McElwee Award

6 March 2016

The McElwee Award is available to pupils in the Lower Sixth and allows them to travel across Europe in order to explore other histories, cultures or societies. It was initially set up by former pupils of the long-serving Bill McElwee, who taught at Stowe either side of the Second World War. He was well known for taking pupils on such journeys during the summer so it is fitting that pairs of Stoics are funded for their independent trips this summer.

On Thursday 11 February, the committee, which is made up of Old Stoics, heard from eight short-listed pairs and had the agonising responsibility of narrowing this group down to four successful awards. They eventually settled on a number of exciting proposals. Archie Forsyth (Chandos) and James Creedy Smith (Chatham) have planned a trip to Vienna to explore the Habsburg Empire; Amy Jorgensen (Nugent) and Skye Longworth (Nugent) will take a journey in the footsteps of Laurie Lee’s ‘As I Walked Out One Midsummer’s Morning’; Emily Osborne (Queen’s) and Izzy Baillie (Queen’s) will visit Ravenna, where they plan to learn more about Italy during late antiquity and the early middle ages and finally Samuel Montgomery (Temple) and Sebastian Wood (Temple) have an ambitious proposal for a trip to Paris and Kiev to explore the theme of revolutions.

The Chairman of the Committee, Christopher Tate (Walpole 71) commented on the exceptionally high quality of all of the applications and was keen to commend those who put together such excellent proposals. Stoics also performed exceptionally well in the interview stage of the process with mature, carefully considered answers to the questions about their trips.

In the evening, Sixth Form Historians were also treated to a lecture in celebration of the Award on ‘Wellington and Waterloo’ by the prestigious military historian Professor Saul David. Professor David chose an interesting approach to the battle by giving a critique of Wellington’s actions and pointing out how easily things could have turned out differently had Napoleon demonstrated his more characteristically brilliant leadership. This led to a lively discussion and might even inspire a McElwee trip in the future. For those who were successful this year, I wish them every success on their trip and look forward to seeing their presentations in September.

Paul Griffin, Head of History