I have set up a charity in Italy called Comitato Fiori di Lavanda Onlus to raise funds for research into childhood leukaemia.  I attach a recent article that appeared in the British Chamber of Commerce for Italy review which sets out details of what the charity does.  Further details are also available online at www.comitatolavanda.com.  HM Ambassador to Italy, Christopher Prentice CMG, is the charity's patron. 

“In 1970 there was only a 5% chance of survival for childhood lymphoblastic leukaemia. Put another way, 95% of children died.  However, following the last 40 years of research, in 2011 there is now an 80% survival rate. This is a huge increase in the overall survival rate, thanks to research, research, research. But put another way, 20% of children still die. Indeed, even today certain strands of leukaemia still do not respond well to treatment, for example, in the age group under 12 months old where the success rate is a pitifully low 20%. In other less palatable words, 80% of these children under 12 months old will still die. Continued research into the causes, cure and prevention of leukaemia is therefore paramount. We need a goal of a 100% survival rate, improved treatment protocols to be tailored for each individual patient, and even a vaccine in the years to come.

Comitato Fiori di Lavanda Onlus is an Italian charity established in 2010 to fund research into childhood leukaemia.  HM Ambassador to Italy, Christopher Prentice CMG, is the Charity’s patron.

The Charity has two distinct goals in the area of leukaemia research:

1.         UK research initiative: the Charity is sending four Italian research assistants from Monza to English research centres such as the Cancer Research Institute in Sutton, Surrey. This is an annual programme of cross border collaboration, and in 2011 we aim to raise €150,000 to support this initiative. The four researchers from Monza will also be assisting the English research teams currently working on the causes of the “Milan Cluster” where 7 children from the same school in Milan contracted leukaemia in a 2 week period in October 2009. This close collaboration is integral to the advance of international research, for developing treatment protocols and generally to promote closer ties in the field of research. In fact, a joint UK – Italian treatment protocol will be launched in 2012 as a result of similar research collaboration.

2.         European research centre in Monza: the Charity is supporting the Ospedale S. Gerardo in Monza in the construction of a new dedicated infant haematological cancer centre.  Part of this dedicated unit will house a new European research centre for leukaemia research, and house the researchers currently supported by the Charity for research activities in the UK. A European leukaemia research centre in Monza will further facilitate cross border research and the exchange of research activities, with the aim of advancing the current 80% cure rate. The research centre will cost over €6 million to construct.

How can you help?

Please see our website www.comitatolavanda.com  for details of our fundraising events and where it is possible to make donations online.  Recent events have included Charity teams running the Venice marathon and Como half marathon, and future events include an art auction at Palazzo Clerici in Milan, hosted by Christie’s, the London marathon 2012 and New York marathon 2012.  All events aim to raise funds and awareness for childhood leukaemia.

Thank you for your precious support.

BCCI Charity Committee

During the Annual General Meeting 2011 the Charity Committee was announced and presented to all BCCI Members.  This newly formed team is led by David Crackett, BCCI’s Vice President – Immediate Past President; Martin Pugsley, Massimo Audisio, Arnaldo Carpi and James Meickle will help him run it.  This committee aims to assist charities in their planning and resource management.”

WHAT’S YOUR LIFE LIKE.COM

Pilgrim Jimmy Adams is part of a small band to feature on a new social blogging network set up by another Pilgrim Nick Southwell.  www.whatsyourlifelike.com has been set up as a currently exclusive platform to allow people to blog through video, text and pictures about what their life is like in their chosen lifestyle and profession. Hampshire opening batsman is one of these and he provides a very interesting and entertaining insight into life as a professional cricketer. For all cricket and Sherborne fans out there, it's definitely worth a look!

http://www.whatsyourlifelike.com/index.php/bloggers/profile/jimmy-adams

Alan Turing (h 1931)

Public support and National Heritage Memorial Fund secure precious collection for new home in Bletchley Park

Almost nothing tangible remains of genius Bletchley Park codebreaker, Alan Turing; so when an extremely rare collection of offprints* relating to his life and work was set to go to auction last year, an ambitious campaign was launched to raise funds to purchase them for the Bletchley Park Trust and its Museum.  The Trust is today delighted to announce that the collection has been saved for the nation as the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) has stepped in quickly to provide £213,437, the final piece of funding required. 

The campaign was launched by passionate supporter Gareth Halfacree, and attracted colossal public and media backing, with £28,500 donated by hundreds of members of the public within just eleven days. Google has generously pledged $100,000 and a significant sum has been received from a private donor.  Despite this tremendous support, further funds were needed to reach the asking price and prevent the collection from potentially being bought by an overseas collector, threatening this unique piece of national codebreaking and computing heritage. 

Dame Jenny Abramsky, Chair of the NHMF, said:  “This is such welcome news.  Alan Turing was a true war hero and played an absolutely crucial role during the Second World War.  The National Heritage Memorial Fund was set up in memory of those who have given their lives for the UK and this grant will now ensure that this extremely rare collection of his work stands as a permanent memorial to the man and to all those who paid the ultimate price in service to this nation.”

Peter Barron, Director of External Relations for Google, said, “Turing is a hero to many of us at Google for his pioneering work on algorithms and the development of computer science. We're delighted that this important Collection will now be accessible to everyone visiting Bletchley Park”

The collection of articles belonged to Professor Max Newman, Turing’s friend and fellow Bletchley Park codebreaking genius.  It includes offprints of sixteen of Turing’s eighteen published works including his momentous paper ‘On Computable Numbers’  A limited number of the offprints would have been produced at the time and Turing’s gifting them to Newman bears testimony to their unique relationship.  The set includes articles which have been annotated by Newman, along with Max Newman's name inscribed in pencil in Turing's hand.  Accompanying the set of offprints is the Newman household visitors’ book with several signatures of Turing, that of Turing’s mother and, of special significance to Bletchley Park, signatures of other wartime codebreaking giants.

The Turing-Newman Collaboration Collection is particularly rare, important and valuable as very few physical traces of Turing’s work or personal belongings still exist.  Most of the wartime records at Bletchley Park were destroyed after the war, while Turing himself kept little of his work and very few personal belongings. 

Simon Greenish, CEO of the Bletchley Park Trust, welcomed today’s announcement, saying, “The acquisition of this hugely important collection has been made possible only by the astonishing support demonstrated by the public, the media, Google, the National Heritage Memorial Fund and Christies the auctioneers whose help in brokering the purchase is gratefully acknowledged.  We are delighted to have the collection here at Bletchley Park, which is surely its most fitting home, and it will be an incredible addition to the visitor experience.”
Tourism and Heritage Minister John Penrose said, “Safeguarding our heritage isn’t just about bricks and mortar or fine art, it’s also about preserving the evidence of significant scientific discoveries and inventions. The National Heritage Memorial Fund’s grant to the Bletchley Park Trust to help secure this collection for the Trust is fantastic news and reflects the great advances Turing made in terms of code breaking and computer science, which as we now recognise, helped to turn the tide for this country during the war.”
Of his many roles – as mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist, Turing is best known for being the father of modern computer science and his work at Bletchley Park conceiving the Turing-Welchman Bombe to mechanise the process of breaking the German Enigma cipher.  He is considered to be one of the most influential thinkers of our time and his work was fundamental to the Allied victory in World War Two and freedom in the West.

Turing's close relationship with Newman was crucial to the historic contribution Turing made, starting with Newman's encouragement to investigate 'mechanical processes' and his help in securing Turing a fellowship at Princeton to continue his research.  In 1952 at a time when homosexuality was illegal in the UK, Turing was convicted of having a sexual relationship with another man.  Turing was sentenced to a hormone treatment that amounted to chemical castration.  The conviction robbed him of his security clearance for GCHQ, for which he still worked, and made him the target for surveillance at the start of the cold war.  Having made one of the most outstanding contributions of the twentieth century, he died after eating an apple laced with cyanide. 
William Newman, son of Max Newman, explaining the special relationship between Turing and Newman, said, “Max Newman supported Alan Turing and collaborated with him for nearly twenty years, starting in 1935 when Turing was inspired by one of Newman’s lectures to write his On Computable Numbers paper.  It was a huge blow to Turing, and also to Newman and his wife Lyn, when Turing was arrested and prosecuted for gross indecency.  Newman gave evidence at Turing’s trial, and may thus have helped the court decide towards sentencing Turing to probation rather than imprisonment.  Two years later came what Lyn described in a letter to a friend as ‘the most shattering thing that has ever happened to me’ – news of Alan’s death.”

In September 2009, following a public campaign, the PM Gordon Brown issued an unequivocal and powerful apology for the way in which Turing had been inhumanely treated, saying “on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better”.

Historians agree that Bletchley Park, top secret codebreaking hub of World War Two, shortened the war by at least two years saving countless lives.  Since 1994, it has been open to the public as a museum.  Interest in the site continues to grow with visitors increasing threefold over the last few years reaching 120,000 for 2010.  Bletchley Park Trust is currently working up a major regeneration project to help transform Bletchley Park into a world class heritage and educational centre.  The Trust aims to commence the project in early 2012 and it will include the restoration of iconic codebreaking huts and derelict WW2 buildings as well as a redeveloped museum, which will greatly enhance the visitor experience and improve educational accessibility.

Now secure, The Turing-Newman Collaboration Collection will be on display in the Bletchley Park Museum later this year once conservation work on the collection is complete.

© Bletchley Park

John le Carré, one of the world’s most celebrated authors, has offered his literary archive to Oxford’s Bodleian Library with the intention that it should become its permanent home.

Le Carré said, ‘I am delighted to be able to do this. Oxford was Smiley’s spiritual home, as it is mine. And while I have the greatest respect for American universities, the Bodleian is where I shall most happily rest.’   

Richard Ovenden, Keeper of Special Collections and Associate Director of the Bodleian Libraries said ‘We are enormously grateful that John le Carré has made his archive available to the Bodleian. It is compelling primary evidence of a major cultural contribution to a literary genre and will offer scholars important insights into his work. We hope the collection will also be appreciated more widely, through exhibitions, seminars and conferences as well as through digitization initiatives.’

To mark the arrival of the archive, the Bodleian is displaying a small selection of le Carré’s working papers for members of the public to see on World Book Day, Thursday 3 March. This will include sections from the various handwritten and typed drafts of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy which show how the novel evolved in the process of composition from its early working title, ‘The Reluctant Autumn of George Smiley’, to the final published text. The display will also include private photographs of le Carré with Alec Guinness, who memorably starred in the 1979 BBC series, as well as manuscripts of two of le Carré’s own favourite novels, The Tailor of Panama and The Constant Gardener.

John le Carré is the nom de plume of David John Moore Cornwell. His writing career spans 50 years and 22 novels which have been translated into 36 languages and adapted for film, TV and radio. He is renowned for his intricate espionage and political fiction, and for the creation of one of modern literature’s most subtle and carefully crafted protagonists, George Smiley. Le Carré’s evocative accounts of the cold war era in novels such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974) and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) were drawn in part from his own experiences working for MI5 and MI6. He has also pointed to the enduring influence upon him of his time as an undergraduate at Oxford. The complex and brilliantly drawn character of Smiley owes something to the Rev. Vivian Green who was Rector of Lincoln College, where le Carré read Modern Languages and graduated with a First Class Honours degree. Previously, Green had been Chaplain at Sherborne School while le Carré was a pupil. More recent novels such as The Constant Gardener and The Mission Song have left behind the complexities of the cold war in favour of more pressing global issues of our times. In le Carré’s words, “The almost unimaginable poverty of Nairobi’s slums, depicted in The Constant Gardener, provoked the formation of a registered British charity by the producers and crew working on the film adaptation. The Constant Gardener Trust continues to provide precious educational resources in the remote Turkana area of northern Kenya, where parts of the novel were set.” Le Carré’s most recent novel, Our Kind of Traitor, published in September 2010, features a young Oxford academic who becomes embroiled in a murky Establishment intelligence plot.

Le Carré’s archive, which fills a space the size of a Cornish barn, comprises multiple versions of his works, showing the evolution of his thought, his handling of plot and development of character, and his intensive editorial approach. Approximately 85 archive boxes were delivered to the Bodleian in late summer 2010 with additional materials still to be received, including a wealth of correspondence relating to his literary career. It is expected that other personal and family papers, photographs, correspondence and documents of great importance to future literary historians and biographers will be made available to researchers in the fullness of time. The Bodleian has the facilities to preserve and ultimately make available any of the more recent ‘born digital’ material in the archive, an area of increasing importance to scholars and librarians.

The World Book Day Display, Tinker Tailor Writer Spy, will include:

1. Tinker Tailor Solider Spy manuscript section

Le Carré’s seventh novel published in 1974.  Manuscript draft on pink paper. The draft is undated and untitled but is an early version of the beginning of Chapter 2 in which Smiley is introduced to the reader as ‘small, podgy …one of those gentle, reluctant worker-bees who throng London’s suburban railway system’. The bee metaphor was eventually excised from the published text, but in this draft many of Smiley’s familiar characteristics are already present and more are added as le Carré amends and elaborates his first thoughts so that a fuller picture of the spymaster begins to emerge: [left margin] ‘His legs were short, his gait anything but agile, his dress sober’. Two slightly later drafts (with the bee comparison retained) are titled ‘The Reluctant Autumn of George Smiley’, the second version with the subtitle ‘being the first story of THE QUEST FOR KARLA’. Only the latest drafts are titled ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ and begin with a description of Thursgood School, and not Smiley.

2. The Russia House manuscript section

Le Carré’s twelfth novel, published in 1989. This manuscript section of the novel, dated 2 July 1987, is written with le Carré’s favourite rollerball pen. Dated four days later, a much altered typescript demonstrates le Carré’s typical working method of drafting and redrafting his text, then stapling manuscript amendments to a main typewritten sheet or (as in the Tinker Tailor manuscripts) stapling several pages together.

NOTES TO THE EDITOR

The Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford form the largest university library system in the United Kingdom. They include the principal University library—the Bodleian Library—which has been a library of legal deposit for 400 years; major research libraries; and libraries attached to faculties, departments and other institutions of the University. The combined library collections number more than 11 million printed items, in addition to 30,000 e-journals and vast quantities of materials in other formats. For additional information see www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

John le Carré is transferring his archive to the Bodleian Library and provision is being made for it to be offered as part of HM Government’s Acceptance-In-Lieu scheme for cultural treasures administered by the MLA (Museums, Libraries and Archives) Council. Since the Bodleian Library was founded in 1602 it has benefited from many generous archival bequests. More recently, in 2007 it was the beneficiary through the Government’s “Acceptance in Lieu” scheme of the Harcourt Family Papers.

John le Carré is the nom de plume of David John Moore Cornwell, who was born in 1931 in Poole, Dorset, and was educated at Sherborne School, at the University of Berne (where he studied German literature for a year) and at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he graduated with a First-Class Honours degree in Modern Languages. He taught at Eton from 1956 to 1958 and was a member of the British Foreign Service from 1959 to 1964, serving first as Second Secretary in the British Embassy in Bonn and subsequently as Political Consul in Hamburg. He started writing novels in 1959, and since then has published twenty-two titles. Seven of his books have been adapted for the big screen and several others for television and radio. Le Carré was the first author to receive both the Gold Dagger Award from the British Crime Writers Association and the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. His official website is www.johnlecarre.com

On Saturday, 5 March 2011, 40,000 copies of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold will be given away as part of World Book Night. Le Carré says of the project: “No writer can ask more than this: that his book should be handed in thousands to people who might otherwise never get to read it, and who will in turn hand it to thousands more. That his book should also pass from one generation to another as a story to challenge and excite each reader in his time - that is beyond his most ambitious dreams.” www.worldbooknight.org

Three other significant donations have recently been gifted to the Bodleian Library: the Alan Bennett Literary Archive in 2008, the Sir Roy Strong Archive in 2009 and the Philip Cannon Music Archive in 2010.

Each year the Library celebrates World Book Day by exhibiting its great treasures. Past displays include: The Gutenberg Bible (2004); Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the autograph manuscripts (2005); Shakespeare's First Folio (2006); The original Wind in the Willows: the centenary of a children's masterpiece (2007); The Creation as told in the Torah, the Bible and the Qur’an (2008); Uncommon Readers: St Margaret of Scotland to Queen Elizabeth I (2009); There and Back Again: The Hobbit (2010).

© Bodleian Library, Oxford February 24 2011