The Conference for 2004 was held from Friday 27 August to Sunday 29 August 2004 at Sherborne School.
Conference Report
The Library, Chapel and Headmaster's rooms of Sherborne School, which adjoin the Abbey Church, are modifications of the original buildings of a Benedictine Abbey with which the school was linked from 1437.
Among the line-up of participants are several distinguished figures including our former Chairman Professor John Williams, whose opening lecture at 8.00 pm on Friday 27 August was entitled ‘“Suffer the little children to come unto me”: The Redemptive Landscape in Theodore Powys’s Writing’.
We began again on Saturday with an excellent lecture on John Cowper Powys and Dostoievsky by our then Vice-Chairman-elect David Gervais. This was a tour-de-force prepared for us at short notice after it was learned that another speaker was prevented by illness from being with us.
We were then treated to a wonderfully witty and erudite performance from the best-selling author, columnist and respected scholar A.N.Wilson, author of an excellent introduction to JCP's Wolf Solent. he spoke to us on ‘Vicarage Childhoods’.
On Saturday evening we enjoyed a dramatised reading prepared by Dr. Peter Foss and presented by Chris Wilkinson, and on Sunday morning there were two events: a talk given at the Sherborne Prep by the Headmaster Peter Tait on the much undervalued Powys brother Littleton Powys, and a general discussion by all those attending the Conference on the subject of ‘Creative Schooldays’.
Programme
Friday 27 August
2.00-4.00: Committee meeting
4.00: Arrivals
5.30: Reception in foyer of Powell Theatre, with welcome by Chairman
6.30: Dinner
8.00: Professor John Williams: ‘“Suffer Little Children to Come Unto Me”:The Redemptive Landscape in T. F. Powys’s Writings’
Saturday 28 August
8.00: Breakfast
9.30: Professor Jeremy Hooker on John Cowper Powys’s Wolf Solent
Coffee
11.15: A. N. Wilson ‘Vicarage Childhoods’
12.45: lunch
Free afternoon, with possibility of excursions
6.30: Dinner
8.00: ‘The Unreturning Morning’: the Powyses at Sherborne - a dramatised sequence in words and music, devised by Peter Foss, produced by Chris Wilkinson
Sunday 29 August
8.00 breakfast
9.30: Peter Tait, Headmaster of Sherborne Prep School, on Littleton Powys and the ‘Prep’
11.00: AGM followed by Members’ Discussion, moderated by the Committee, on the subject of‘Creative Schooldays’
1.00: lunch
2.30: End of Conference and Departure
Pictures from the Conference
Anyone who took photos and would like them to be considered for online publication, please send them to Richard Graves, 7 Lilymead Avenue, Bristol BS4 2BY
In the meantime here are a few photos taken by the Chairman - please feel free to download any of them:
