 Well, good afternoon and welcome. My name is Ian Brown. Let me say with pride and genuine pride, but also with rising panic. I am committed to produce a history of the school to be published in time for the centenary while everybody says 2016, believe me, I say 2017. I'm fairly used to working to publishing deadlines, but believe me, this is the mother of all deadlines. I do not fancy the prospect of going to the senior administration of the school and suggesting a postponement of the celebrations. But essentially I've got to be there with a finished manuscript by the middle of 2015. I'm now devoting all my waking hours to this task. I've been doing this essentially from the beginning of this calendar year. And I'm working my way through the school's records from 1917, indeed back to the early years of the 20th century. I'm working through fairly chronologically. I've now reached the late 1940s and early 1950s. I'll say a little bit about some of the events then. But my hope is that that research will be finished roughly October, November. There are other archives that we'll need looking at. There will be many people who have to be taught to and then for begin writing roughly as we reach the climax of the Carol season. So that gives me about 18 months. As far as I know, there has been no official announcement that the book is being written and that I'm doing it. But word spreads. So let me start by sharing with you three common comments I get from colleagues. They come up to me and they say, we're here, you're writing the history of the school. And they usually say one of three things. The first is a question. Am I in it? And my invariable response is, no you're not. Or if I'm feeling a little bit cruel, well okay, maybe a footnote. And if I'm being really cruel, but of course I'm devoting three chapters to you. But actually it's a serious question and I think if I was in their position I'd be tempted to ask it or rather a variation of it. Because of course we all have our own science history. We tend to be the centre of it. And I am sure that when school staff, students, alumni read the book, they will perhaps subconsciously or maybe consciously attempt to align their own memories, their own experience with the history of the school. They don't necessarily expect to see their name in the index, I suspect one or two do. But at least they ought to see something that they think that they recognise. It rings true. And that's actually quite an intimidating feeling to have as you tend to write the history of the school. The reality is that I suspect that when the book comes out many people, the saw-ass community might well be disappointed that it doesn't align very effectively with their own history of the school. Let me give you sort of one example to try and demonstrate that point. I've become fascinated in the last couple of months with architects plans and floor plans for the new building, which of course is this building, the Bloomsbury building. And I've poured over these things because I can relate it to what now exists. So, for example, the building as originally planned was never completed. The original proposal would be that there would be a north wing. This is the south wing. You then go up that side, the east wing, and then they were going to build a cross, which of course would now bump into the Phillips building. But that was never built. Another example, if you stand on the steps of the school and look straight left down the side of the building, down the south side of the building, there's the bit that sticks out. Instead of a straight facade, there is that bit that sticks out. I believe it's now the student union offices or the student union shop and what have you. On top of it is the balcony that comes off the common room on the first floor. In the original plans, that was the director's office. Rather an exposed position, I would suggest, and one can understand why he has retreated to a more secure environment. And I'm absolutely fascinated by these things. You look and think, gosh, I was in that room. That used to be the gents toilet in 1948 or something like this. Those sorts of details fascinate and would fascinate any member of the Siar's community. But there are absolutely no interest to anybody who doesn't know the school. To the outside world who wants to know the importance of the school and the impact of the school. This is domestic trivia, though it may be fascinating for, as I say, for those people who know the building and who've occupied it. So the question, am I in it, does raise up that issue as to for whom am I writing? Am I there to unlock the memories of the Siar's community? Well I'd like to in some degree, but my prime audience for those people who, and sadly it's the majority of the human race, have never been to Siar's. To try and explain the importance of this institution. Well the second question that I'm asked, will there be lots of funny stories in it? This infuriates me. Were I writing the history of All Souls College Oxford, a very serious institution of extremely high learning, you would not ask the author, are there any jokes in it? Now to a certain extent, this is my fault. I've been here at extremely long time. It's terrifying to think that the year after the school celebrates its centenary, that is in 2018, then God willing, I will celebrate my half centenary of Siar's connection. I've been here effectively half the length of the time of the school. And during that time I've collected a vast treasury of Siar's stories. Many of them quite cruel, that play upon the eccentricities of the place. And I think a number of my colleagues have picked up on that and believe that what I'm basically doing is stringing all these funny stories together, so it will be the Siar's joke book to end all joke books. Now again, there's a serious point here. We all know, we're parts of the Siar's community, that this is, how do I put it, a distinctive institution, a unique institution, a slightly eccentric, if not weird institution. One of my first Siar's experience in the second year I was here, I did the, I nearly said I learnt Thai. I was taught Thai, that's quite different from learning Thai. And in those days the South East Asia department occupied offices in Howland Street, the other side of Totland Court Road. And the rest of that block of offices was occupied I think by an advertising agency, McCann Erickson. We were on the fourth or fifth floor. And one day I was going up in the lift and there were two McCann Erickson employees also in the lift. And one turns to the other and says, who are those people on the fourth floor? And the reply was, I don't know, I think it's some strange religious cult, eccentricity, difference. We all know it, we all feel it. But I think it's a very dangerous card to play when you're writing a history of the school. The great warning here is in the autobiography by Sir Cyril Phillips, the school's third director. Because he has a series of pictures in the autobiography and one of them is Siar's staff and students 1938. Colan, the biggest bunch of eccentrics in the world. It's a dangerous thing to say. It's something not that we should try and keep to ourselves, but I don't think one should play too strongly in a history of the school. Well, the third response, the third and final response, is usually prefaced by my colleague comes much closer to me. The voice drops on occasions, an arm goes round my shoulder. And conspiratorially they say, we must have lunch. They then refer to some of crisis scandal in the school when Dr Nible unexpectedly resigned as head of the Swahili section in 1979. No, I made all that up. And they say, whatever the record say, I know what the real truth was. You know that the police were called, but nothing was ever done. Or a variation of that is that they step back and in a very loud voice say, at last the truth will come out. And they mention a colleague and some crime that they committed, they denied them study leave in 1986 or something. The revenge brigade in other words. Well, clearly I'm going to have a large number of lunch or dinner invitations on the basis of this and I will listen with great interest. I don't think that this will be in the history of the school. So to your relief, or maybe actually to your sadness, the book is not going to be like this. People are not necessarily going to be mentioned. No, it's not going to be full of stories of Swahiliac eccentrics. And it's certainly not going to expose in inverted commas the truth. This is essentially a history, not of the domestic, so as not of our daily lives and how it changed. That's not going to be completely ignored, but it's not the focus of the book. It is essentially an external history of the school, the school's relationship with the various worlds that it is occupied over the last century. And without getting too precious about this, it is a serious book. It is an academic book. I am approaching this in exactly the same way as I would approach writing the history of any institution. I'm trying to a degree to take myself out of it. So, for example, a constant theme throughout the book is the school's relationships with government. And a very important part of that, of course, are discussions with government about finances. And I have to deal with the fact that there's going to be discussion of expenditure and income accounts, etc. at various stages. This has been an important issue for the school. But even there, lying behind it is another issue, which the more I reflect upon this is, I think, the great constant in the history of the school from 1917. So, I can put it like this. Africa, Asia and the Middle East are big. The opportunities for study and teaching in these areas are almost limitless. And therefore, the issue that the school has faced throughout these decades is which bits do we do? Or rather, how deep do we go? We've never decided we're going to cut something out, though in fact that has happened on occasion. It's really a question of depth. We cannot do everything. We would love to do everything. We cannot do everything. And therefore, it's a discussion of what influences have been brought to bear in deciding what we do and what we don't do. Let me give you a simple example. And this is simply because it's in my head because I've actually been doing this the last week. Towards the end of the war, 1943-44, the government clearly made a decision that it was going to invest heavily in the post-war world in Oriental and African studies. Therefore, established a commission under Lord Scarborough to make proposals for government funding. The school, the then director Ralph Turner and senior management, are therefore called into the Scarborough Commission towards the end of July 1945 to present their plans for the future, their plans for expansion. In those days, the staff of the school numbered about 100. And the school then asked for funding for about 150 posts. That's a very substantial increase. Anyway, they went in to see the Scarborough Commission. And the Scarborough Commission basically said, you have been far, far too modest. Go away and think big. So they went away and it was over the summer months. They had to be back by September with their revised proposals. And that proposed a school staff of 256 from 100 to 150 to 256. And that number was arrived at basically by the director writing to every head of department saying, what is your optimum staff size? And my favorite one of all of these is the Africa department where the head of department wrote long memorandum explaining what he wanted in order to cover effectively, not generously, but just so that we can do it adequately, the number of posts he wanted. They were eight professors, eight readers and 38 lecturers. With that we can just about get by. The Scarborough Commission's recommendations to the government were accepted in full. So for the next 10 years or so there is an attempt to fulfill that program for massive expansion. It was not achieved. And that's the thing I'm interested in. What shaped the extent to which we met, in that case, an extraordinary ambitious remit. So the sorts of things that affected it would be there's actually not eight professors, eight readers and 38 lecturers out there whom you can appoint. You can list all these 47 African languages but there actually aren't enough people out there with a good command of it and certainly with a scholarly basis in those languages to fill them. So one restraint on all this is simply the staff aren't there to appoint. The second restriction of course was an increasingly difficult financial position. But a third interesting point and it replies less to Africa than to actually to my own region because the other great expansion in this period was in the establishment of a department of South East Asia was Britain's political and economic interest in those parts of the world. And although this is never explicitly stated it's implied in much of the schools dealings with the foreign office, with the war office, with the India office. We need these in Britain's international interest and therefore from 4748 there is establishment of a South East Asia department to reflect Britain's interest in that part of the world. Interestingly of course the South East Asia department they again had the problem. They couldn't find people to appoint to these positions. Burmese and Burma was covered effectively because it had been part of an India department before the war. But when they came to appoint people to teach Thai even Malay and certainly Vietnamese, we had to appoint people to the phonetics and linguistics department and then train them in those languages. So this is a constant theme throughout the schools history. How much do we cover? Where do we cover? One last comment on Scarborough. Scarborough was absolutely adamant. Student demand doesn't come into it. And there's a wonderful exchange between Lord Scarborough and the director. When the director said that in the whole of the history of the school there had been no interest whatsoever in the customary law of China. There never been demand for it either for teaching or for research. And Lord Scarborough replied, let me assure you it is essential that you have two posts in Chinese customary law and believe me that's what went in and I think they actually did appoint to one of them. We now live in a rather different world where student demand is absolutely at the core of this. So that's one serious aspect of the school's external relations. Let me pick on another one. In certain fields at certain times, in many fields at many times, the school has been a pioneer in scholarship. If I take my examples essentially from the early decades of the school, this simply reflects the fact that that's as far as the research is gone. I'm sure I can duplicate this in later decades. But in the 1930s, 1932, the Rockefeller Foundation gave the school a very generous grant that enabled the school to establish the Africa department. And the research that was undertaken there in the classification and analysis of African languages was absolutely critical. It established a new field. It's in this context that Paul Robeson came to the school to study some of these languages. Unfortunately, the Rockefeller grant came to an end in 1938 and there was a proposal therefore to abolish the Africa department. But there was a happy ending that the colonial governments in Africa were asked to chip in. They all did and the Africa department was kept alive. And as I said earlier, was requiring eight professors, eight readers and 38 lecturers within a decade. But that work is absolutely critical. Phonetics and linguistics in the 1940s. The need to teach military officers Japanese in six months flat had a major impact upon the development of language teaching methods. And the school was clearly at the forefront of this. There's a rather sad character called Lloyd James, Professor Lloyd James, who was crucial in this. He, I discovered, was the man who invented the phrase Ho Ho. He was the BBC's advisor on pronunciation. And when you think back to BBC standards of pronunciation in the 1930s, you wonder what advice he gave them. But his complaint against BBC radio announcers in the 1930s was, it was his phrase, they all sounded like Lord Ho Ho. And that phrase was then taken up when we had the traitor who went to Germany and he was referred to as Lord Ho Ho. But the phrase, I'm proud to say, comes from Sires. Lloyd James had a very sad end. He went mad in 1942, the bombing of London simply tipped him over the edge and he took his own life. Other examples. The early history of Islam. There is a clear school of Sires, school of thought in this area. The history of Africa is born here. The history of Southeast Asia, looking at Southeast Asia as a distinct region, began in Sires with the appointment of DGE Hall in 1949 and the publication is a book in the mid 1950s. In these important areas, the school has had a huge impact upon scholarship and beyond that on popular understandings of Africa, Asia and the Middle East. And what I propose to do is, at various stages in the book, is to simply stand back, when I'm dealing with the 1930s for example, is to stand back and over five, ten pages to explain what the state of the field was before the school got to work here and how the school has changed that field of scholarship. And again, it's important to argue wider popular perceptions. And a third and final strand is of course to talk about the people who have studied at Sires. And I'm less interested here in the famous alumni, though of course they will indeed get a mention I suppose, but about the Sires student community and how that has changed and the impact that they have had on the rest of the world. Before the war there were very few degree students here. The vast majority of people who studied here were either colonial service cadets or Indian civil service cadets. These are people who have just been appointed and are now being trained. Commercial people coming in for a few weeks to get a smattering of a language before they went off to that country. That the vast majority of degree students at the school in the 1930s are students from India coming here to study higher degrees. When the school was established in 1917 nobody foresaw that development. In the war of course the overwhelming majority of the school's student body are military officers trained these intensive Japanese courses and they would then go off into military intelligence. Might also talk about the same time about the school's work during the war in postal censorship. The school staff as well as teaching, I mean the teaching year in the 1940s was 46 weeks because the academic terms have basically been abolished. So as well as doing that the school staff worked for postal censorship reading endless letters. Trying to pick up information, most of them from sailors because they say we've just sailed from here to here and this is very important for military reasons. It's estimated that the school staff read 32,000 letters between 1942 and 1945 in, I can accept the 32,000 but they were in 192 languages. My favourite one of this is that the head of postal censorship writes to the director praising the school's efforts and saying that the perfect censor is somebody who knows nothing about the country of the language which is being used. He quotes the case of the censor in Finnish, obviously he wasn't here, who had no knowledge of Finland, had never been to Finland, had no wish to go to Finland and actually couldn't speak Finnish but had a remarkable ability to censor letters and spot potentially damaging information. This was important and then after the war of course then the development of degree students which of course from the late 1950s and 60s both undergraduates and then for higher degrees have been the absolute core of the student body. So after all in that context you may well be in it because in the end I have to talk about the development of the community and the development of the student community so check the index. Thank you.