Abingdonian 2018

102 The Abingdonian as master in charge of athletics and also coached hockey. More recently, George started a mountain bike club for the boys and has even helped out with the gardening club. George will also be remembered for his challenging, occasionally provocative, chapel talks and for serving the spiritual life of the school in other ways. George was ordained priest in the Church Of England in 2014, after completing the Oxford ministry course at Ripon College, Cuddesdon. In August, George became the vicar of several parishes in the Three Valleys benefice in Dorset. We are grateful to George for the great contribution he has made to Abingdon over 15 years and wish him and the family much joy and fulfilment. Simon Steer Andrew Swarbrick Boys are not naturally generous in their praise, with one epithet in particular reserved for the very few, but the words of a fifth former still echo when I think of Andrew: “Mr Swarbrick? He’s a legend.” And Andrew is indeed an Abingdon colossus, straddling as he has considerable cornerstones of life here during his career. Andrew came to us in 1998 after a spell as Head of English at RGS Worcester, and time at a minor public school on the outskirts of Abingdon. He quickly proved himself a fine and inspiring teacher, an approachable and supportive colleague, and a much-cherished “still small voice of calm” at those meetings in which the wheel was always energetically being reinvented, after which Andrew would cheer us up by quoting Beckett’s line, “It’s never the same pus from one second to the next”. Not that Andrew sought to preserve the status quo - far from it. As Head of English, he founded the joint Abingdon/St Helen’s Literary Society, initiated reciprocal Oxbridge interviewing for pupils at both schools and generally kick-started the highly valued collaboration between the two departments, always leading from the front, giving talks at St Helen’s on Eliot and Larkin. At the same time, he managed a stable of departmental thoroughbreds who had been in post long before he arrived, and skilfully guided them through the introduction of the AS and A2, the new GCSE courses and a host of other reforms to assessment that came in their wake. When he gave up the Head of English role after more than a decade, it was to take up the challenge of running the University Admissions Department at a time of great change in the higher education sector. As application and admissions procedures became more and more demanding, Andrew helped sixth formers to navigate them with tremendous patience and expertise, encouraging them to match their aspirations with the right course. There are now countless Abingdonians who have cause to be grateful to Andrew for his help in getting them to their preferred destination. Yet Andrew is by nature a modest and at times self-effacing man. He would never be the first to tell you about his published work on Philip Larkin, for example, but the range and depth of the subject knowledge that emanated in his teaching Andrew Swarbrick with his 3 OA sons