Profile Andrew Freemantle
Director of the RNLI
Due to be published in The Sunday Times
October 2008
During the course of today, lifeboats are likely have rescued around 20 people from coastal waters around the UK and Ireland. Over a year their unpaid volunteer crews save thousands of lives.
The Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s chief executive Andrew Freemantle, a former career soldier says: “There is a nobility about these people who go out in these little boats in appalling conditions to rescue other people. One is very fortunate to be working in an organisation held in such high esteem. It represents the best of British – to give and not count the cost.”
Last year RNLI Lifeboats rescued 7,834 people, Another 10,000 were helped by the RNLI’s recently established beach life guard operation
It’s creation and the opening of the RNLI training college are two key achievements of Freemantle’s 10 years at the helm.
Before coming to the RNLI he saw combat in Vietnam with the Australian SAS after a career in the British Army, then ran the Scottish Ambulance Service. He says: “There are common skills, challenges and problems in running big organisations. There are lots of people in the Army and Scottish ambulance service - though not enough - and in the RNLI. “
The charity, founded in 1824, operates its lifeboat services without a penny from the British Government. Most of its annual £124 million budget comes from legacies and fundraising - though it does get a little financial aid from the Irish Government, a relationship that pre-dates independence.
Projects like the first memorial to commemorate lifeboat crew lost at work - to be unveiled late in 2009 – must be funded from other sources. Last summer Freemantle did his bit. The 64-year-old - not normally a cyclist - undertook a 1,100 mile sponsored bike ride from the RNLI HQ in Poole to Rome to raise £57,000 towards the sculpture.
The RNLI pays Freemantle just over £133,000 a year to oversee its 1,300 staff, 26.000 fundraising volunteers and about 7.000 men and volunteers who are in the front line at 235 lifeboat stations.
Freemantle’s office overlooks the RNLI’s training college, opened five years ago by the Queen. All lifeboat crew attend courses here, reflecting the RNLI’s saying: “Train one, save many.”
Though he can also see Poole harbour from his desk, Freemantle’s forays onto the water are infrequent because his week involves long hours in meetings. He does rub shoulders with visiting crews in the college cafeteria.
This week he addressed the Fire Services College – they collaborate on flood rescue operations – and prepared for an imminent visit to China.
The Chinese Rescue and Salvage Bureau have bought 20 lifeboats from the RNLI. “The Chinese sent people around the world and hit upon the RNLI to work with. We are regarded as providing a gold standard world-wide for sea rescue services.”
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Profile Michael Dixon
Profile Dr Michael Dixon
Director the Natural History Museum London
to be published in the Sunday Times in October
The Natural History Museum in Kensington is on the threshold of the most dramatic chapter in its history since its foundation in 1881- the opening late next year of the Darwin Centre.
The giant concrete cocoon behind a wall of steel and glass will showcase the Museum’s hugely important scientific work. It will house hundreds of scientists, their research and millions of specimens.
“We are every bit as much an important scientific research institute on issues relating to the natural world as a place of public education and entertainment” says its Director Dr Michael Dixon. “ So our vision for the future is to advance knowledge about the natural world to inspire better care of the planet. It is about making a difference - making people who visit here feel differently about our planet and natural resources.”
He hopes that the sort of crowds who thrill to animatronic dinosaurs and showcases of creepy crawlies will also engage with the serious scientific work going on backstage. “Our ability to influence our visitors is underpinned and made credible by the scientific work we do here.”
It’s going to be a busy year for Dixon, 52, as he oversees the run-up to the opening of the £78 million project - a key element of 18 months celebrating Charles Darwin’s 200th anniversary. The scientist’s statue has recently been moved to look down on the Museum’s grand entrance hall.
A few days ago Dixon presided over the first public glimpse of the centre. He also gave the Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt a tour and showed him the Museum’s research departments.
Dixon studied zoology but though his alma mater Imperial College is a few doors away, he has not been a working scientist since gaining his doctorate. Instead he embarked on a career in publishing.
But after 20 years he returned to his first love as Director of the Zoological Society of London and, for the past four and a half years, in his present post on a salary of £166,000.
He is a full time administrator “but with a knowledge of how science works and of the politics of how science works and is funded.”
“But I do try to get out into the museum. I love the place and love this job. Its hardly like working really, except getting up and getting home in the dark. Long hours.”
He has a big team – more than 900 full time staff, including 350 scientists and an additional 313 volunteers. And the spend is also big – annually around £65 million derived from government grants, money from other sources and from its own revenues.
These include merchandising, museum restaurants and corporate events. London Fashion Week has just used the Museum’s gardens. “It generated a healthy income.”
And the visitors have swelled since admission fees were scrapped in 2001. Last year there were around 3.8 million and once the Darwin Centre opens its expected to top four million for the first time.
Director the Natural History Museum London
to be published in the Sunday Times in October
The Natural History Museum in Kensington is on the threshold of the most dramatic chapter in its history since its foundation in 1881- the opening late next year of the Darwin Centre.
The giant concrete cocoon behind a wall of steel and glass will showcase the Museum’s hugely important scientific work. It will house hundreds of scientists, their research and millions of specimens.
“We are every bit as much an important scientific research institute on issues relating to the natural world as a place of public education and entertainment” says its Director Dr Michael Dixon. “ So our vision for the future is to advance knowledge about the natural world to inspire better care of the planet. It is about making a difference - making people who visit here feel differently about our planet and natural resources.”
He hopes that the sort of crowds who thrill to animatronic dinosaurs and showcases of creepy crawlies will also engage with the serious scientific work going on backstage. “Our ability to influence our visitors is underpinned and made credible by the scientific work we do here.”
It’s going to be a busy year for Dixon, 52, as he oversees the run-up to the opening of the £78 million project - a key element of 18 months celebrating Charles Darwin’s 200th anniversary. The scientist’s statue has recently been moved to look down on the Museum’s grand entrance hall.
A few days ago Dixon presided over the first public glimpse of the centre. He also gave the Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt a tour and showed him the Museum’s research departments.
Dixon studied zoology but though his alma mater Imperial College is a few doors away, he has not been a working scientist since gaining his doctorate. Instead he embarked on a career in publishing.
But after 20 years he returned to his first love as Director of the Zoological Society of London and, for the past four and a half years, in his present post on a salary of £166,000.
He is a full time administrator “but with a knowledge of how science works and of the politics of how science works and is funded.”
“But I do try to get out into the museum. I love the place and love this job. Its hardly like working really, except getting up and getting home in the dark. Long hours.”
He has a big team – more than 900 full time staff, including 350 scientists and an additional 313 volunteers. And the spend is also big – annually around £65 million derived from government grants, money from other sources and from its own revenues.
These include merchandising, museum restaurants and corporate events. London Fashion Week has just used the Museum’s gardens. “It generated a healthy income.”
And the visitors have swelled since admission fees were scrapped in 2001. Last year there were around 3.8 million and once the Darwin Centre opens its expected to top four million for the first time.
Profile - Director of the Royal Opera House
Profile Tony Hall - Chief exeutive of the Royal Opera House
appeared in The Sunday Times
October 2008
Nobody could accuse Tony Hall, the Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House of elitism.
This summer its productions have been busting out all over Britain. Nationwide 160 cinemas, plus others in Europe, screened Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” live from Covent Garden and other audiences watched opera and ballet relayed to giant outdoor screens across London.
Its offerings are promoted online – producing a cluster of first time customers and Hall, who left as BBC director of news and current affairs in 2001, also oversees the production and marketing of DVDs of performances and is involved in education initiatives to help foster interest in ballet and opera.
“We are becoming a total production house – not just on stage but on TV, radio and the web. When you are taking a large grant it’s important you should reach as many people as you can.”
Which means offering popular work alongside challenging pieces like “Minotaur”, by Harrison Birtwistle and the pop opera “Monkey” by Blur’s Damon Albarn, “Monkey was a really exciting moment for us. It was a very different audience - a younger crowd.”
The ROH spends £92 million annually and gets £26 million in grant aid. “But we raise more than twice as much in other ways - £38 million from the box office and over £60 million from sponsors and commercially.”
Hall, 57, took a pay cut when he left the BBC but now earns more than £250,000 a year. His team is smaller – 880 permanent staff but more for big productions.
He says the BBC and Opera House have similarities as creative organisations. “But the big difference here is you have to go out and make money.”
He doesn’t miss the BBC, “But I do get twitchy when a big story happens. I’m nosy and inquisitive about everything going on, like last week watching the financial world shudder. I have spent time thinking through what it means for us. We are not seeing any downturn in income yet, but we’d been foolish if weren’t thinking through the implications.”
It’s not a nine to five job. Hall attends all first nights and many other performances. Otherwise there is entertaining, management meetings and regular discussions with the artistic directors of the Royal Ballet and Opera.
“My job is to enable as many of their dreams to happen as possible. I know if finances go whoopsie, the art will suffer. In the end if we have to make an unpleasant decision it will be mine”
Then there is extracurricular work – chairing an industry skills council, masterminding a national skills academy in Thurrock, reporting on Dance Education and assessing media relations for the MOD.
But Hall’s love of Opera runs deep and helps him cope with any work pressures. “If things get stressful I drop into rehearsals. It reminds me what it is all about.”
appeared in The Sunday Times
October 2008
Nobody could accuse Tony Hall, the Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House of elitism.
This summer its productions have been busting out all over Britain. Nationwide 160 cinemas, plus others in Europe, screened Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” live from Covent Garden and other audiences watched opera and ballet relayed to giant outdoor screens across London.
Its offerings are promoted online – producing a cluster of first time customers and Hall, who left as BBC director of news and current affairs in 2001, also oversees the production and marketing of DVDs of performances and is involved in education initiatives to help foster interest in ballet and opera.
“We are becoming a total production house – not just on stage but on TV, radio and the web. When you are taking a large grant it’s important you should reach as many people as you can.”
Which means offering popular work alongside challenging pieces like “Minotaur”, by Harrison Birtwistle and the pop opera “Monkey” by Blur’s Damon Albarn, “Monkey was a really exciting moment for us. It was a very different audience - a younger crowd.”
The ROH spends £92 million annually and gets £26 million in grant aid. “But we raise more than twice as much in other ways - £38 million from the box office and over £60 million from sponsors and commercially.”
Hall, 57, took a pay cut when he left the BBC but now earns more than £250,000 a year. His team is smaller – 880 permanent staff but more for big productions.
He says the BBC and Opera House have similarities as creative organisations. “But the big difference here is you have to go out and make money.”
He doesn’t miss the BBC, “But I do get twitchy when a big story happens. I’m nosy and inquisitive about everything going on, like last week watching the financial world shudder. I have spent time thinking through what it means for us. We are not seeing any downturn in income yet, but we’d been foolish if weren’t thinking through the implications.”
It’s not a nine to five job. Hall attends all first nights and many other performances. Otherwise there is entertaining, management meetings and regular discussions with the artistic directors of the Royal Ballet and Opera.
“My job is to enable as many of their dreams to happen as possible. I know if finances go whoopsie, the art will suffer. In the end if we have to make an unpleasant decision it will be mine”
Then there is extracurricular work – chairing an industry skills council, masterminding a national skills academy in Thurrock, reporting on Dance Education and assessing media relations for the MOD.
But Hall’s love of Opera runs deep and helps him cope with any work pressures. “If things get stressful I drop into rehearsals. It reminds me what it is all about.”
Monday, September 15, 2008
Profile - Mary Rice
Profile of Mary Rice, head of the Environmental Investigation Agency published in the Sunday Times September 14th.
Profile Mary Rice
A week in the life
John Kelleher September 11 2008
When it comes to confronting the Goliaths of government, globalised crime and multinational corporations, the Environmental Investigation Agency, based in a tiny suite of offices above an Islington cafe is something of a giant killer.
The NGO, with just 22 UK staff runs as many operations as it can manage globally – exposing environmental crime, tracking, often covertly, trade in endangered species, gathering evidence and generally working to highlight and combat crimes against nature.
Mary Rice, its new chief executive, says present key campaigns include protecting forests and combating illegal logging, tracking the trade in Asian big cats, protecting whales and dolphins, fighting unlawful ivory exports and controls on ozone depleting chemicals.
Its notable past successes include stopping a massive ivory smuggling operation to Asia by a Zambia based crime syndicate.
Rice says: “We don’t have the resources to be a World Wildlife Fund or Friends Of The Earth, but we do regularly punch way above our weight. We have a documented history of campaign successes, but they’re not always recognised as ours. We find a problem and publicise it, but can’t always carry it forward so a bigger and better resourced group will come in and takeover.”
Rice, 50, trained as a journalist and spent 15 years teaching before she joined the EIA as a volunteer in 1995, 11 years after its creation as what she calls “a small sitting room outfit.”
It has evolved since then and Rice, who earns £43,000 annually, has spent much of the past week looking at how to continue its growth through restructuring to bring in more funding and to identify patrons or ambassadors. “We are looking strategically at where we are going and how we brand ourselves.”
She also had briefings with campaign teams and a full staff meeting “We’re rarely all in the office at the same time.”
The EIA is forced to target its work as it has just a trickle of regular funding from dedicated supporters. All major grants from bodies such as the EU and the Department For International Development are pegged to specific initiatives. One such three-year project is about to begin in Zambia, training local people to monitor illegal logging.
But compactness can be beneficial. Partnerships with larger bodies are frequent and the EIA can be somewhat maverick – taking direct action where larger organisations with offices and locally employed staff might be compromised. “ We can go in and come out and we won’t lose our offices and our people wont be bullied.”
She is not deterred by the EIA’s modest scale. “I think every single individual can make a difference. There is no failure in trying, only in not bothering. Working for a charity means sacrificing a lot. There are long hours, the remuneration is pretty dismal and you are faced with depressing things, but you meet the most inspirational people and each small success makes you realise that is how you build. It’s not an overnight thing.”
Profile Mary Rice
A week in the life
John Kelleher September 11 2008
When it comes to confronting the Goliaths of government, globalised crime and multinational corporations, the Environmental Investigation Agency, based in a tiny suite of offices above an Islington cafe is something of a giant killer.
The NGO, with just 22 UK staff runs as many operations as it can manage globally – exposing environmental crime, tracking, often covertly, trade in endangered species, gathering evidence and generally working to highlight and combat crimes against nature.
Mary Rice, its new chief executive, says present key campaigns include protecting forests and combating illegal logging, tracking the trade in Asian big cats, protecting whales and dolphins, fighting unlawful ivory exports and controls on ozone depleting chemicals.
Its notable past successes include stopping a massive ivory smuggling operation to Asia by a Zambia based crime syndicate.
Rice says: “We don’t have the resources to be a World Wildlife Fund or Friends Of The Earth, but we do regularly punch way above our weight. We have a documented history of campaign successes, but they’re not always recognised as ours. We find a problem and publicise it, but can’t always carry it forward so a bigger and better resourced group will come in and takeover.”
Rice, 50, trained as a journalist and spent 15 years teaching before she joined the EIA as a volunteer in 1995, 11 years after its creation as what she calls “a small sitting room outfit.”
It has evolved since then and Rice, who earns £43,000 annually, has spent much of the past week looking at how to continue its growth through restructuring to bring in more funding and to identify patrons or ambassadors. “We are looking strategically at where we are going and how we brand ourselves.”
She also had briefings with campaign teams and a full staff meeting “We’re rarely all in the office at the same time.”
The EIA is forced to target its work as it has just a trickle of regular funding from dedicated supporters. All major grants from bodies such as the EU and the Department For International Development are pegged to specific initiatives. One such three-year project is about to begin in Zambia, training local people to monitor illegal logging.
But compactness can be beneficial. Partnerships with larger bodies are frequent and the EIA can be somewhat maverick – taking direct action where larger organisations with offices and locally employed staff might be compromised. “ We can go in and come out and we won’t lose our offices and our people wont be bullied.”
She is not deterred by the EIA’s modest scale. “I think every single individual can make a difference. There is no failure in trying, only in not bothering. Working for a charity means sacrificing a lot. There are long hours, the remuneration is pretty dismal and you are faced with depressing things, but you meet the most inspirational people and each small success makes you realise that is how you build. It’s not an overnight thing.”
Monday, August 04, 2008
Profile - chief constable of Nottinghamshire
This profile is due to be published in the Sunday Times sometime in September/
A week in the life
Julia Hodson
Nottinghamshire’s first female chief constable Julia Hodson got a sobering reminder of the ultimate price a police officer can pay shortly after taking up her job in June. She attended a memorial service.
“I spent some time with Tracy, the widow of PC Ged Walker who was killed trying to stop a criminal escaping in a car. That was in 2003 and feelings are still raw here. He would have retired last weekend after 30 years service “
Hodson, 51, says everyone congratulated her when she took the £131,000 a year job. “ But some were quite dismissive about the area. There is still a phase ‘gun city’ and the notion that Nottingham is a violent place. For all the evidence I see I genuinely feel this is undeserved now.”
Her predecessor Steve Green had presided over four successive years of dropping crime statistics. When he left crime was at its lowest for eight years. She says one of his achievements was: “to have taken out most of the significant organised crime groups in the county – the cause of much of the very violent crime a few years ago.”
Only burglaries have nudged upwards and Hodson says this is a high priority.
She says one key is prevention both in developing greater public awareness and devising interventions to cut re-offending.
She is also worried the economic downturn might result in rising crime. “When people are under financial challenges it creates stress which can lead to domestic violence and if people have less money they’ll maybe move towards acquisitive crime.”
Hodson, a Derbyshire miner’s daughter, followed a conventional path from patrol officer to Chief Constable – though she also has two university degrees and joined the police accelerated promotion programme.
She was still on the beat in Merseyside during the miners strike. “Women weren’t involved in policing civil disorder so male officers went from Merseyside and across the country and women officers - there weren’t very many then - were left to police the streets. Perhaps that was part of the change towards accepting that women officers could play a full role in police duties.”
Right now Hodson is still getting to know Nottinghamshire where she oversees four divisions – with 2,500 officers and more than 2,000 other staff and support.
She meets the police authority fortnightly and her chief officers three mornings a week. She’s trying to meet as many ordinary people and civic and business leaders as possible. She has also joined patrol officers and met the victims of crime.
“When I joined I don’t think I ever envisaged being in a management position. I do miss the contact with the public and the best bits of the job are when I can steer towards meeting them.”
She says once her five-year contract is done, she may retire. “I’ll have spent 30 years as a police officer. University beckons. Maybe I’ll do an art history degree. Something completely different.”
A week in the life
Julia Hodson
Nottinghamshire’s first female chief constable Julia Hodson got a sobering reminder of the ultimate price a police officer can pay shortly after taking up her job in June. She attended a memorial service.
“I spent some time with Tracy, the widow of PC Ged Walker who was killed trying to stop a criminal escaping in a car. That was in 2003 and feelings are still raw here. He would have retired last weekend after 30 years service “
Hodson, 51, says everyone congratulated her when she took the £131,000 a year job. “ But some were quite dismissive about the area. There is still a phase ‘gun city’ and the notion that Nottingham is a violent place. For all the evidence I see I genuinely feel this is undeserved now.”
Her predecessor Steve Green had presided over four successive years of dropping crime statistics. When he left crime was at its lowest for eight years. She says one of his achievements was: “to have taken out most of the significant organised crime groups in the county – the cause of much of the very violent crime a few years ago.”
Only burglaries have nudged upwards and Hodson says this is a high priority.
She says one key is prevention both in developing greater public awareness and devising interventions to cut re-offending.
She is also worried the economic downturn might result in rising crime. “When people are under financial challenges it creates stress which can lead to domestic violence and if people have less money they’ll maybe move towards acquisitive crime.”
Hodson, a Derbyshire miner’s daughter, followed a conventional path from patrol officer to Chief Constable – though she also has two university degrees and joined the police accelerated promotion programme.
She was still on the beat in Merseyside during the miners strike. “Women weren’t involved in policing civil disorder so male officers went from Merseyside and across the country and women officers - there weren’t very many then - were left to police the streets. Perhaps that was part of the change towards accepting that women officers could play a full role in police duties.”
Right now Hodson is still getting to know Nottinghamshire where she oversees four divisions – with 2,500 officers and more than 2,000 other staff and support.
She meets the police authority fortnightly and her chief officers three mornings a week. She’s trying to meet as many ordinary people and civic and business leaders as possible. She has also joined patrol officers and met the victims of crime.
“When I joined I don’t think I ever envisaged being in a management position. I do miss the contact with the public and the best bits of the job are when I can steer towards meeting them.”
She says once her five-year contract is done, she may retire. “I’ll have spent 30 years as a police officer. University beckons. Maybe I’ll do an art history degree. Something completely different.”
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Profile Rehayn King
Rehayn King
A week in the life
Sunday Times July 27
Tall ships in the docks, ex-Beatles on stage and scores of other cultural highs. Liverpool is halfway through its party year as European Capital of Culture and making it all work is surely challenging for those behind the scenes.
For Rehayn King it’s an especially busy time. She became director of art galleries at the National Museums Liverpool just over a year ago. King, 43, who manages the flagship Walker Art Gallery together with Sudley House and the Lady Lever Gallery, is also overseeing judging for the 25th John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize this September and helping steer the Liverpool Biennial.
“I suspect this year’s John Moores’ may prove quite controversial” she says. It’s had a record entry but the jurors – including the art provocateurs Jake and Dinos Chapman – have selected fewer works for the shortlist.
King took up her £50,000 a year post after a decade curating in Birmingham with previous experience in Coventry and Boston. Born in Edinburgh, she lived in Tanzania and Surrey before studying art history at Oxford.
“Gallery going wasn’t in my family background, but I was dropped off for a morning at the National Gallery of Scotland when I was 16 and thought – ‘this is a whole new world’. It made a big impact. I wanted to share the pleasure I get from art.”
Merseyside seems to mirror her passion. “Liverpool is very special. It has a very strong creative culture. It is a city that grabs you by the throat - a very emotional place. It makes you want to do something for the city. I found myself very quickly a proponent of how wonderful Liverpool is and how strong it is for the visual arts. “
Now she has bolder visions for the Walker that occupy much of her time away from management work.
In the last week she had meetings with the head of Liverpool’s library that should result in an expansion of the Walkers’ exhibition space. She prepared and delivered a paper on “The Value of Art” for the annual conference of art librarians.
And she attended a fund raising dinner at which the new chairman of National Museums Liverpool, the high profile TV Producer Phil Redmond, was guest of honour.
Much of the week was about developing her vision for the Walker. She wants it to embrace a wider range of art, to increase visual literacy among the young and to increase visitor levels. “It used to get 600,000 a year in the 19th century. Last year we had 300,000.”
“Outside Liverpool it is thought of primarily as about Victorian art, but it is about so much more. I would like to get to the point where it is seen as the best place to see any European painting, from the Renaissance to the modern day, north of Oxford and south of Edinburgh.”
A week in the life
Sunday Times July 27
Tall ships in the docks, ex-Beatles on stage and scores of other cultural highs. Liverpool is halfway through its party year as European Capital of Culture and making it all work is surely challenging for those behind the scenes.
For Rehayn King it’s an especially busy time. She became director of art galleries at the National Museums Liverpool just over a year ago. King, 43, who manages the flagship Walker Art Gallery together with Sudley House and the Lady Lever Gallery, is also overseeing judging for the 25th John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize this September and helping steer the Liverpool Biennial.
“I suspect this year’s John Moores’ may prove quite controversial” she says. It’s had a record entry but the jurors – including the art provocateurs Jake and Dinos Chapman – have selected fewer works for the shortlist.
King took up her £50,000 a year post after a decade curating in Birmingham with previous experience in Coventry and Boston. Born in Edinburgh, she lived in Tanzania and Surrey before studying art history at Oxford.
“Gallery going wasn’t in my family background, but I was dropped off for a morning at the National Gallery of Scotland when I was 16 and thought – ‘this is a whole new world’. It made a big impact. I wanted to share the pleasure I get from art.”
Merseyside seems to mirror her passion. “Liverpool is very special. It has a very strong creative culture. It is a city that grabs you by the throat - a very emotional place. It makes you want to do something for the city. I found myself very quickly a proponent of how wonderful Liverpool is and how strong it is for the visual arts. “
Now she has bolder visions for the Walker that occupy much of her time away from management work.
In the last week she had meetings with the head of Liverpool’s library that should result in an expansion of the Walkers’ exhibition space. She prepared and delivered a paper on “The Value of Art” for the annual conference of art librarians.
And she attended a fund raising dinner at which the new chairman of National Museums Liverpool, the high profile TV Producer Phil Redmond, was guest of honour.
Much of the week was about developing her vision for the Walker. She wants it to embrace a wider range of art, to increase visual literacy among the young and to increase visitor levels. “It used to get 600,000 a year in the 19th century. Last year we had 300,000.”
“Outside Liverpool it is thought of primarily as about Victorian art, but it is about so much more. I would like to get to the point where it is seen as the best place to see any European painting, from the Renaissance to the modern day, north of Oxford and south of Edinburgh.”
Sunday, July 20, 2008
A WEEK IN LIFE – MARTIN DAVIDSON
Published in the Sunday Times July 20th 2008
The sun never sets on the British Council. Britain’s vehicle for promoting the UK through cultural relations has 7,400 staff in 110 countries including troubled places where Government diplomats sometimes fear to tread.
In Zimbabwe and Burma, British Council people remain resolutely at their desks, despite official hostility to the UK. It also operates in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.
Martin Davidson, its chief executive says: “I’m enormously proud that our offices in Mandalay and Rangoon are probably the only public spaces in that country where you can read a foreign newspaper, look at the internet or see foreign television. We get about 350,000 people pass through our offices just to get that contact. I don’t think there is any doubt that they are identified and their names are taken.”
“In Zimbabwe we are providing a link to the outside world hugely valued by the young professional Zimbabwean for giving an understanding of what the outside world is thinking about Zimbabwe, contact with colleagues outside and helping to persuade them to stay in the country.”
Davidson, 52, says the Council’s role has changed little since its creation 75 years ago in response to Nazi propaganda. “Then we sought to demonstrate through education, culture and science that there was an alternative narrative about how people live with one another and across international boundaries. That is still what we are for. We use different language now and talk in terms of our role being to build engagement and trust for the UK through the exchange of knowledge and ideas.”
He is paid £160,000 a year to oversee a hugely complex operation with a shifting set of priorities. The Council’s independence of government, “rather like the BBC” gives it credibility. It gets £190 million from Westminster, but makes £375 million from a range of commercial enterprises, especially education. Millions learn English through the British Council’s work.
Davidson’s week reflects the Council’s international nature. Recently he returned from trip consolidating educational links with Arab nations. Improving relations in the Islamic world is currently high priority.
So is climate change. Hours after returning from Beirut, he flew to Switzerland for a forum at which young people from around the world - recruited by the Council - presented their personal encounters with climate change.
Back in London he delivered an evening briefing at Chatham House followed by breakfast with Margaret Hodge, the Arts Minister. Then he briefed a Foreign Office forum on cultural diplomacy.
The key office event was an internal public accounts meeting. A report concluded the Council delivered significant value for money – promoting the present key idea of Britain as: “an open, diverse, interested and engaged society.” Our values are respect for the rule of law, the individual, diversity and for people who come from different places. “That is the narrative we are trying to present about the UK.”
Published in the Sunday Times July 20th 2008
The sun never sets on the British Council. Britain’s vehicle for promoting the UK through cultural relations has 7,400 staff in 110 countries including troubled places where Government diplomats sometimes fear to tread.
In Zimbabwe and Burma, British Council people remain resolutely at their desks, despite official hostility to the UK. It also operates in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.
Martin Davidson, its chief executive says: “I’m enormously proud that our offices in Mandalay and Rangoon are probably the only public spaces in that country where you can read a foreign newspaper, look at the internet or see foreign television. We get about 350,000 people pass through our offices just to get that contact. I don’t think there is any doubt that they are identified and their names are taken.”
“In Zimbabwe we are providing a link to the outside world hugely valued by the young professional Zimbabwean for giving an understanding of what the outside world is thinking about Zimbabwe, contact with colleagues outside and helping to persuade them to stay in the country.”
Davidson, 52, says the Council’s role has changed little since its creation 75 years ago in response to Nazi propaganda. “Then we sought to demonstrate through education, culture and science that there was an alternative narrative about how people live with one another and across international boundaries. That is still what we are for. We use different language now and talk in terms of our role being to build engagement and trust for the UK through the exchange of knowledge and ideas.”
He is paid £160,000 a year to oversee a hugely complex operation with a shifting set of priorities. The Council’s independence of government, “rather like the BBC” gives it credibility. It gets £190 million from Westminster, but makes £375 million from a range of commercial enterprises, especially education. Millions learn English through the British Council’s work.
Davidson’s week reflects the Council’s international nature. Recently he returned from trip consolidating educational links with Arab nations. Improving relations in the Islamic world is currently high priority.
So is climate change. Hours after returning from Beirut, he flew to Switzerland for a forum at which young people from around the world - recruited by the Council - presented their personal encounters with climate change.
Back in London he delivered an evening briefing at Chatham House followed by breakfast with Margaret Hodge, the Arts Minister. Then he briefed a Foreign Office forum on cultural diplomacy.
The key office event was an internal public accounts meeting. A report concluded the Council delivered significant value for money – promoting the present key idea of Britain as: “an open, diverse, interested and engaged society.” Our values are respect for the rule of law, the individual, diversity and for people who come from different places. “That is the narrative we are trying to present about the UK.”
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Profile - Nick Partridge
Profile - Nick Partridge - Published in The Sunday Times July 13th 2008
When rumours that a frightening new disease was killing gay men in America first surfaced in the early 1980s, Nick Partridge - now director of the Terrence Higgins Trust - was working in Amsterdam.
“I was fearful and horrified by the prospect of something that was completely unknown, but was killing people very quickly.” These early intimations spurred him back to London where he soon began working with the newly founded Trust, named after the first known British victim.
Twenty-five years later Terrence Higgins is Europe’s largest HIV and Aids charity and works in a very different landscape.
Aids has killed 25 million people around the world and there are 2.5 million new cases of HIV each year. But in developed countries HIV is now largely a chronic condition controlled by powerful antiretroviral drugs.
Partridge, 52, who earns £85,000 annually, has been director since 1991. This week he returned from a UN gathering in New York about the global Aids situation.
Terrence Higgins is now part of Britain’s health establishment and Partridge divides his time between the Trust and working as deputy chair of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration, as a member of the Healthcare Commission and chairing INVOLVE which promotes public involvement in public health, NHS and social care research.
Meetings in London and Manchester with these organisations form key parts of his week together with the enjoyable business of attending the Trust’s annual fundraising gala dinner.
Partridge says he once believed the Trust would disappear when a cure and vaccine for Aids were found. “But research on this has stalled. I don’t now believe we will see either in our lifetime.”
The work of the Trust has changed after two watershed dates. In 1991 Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury died from AIDS. A million pounds in royalties from the re-released “Bohemian Rhapsody”, donated to the Trust gave it financial security.
More importantly Mercury’s death – and the Princess of Wales’s involvement in Aids issues - broadened public understanding.
But Partridge says by then he was close to emotional burn-out and would have quit had it not been for the development of effective antiretroviral drugs treatments in 1996.
“This was extraordinary. The numbers of people dying dropped by over 70 per cent in just 18 months. To see that dawning realization that people were going to live and not die was absolutely fabulous.”
But it also meant the Trust completely re-thinking its purpose. “Our services now reflect a very different relationship. They’re tailored around moments of crisis – such as the initial diagnosis or going on to treatment.”
A new challenge is sustaining awareness. A third of people with HIV in Britain don’t know they have the infection.
“There is a worryingly low level of HIV knowledge and that is where having proper and effective sex education in schools is vital. We have failed to do this and to equip each new generation to understand the risk around HIV and to better enjoy their journey into sex and relationships.”
When rumours that a frightening new disease was killing gay men in America first surfaced in the early 1980s, Nick Partridge - now director of the Terrence Higgins Trust - was working in Amsterdam.
“I was fearful and horrified by the prospect of something that was completely unknown, but was killing people very quickly.” These early intimations spurred him back to London where he soon began working with the newly founded Trust, named after the first known British victim.
Twenty-five years later Terrence Higgins is Europe’s largest HIV and Aids charity and works in a very different landscape.
Aids has killed 25 million people around the world and there are 2.5 million new cases of HIV each year. But in developed countries HIV is now largely a chronic condition controlled by powerful antiretroviral drugs.
Partridge, 52, who earns £85,000 annually, has been director since 1991. This week he returned from a UN gathering in New York about the global Aids situation.
Terrence Higgins is now part of Britain’s health establishment and Partridge divides his time between the Trust and working as deputy chair of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration, as a member of the Healthcare Commission and chairing INVOLVE which promotes public involvement in public health, NHS and social care research.
Meetings in London and Manchester with these organisations form key parts of his week together with the enjoyable business of attending the Trust’s annual fundraising gala dinner.
Partridge says he once believed the Trust would disappear when a cure and vaccine for Aids were found. “But research on this has stalled. I don’t now believe we will see either in our lifetime.”
The work of the Trust has changed after two watershed dates. In 1991 Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury died from AIDS. A million pounds in royalties from the re-released “Bohemian Rhapsody”, donated to the Trust gave it financial security.
More importantly Mercury’s death – and the Princess of Wales’s involvement in Aids issues - broadened public understanding.
But Partridge says by then he was close to emotional burn-out and would have quit had it not been for the development of effective antiretroviral drugs treatments in 1996.
“This was extraordinary. The numbers of people dying dropped by over 70 per cent in just 18 months. To see that dawning realization that people were going to live and not die was absolutely fabulous.”
But it also meant the Trust completely re-thinking its purpose. “Our services now reflect a very different relationship. They’re tailored around moments of crisis – such as the initial diagnosis or going on to treatment.”
A new challenge is sustaining awareness. A third of people with HIV in Britain don’t know they have the infection.
“There is a worryingly low level of HIV knowledge and that is where having proper and effective sex education in schools is vital. We have failed to do this and to equip each new generation to understand the risk around HIV and to better enjoy their journey into sex and relationships.”
Monday, June 30, 2008
Profile - Anthony Mayer
Profile - Anthony Mayer
Published in The Sunday Times June 29th 2008
A manifesto pledge by London’s new Mayor Boris Johnson to downsize staffing at the Greater London Authority is being fulfilled. Five senior posts held by women are being axed in the Mayor’s office including the job held by the former Mayor Ken Livingstone’s long term partner Emma Beal who is mother of two of his children.
Another departure will have a different impact. Anthony Mayer, GLA Chief Executive since late 2000, leaves this autumn to become chairman of the Government’s new Social Housing Regulator, the Office for Tenants and Social Landlords.
“Did I jump or was I pushed? Neither,“ he says. “I’ve known about this since March,” before he presided over the Mayoral elections in his role as London’s chief electoral returning officer.
Mayer, who earns £183,000 a year, was CEO throughout the Ken Livingstone era. “It will be a wrench to leave. I’ve loved it and had good and cordial relationships with assembly members and both mayors. But I’m 62 and it is time to go if I want a post fulltime employment role. “
He oversees an Authority staff of 650 and an £11 billion budget for the wider GLA group which includes the police, Transport for London and the London Development Agency. He says his job is more like being a Permanent Secretary, but adds:” I’ve been a bit of a maitre’ d/bouncer in a rather rowdy nightclub. Whenever there’s been any conflict that needed resolving. I nearly always got involved.”
“Call me old fashioned, but I see myself and my successor as bureaucrats who facilitate. My successor’s biggest challenge will be getting things up and running and then facilitating the Mayor’s agendas – addressing transport problems, the Olympics and making the organisation more cost effective.”
Mayer’s mondays have been reserved for catch up meetings with directors. his management team and then with the Mayor. The rest of the week? “Anything and everything as it comes up.”
One of the GLA’s highest profile weeks was in July 2005 when winning the 2012 Olympics was followed by the 7/7 bombings.
“On the Thursday I had the massive adrenalin rush of the win, hearing about it on my way to fly to Shanghai for a conference. I heard of the bombings at 9.00 in the morning in Shanghai. I had this sense of horrible shock and then this huge difficulty of using the mobile phone system to enact all the trusted and well-tried systems of response. I was very proud of all those colleagues who did so well to get the recovery system going so quickly.”
How Boris Johnson differ from his predecessor?
“There is more than one style of Mayoralty. One of the things about Mr Livingstone was he was a great managerial politician. He knew how to operate all the levers. What Mr Johnson has made clear is that he is going to want to be absolutely at the forefront of leading London, but wants to have a have a first deputy mayor to implement his policies. So it’s much more a Whitehall model with a Secretary of State and ministers working for you. It would be presumptuous of me to say how that is going to shake down.“
Published in The Sunday Times June 29th 2008
A manifesto pledge by London’s new Mayor Boris Johnson to downsize staffing at the Greater London Authority is being fulfilled. Five senior posts held by women are being axed in the Mayor’s office including the job held by the former Mayor Ken Livingstone’s long term partner Emma Beal who is mother of two of his children.
Another departure will have a different impact. Anthony Mayer, GLA Chief Executive since late 2000, leaves this autumn to become chairman of the Government’s new Social Housing Regulator, the Office for Tenants and Social Landlords.
“Did I jump or was I pushed? Neither,“ he says. “I’ve known about this since March,” before he presided over the Mayoral elections in his role as London’s chief electoral returning officer.
Mayer, who earns £183,000 a year, was CEO throughout the Ken Livingstone era. “It will be a wrench to leave. I’ve loved it and had good and cordial relationships with assembly members and both mayors. But I’m 62 and it is time to go if I want a post fulltime employment role. “
He oversees an Authority staff of 650 and an £11 billion budget for the wider GLA group which includes the police, Transport for London and the London Development Agency. He says his job is more like being a Permanent Secretary, but adds:” I’ve been a bit of a maitre’ d/bouncer in a rather rowdy nightclub. Whenever there’s been any conflict that needed resolving. I nearly always got involved.”
“Call me old fashioned, but I see myself and my successor as bureaucrats who facilitate. My successor’s biggest challenge will be getting things up and running and then facilitating the Mayor’s agendas – addressing transport problems, the Olympics and making the organisation more cost effective.”
Mayer’s mondays have been reserved for catch up meetings with directors. his management team and then with the Mayor. The rest of the week? “Anything and everything as it comes up.”
One of the GLA’s highest profile weeks was in July 2005 when winning the 2012 Olympics was followed by the 7/7 bombings.
“On the Thursday I had the massive adrenalin rush of the win, hearing about it on my way to fly to Shanghai for a conference. I heard of the bombings at 9.00 in the morning in Shanghai. I had this sense of horrible shock and then this huge difficulty of using the mobile phone system to enact all the trusted and well-tried systems of response. I was very proud of all those colleagues who did so well to get the recovery system going so quickly.”
How Boris Johnson differ from his predecessor?
“There is more than one style of Mayoralty. One of the things about Mr Livingstone was he was a great managerial politician. He knew how to operate all the levers. What Mr Johnson has made clear is that he is going to want to be absolutely at the forefront of leading London, but wants to have a have a first deputy mayor to implement his policies. So it’s much more a Whitehall model with a Secretary of State and ministers working for you. It would be presumptuous of me to say how that is going to shake down.“
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Profile Dame Fiona Reynolds
A WEEK IN THE LIFE
DAME FIONA REYNOLDS
sunday times June 22
When Dame Fiona Reynolds, Director General of the National Trust, appeared on Desert Island Discs her luxury was a set of Ordnance Survey maps of Britain and her book The Making Of The English Landscape.
Dame Fiona, 50, says she has always had a passionate love of the countryside. “It is in my blood.”
So in 2001, when she learned the Trust’s top job was being advertised, she turned her back on two and a half years heading up the Cabinet Office Women’s Unit.
“It was fascinating and I had learned a lot, but this was my dream job. I never expected to get it,” she says, “and I just love it in so many ways.”
Dame Fiona, the Trust’s first female head since its foundation in 1895 by the Victorian social reformer Octavia Hill, earns more than £130,000. She studied geography and land management at Cambridge and has worked on green issues throughout her career apart from the interlude in Whitehall.
She now runs one of the world’s largest non-governmental organisations. With 3.5 million members, the charity looks after more than 620,000 acres of land of outstanding natural beauty across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 705 miles of coastline and hundreds of historic sites including houses, castles, villages and lighthouses.
A permanent staff of around 500 is helped by some 50,000 volunteers.
“There’s no such thing as an average week. I love the variety and am out as much as I can be. One or two days a week are spent at properties. Last week I was in the South East. Tomorrow I am in Wessex and next week in Devon and Cornwall.
She is based at the new Trust HQ in Swindon and attends board meetings and looks after management tasks there, but visits London most weeks.
“My role as leader is to set a strategic direction and champion it. It is definitely not about telling individual properties or people what do.”
Her travels enable her to gather ideas from the experiences of staff and volunteers that can feed into the Trust’s new strategy.
“It is a move from encouraging people to join the Trust, to encouraging them to join in. It’s a simple proposition – for people to not just visit but to get involved.”
She cites a successful venture at Cothele in Cornwall where families now help to create the annual Christmas garlands that decorate the house.
But though the Trust remains the custodian of places of beauty and historical importance – “we need them for our spiritual and emotional and physical refreshment” - it is also confronting the challenge of climate change.
“I often call us the nation’s canary. Because of the scale of our property ownership we can see the bigger picture and spot trends that individuals might not always see. We’ve done a lot of work on the impact of climate change on gardens and on its likely impacts on coastline – more than government departments have done.”
DAME FIONA REYNOLDS
sunday times June 22
When Dame Fiona Reynolds, Director General of the National Trust, appeared on Desert Island Discs her luxury was a set of Ordnance Survey maps of Britain and her book The Making Of The English Landscape.
Dame Fiona, 50, says she has always had a passionate love of the countryside. “It is in my blood.”
So in 2001, when she learned the Trust’s top job was being advertised, she turned her back on two and a half years heading up the Cabinet Office Women’s Unit.
“It was fascinating and I had learned a lot, but this was my dream job. I never expected to get it,” she says, “and I just love it in so many ways.”
Dame Fiona, the Trust’s first female head since its foundation in 1895 by the Victorian social reformer Octavia Hill, earns more than £130,000. She studied geography and land management at Cambridge and has worked on green issues throughout her career apart from the interlude in Whitehall.
She now runs one of the world’s largest non-governmental organisations. With 3.5 million members, the charity looks after more than 620,000 acres of land of outstanding natural beauty across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 705 miles of coastline and hundreds of historic sites including houses, castles, villages and lighthouses.
A permanent staff of around 500 is helped by some 50,000 volunteers.
“There’s no such thing as an average week. I love the variety and am out as much as I can be. One or two days a week are spent at properties. Last week I was in the South East. Tomorrow I am in Wessex and next week in Devon and Cornwall.
She is based at the new Trust HQ in Swindon and attends board meetings and looks after management tasks there, but visits London most weeks.
“My role as leader is to set a strategic direction and champion it. It is definitely not about telling individual properties or people what do.”
Her travels enable her to gather ideas from the experiences of staff and volunteers that can feed into the Trust’s new strategy.
“It is a move from encouraging people to join the Trust, to encouraging them to join in. It’s a simple proposition – for people to not just visit but to get involved.”
She cites a successful venture at Cothele in Cornwall where families now help to create the annual Christmas garlands that decorate the house.
But though the Trust remains the custodian of places of beauty and historical importance – “we need them for our spiritual and emotional and physical refreshment” - it is also confronting the challenge of climate change.
“I often call us the nation’s canary. Because of the scale of our property ownership we can see the bigger picture and spot trends that individuals might not always see. We’ve done a lot of work on the impact of climate change on gardens and on its likely impacts on coastline – more than government departments have done.”
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Profile - Director of RUSI
Profile of the Director of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies
Published in The Sunday Times June 8th 2008
Professor Michael Clarke is the first non-military man to be director of Britain’s top defence think tank - the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies - since its creation by the Duke of Wellington in 1831.
“In the UK we’ve long since got over the military/civil distinction, but in many countries, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, if you’re not a military officer they wonder why you’re doing this job. I have to prove I know about defence.”
“RUSI’s Council was interested in me because they want it to become a more internationally recognised think tank. So as well as CEO I’m also a research entrepreneur.”
Clarke, 57, has impeccable credentials. He founded The Centre For Defence Studies at Kings College, London and ran it for 17 years.
“RUSI occupies a unique space in British defence and security, but the whole field is getting wider with terrorism, international crime, civil disruption and more. Our challenge is to fill this space.”
This means finding new funding sources. RUSI, a charity based on Whitehall near Downing Street and the MoD, works intimately with them, but gets no state funding – even though its patron is The Queen.
“I always tell people in Government that we’re of most use when the outside world sees how independent we are. If we are seen as an adjunct of Government people won’t take us seriously.”
The core of RUSI’s work is researching current trends in defence and security and their implications for Britain.
But RUSI’s independence means it can offer controversial views – a recent report argued the world should spend 10 times more on fighting climate change than on defence - and trenchant criticism. For example, Clarke says: “The invasion of Iraq remains a blunder from which Iran has gained most” and Britain and the West have a worse understanding of Middle Eastern politics than for generations.
But he also offers praise. “In terms of dealing with terrorism in the UK, the security forces have done really well. It was hopeless a few years ago, but they’ve made really good progress.”
After returning from a conference in Johannesburg on conflict resolution Clarke’s working week combined his duties as CEO with a whirlwind of sessions meeting politicians, senior defence figures, business leaders and visiting academics.
All feed back into RUSI’s work. Its fastest growing research area is homeland security with continuing studies on UK terrorism, radicalisation and protection of critical national infrastructure. So this week he also attended a Whitehall forum on policing London, spent a day at a terrorism trial as an expert witness, attended a reception for the departing Pakistan High Commissioner and recorded his fortnightly Forces Radio show.
Clarke’s personal academic focus is British defence policy making and nuclear issues – he is an advisor to the UN Secretary General on Disarmament - and this sprawls into his personal time. ”I have to keep up my professorial profile. In an institute like this it is important that we are all seen as big hitters.”
Published in The Sunday Times June 8th 2008
Professor Michael Clarke is the first non-military man to be director of Britain’s top defence think tank - the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies - since its creation by the Duke of Wellington in 1831.
“In the UK we’ve long since got over the military/civil distinction, but in many countries, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, if you’re not a military officer they wonder why you’re doing this job. I have to prove I know about defence.”
“RUSI’s Council was interested in me because they want it to become a more internationally recognised think tank. So as well as CEO I’m also a research entrepreneur.”
Clarke, 57, has impeccable credentials. He founded The Centre For Defence Studies at Kings College, London and ran it for 17 years.
“RUSI occupies a unique space in British defence and security, but the whole field is getting wider with terrorism, international crime, civil disruption and more. Our challenge is to fill this space.”
This means finding new funding sources. RUSI, a charity based on Whitehall near Downing Street and the MoD, works intimately with them, but gets no state funding – even though its patron is The Queen.
“I always tell people in Government that we’re of most use when the outside world sees how independent we are. If we are seen as an adjunct of Government people won’t take us seriously.”
The core of RUSI’s work is researching current trends in defence and security and their implications for Britain.
But RUSI’s independence means it can offer controversial views – a recent report argued the world should spend 10 times more on fighting climate change than on defence - and trenchant criticism. For example, Clarke says: “The invasion of Iraq remains a blunder from which Iran has gained most” and Britain and the West have a worse understanding of Middle Eastern politics than for generations.
But he also offers praise. “In terms of dealing with terrorism in the UK, the security forces have done really well. It was hopeless a few years ago, but they’ve made really good progress.”
After returning from a conference in Johannesburg on conflict resolution Clarke’s working week combined his duties as CEO with a whirlwind of sessions meeting politicians, senior defence figures, business leaders and visiting academics.
All feed back into RUSI’s work. Its fastest growing research area is homeland security with continuing studies on UK terrorism, radicalisation and protection of critical national infrastructure. So this week he also attended a Whitehall forum on policing London, spent a day at a terrorism trial as an expert witness, attended a reception for the departing Pakistan High Commissioner and recorded his fortnightly Forces Radio show.
Clarke’s personal academic focus is British defence policy making and nuclear issues – he is an advisor to the UN Secretary General on Disarmament - and this sprawls into his personal time. ”I have to keep up my professorial profile. In an institute like this it is important that we are all seen as big hitters.”
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Profile - Imperial War Museum Director
PROFILE SIR ROBERT CRAWFORD
A WEEK IN THE LIFE
John Kelleher
The Imperial War Museum, headquartered in South London was conceived in 1917 in the final stages of the conflict briefly known as the “war to end all wars.”
Across the century since it has chronicled innumerable conflicts around the world involving Britain and the Commonwealth.
Sir Robert Crawford, its Director General, who retires this autumn after 40 years, has spent his career gazing into the heart of this darkness - the museum’s account of the impacts of war on the lives of ordinary people.
“I think war is part of our human condition. I don’t think it will go away, but I think it is important to remain optimistic about humanity’s ability to manage this challenge. Institutions like this have a role in equipping people with an understanding of the history of war and of the historical antecedents to current conflicts that should enable them to address the challenges of war more responsibly and effectively in the future.”
Crawford, who earns £129,000 annually, joined the Museum in 1966 as a junior researcher straight from Oxford. His first job was cataloguing part of its immense film archive of the build-up to D Day and ensuing battle for Normandy.
“I told the director it would take thirty-five of me the rest of the century to complete cataloguing this material in the amount of detail that was required! We now do it in a somewhat speedier manner.”
Crawford, 63 now has others among the Museum’s 645 fulltime staff who maintain the still growing archive. Although Museum overlord, he praises his team for such achievements as creating the Holocaust exhibition, the dramatic Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, HMS Belfast, the air museums at Duxford and the Cabinet War Rooms.
But at the Museum’s core is an unswerving vision – overseen by Crawford since he became Director General in 1995. Education is its enduring raison d’etre and, despite regular debates about widening its remit, he says The Great War – the first “total war” - is still the best starting point for the collection. Suggestions it might drop Imperial from its name have also been examined frequently and rejected.
With mere months before retirement Crawford shows no sign of flagging.
Recently he was in Washington for a fund raising dinner for the American Air Museum at Duxford. “Uniquely we managed to close Reagan Airport for a flyover of three second world war aircraft.” He also attended a Downing Street reception marking the cultural world’s contribution to the economy, opened the “For Your Eyes Only” exhibition on James Bond’s creator Ian Fleming and chaired meetings about funding and the museum’s future.
From October that future will be the responsibility of the Museum’s first female director, Diane Lees, presently running London’s Museum of Childhood.
“My retirement will be a clean break. Rather like headmasters and vicars, one doesn’t offer a ghost like tread in the patch of one’s successor. I do hope though they might invite me back for an exhibition opening or two.”
A WEEK IN THE LIFE
John Kelleher
The Imperial War Museum, headquartered in South London was conceived in 1917 in the final stages of the conflict briefly known as the “war to end all wars.”
Across the century since it has chronicled innumerable conflicts around the world involving Britain and the Commonwealth.
Sir Robert Crawford, its Director General, who retires this autumn after 40 years, has spent his career gazing into the heart of this darkness - the museum’s account of the impacts of war on the lives of ordinary people.
“I think war is part of our human condition. I don’t think it will go away, but I think it is important to remain optimistic about humanity’s ability to manage this challenge. Institutions like this have a role in equipping people with an understanding of the history of war and of the historical antecedents to current conflicts that should enable them to address the challenges of war more responsibly and effectively in the future.”
Crawford, who earns £129,000 annually, joined the Museum in 1966 as a junior researcher straight from Oxford. His first job was cataloguing part of its immense film archive of the build-up to D Day and ensuing battle for Normandy.
“I told the director it would take thirty-five of me the rest of the century to complete cataloguing this material in the amount of detail that was required! We now do it in a somewhat speedier manner.”
Crawford, 63 now has others among the Museum’s 645 fulltime staff who maintain the still growing archive. Although Museum overlord, he praises his team for such achievements as creating the Holocaust exhibition, the dramatic Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, HMS Belfast, the air museums at Duxford and the Cabinet War Rooms.
But at the Museum’s core is an unswerving vision – overseen by Crawford since he became Director General in 1995. Education is its enduring raison d’etre and, despite regular debates about widening its remit, he says The Great War – the first “total war” - is still the best starting point for the collection. Suggestions it might drop Imperial from its name have also been examined frequently and rejected.
With mere months before retirement Crawford shows no sign of flagging.
Recently he was in Washington for a fund raising dinner for the American Air Museum at Duxford. “Uniquely we managed to close Reagan Airport for a flyover of three second world war aircraft.” He also attended a Downing Street reception marking the cultural world’s contribution to the economy, opened the “For Your Eyes Only” exhibition on James Bond’s creator Ian Fleming and chaired meetings about funding and the museum’s future.
From October that future will be the responsibility of the Museum’s first female director, Diane Lees, presently running London’s Museum of Childhood.
“My retirement will be a clean break. Rather like headmasters and vicars, one doesn’t offer a ghost like tread in the patch of one’s successor. I do hope though they might invite me back for an exhibition opening or two.”
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
CHINA DESIGN NOW - A REVIEW
CHINA DESIGN NOW
THE V+A
A short distance from the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington there is a shop full of cool Scandinavian design. Elegant and curvaceous modernist creations by Marimekko and the like.
It offers a stark contrast to (and perhaps a ordered and restorative balm after) the cacophony of the current featured show at the V+A – “China Design Now” which runs until the middle of July.
The exhibition offers a reminder of Napoleon’s famous words: “Let China sleep for when she wakes the world will tremble.”
Indeed it could be sub-titled:” whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.”
The show is all about design in modern China – graphic and architectural ideas in particular.
Three cities are featured from the east coast of this continent of cultures -Shenzhen, Shanghai and the Olympic capital Beijing. Little is revealed about the vaster hinterland.
There is also little to put any of this in any historical context. Instead we are offered a welter of sensation. The overwhelming feeling is of bewildering confusion – of the Western notion of the fragile beauty of Chinese design and art confounded by a dam burst of youthful ideas – borrowed, stolen, pasted or smashed together from a thousand and one primarily Western youth culture sources to into an exotic hybrid.
One young visitor said she was appalled by the thought that millions of young Chinese children were growing up with this mishmash as their visual backdrop.
It is hard to find coherence or what we’ve come to think of as traditional elements of Chinese beauty here.
There are some fine modern variations on Chinese calligraphy, but primarily one can admire the sheer vitality and energy on show, of ideas going in a thousand different directions.
This is a world being endlessly born – something that parallels the nature of China since its entrance into the modern world. It’s a new cultural revolution and, rather akin to Mao’s political event, it grows by despoiling the past.
The section about the transformation of Beijing for the Olympics is revealing. When I visited nearly a decade ago the vast avenues were already becoming lined with modernist creations.
But behind them were still a maze of old streets – the hutongs or neighbourhoods.
Since then Beijing has gone into overdrive – exorcising the old and creating whole neighbourhoods of dramatic post-modernism. Just as with the smaller Canary Wharf area in London this blooming of a thousand new buildings offers a dazzling display.
But it is being done at a price - the seeming carnage enacted on a culture that has been swept away. It is easy for the Western mind, often fixated on the romantic to bemoan this.
After the visit to Beijing one feature I wrote talked of the willow-pattern prettiness of Behei Park in the early morning – its lake around a white Dagoba fringed with trees and people practicing t’ai chi. I was criticised for this by a Chinese friend - and for some elements of our film - for conjuring a romantic and backwards looking image of contemporary China.
Perhaps the criticsm was valid from the perspective of a young Chinese who saw change and modernisation in a wholly positive light. Quite correct from the perspective of creating a new nation where everyone benefits from its growing economy.
For them much of the past serves a commercial purpose – luring tourists – but in other respects signifies oppression by a now defunct ruling class and poverty.
The new China emerging now is getting wealthier and offering its citizens opportunities we in the West take for granted.
But such reservations about these changes also highlight the different things that are valued now in a West that went through many convulsions as it moved into the modern age.
In the UK we walk through the gutted hearts of many an old town or city and see fragments of our “heritage” poling through the soulless malls of multinational shopping outlets. We feel regret for a history now lost beneath the concrete and wish such a fate could be avoided elsewhere.
Now we seek to create a balance carefully between the benefits of continuing modernisation and a desire to preserve the best of the past. This is in stark contrast to the increasingly dominant idea in previously impoverished parts of the world which are modernising as fast as they can.
Such concern about the careful preservation of the past can be seen as a luxury that cannot be afforded.
We in the West seek to see our dreams of cultural continuity and of places in a finer harmony with their past in cultures that have trailed behind our embrace of the modern world. And we resent the sort of idea of progress that rocks that dreamboat.
In the Arabian Gulf for instance, the nomads of the desert have forsaken their tents and impoverished lifestyle for the vast gallop to modernism of Dubai or Abu Dhabi.
It is a shame, we feel, as we perceive something of what we see as the romantic Bedouin soul being lost among the concrete and glass. Such a perspective might be the folly of what Edward Said defined as orientalism.
For would we have accepted living in wattle and daub as serfs if a parallel world of wealth, comfort and improvement were on offer?
It’s a complicated question. The China being born today seems alien and challenging – but perhaps it embodies what western liberals once praised about Maoism - the challenge of constant revolution made solid.
THE V+A
A short distance from the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington there is a shop full of cool Scandinavian design. Elegant and curvaceous modernist creations by Marimekko and the like.
It offers a stark contrast to (and perhaps a ordered and restorative balm after) the cacophony of the current featured show at the V+A – “China Design Now” which runs until the middle of July.
The exhibition offers a reminder of Napoleon’s famous words: “Let China sleep for when she wakes the world will tremble.”
Indeed it could be sub-titled:” whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.”
The show is all about design in modern China – graphic and architectural ideas in particular.
Three cities are featured from the east coast of this continent of cultures -Shenzhen, Shanghai and the Olympic capital Beijing. Little is revealed about the vaster hinterland.
There is also little to put any of this in any historical context. Instead we are offered a welter of sensation. The overwhelming feeling is of bewildering confusion – of the Western notion of the fragile beauty of Chinese design and art confounded by a dam burst of youthful ideas – borrowed, stolen, pasted or smashed together from a thousand and one primarily Western youth culture sources to into an exotic hybrid.
One young visitor said she was appalled by the thought that millions of young Chinese children were growing up with this mishmash as their visual backdrop.
It is hard to find coherence or what we’ve come to think of as traditional elements of Chinese beauty here.
There are some fine modern variations on Chinese calligraphy, but primarily one can admire the sheer vitality and energy on show, of ideas going in a thousand different directions.
This is a world being endlessly born – something that parallels the nature of China since its entrance into the modern world. It’s a new cultural revolution and, rather akin to Mao’s political event, it grows by despoiling the past.
The section about the transformation of Beijing for the Olympics is revealing. When I visited nearly a decade ago the vast avenues were already becoming lined with modernist creations.
But behind them were still a maze of old streets – the hutongs or neighbourhoods.
Since then Beijing has gone into overdrive – exorcising the old and creating whole neighbourhoods of dramatic post-modernism. Just as with the smaller Canary Wharf area in London this blooming of a thousand new buildings offers a dazzling display.
But it is being done at a price - the seeming carnage enacted on a culture that has been swept away. It is easy for the Western mind, often fixated on the romantic to bemoan this.
After the visit to Beijing one feature I wrote talked of the willow-pattern prettiness of Behei Park in the early morning – its lake around a white Dagoba fringed with trees and people practicing t’ai chi. I was criticised for this by a Chinese friend - and for some elements of our film - for conjuring a romantic and backwards looking image of contemporary China.
Perhaps the criticsm was valid from the perspective of a young Chinese who saw change and modernisation in a wholly positive light. Quite correct from the perspective of creating a new nation where everyone benefits from its growing economy.
For them much of the past serves a commercial purpose – luring tourists – but in other respects signifies oppression by a now defunct ruling class and poverty.
The new China emerging now is getting wealthier and offering its citizens opportunities we in the West take for granted.
But such reservations about these changes also highlight the different things that are valued now in a West that went through many convulsions as it moved into the modern age.
In the UK we walk through the gutted hearts of many an old town or city and see fragments of our “heritage” poling through the soulless malls of multinational shopping outlets. We feel regret for a history now lost beneath the concrete and wish such a fate could be avoided elsewhere.
Now we seek to create a balance carefully between the benefits of continuing modernisation and a desire to preserve the best of the past. This is in stark contrast to the increasingly dominant idea in previously impoverished parts of the world which are modernising as fast as they can.
Such concern about the careful preservation of the past can be seen as a luxury that cannot be afforded.
We in the West seek to see our dreams of cultural continuity and of places in a finer harmony with their past in cultures that have trailed behind our embrace of the modern world. And we resent the sort of idea of progress that rocks that dreamboat.
In the Arabian Gulf for instance, the nomads of the desert have forsaken their tents and impoverished lifestyle for the vast gallop to modernism of Dubai or Abu Dhabi.
It is a shame, we feel, as we perceive something of what we see as the romantic Bedouin soul being lost among the concrete and glass. Such a perspective might be the folly of what Edward Said defined as orientalism.
For would we have accepted living in wattle and daub as serfs if a parallel world of wealth, comfort and improvement were on offer?
It’s a complicated question. The China being born today seems alien and challenging – but perhaps it embodies what western liberals once praised about Maoism - the challenge of constant revolution made solid.
Monday, May 05, 2008
Profile of Rear Admiral jeremy de Halpert
A week in the life
Sunday Times
May 4 2008
This summer a sunken German U-Boat that has lain undisturbed for 90 years will be shifted from a busy section of the English Channel – to clear a passage for giant supertankers carrying Russian oil.
“The English Channel and the Dover Straits are the busiest shipping lanes in the world. On a single day, there are more shipping movements there than air traffic movements at Heathrow,” says Rear Admiral Jeremy de Halpert CB, Executive Chairman of Trinity House.
Trinity House has overall responsibility for the safety of shipping here and around the coast of England, Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar. It works closely with matching organisations for Scotland and Ireland.
“I always call us the highways agency of the sea. We mark the roads and clear the wrecks,” says de Halpert, 60, who took over the £95,000 a year job in 2002 - together with the pro-bono role of Deputy Master, running its charity.
The Rear Admiral’s 40 years in the Royal Navy included action in the Falklands. More recently he has held such high-ranking jobs on dry land as Director of Overseas Military Activity at the Ministry of Defence.
“I still try to spend about four weeks a year at sea. For the past two days I’ve been at sea about our new vessel The Galatea.”
In the same week he visited retirement homes near Dover run by the charity which, as one of the largest endowed maritime charities in the UK, has £3 million annually to spend.
As Executive Chairman he saw the naming of a new cruise liner in Southampton, attended meetings in London, Harwich, Edinburgh and Paris and had a formal dinner with deep-sea fishermen.
Trinity House spends £30 million a year on a wide range of safety responsibilities – running lighthouses and maintaining buoys, and ensuring safe navigation in coastal waters. It has 300 people – 100 at sea in its three vessels. The funding comes from levies on vessels using ports.
Henry VIII founded Trinity House in 1514 and his portrait gazes down on business at its’ HQ near Tower Hill. But today Trinity House uses technology undreamt of in Tudor days. Things have evolved radically even over de Halpert’s career. His office displays a sextant, a chronometer and a star globe. “When I started in 1966 this is what you navigated with out of sight of land. They’re museum pieces now.”
Marine Satnav using GPS is standard, with Britain’s now fully automated lighthouses and buoys becoming primarily visual aids for mariners.
Trinity House and its French counterpart are now testing something called eLoran – a high-powered landbased navigation transmission system. de Halpert says it performed very well in recent trials investigating how easily GPS signals could be disrupted or jammed by atmospherics or terrorism. “eLoran was rock steady wheras GPS was all over the place.”
In the still precarious world of marine navigation a secure new aid is welcome indeed and bad news for terrorists, or anyone else, hoping to cause chaos at sea.
Sunday Times
May 4 2008
This summer a sunken German U-Boat that has lain undisturbed for 90 years will be shifted from a busy section of the English Channel – to clear a passage for giant supertankers carrying Russian oil.
“The English Channel and the Dover Straits are the busiest shipping lanes in the world. On a single day, there are more shipping movements there than air traffic movements at Heathrow,” says Rear Admiral Jeremy de Halpert CB, Executive Chairman of Trinity House.
Trinity House has overall responsibility for the safety of shipping here and around the coast of England, Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar. It works closely with matching organisations for Scotland and Ireland.
“I always call us the highways agency of the sea. We mark the roads and clear the wrecks,” says de Halpert, 60, who took over the £95,000 a year job in 2002 - together with the pro-bono role of Deputy Master, running its charity.
The Rear Admiral’s 40 years in the Royal Navy included action in the Falklands. More recently he has held such high-ranking jobs on dry land as Director of Overseas Military Activity at the Ministry of Defence.
“I still try to spend about four weeks a year at sea. For the past two days I’ve been at sea about our new vessel The Galatea.”
In the same week he visited retirement homes near Dover run by the charity which, as one of the largest endowed maritime charities in the UK, has £3 million annually to spend.
As Executive Chairman he saw the naming of a new cruise liner in Southampton, attended meetings in London, Harwich, Edinburgh and Paris and had a formal dinner with deep-sea fishermen.
Trinity House spends £30 million a year on a wide range of safety responsibilities – running lighthouses and maintaining buoys, and ensuring safe navigation in coastal waters. It has 300 people – 100 at sea in its three vessels. The funding comes from levies on vessels using ports.
Henry VIII founded Trinity House in 1514 and his portrait gazes down on business at its’ HQ near Tower Hill. But today Trinity House uses technology undreamt of in Tudor days. Things have evolved radically even over de Halpert’s career. His office displays a sextant, a chronometer and a star globe. “When I started in 1966 this is what you navigated with out of sight of land. They’re museum pieces now.”
Marine Satnav using GPS is standard, with Britain’s now fully automated lighthouses and buoys becoming primarily visual aids for mariners.
Trinity House and its French counterpart are now testing something called eLoran – a high-powered landbased navigation transmission system. de Halpert says it performed very well in recent trials investigating how easily GPS signals could be disrupted or jammed by atmospherics or terrorism. “eLoran was rock steady wheras GPS was all over the place.”
In the still precarious world of marine navigation a secure new aid is welcome indeed and bad news for terrorists, or anyone else, hoping to cause chaos at sea.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Profile - Amanda Neville
Profile of Amanda Neville - BFI - published in Sunday Times April 20th
The boundary between profession and passion is blurred for Amanda Nevill, director of the British Film Institute.
Her working hours are full of the challenges of running an institution in the throes of radical re-invention. It is 75 this year and waiting for Government approval to create an ambitious £200 million National Film Centre on the South Bank in London.
But after hours and at weekends she can often be found – along with many other BFI staffers - at the present BFI Southbank centre, watching films or mingling with people from the business.
“I don’t know how many films I’ve seen, but I still get excited every time that curtain opens. I want other people to have the opportunity to get as excited and to be nourished in the same way that I do.”
Nevill, 51 who earns around £120,000 annually was appointed in 2003 by the then new chairman of the BFI, film director Anthony Minghella. He died this March.
“His loss numbed me. The BFI that exists now is very much his vision. He and I shared the same values. We wanted the BFI to be loved by a lot of people.”
His successor is former BBC Director General Greg Dyke. Nevill has just taken him to see the BFI’s film archive – the world’s largest - housed over 34 acres underground near Birmingham and in Hertfordshire.
During the week Nevill moves between meetings with colleagues to discuss things like the London Film Festival, conservation issues, the proposed National Film Centre and how to make the BFI’s vast collection increasingly accessible.
“We are like the British Museum for film – one of the great planks of UK culture. Our job is interpret this stuff in a way that is relevant and exciting for lots of different audiences.
The BFI is multi-faceted. As well as running the BFI Southbank and Mediatheque, it has the IMAX, a vast library and immense film archive, a distribution wing, Sight and Sound magazine, publications and more.
Nevill says there are many challenges for the BFI – all interconnected. These include protecting the archive and ensuring that everyone has access to the widest diversity of cinema and to knowledge about it in the digital age.
“Our distribution of films is spectacular now. We serve over 800 venues across the UK with around 12,000 prints in an average year.”
Then there are the Mediatheques in London and touring the UK and co-productions utilising forgotten archive film. But the single biggest vision is the proposed National Film Centre.
“Anthony used to say that BFI Southbank is a rehearsal run for this. It will be a collision of facets which have never sat together before.
We are in the throes of negotiating a very exciting formal partnership with higher education which will breathe the next level of scholarly engagement with our collections.”
“We want to create a destination where anybody who loves anything about film can come, a place to capture the hearts and minds of the public, for people from the industry and for everyone else.”
The boundary between profession and passion is blurred for Amanda Nevill, director of the British Film Institute.
Her working hours are full of the challenges of running an institution in the throes of radical re-invention. It is 75 this year and waiting for Government approval to create an ambitious £200 million National Film Centre on the South Bank in London.
But after hours and at weekends she can often be found – along with many other BFI staffers - at the present BFI Southbank centre, watching films or mingling with people from the business.
“I don’t know how many films I’ve seen, but I still get excited every time that curtain opens. I want other people to have the opportunity to get as excited and to be nourished in the same way that I do.”
Nevill, 51 who earns around £120,000 annually was appointed in 2003 by the then new chairman of the BFI, film director Anthony Minghella. He died this March.
“His loss numbed me. The BFI that exists now is very much his vision. He and I shared the same values. We wanted the BFI to be loved by a lot of people.”
His successor is former BBC Director General Greg Dyke. Nevill has just taken him to see the BFI’s film archive – the world’s largest - housed over 34 acres underground near Birmingham and in Hertfordshire.
During the week Nevill moves between meetings with colleagues to discuss things like the London Film Festival, conservation issues, the proposed National Film Centre and how to make the BFI’s vast collection increasingly accessible.
“We are like the British Museum for film – one of the great planks of UK culture. Our job is interpret this stuff in a way that is relevant and exciting for lots of different audiences.
The BFI is multi-faceted. As well as running the BFI Southbank and Mediatheque, it has the IMAX, a vast library and immense film archive, a distribution wing, Sight and Sound magazine, publications and more.
Nevill says there are many challenges for the BFI – all interconnected. These include protecting the archive and ensuring that everyone has access to the widest diversity of cinema and to knowledge about it in the digital age.
“Our distribution of films is spectacular now. We serve over 800 venues across the UK with around 12,000 prints in an average year.”
Then there are the Mediatheques in London and touring the UK and co-productions utilising forgotten archive film. But the single biggest vision is the proposed National Film Centre.
“Anthony used to say that BFI Southbank is a rehearsal run for this. It will be a collision of facets which have never sat together before.
We are in the throes of negotiating a very exciting formal partnership with higher education which will breathe the next level of scholarly engagement with our collections.”
“We want to create a destination where anybody who loves anything about film can come, a place to capture the hearts and minds of the public, for people from the industry and for everyone else.”
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Kew Gardens Profile - Sunday Times - April 2008
Most mornings before breakfast, Professor Stephen Hopper and his wife walk in the gardens around the West London house which comes with his job.
But these are no ordinary gardens. The 56-year-old Australian botanist became Director of Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in 2006 and his stroll can take him anywhere in its 300 acres.
Kew is the popular public showcase for a vast root system of lesser-known but vital scientific work there and at Wakehurst Place in Sussex – home to the Millennium Seed Bank. Kew’s scientists work globally and it also has a small outpost in Mozambique manned by six local people. “It is one of the world’s richest but least explored places for plant species.”
When Hopper started the £129,000 a year job he says: “I had a sense of awe and found it humbling to be involved in a place so rich in history and global reach. There are around 700 staff - about a third involved in science, so it is one of the plant science powerhouses of the world.
The scientific work is focused at the Jodrell laboratories in Kew and at the Seed Bank where it is aimed to have seeds from 25 percent of the world’s plants in storage by 2020.
“The challenges for Kew are to help improve the quality of life by focusing on what plants can do for people in general and what they can do in terms of some of the environmental challenges we all face. That involves some organisational changes and new partnerships and ways of doing things.”
Attending to those partnerships meant meeting a senior BBC executive this week to explore ways of increasing public awareness of environmental issues. Hopper also travelled to Cambridge for a scientific conference. His weekend was spent reading about Darwin whose 200th anniversary coincides with Kew’s 250th birthday. Big events are planned.
Hopper grew up in the semi desert landscape of Western Australia and a school trip into the wild made him realise he wanted to work outdoors. He trained first as a marine biologist but switched over to botany. He still spends a month a year in the field.
Scientific and management skills must now be matched by political canniness. “We have an active role in exploring the world of plants and funghi, demonstrating clearly their value and importance and engaging in the political process to get the world to turn the corner and stop this crazy behaviour of ever more destruction of wild vegetation.”
“Kew’s role is not blatantly political. It is about ensuring that the underpinning science is conducted to really help policy makers take informed decisions.”
“I have to be optimistic. I went to a conference on sustainability and indigenous people and an elder from an Native American nation said the most important thing we can give to young people is hope. We really need to think of what can be done and engage people. All good things start with individuals.”
But these are no ordinary gardens. The 56-year-old Australian botanist became Director of Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in 2006 and his stroll can take him anywhere in its 300 acres.
Kew is the popular public showcase for a vast root system of lesser-known but vital scientific work there and at Wakehurst Place in Sussex – home to the Millennium Seed Bank. Kew’s scientists work globally and it also has a small outpost in Mozambique manned by six local people. “It is one of the world’s richest but least explored places for plant species.”
When Hopper started the £129,000 a year job he says: “I had a sense of awe and found it humbling to be involved in a place so rich in history and global reach. There are around 700 staff - about a third involved in science, so it is one of the plant science powerhouses of the world.
The scientific work is focused at the Jodrell laboratories in Kew and at the Seed Bank where it is aimed to have seeds from 25 percent of the world’s plants in storage by 2020.
“The challenges for Kew are to help improve the quality of life by focusing on what plants can do for people in general and what they can do in terms of some of the environmental challenges we all face. That involves some organisational changes and new partnerships and ways of doing things.”
Attending to those partnerships meant meeting a senior BBC executive this week to explore ways of increasing public awareness of environmental issues. Hopper also travelled to Cambridge for a scientific conference. His weekend was spent reading about Darwin whose 200th anniversary coincides with Kew’s 250th birthday. Big events are planned.
Hopper grew up in the semi desert landscape of Western Australia and a school trip into the wild made him realise he wanted to work outdoors. He trained first as a marine biologist but switched over to botany. He still spends a month a year in the field.
Scientific and management skills must now be matched by political canniness. “We have an active role in exploring the world of plants and funghi, demonstrating clearly their value and importance and engaging in the political process to get the world to turn the corner and stop this crazy behaviour of ever more destruction of wild vegetation.”
“Kew’s role is not blatantly political. It is about ensuring that the underpinning science is conducted to really help policy makers take informed decisions.”
“I have to be optimistic. I went to a conference on sustainability and indigenous people and an elder from an Native American nation said the most important thing we can give to young people is hope. We really need to think of what can be done and engage people. All good things start with individuals.”
Zoo profile - Sunday Times - april
It was on his second day as a teenage volunteer at Dudley Zoo that David Field had a life-changing encounter.
Field, 41, is now Zoological Director of the two establishments run by the Zoological Society of London – ZSL London Zoo and ZSL Whipsnade.
“I’d like to say my inspiration was David Attenborough or Sir Stamford Raffles who started this zoo, but it was probably Joe the Orang Utan. He was a remarkable animal.
“Joe loved Horlicks and the first time I went to feed him he gently manoeuvred the feeding can aside and, for ten minutes, we just looked at each other. I felt such a sense of responsibility for him and began to understand the responsibility we as humans have for the care of nature, whether it be in zoos or the environment.”
Field has 20,845 animals in his care together with 240 staff. He has been with ZSL five years, first as Whipsnade’s curator and as Zoological Director since 2006. His week now involves so much business planning that, last year, he completed an MBA.
“ It is quite an eclectic job. I am responsible for the animals but also for keepers and the veterinary department, development of new exhibits, future plans for the zoo and also education. It’s not just children, but finding ways to inspire all our million and a half visitors.”
Alongside weekly management meetings and one-to-ones with key workers, another priority is visiting all staff and animals at both sites.
“I like to know exactly what is going on with all the animals. Today I joined a briefing for the bird team and I visited our new gorilla who arrived yesterday – a gorgeous female called Mijuku.
“It is incredibly exciting. Today she met our male gorilla Bobby for the first time and, to quote my head keeper of gorillas: ‘love is in the air.’ “
Other highlights of his week were the opening in London of the Blackburn Pavilion for birds, and in Whipsnade, Cheetah Rock with extensive facilities for captive breeding of the big cat.
Those who disapprove of zoos may not have visited one lately. Field says: “Discovery and learning is one of the pillars of our work alongside research and conservation.”
“”Society is becoming so divorced from nature that places like zoos can really reconnect them with nature. It for their own well being.”
Zoos are now in the environmental frontline. Among many conservation projects, ZSL is pioneering the fight against a fungal infection called the Chytrid Fungus that is killing amphibians globally.
“It is an extinction crisis worse than the dinosaurs. The only survival hope for many amphibians is to set up captive breeding habitats.“
In an era when the challenges of climate change and global extinction seem overwhelming, Field remains optimistic. “ We cannot win all the battles, but I always remember a quotation from the anthropologist Margaret Mead. ‘Never doubt that a group of thoughtful committed people can change the world. It is the only thing that ever has.’”
Field, 41, is now Zoological Director of the two establishments run by the Zoological Society of London – ZSL London Zoo and ZSL Whipsnade.
“I’d like to say my inspiration was David Attenborough or Sir Stamford Raffles who started this zoo, but it was probably Joe the Orang Utan. He was a remarkable animal.
“Joe loved Horlicks and the first time I went to feed him he gently manoeuvred the feeding can aside and, for ten minutes, we just looked at each other. I felt such a sense of responsibility for him and began to understand the responsibility we as humans have for the care of nature, whether it be in zoos or the environment.”
Field has 20,845 animals in his care together with 240 staff. He has been with ZSL five years, first as Whipsnade’s curator and as Zoological Director since 2006. His week now involves so much business planning that, last year, he completed an MBA.
“ It is quite an eclectic job. I am responsible for the animals but also for keepers and the veterinary department, development of new exhibits, future plans for the zoo and also education. It’s not just children, but finding ways to inspire all our million and a half visitors.”
Alongside weekly management meetings and one-to-ones with key workers, another priority is visiting all staff and animals at both sites.
“I like to know exactly what is going on with all the animals. Today I joined a briefing for the bird team and I visited our new gorilla who arrived yesterday – a gorgeous female called Mijuku.
“It is incredibly exciting. Today she met our male gorilla Bobby for the first time and, to quote my head keeper of gorillas: ‘love is in the air.’ “
Other highlights of his week were the opening in London of the Blackburn Pavilion for birds, and in Whipsnade, Cheetah Rock with extensive facilities for captive breeding of the big cat.
Those who disapprove of zoos may not have visited one lately. Field says: “Discovery and learning is one of the pillars of our work alongside research and conservation.”
“”Society is becoming so divorced from nature that places like zoos can really reconnect them with nature. It for their own well being.”
Zoos are now in the environmental frontline. Among many conservation projects, ZSL is pioneering the fight against a fungal infection called the Chytrid Fungus that is killing amphibians globally.
“It is an extinction crisis worse than the dinosaurs. The only survival hope for many amphibians is to set up captive breeding habitats.“
In an era when the challenges of climate change and global extinction seem overwhelming, Field remains optimistic. “ We cannot win all the battles, but I always remember a quotation from the anthropologist Margaret Mead. ‘Never doubt that a group of thoughtful committed people can change the world. It is the only thing that ever has.’”
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