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Head'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 Head, 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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  • Origins - For Good and Ill

    I took so long last week explaining how I came to own a copy of Origins that I ran out of time to share as much of it as I had intended.  As I said, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, particularly the more anthropological aspects about how the environment of the planet shaped...
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  • Difficult - In So Many Ways

    [Photo: St Andrews - Patrick Dieudonne / Robert Harding World Imagery / Universal Images Group] Apparently, it is not easy to buy presents for me.  When asked what I want for my birthday or at Christmas, I usually struggle to come up with anything creative by way of helping my family...
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  • Recollections May Vary

    [Photo: Marina Tsvetaeva, Russian poet] As soon as I saw those three splendid words splashed across the front pages of several of the tabloid newspapers this week, I knew I had to use them as the title for this week’s blog.  Frustratingly, I wrote something at the w...
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  • Missing A Trick

    It is usually relatively easy for me to remember conversations I have had with people and what I have told them.  This is not because I have some particular gifts of memory or insight, but more likely because I only have a finite resource of material on which to draw...
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  • Is There Life on Mars?

    [Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech] No, Mr Bowie, there is not, so can we all move on, please?  Mind you, it would be quite something if the last image beamed back to NASA headquarters from their space rover was a creature breaking off the camera and eating it for lunch!  I grew up being regularl...
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  • Frost-Resistant Turnips

    Despite my somewhat old-fashioned approach and ongoing struggles to engage with aspects of the technological revolution, I still think I can add value to the teaching of A Level History, not least in my attempts to show pupils that the best way to learn more about something is usually...
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  • Planet A or Planet B?

    [Photo: UNIVERSAL STUDIOS / MOUNTAIN, PETER / Album / Universal Images Group Rights Managed]    I will pay a final visit this week, at least for the time being, to Rutger Bregman’s ‘Humankind: A Hopeful History’, because it is a book for optimists, and I think the...
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  • Another Grim Metaphor

    In my ongoing attempts both to better myself and survive the tedium of lockdown, I watched two online lectures this week, each of which focused on English literature and language, which is just outside my comfort zone, where the best learning often takes place. 
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  • This Is Interesting

    Horizons, ambitions and the usual sources of pleasure may have narrowed for most of us in the last few months, but among all the frustrations there have also been some additional opportunities, which for me usually means the chance to read another book.  I cannot quite explain why, but I seem t...
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  • The Oracle of Twickenham

    Let’s be clear from the outset – no one likes a smart alec, and there is no skill in being wise after the event.  Having taught history for so many years, I am all too familiar with the benefit of hindsight and how it can alter our perspective of what actually happene...
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  • Read for Pleasure, Write to Think

    ‘The faintest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory’ may or may not be a Chinese proverb – people online seem to have remarkably powerful views about things that seem of limited importance to me – but it is a useful way to summarise one of my key approaches to educat...
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  • Let The Games Begin

    I am still trying to come to terms with the decision to allow three different households to mix over five days at Christmas this year.  Watching Gogglebox last week, it was once again interesting to see the reaction to the government announcement.  There was no sense th...
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