London garden party

9 June 2016

Hertford College will be holding a garden party for alumni and friends near Regent’s Park on Thursday 9 June.

Nick Carn (1976, English Language & Literature) is kindly hosting us in his beautiful garden on Park Village East. Featured in a 2014 edition of Country Life, it has been described as “a boundary-less sea of green.”

We look forward to a friendly catch up – similar to the very popular November London Drinks – in a garden setting.

Music will be provided by saxophonist Ellie McMurray (from the Ferio Saxophone Quartet) and harpist Cecilia Sultana de Maria.

Tickets cost £15 per person and include drinks and canapés; guests are welcome. 

We have our fingers crossed for a beautiful summer evening in London. If the weather is wet we hope to still go ahead, so make sure to bring warm and waterproof clothing. An email with full details of how to get to Nick’s garden will be sent to all guests shortly before the event.

Please book your place on eventbrite using the form below. If you have any queries, please contact Claire Blake in the Development Office by emailing development [dot] office [at] hertford [dot] ox [dot] ac [dot] uk, or telephoning 01865 279428.

 

Appropriately given Hertford’s incorrigible political leanings, this house was for a while the home of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, the Fabian socialists.

They were very intimidating hosts. In his diary Kingsley Martin the former editor of the New Statesman tells of a visit to the Webb’s house:

“After lunch I asked Webb who seemed a little surprised if I could use the lavatory. Harold Laski and I walked away together [after lunch]. Harold told me that my request had been an extraordinary act of courage which no one had ever dared perform before in the Webb household. He said that the week before he had dined there with Ramsay McDonald and that he and the premier had had to make use of a timber yard on the way home.”

We hope to provide a rather warmer welcome!

– Nick Carn

More information about the garden is available on the National Gardens Scheme website. 

Photograph by Marianne Majerus for Country Life, 8 October 2014.