The McEachran Prize 2025: showcasing Salopian spells

Nineteen contestants, with representatives from every year group, presented themselves in the Moser Library on Monday 10th February for one of Shrewsbury School’s most prestigious events – the McEachran Competition.  

Competitors choose a line or two of prose or poetry, called their ‘Spell’ – a term coined by the legendary Frank McEachran, also known as ‘Kek’, whose memory as an extraordinary teacher lives on, despite his death nearly 50 years ago. 

Each participant then delivers a freestyle talk of not more than four minutes on anything suggested to them by the words or ideas in the Spell. This is not a competition for the faint-hearted, and it is quite wonderful to see fresh-faced Third Formers competing alongside more careworn Upper Sixth Formers, taking time out from preparing for their final exams. It is a competition for the boldest and most original minds, and judging from this year’s talks, Shrewsbury has plenty of these! 

 As ever, the audience was treated to a dizzying range of ideas, styles and texts, drawn from a wider range of sources from contemporary song lyrics to the words of Shakespeare and Nietzsche. In his reflections on, and reminiscences of, being taught by Kek in the early 1970s, the adjudicator, old Salopian and former Churchill’s Housemaster and teacher of English, Richard Hudson, remarked on how many of this year’s talks were meditations on the way life should be lived, perhaps much more of a preoccupation for today’s youth than it was in his own younger years, when the world seemed a more certain place. 

All were worthy of reward, but – alas - choices had to be made!  The Senior Prize was awarded to Rigg’s Hall Upper Sixth Former John L (‘The poorest way to face life is with a sneer’) and the Junior Prize to Moser’s Hall Fourth Former Francesca T (‘Do not go gentle into that good night’). Highly commended in the Senior category was Mary Sidney Hall Lower Sixth Former Alanood A (‘If you jump in muddy puddles, you must wear your boots’) and in the Junior category Queen’s Fifth Former Lulu G (‘Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.’)   

As ever, an inspiring evening of intellectual exuberance and passion.