Sixth Form Prize 1973
Results and report
The Spectator offered a prize of £250, to be awarded either to an outright winner or to be divided at the discretion of the judges among a number of winners to a Maximum of five. Unlike last year, When an outside panel of judges was used, this year all the judges were on The Spectator staff. This made for swifter judging, and we do not think the results would have been very much different had an outside panel been used. The standard of entries was much higher than last year, and the number considerably greater. The most popular subject by far was ' A winter's tale ', and, this being so, all but the most outstanding entries on this subject were ruthlessly eliminated. The question, "Is professionalism destroying sport?" aroused nothing More than competent interest. Yeats's famo,us quotation, ' Things fall apart. . .' provoked a great deal of excellent stuff (including a couple of pieces by sixth-formers apparently unaware of the quotation's provenance). ' Life on a production line' was a dingy subject, but less than dingHY treated by three or four very Vigorous competitors. 'What chance of another Golden Age?' We thought to be difficult, but the response was equal to the challenge.' Elegy for a soldier killed in action ' produced what was, in its Way, a marvellous outpouring of verse, almost all of it inspired by Northern Ireland.
What we did was to weed out everyone whose contribution we thought either fell short of ' S' or Oxbridge scholarship levels or, alternatively, lacked sufficient original bite to win.
Next, we produced a short short-list with sixteen names on it. Half of these were, reluctantly,' eliminated on the ground that, While any of them might have been a runner-up, none of them would really fit as the chief prize winner. These eight, very highly Commended, were: Peter Joseph Williams (Cheltenham Grammar School), Nicola Devlin (Badmint,911 School, Westbury-on-Trym), Nimbra Homes (Swanwick Mall Grammar School, Somercotes, herby), R. 4. S. Maher (Clifton College), Martin F. M. Smith (Reading School), Evan Chalmers (hunfermline High School), Elizabeth Hardley (Wade Deacon Grammar School, Widnes), and Stephen Cahalan (South Shields Grammar Tech. for Boys). We now were down to eight — arid already one or two of the first choices' of our examining team had been eliminated. More, sadly, had to go. First was ChristoPher Joslin, of the Boys' GramMar School, Torquay, whose essay on 'God Save The Queen' Was a highly competent and assured piece of work. ' The Elegy'
of Eileen Miller, from the Methodist College Belfast, was, we thought, most touching of the ele gies (and this, with others, will be published later). Jacqueline Crust, of Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Alford, Lincs, wrote a short story on ' Things fall apart ' which was highly favoured by two of us, less so by the other two: its skill was, perhaps, marred by a sentimental ending. The verses on the same subject, by S. J. Parker of the St Thomas Aquinas Gram mar School, Headingly, Leeds, were also admired, but faulted on grounds of facility. We all thought that the best essay on the hardest subject was that by John J. Page, of the Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College, Darlington, on ' What is time?' He relied less on quotations than did other essayists who chose this subject, but he still ended up with T. S. Eliot.
We now were left with three. From the Crandon Institute, Montevideo, Uruguay, Maria del Carmen Balestie had sent in a long, rather El iotesque poem on 'Things fall apart' which was beautifully worked out, and which improved upon each re-reading. Carmen Wheatley, of Loreto College, St Albans, sent us in 'A winter's tale' which, truth to say, could have gone under almost any other title, Ilut which we all liked for its inventiveness and a kind of toughness which went against the grain of her story. And Francis Mace, of St Mary's, Darlington, contributed a finely-controlled dialogue on ' What chance of another Golden Age?' which, despite some rather extraneous and unnecessary ' colour ', had very distinct ' alpha ' content indeed,
We had £250 to award in prizes, and books to the value of £250 to the winner's school. We finally decided to award joint first prizes of £100 each to Maria del Carmen Balestie and to Francis Mace, and a 'best runner-up' prize of £50 to Carmen Wheatley. So: £100 prize: Francis Mace, 50 Reid Street, Darlington; and books to the value of £250 to St Mary's School, Darlington. £100 prize: Maria del Carmen Balestie, of Av. Centenaria 3180, Montevideo, Uruguay.
E50 prize: Carmen Wheatley, 12 Shakespeare Road, Harpenden, Herts.
Francis Mace's entry is published below. The other winning entries will be published later.
In addition to those already mentioned, the following entries were highly commended by the judges: Martin Palmer (Hayes School), Jane Williams (Belfast Royal Academy), Ian Hughes (Bedford Modern School), Barrie Edwards (St Dunstan's College), Celia Heatley (Plymstock School), Catherine Ellis (Cheltenham Ladies' College), Paul M. Sains (Ranelagh School), Alison Light (Patsmouth Southern Grammar School), Christopher Benjamin (Bishop Douglas Comprehensive), Jonathan Solly (Maidstone Grammar School), Linda Anne Kedshaw (Blackfyne Secondary School), A. M. Pitts (Lawrence Sheriff School). Robin Richard Marshall (St Austell Grammar School), David Hurst (St Mary's Darlington), Nicola Clark (St Mary's Convent, Dorset), Martin Landon Smith (South Devon Technical College), John Kevin Curtice (Truro School), Susanna G. Nutsford (Arnold High School for Girls), Miriam Attwood (Simon Langton Grammar School for Girls), J. R. Atkinson (Preston Sixth Form College), Michael A. Kelly (Park Lane College, Leeds), Pippa Johnson (Ancaster House, Bexhill), Jonathan P. C. Brown (The' Edinburgh Academy), Peter Mona
ghan (International School of Geneva), Parita Trivedy (North London Collegiate School), Paul Thomas (Catford School for boys), Jane C. Augier (Combe Banks School Sundridge), Paul J. Burns (St Francis Xavier's College, Wciolton), Annamaria Jeffries (St Mary's College, Leeds), A. H. V. Schapira (Bradford Grammar School), Stephen Rabley (Plymstock Comprehensive). Wendy J. White (Cowley, School for Girls), J. D. Macdonald (Trinity College Perthshire), John Paul Kuschniv (Priory Boys' School, Shrewsbury), Tim Travis (Newport Grammar), John A. Bell Muir (King Edward VI School Nuneaton), K. Ridgeon (Lord Wandsworth College), Penelope Hinnitt (St Michael's Pet. worth).
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