At this time of year we remember all members of this college who died in conflict. The names of the fallen in the First and Second World Wars, which are inscribed in our war memorials, are read out on Remembrance Sunday; and there is music and poetry in chapel for people of all faiths and none.

We were particularly saddened to read an item from Haileybury School about a young man who died 100 years ago.

Ralph Upton (pictured) attended Haileybury from 1911-1916. He was a college prefect who played cricket and rugby for the school. Ralph was then awarded a scholarship to Selwyn, but never got the chance to come here.

He was gazetted as a Second Lieutenant in the East Surrey Regiment on 11 August 1916. A soldier who had known Ralph at Cadet School wrote that he was ‘a worker whom anyone would choose to have on his side’.

Tragically, he was killed on 3 May 1917, aged just 19. His father wrote: ‘After his wonderful school career, he faced this terrible, gigantic, horrible War with such a spirit and such courage; all the greater for hating and scorning all the ugliness and cruelty of it…But he suffered and hid all that under his cheery, joking manner.’

We think of all Selwynites who fell in conflict, and those like Ralph who never came here, in our Remembrance services.