McEachran Prize 2022 – Return from Remote

The annual competition returned last week.

The most eccentric of Salopian prize competitions, the McEachran prize, celebrating the memory of the extraordinary Frank McEachran, known to the pupils as ‘Kek’, whose forty years at Shrewsbury ended with his death in 1976, last week returned with a vengeance from the Remote. Worries that last year’s video format might have fatally disrupted the continuity proved completely unfounded when a record number of competitors braved the stage in Hodgson Hall on Tuesday 8^th February.

As has become customary, the adjudicator, this year former Kek pupil and recently retired Churchill’s housemaster Richard Hudson, set the stage by reminding the competitors of the competition’s deceptively simple rules: a four-minute-maximum talk based on a piece of text, no matter how short, or from what genre, whose content must (a) be related to the chosen text, (b) be intellectually coherent, and (c) be interesting – the final criterion, satisfied par excellence by all this year’s speakers – perhaps the most difficult. Key to the spirit of the event is that presentational pzazz is not a relevant criterion for a prize, allowing ideas to take precedence over presentational skills.

This year was marked by an unusually large number of entrants from the Third and Fourth forms, with the pupils choosing their texts from song lyrics, modern poetry, classic literature and teenage fiction.  Much thought and imagination had gone into the preparation of the talks, all of which delighted audience and judge alike. This year the prize was shared between two Third formers, Charlotte K (M) and George R (PH). Charlotte chose a text from Joyce Carol Oates’ ghoulish Cardiff, by the Sea, with a reflection on the importance of looking behind the surface of things, while George R, choosing a sentence from The Martian by Andy Weir, reflected on how authors manipulate language to appeal to their chosen readership.

The senior section embraced a similarly eclectic selection of texts, with the prize awarded to George C (G, UVI) for a fascinating meditation on the hidden passion behind the phrase a fine pair of eyes from Jane Austen’s immortal Pride and Prejudice. Highly commended from a rich field was Laurie M (Rb, LVI) whose phrase from the film Bladerunner spawned a meditation on the unwisdom of striving for unattainable ideals of perfection.

In Lauren Temple, newly in post as Housemistress of Moser’s Hall, the McEachran Prize has a worthy champion. But our main congratulations must of course go to all the splendid – and brave – competitors.

RTH