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enches for peaceful chats and a new location for summer pre-dinner drinks or ballet<br />
performances.<br />
More than one person has observed that Hermione is the best ‘topper and tailer’ in<br />
the business. When it comes to introducing speakers at public lectures, Hermione has<br />
an enviable gift for welcoming them with warmth and humour and perfectly judged<br />
comments – and then she follows their talk with a laser-sharp first question, ‘whether<br />
it be on the economy of Pakistan or quantum physics’, as Governing Body Matthew<br />
McCartney notes. She extracts the key issues from any lecture with forensic skill.<br />
But it is a surprisingly short step from this immensely erudite scholar to her<br />
reconfiguration at last summer’s fiftieth anniversary ball as Marilyn Monroe, in one<br />
of our students’ wonderfully apt reworking of the famous Andy Warhol portrait; and<br />
many of us will think of her always flicking her hair out of the eyes, and often on the<br />
brink of a giggle.<br />
Photo by Roger Tomlin<br />
Her husband John Barnard’s presence here has been an extremely congenial gain for<br />
the <strong>College</strong> as well, and he has proved a very supportive consort to Hermione during<br />
these years.<br />
Hermione will be very busy over the coming years completing her authorized<br />
biography of the playwright Sir Tom Stoppard. They are well matched, both of them<br />
outstanding intellectuals in contemporary British culture while both deriving from<br />
East European origins. Another reminder, if we need one, of what a huge benefit<br />
immigration brings us over the generations. Amongst the characters of Stoppard’s<br />
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