Durham, while Rev. Matthias Milward, a Governor and subsequently Master of the School, attended to her spiritual needs.
Anyone with access to the eQE portal may read The Arabella here.
Head Editor Timi Banjo, of Year 12, leads a 12-strong team of editors and advertising managers drawn from the senior year groups. He said: “This edition of The Arabella captures the spirit of creativity, exploration, and expression that defines our school community.”
Year 11’s Soham Sapra got the drama content off to a good start with an essay on the ‘spell-binding performance’ of comedian Robin Williams’ in his voice-acting for Disney’s 1992 animated film, Aladdin.
Here is a small selection of the many other contributions:
- The above artwork produced by Year 11’s Kyaan Syed
- A poem by Danyal Rahim, of Year 10, extolling the praises of sweets and chocolate
- Year 10 boy Nikhil Francine’s analysis of Sibelius’ Violin Concerto
- A piece of creative writing by Elijah Bedion, of Year 7, entitled The Window
- Year 11 pupil Vu-Lam Le-Nguyen’s exploration of The Intertwined
- Lexicons of France and its Former Colonies
- Sixth-former Harshith Sharavana’s account of the work of 19th-century doctor Ignaz Semmelweis in introducing antiseptic procedures in hospitals and thus reducing fatal infections
- A short Classics essay by Felix Calder, of Year 12, on Is Roman Satire a genuine expression of feelings? A defence of Juvenal’s Satire 6.