Bedford Society committee members

I joined the History department of Bedford College in 1965 as a tutorial fellow and rose through the ranks to become a professor in 2005. So my academic career was divided almost evenly between Bedford College in Regent’s Park and Royal Holloway and Bedford New College at Egham. I was the last Dean of Arts at Bedford and worked closely with Professor Ian Spink, the Dean of Arts at Holloway to try to achieve a creative and amicable merger of the two Arts Faculties. Later I was Dean of the Postgraduate School at RHBNC and I have always particularly enjoyed teaching postgraduates. Together with Dr Ros Field in the Bedford English department we instituted the new MA in Medieval Studies which we took with us to RHBNC and which still flourishes.

My own research interests focus on medieval London, Richard II and medieval women. Outside of my University work I have served on the Council of the Girl’s Day School Trust, as a Royal Commissioner on Historical Manuscripts, as a Corresponding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America and as an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College Oxford. Bedford College gave me the opportunity to pursue a career which has been an extremely happy one and I am very glad that I have been able to repay a little of that debt by serving on the Bedford Society Committee.

I studied History at Bedford College from 1971-74 and as a result of the inspirational teaching there, History became my passion. The staff were encouraging and supportive; they provided an exceptional environment in which to study and also to have fun – some exciting staff student cricket matches and Christmas entertainments! I loved the sport and took advantage of the London University Swimming Team, becoming captain in 1973. This brought me into contact with students from all the colleges.

I went on to King’s College for my P.G.C.E. teaching qualification and then into a career of teaching History in a wide range of secondary school in Bromley and in Kent -  a High School, three Comprehensives and two Grammars.  As my level of responsibility grew, there was less opportunity to teach History which I regretted, but it was the price to pay for promotion. I was Headteacher for the last twelve years of my career. 

When I announced my retirement, I was asked to continue to work with, and develop further, a consortium of 34 primary and secondary schools - to organise conferences and to provide a range of programmes to develop leadership in schools. I also ran training in mentor-coaching for all newly appointed Kent Leaders of Education.

After three years of this work, I decided it was time to return to my passion for History and take a further degree. The natural choice was to choose Royal Holloway and Bedford New College and I studied there for a Masters in Medieval Studies. I thoroughly enjoyed the year and whilst studying there, I realised the importance of championing the role that Bedford College played and continues to play through its alumni, to the current work of the College. In addition, of course, it is important that Bedford alumni can still come together and enjoy themselves in a range of activities.

I studied history at Bedford College, graduating in 1974. The course was wide-ranging, and we were exceptionally well taught, and well cared for as individuals. Of course it helped that we were located in Regent's Park and that our department was in the beautiful St John's Lodge, with a rose garden running down to the boating lake where some tutorials even took place. We had the best time.

The history degree was intercollegiate so we could take courses in different colleges of the university, and I did. We were encouraged to feel part of our own college, but also part of the University of London, and to take advantage of what London offered.  Being in central London was a great privilege, even though in 1973 we had the oil crisis and not long after that the three-day week, and much disruption. But all in all it was a golden time.

I made friends there, at Bedford, good friends for life, and I came out with a very good degree which took me on to a further degree, and I never really left history. I have worked at different kinds of jobs in the University of London, and now in Cambridge where I have been for the last seventeen years. Although now retired I still do some research and teaching in medieval history.

What I took from Bedford College was a deep love of my subject and of academic enquiry more generally, and an abiding sense of gratitude to the place and people who taught me. I am still in regular contact with many of them, and the Bedford society helps to maintain this contact.

I joined the Sociology Department at Bedford in 1966, as a very junior research assistant attached to the Legal Research Unit. The Head of Department then was the formidable Professor (later, Lord) McGregor, but I quickly learned that it was our equally formidable departmental secretary, Madge Simonis, who really ruled the roost. My research director was the distinguished barrister (he was subsequently elected an an honorary fellow of RHBNC) the late Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC, who taught criminology. In 1970, I transferred to the teaching staff, and lectured in politics and public administration. I went on doing that for another 39 years (can it really have been so long?) until I (semi) retired, as an emeritus professor, from what had by then metamorphosed, via many convoluted evolutionary stages, into the Department of Politics and International Relations at RHBNC.

Like many Bedford colleagues and students, I didn’t relish one little bit the prospect of eviction from our lovely location in Regent’s Park. But, I did soon grow to accept and respect the merged institution at Egham. RHBNC is a world-class university and Bedford is an essential part of its heritage. The spirit of Bedford College is, thankfully, still very much alive and the mission of this Society is to ensure that it remains so. As a loyal and rather sentimental old Bedfordian I am very glad to be part of this important project.

After sixth form I started work as a computer programmer, this was in 1970 and computers were quite a novelty, women programmers even more so. It soon became obvious that I needed to get a degree to have real credibility. From a working-class background, I was the first person in my family to go to university and I graduated in 1973 in Physics, followed by a PGCE at Homerton College, Cambridge. By then I was already married, which was very unusual, and had my first child in August 1974, just weeks after my final teaching practice.

There were only 3 women studying Physics out of a cohort of 30 in my year. We started lectures at 9am every day and the course was demanding but the walk from the station through the park was magical even in the rain. It was a small, friendly department and we helped each other to succeed.

I taught Maths and Physics, part-time until the youngest of my 3 children starting school, then I took up my first full-time post as Head of Physics in a girl’s grammar school, followed by working as a lecturer in an Further Education college and as Head of Science in a comprehensive school in East London before moving into education management as Deputy Head and then Acting Head of a very deprived school in Hackney. I found that I related well to pupils with a range of needs so I moved into Special Education as the Head of a school for pupils with Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties. This was in the early days of Ofsted and I found that I was able to lead schools out of, so called, Ofsted failure to get a Good or Outstanding rating. I focused on helping pupils from dysfunctional background to achieve academically, improving their self-esteem and thus giving them chances that they wouldn’t otherwise have had.

Since retiring in 2012 I have taken up several volunteering roles, including breast-feeding peer supporter, and become very involved in helping to revive the joys of folk dancing. I’m a member of a women’s Morris Dance team and I teach Maypole dancing.

I have been a member of the Bedford Society Committee for 8 years and value the opportunity to help alumni to keep in touch and to keep the spirit of Bedford College alive.

I studied History at Bedford College from 1962 to 1965, and like many of my contemporaries was the first of my family to go to University. It was unforgettably exciting to come to the Big Smoke from a Leicestershire village, live in stunning Regents’ Park and to be taught by such erudite and supportive academics as Conrad Russell and Joe Mordaunt Crook. I sang in Imperial College Choir, performed with ULU Gilbert and Sullivan Society and was Treasurer of the Students’ Union; studying tended to take place in the small hours.

From an all-female College I joined the predominantly male Ministry of Transport as a fast stream entrant. There followed 20 different jobs in 5 different Departments over 35+ years in the Civil Service, memorable amongst them the first failed attempt at Devolution, inner city regeneration after the 1981 riots, Private Secretary to both Labour and Conservative Transport Ministers, and “landlady” of the Government’s 70m square feet of office space. In my final full time post as Director General Environment I headed the UK delegation to the Kyoto Climate Change Conference and the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

I then changed tack with a variety of appointments in the private, public and charitable sectors. I served as a Crown Estate Commissioner, a non-executive Director of Pennon Group, Chair of the National Forest Company in the Midlands ex-coalfields (tree cover coming on nicely) and Chair of Keep Britain Tidy (alas not much progress); and I am currently a Governor of Plymouth University.

I was proud to have been awarded the Reid Arts Scholarship as an undergraduate and even more so to have been made an Honorary Fellow of Royal Holloway and Bedford New College. In return I am funding an annual Scholarship for a Post Graduate MA in History, in memory of my sister who also read History at Bedford - a warm thank you to the College which gave me such a firm foundation and direction for my adult life.

Joseph Spring is a mathematician and computer scientist. His initial training in mathematics centred on developing skills in analytic and algebraic disciplines with applications in Newtonian, Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics, logic, classical probability, quantum theory and relativity. Subsequent training focused in operator theory, quantum probability and quantum stochastic calculus. In computer science his initial training involved programming, formal languages, cryptography and security in networks and distributed systems, quantum Information and computation.

Joseph’s research interests include classical and quantum distributed systems, dynamics, intrusion detection schemes, geometric applications to quantum based systems and applications of quantum stochastic calculus.

Joseph currently lectures in cyber security, quantum computing, programming paradigms, measures and models for software engineering, secure systems programming and distributed systems security. He continues to supervise students for PhD, MPhil, MSc (Res), MSc and BSc (Hons) in areas relating to quantum distributed systems, cyber security, intrusion detection, applications of game theory to secure systems, security and VoIP, security and the internet of things, cryptography, cryptographic algorithms, and the representation of quantum states via hyperbolic geometry.

Joseph’s international interests have involved the management of educational links in Hungary, India, Ireland, Malta and Oman