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Principal's Blog

Radnor House parents receive a Weekly Bulletin of news information, highlights of achievements and details of forthcoming events, as well as additional communications from other departments and individuals as necessary.

Our Principal, Darryl Wideman, also writes a regular blog to share his thoughts about education and the world with a wider audience, which you can read below.

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  • Healthy Scepticism

    My first duty this week is to draw your attention to something genuinely shocking that is taking place before our very eyes, and yet often goes unseen.  You need to be aware of the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO), which is a colourless, tasteless liquid found in acid rain, nuclear waste a...
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  • Irrational Apes

    The writing of last week’s blog proved to be a satisfying experience in ticking a few more ideas off my list of unfinished business and moving towards a welcome point of closure.  For not dissimilar reasons, I have created a file on my computer called ‘Unused Material’, which...
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  • Tidying Up

    It occurred to me over the half-term break that I will need to be particularly organised with these blogs in the coming months to ensure I tell you everything I want to share with you before the time comes to move on – though I already know that this is a target I will miss.  I suppose I...
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  • How Britain Ends

    I highlighted last week that I enjoyed the journalist Gavin Esler’s book ‘How Britain Ends’, albeit with a caveat or two about its repetitiveness in places and how quickly books of political commentary go out of date.  Our attention is unsurprisingly focused on the Middle East...
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  • The News Where You Are

    The arguments around the cancellation of the HS2 link from Birmingham to Manchester, which came on top of the previous news that the links to Sheffield, Leeds and Bradford were no longer part of the plan either, reminded me of what it is like not living in London.  If you have never experienced...
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  • Glory Days

    I am not a great believer in looking backwards, or indeed forwards, preferring for the most part to live in the present and worry about tomorrow later – usually when it becomes today.  Reminiscing about days gone by, telling tales of how much better everything was in the past and hanging...
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  • The Time Has Come

      ‘The time has come,' the Walrus said, To talk of many things: Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, Of cabbages and kings, And why the sea is boiling hot, And whether pigs have wings.'
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  • Our Shared Planet

    It was Aristotle who apparently said that we do not see the world as it is; we see it as we think it is, which feels like a piece of wisdom worthy of coming down through the ages.  However, the more I read, the more it becomes clear that most of the quotations we assign to figures of the past...
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  • An Immense World

    In my assemblies with the pupils this week, I shared with them a few facts and figures that I gleaned from my summer book list, and I read them the introduction to Ed Yong’s ‘An Immense World’ because I had enjoyed it so much.  Although I would not describe this year as a bump...
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  • Principal’s Speech – July 2023

    There is a line at the end of the Blackadder Goes Forth series when the main characters think the First World War has ended and they will not, after all, have to leave their trenches and face the dangers of the enemy machine guns.  Captain Darling says, ‘Thank God!  We lived through...
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  • The Game of Chance

    Last week’s blog featured a book called ‘Maths on the Back of an Envelope’ by Rob Eastaway, which might make a useful read for budding mathematicians over the summer.  There were just a couple of points that I wanted to finish off before we move on, both related to some of the...
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  • Trees, Seeds and Envelopes

    After a couple of rather melancholic weeks looking at the writing of W.G. Sebald, I promised something a bit more upbeat this week, for which I turn to a book about trees, a few thoughts about seeds and some mathematical puzzles offered via the back of an envelope.  It may all be a bit eclectic...
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