The Roger Lancelyn Green Memorial Trust has provided successive donations to the Greek Play since its inception in 1991 and we are incredibly grateful to its founded and lead Trustee, Scirard Lancelyn-Green for this kind gift that enables us to stage the triennial production. In this piece Scirard shares his experiences at Bradfield and motivations for establishing the Trust that enables the defining experience of many Bradfieldians time at the College…

Scirard’s father, Roger Lancelyn Green, was the British biographer and children’s writer who formed part of the Inklings literary discussion group with CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. He studied under CS Lewis at Merton College, where be obtained a BLitt degree and subsequently acted as Deputy librarian at Merton, then became a William Noble Research Fellow in English Literature at the University of Liverpool between 1950 and 1952, wrote The Tales of Troy (1958), Tales of the Greek Heroes (1958), Tales of Ancient Egypt (1967).

When living in Oxford Roger identified Bradfield as the place that he would like his two sons, Scirard and Richard, to be educated at, because of the production of the Greek Play. Young Scirard however had little interest in Greek per se, he was a scientist and at the time of the ‘3Gs’ German, Greek and Geography, Scirard elected to study German given its utility when studying sciences.

Scirard would however come to be integral to the Greek play in another way, from behind the scenes, as a member of the stage crew, notably the lighting. His love of lighting began at prep school where he built a set of footlights. Having built up experience, he was first in the queue for lighting of Bradfield Productions, including the Greek Play. In an era before ‘Health and Safety’, the pupils were allowed to experiment in their areas of interest. ‘Stage lighting at the time I was at Bradfield was heavy kit with resistance dimming and wiring to the lights done with terminal strip and insulating tape!’. The College electrician noted that he recognised that Scirard had connected the lighting up to the mains electricity, which was his job, but no accidents happened, so all was well.

Bradfield provided a great liberty and independence when pursing areas of interest. Scirard fondly remembers setting up ‘The College Press’ in the wine cellar basement at Crossways. The boys accessed the building via the barrel chute and could come and go as they pleased. The Press was not for literary content, but for producing Christmas cards and the like, an endeavour for those interested in the mechanics of letterpress printing rather than the content.

He also remembers evenings in the observatory, looking hopefully for stars that were frustratingly whimsical in their appearance. He also remembers pulling a ‘Physics all-nighter’. Armed with coffee and hope, two physicists asked for permission to use the specialist equipment in the Physics lab to conduct the ‘Cavendish’s Balance Experiment’, which enables determination of the absolute gravitational constant (G). The experiment needed to be conducted at night to minimise the disruption caused by vibration. Scirard said they did achieve a fairly good result, but also came to recognise the timings of the local bus, as the vibrations it made on passing through Bradfield were prominent in their experiment.

At Bradfield he studied Maths, Physics and Chemistry, achieving A’s in the first two but a B in the latter; he feared for his place at Merton College, where he hoped to follow his father. He was however saved by a strong score in his General Paper where his literary knowledge set him apart from his fellow scientists and was duly accepted to read Physics.

In addition to his degree Scirard became heavily involved in theatre lighting for university productions in Oxford, being enlisted to support 4 or 5 shows a term, many of which were hosted at the Oxford Playhouse with the others being staged in non-purpose built venues. In addition, he was Chief Electrician of the Oxford and Cambridge Shakespeare Company and over the six weeks of his Christmas breaks he participated in tours to the US, where he worked alongside professional set designers to produce high quality shows. Three were directed by Jonathan Miller, co-author of ‘Beyond the Fringe’ which starred Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett and one by Elijah Moshinsky who later saw success as both opera and theatre director.

Following Merton, Scirard established his own theatre lighting company and indeed Bradfield still use ‘Henley Theatre Services’, a spin off from his former company to support their theatre productions.

On 6 June 1991 Scirard established the Roger Lancelyn Green Memorial Trust in honour of his father with the aim of supporting the continued production of a play in Ancient Greek at Bradfield. The trust also provides bursarial support to pupils performing in the Greek Play to allow them to participate in the post production tour. Talking of his motivation for establishing the trust

‘Having visited the ancient Greek sites with my father and known his love of all things Greek, I wanted to mark his life with a lasting memorial that might inspire others’

In the last iteration of the Greek play ‘Oedipus Tyrannus’ was performed in a new style format, with the main scenes performed in English whilst the performance was retained in Ancient Greek. Scirard sees this new format as a great compromise between retaining the tradition, whilst making the production more accessible to performers and audiences. ‘In my day we had to try to follow the synopsis in the programme to get the gist of what was taking place and it wasn’t always very successful’. He is however keen to retain the Ancient Greek element, as this, after all, was the purpose of setting up the fund.

Of his wider family, Scirard’s late younger brother, Richard (A 66-71), was the literary member of the family and created what became the Conan Doyle Collections at Portsmouth Library and City Museum. His memorial in the Times opened ‘The stage lost a fine actor, said Dr Watson in A Scandal in Bohemia, when Holmes became a specialist in crime’. And it was remarked by friends of Richard that the stage lost another fine actor when he became a specialist in Sherlock Holmes.

Scirard normally only visits the College for the Greek Play, so once every three years, but we were delighted that he were able to also join us for the Tempus Fugit lunch in October 2025, where he had the opportunity to see the College in broader terms and take a College tour. ‘There is still much that I remember although about half the buildings appear to be new since I was here’