The Repton School Upper Sixth Form Lecture Programme was established in 2005 with the stated aim of informing, inspiring and provoking our students. Lectures usually take place on Friday afternoons, and over the last two years we have been fortunate to welcome a diverse range of speakers to the School such as Justin King, the Chief Executive of Sainsburys, Matthew Parris, the journalist and author and Tom Avery, the polar explorer, to name but a few. Pupils are given the opportunity to lunch or to share a cup of tea with speakers.
Friday 11th September - Paul Deegan: The Quest
Wednesday 16th September - Freddie Knoller: Deperate Journeys
Friday 6th November - Benedict Allen: tbc
Friday 20th November - Martha Holmes: LIFE:a talk based on BBC Wildlife series
About the speakers:
After co-leading an environmental expedition to Everest when he was 18, Paul Deegan made two unsuccessful attempts to climb the world’s highest mountain in the 1990s. One of these took place during the infamous ‘Into Thin Air’ storm. After a hiatus of eight years, he returned to Everest in a final bid to reach the top of the world.
Paul’s other expeditions have taken him to the summits of the highest mountains in North and South America, to an unexplored mountain range in Central Asia, and to the rarely-visited Indian island of Car Nicobar.
Publications ranging from The Sunday Times to Geographical (the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society) have published more than 250 of Paul’s articles on destinations as diverse as Antarctica, Zanskar, and the Galápagos. Paul’s first book received an award at the U.S. National Outdoor Book Awards. Vist his website at www.pauldeegan.com
Freddie Knoller, aged 85, is a holocaust survivor. He was born in Vienna in 1921 and his early childhood was spent living happily with his parents and two brothers. The family were well known for their musical abilities and were often seen performing on the stage and at various charity functions. As a young boy, Freddie was so used to anti-Semitism that he hardly questioned it, not since the day at school when, aged six years old, he punched a fellow pupil for shouting "Sau Jud" at him.
On 11 March 1938, everything changed when Austria was annexed by Germany. Freddie’s life, during the tragic period of 1938 – 1945 and during which time 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, reads like a novel - arrests, prison, escapes, hiding with false papers, joining the resistance and concentration camps. Waving farewell to his parents at seventeen (whom he was never to see again), he went on to survive the horrors of a bombing, escaped to France, was interned, escaped again and then made his way to Paris where he spent an extraordinary two years living on commissions from German soldiers. But that was only the beginning of his extraordinary story. Arrested by the Gestapo, Freddie fled and joined the Resistance. A betrayal led to his arrest and deportation to Auschwitz. He survived the camp and the infamous death march through the resources of luck, friendship and optimism. Finally, after a period in Dora Nordhausen, where he was forced to witness the hideous executions of other slave labourers, the British liberated him from Belsen-Bergen on April 15th 1945.
Not content to settle quietly into retirement, Freddie’s mission is to get out and tell his life story to as many people as he can - not only to young people but also to the wider public. Often working with the Holocaust Education Trust, he aims to raise awareness and understanding of the Holocaust and explain its relevance today, for he firmly believes that the Holocaust must have a permanent place in our nation’s collective memor
Dr. Martha Holmes is a Series Producer for the BBC's Natural History Unit (NHU). She has worked on many award-winning series, including the much acclaimed 'Life in the Freezer' and 'Wildlife Special: Polar Bear'. She has also produced numerous films for 'Wildlife on One' focussing in turn on hippos, snakes, otters and coral reefs.
More recently, she was one of the Producers on the celebrated 'Blue Planet' series, and presented the environmental show to accompany the series. She has also series produced 'Nile' and the factual dramas of the 'Manhunters' series. Martha is currently working as a series producer on the NHU's next big landmark series 'Life', due to be screened in 2009.
For last year's lecture series and details of the speakers, please click here.