New: The F H Pasby Prize

A generous new prize aims to offer encouragement to Creative Writing Master's students.

A friend of the Department's Master's in Creative Writing - Lisa Sargood - has generously decided to fund a prize which will award £500 to the student on the course who receives the highest mark at the end of the first year.

The prize is to be named the F H Pasby Prize after Lisa's grandfather who was passionate about literature and encouraged Lisa to take a positive interest in literature and writing.

Lisa was eager for the prize to be awarded at the end of the first year to reflect the encouragement that her grandfather gave her to study and to achieve her best. She hopes that the prize will encourage students at the end of their first year to continue to strive to achieve their full potential in their second year.

Lisa told us:

'My grandfather Frank H Pasby was born in 1918. Clever and sporty he won a place at grammar school but - not unusually for his time - his parents couldn't afford to send him. After leaving school he joined the Navy but an accident on board ship saw him invalided home just before the start of the Second World War. In 1940 he met my grandmother, Dorothy (she was born in Headington Hill House in Oxford) and they set up home in West London. A creative and sociable pair they played in a band together and my grandfather wrote plays. Sadly none survive.'

'He was a great advocate of education, encouraging my mother to stay on at school at a time and in a class where female learning was not seen as a high priority. His own love of books and history he passed to her and to me.'

'As a child I remember him as incredibly patient and kind, keen to see all of his grandchildren fulfil their potential. He liked us to read aloud, to learn and understand new words. My first encounter with Shakespeare was a worn red leather gilt edged copy of the Collected Works that he gave me. The pages so thin and delicate. I was too young to absorb it then but I still recall my sense that it was precious and contained important things.'

'He died very suddenly in his late fifties when I was ten. It was a huge shock but such was his impact, in particular on my love of learning that I do believe I carried him with me through school and university. I always felt he would have been there rooting for me to keep going and most importantly, to enjoy the opportunity to encounter new books, thinkers and writers.'

'His legacy for me has been profound and sustaining so I want now to honour his care and his memory in the spirit that I think he would have supported - the encouragement of personal creative effort and development (never an easy endeavour...) and a sheer love of words and stories and the magic they can weave.'

Published 29 April 2013