News

Celebrations in words and music for Chancellor Bill Bryson

(10 November 2005)

Staff, students, graduates, friends and neighbours of Durham University gave long and loud applause to acclaim Bill Bryson as the University’s 11th Chancellor at a special ceremony in Durham Cathedral - also to the sound of bells, music and the exclusive premiere of a new poem by poet Anne Stevenson.

More than 1,000 people filled the Cathedral for the event. Staff gave speeches in honour of Bill Bryson himself plus three people nominated by him for the influence they have had on his life and work. The University Consort of Voices sang for him, the Reg Vardy (Ever Ready) Band in Residence and the University Organist played for him and the students of the Society of Change Ringers pealed the Cathedral bells before and after the ceremony. And Durham poet Anne Stevenson, on whom Bill Bryson conferred and honorary doctorate in June, gave the first public reading of a poem dedicated to the new Chancellor. Its title - An Even Shorter History of Nearly Everything - echoes his recent prize-winning book on science. Bill Bryson told the gathering: ”In Des Moines, Iowa, tonight, people will be going round saying to each other ‘What is that noise?’ It is the sound my old careers teacher spinning in his grave. “I have never been so warmly and generously welcomed anywhere else on earth. I am only just beginning my acquaintance with Durham and with the Campus and town at Stockton, but already as I have walked around people have been so kind in giving me their best wishes. This is simply astounding. Thank you for letting me be part of your world.” He also paid his personal tribute to the three candidates for honorary degree he had nominated to be part of the celebrations: Professor Richard Dawkins – author of many books that have raised awareness about scientific issues among a very wide public. He was presented for an honorary DSc – Doctor of Science – degree, by Deputy Dean of Science, Dr Madeline Eacott. Professor Stanley Wells – a distinguished expert on Shakespeare, whose work has widely influenced the study and performance of the plays. He received an honorary D Litt – Doctor of Letters – degree and was presented by Professor David Fuller, of the English Department of the University. The Reverend Nicholas Holtam – Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields church in London, writer, broadcaster and advocate for human rights, who is already a Durham graduate, with a BA in Geography and MA in Theology. He was presented by Deputy Dean of Arts & Humanities Dr Colin Crowder for an honorary DCL – Doctor of Civil Law – degree. Anne Stevenson introduced and read her poem, which was inspired by the ceremony’s celebration of learning and knowledge and brings in the imagery of two massive landmarks of the North East - Angel of the North and Durham Cathedral itself. (See text below) The Installation of Dr Bryson as Chancellor was conducted by the Vice-Chancellor, supported by the University Registrar Lee Sanders and President of Durham Students’ Union, Nick Pickles. Chairman of the University Council Mr Chris Moyes outlined the process of selecting a Chancellor, and revealed that among the suggested names the University passed over were Robocop, Homer Simpson and The Terminator. Bill Bryson is completing a week of visits in Durham and Stockton with a visit to Durham Town Hall with the Mayor, Councillor John Lightley, meetings with staff and students at a selection of departments and colleges in the University and to the new North East Science Learning Centre at Framwellgate School. An Even Shorter History of Nearly Everything Should you find yourself today on the road to Newcastle, You couldn’t miss, nailed to the horizon, The armed wings of the north’s super-angel Smelted from the embers of its past. Part phoenix, part satellite, part Lucifer, Faceless and sexless, it embodies vast Crowds of miniature working people Welded into an elevated whole, As if to cancel evolutionary nature And replace it with a single global soul. The Angel electronically stores the dead, Communicates by radar, commands Through the computer in its head. You’ll notice that it has dispensed with hands, So never could have built this grey cathedral Whose shoulders, a short nine hundred years ago, Shoved aside the coal seams and still stands, A Rock of Ages in the evening glow, Shrugging off raids by pylon and power cable– Our world the hands that raised it couldn’t know Any more than they could know the local stones They shaped with mathematical exactness For luminous Cuthbert and Bede’s stolen bones Were seas squeezed solid long before man’s genesis, Were relics, world upon world, beneath a crust They reckoned. . . sixty centuries in the making? Thin as a tissue dropped on Everest, But packed like New York with nearly everything That translates time into language for us. We need to name the images we trust. How is it that, alone among breeding creatures, We feel compelled to create for ourselves, Again and again in the image of ourselves, A sacred exoskeleton, claiming for ourselves Powers to preserve our uniqueness? Not as we are, But as shells leave signs in the sand: Relics of Christian worship, Christian war, Reminders that ‘in our beginning is our end’, Heaps of DNA in cryptic rooms, The Nevilles hacked to pieces on their tombs, News that this palace, theatre, fortress, prison Was achieved by some genius of the pointed arch Who read his Bible but couldn’t read the rocks Dragged from the carboniferous to frill a church With storms of fossils individual as snowflakes Three hundred million years adrift with the continents, Locked in the ooze of an equatorial ocean. What faith, what story, what fact is more remarkable Than this resurrection of the dead that represents The life in us, the strangeness of it all? This poem by Anne Stevenson was written to celebrate the installation of Bill Bryson as Chancellor of Durham University. She introduced and read the poem at the University’s public ceremony in Durham Cathedral on 9th November, 2005.