Shrewsbury

2023 McEachran Prize - the celebrated event returns to Shrewsbury

February 9th 2023

On a chilly evening in early February, what could be better than an evening in the Moser Library, listening to Salopians discussing their carefully chosen “spells”?

The McEachran Prize, awarded to the winner of this wonderfully unique competition, is a celebrated and much anticipated event in our school’s Fasti, and the class of 2023 did not disappoint. The illustrious Frank McEachran, who taught for forty years at Shrewsbury and whose passion and individuality are commemorated through this competition, would have been very pleased to see sixteen young people volunteering to share such a wide variety of interesting and engaging thoughts, sparked by carefully chosen lines of verse or prose.

Richard Hudson, former pupil of ‘Kek’ and, more latterly teacher of English and Housemaster of Churchill’s, was welcomed back to adjudicate – and nobody envied him the task of having to choose the winners from such a strong field!

The evening began with a reminder of the rules: students must talk for up to four minutes on the subject of their choice, the content of which has been inspired by a “spell” – a piece of text from any source or genre. There is no reward for slick delivery here – this is not a public speaking competition - rather, the talks are judged on the way the subject matter relates to the chosen text, the level of intellectual coherence and the interest and value of what they have to say.

This year’s “spells” came from a wide variety of sources, from The Velvet Underground to Herman Melville, from Woody Allen to John Milton. Without exception, the talks were hugely engaging, carefully considered and intellectually stimulating. Such is the personal nature of the competition, every person in the audience will have had their own individual view on who was the most deserving of the prize, with so many worthy contributors. But the adjudicator was the only person to make his choice.

Mr Hudson gave careful consideration to each talk and in the end made the following awards: the junior prize was shared between Violet H (M, III) and Matthew Wong (SH, IV). Charlotte reflected on the aphorism commonly associated with Winston Churchill: History is written by the victors. Matthew chose an extract from Keith Douglas poem, ‘Vergissmeinnicht’.

The senior prize was awarded to Edward S (Rt, UVI) who skilfully wove his spell into his speech, to explore the nature of Englishness and the value of the ordinary through examination of “the little old lady of College Street, who commanded no armies and attacked no religions, who was burnt at no stake and married no prince, whose life added no faintest ripple to the waves and storms and England.” (from ‘England, their England’ by A G Macdonnell).