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L.S.E. LUMINARIES |
Separate entries are given for the following individuals with whom I interacted mainly during my undergraduate years (the remainder will be found below):
LYRICS
These are the lyrics of the song that might have been adopted - but, to my knowledge, never was - as the College Song of the London School of Economics and Political Science. It was performed by the entire cast in the 1949 college revue, Place Pigalle.
Yell L-L-S, LSE,
For the cynosurest college in the university,
Not a better lot will match you
For a bachelor's degree.
So let's yell L-L-S, LSE.
Yell C-A-U-S-A-S,
For we're rarer than the rerum in cognoscere causas
And the Latin doesn't matter
If you natter in a mass.
So let's yell C-A-U-S-A-S.
Yell B-E-A-V-E-R,
For the fieriest amphibian beneath the northern star
Not a better lot of fellows,
Bitter mellows in a bar.
So let's yell B-E-A-V-E-R.
Yell L-L-S, L.S.E.,
Yell C-A-U-S-A-S,
Yell B-E-A-V-E-R.
Beaver, beaver, beaver, beaver, beaver, beaver, Raaaah!
And these lyrics from another of the show's numbers identifies some of the staff who were lecturing at the time:
Stick it below the line
(I can't think of a better place to choose
Or a category more certain to confuse)
So don't ask Hicks or Paish or Tress,
But leave it in a bloody mess,
And any item that you can't define,
Just stick . . . below the line!
A MEMORY OF MARIE STOPES
(Marie Stopes was included in the series of postage stamps issued in 2008 honouring British women)
An abiding memory is that of a guest speaker, invited by the Students' Union to address us in the Old Theatre. This was Marie Stopes, a famed pioneer and advocate of birth control. A woman of (as the French gallantly put it) un certain age, who showed no reluctance in trying to hide that age with brightly hennaed hair and under several millimetres of make-up that merely seemed to enhance and emphasize the wrinkles that lurked beneath. She was actually around 70 years old at the time.
The Old Theatre was packed. People were literally standing in the aisles. They had come to be amused. They had come to show their superiority and to mock. They had neglected to do their homework. This was a woman who had dealt with far more fearsome opponents during the course of her lengthy career, and she numbered amongst her friends and correspondents such worthies as Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, John Gielgud, Evelyn Waugh and Noel Coward
Not only did the lady disdain to be heckled, she had the audience eating out of the palms of her hands From the moment they were convulsed by her assertion that the Roman Catholic church, exemplified by its denunciation of birth control methods - other than abstinence of course - was strongest in Italy which is (or was, at that time) the world's largest producer of olive oil, which Ms Stopes proudly proclaimed to be the most effective and least expensive of all natural birth control products. The insertion of quantities of oil into the vagina, she maintained, would prevent the spermatazoa from making their way to the uterus. Her delivery was impeccable.
They had come to jeer . . . they stayed to cheer!
OTHER LSE CONNECTIONS
Lionel Arbiss
Martyn Davis
Alan Gershon
Allan Kingsbury
Brenda Knight
Lionel Lassman
Michael (Mac) Lassman
Buster Morawetz
Brenda Sands
Pat Simpson
And my apologies to the many others who contributed to my pleasure during my time at LSE simply by the act of being there. Their exclusion from these lists is attributable to nothing other than failing memory.
New Year's Eve 1949 at the Waldorf Hotel in Aldwych. From the left: Martyn Davis, Brenda Sands, Naomi Glynne, Myself. (Naomi became my first wife)
On the rooftop of the LSE building in 1949