In this first biographical interview, Professor Sir Roy Calne discusses early family life in Richmond Surrey, a family motor engineering business and the mechanical and modelling interests this assisted. Biographical insights into parents Joseph and Eileen Calne are followed by reflections on schooling, first in Richmond, then Marlow, Surrey, at Collet Court, later in North Wales, Ludlow and Brighton, a progression partly influenced by wartime changes in the location of family and schools. How schooldays in North Wales influenced interests in natural history, landscape and painting is then outlined. From the wartime quarters of Dulwich College Preparatory School at Betws-y-Coed, the story moves in 1943 to Lancing College and Ludlow, where the school spent the war years. The impact of three schoolmasters, Chamberlain, Saw and Russell Flint is acknowledged in the course of reviewing Lancing days, and there is reference to ornithological interests, painting, house life and a characteristic rebelliousness flouting petty authority. The roots of a commitment to medicine and surgery are also dissected back as far as preparatory schools days, with thoughts of surgery fundamentally a projection of motor engineering interests into a more fascinating realm of biology, where thoughts of spare part replacement were eventually to register. Before conversation turns, however, to medical training, there is comment on two post war years in a school restored to its Lancing, Sussex home, with thoughts on its creator, Nathaniel Woodard and the cathedral-like chapel he created. Finally, thoughts turn to the entry of a sixteen-year-old student to Guy's Hospital Medical School in 1947 and a remarkable post-war undergraduate entry mainly of ex-servicemen.
Joseph Robert Calne, Eileen Calne, Donald Calne, Lancing College, Lancing College Chapel, Lancing College masters: Ken Saw, Francis Russell Flint, Christopher Chamberlain, Dulwich College Preparatory School, Collet Court School, Colwyn Bay, Conway Valley, Betws-y-Coed.
Administration, Geriatrics, Health services administration, Science and state (science funding/policy), General surgery,
vid-035, MSVA_152
Permanent link to this resource: https://doi.org/10.24384/000181
Calne, RoyBlythe, Max
Learning Resources
Original artefact: 1996 RADAR resource: 2017
Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge, UK
© The Royal College of Physicians; Oxford Brookes University Published by Oxford Brookes UniversityAll rights reserved.