Wadham Cornwall (Lennard Bequest) Reading Party 2025

In the dim future, when a social historian as yet unborn attempts to write the long and colourful history of Wadham’s Cornwall reading party, she may well find that the first post-Brat reading party poses more questions than answers. Can a climate change without getting hotter or colder? On what grounds might an attendee of the Eras tour legitimately identify as not a Swiftie? Who actually were the mysterious Wye and Dot?

The fifty-second annual Lennard Bequest reading party was once again held in the beautiful surroundings of Lamledra House on the south coast of Cornwall. Applications were, as usual, solicited from all current undergraduates, and competition for places was lively. The successful fifteen applicants were a mix of third- and fourth-year students, reading subjects on a spectrum from Maths to French and Arabic.

We were delighted to welcome back two returnees, Caitlin Russell and Yasmine Amirouch, from the 2024 reading party. Alice Baldock and Peter Thonemann, the two senior members present, took the lead on yoga and schottisches. On the first night we drank our traditional toasts to the late Reggie Lennard, whose generous bequest continues to fund many of the reading party’s costs, and to the great Ray Ockenden, founder and leader of the reading party for many years.

The core purpose of the reading party is to enable final-year students to get a serious head-start on Finals revision, and seven hours were set aside each day for quiet self-directed work. Members of the party pursued topics ranging from Minoan palaces to game theory, and from Wordsworth to human impermanence in Old English monastic poetry. Milla Kahl-el Gabry triumphantly completed her thesis with seconds to spare, Raphael Xelot-Wilson helpfully expanded our collective repertoire of adjectives, and several reading party members drew, knitted and painted with extraordinary talent and beauty.

With seventeen people around the dinner table, cooking and washing-up were major enterprises, but few recent reading parties have seen such exceptional culinary skills on display. Seun Sowunmi, surely the finest Lamledran baker in living memory, comfortably won the cooking with her breathtaking vanilla cake, although Suzi Darrington’s vegan bread-and-butter pudding ran it a very close second. Several days of splendid sunshine enabled some lengthy afternoon excursions, including walks to Mevagissey and to Hemmick beach, and a memorable trip to the Lost Gardens of Heligan, where Issy Gardner initiated a touching friendship with two personality-rich donkeys. Grace Kind and Milly Collins were notably competent drivers for the party, keeping a cool head during their occasional encounters with members of the Cornish undead community.

Evening entertainment included the traditional round of Mafia, in which Alice Graham’s dark arts proved too exciting for Grace Kind’s dental stability, and a diverting bout of Murder in the Dark, for which, unfortunately, Jeshin Muragiah proved to be the wrong shape. Leoni Powers won the table-tennis swimming bet, and Frankie Peacock led us in a wonderful ceilidh, enlivened by Anjali Cheung’s invigorating Indian dance interlude, with ursine musical accompaniment from Emilia Osztafi, Alice Graham and others. Musical innovation was in fact a keynote of the week, with Caitlin Russell leading the party in a lively bonfire sing-along on the theme of human-animal relations.

A hard-working and memorable week was had by all. Next year’s reading party will be advertised in January 2026.