The Mitre Lounge is a place where several of the school's societies meet - to create an awareness for current Bishops students of the ODU where they will one day belong. 

On Tuesday 22 July, The Historical Bench, one of the many school societies at Bishops, met in The Mitre Lounge for a discussion on current Geo-Politics.  The nature of the society is to bring awareness of international trends in history & politics to the students. 

A former teacher at Bishops, Mr Michael Fisher inspired Dr Paul Murray the ODA who also teaches history to the AS and A level students, to found a new society at the occasion of Bishops' 150th year and suggested the idea of a 'bench' much like at the school he attended, Ampleforth College in the UK. Hence, The Historical Bench!  Looking at its offering of co-curricular activities, today, Ampleforth College still offers a wide range of societies much like Bishops!

Paul presented a talk with overhead slides on the topic of the changing nature of International Diplomacy.  He outlined the idea of international diplomacy, explaining the importance of 'Summits' such as the G20, and then closer to home, the recent meeting at presidential level of the SA President Cyril Ramaphosa and his US counterpart Donald Trump, at the White House on 22 May 2025. 

This meeting was contextualised for other US President / SA President meetings including the Clinton, Bush & Obama administrations. 

However, and most interesting of all probably for the students, was the discussion around the way the narrative of golfing as a sport, was brought into the meeting.

The House therefore had to decide whether this was a masterstroke - SA golfers were present, and the US President seemed to think highly of their achievements, Goosen, Player, Else and others; also mentioning by Pres. Trump is the fact that SA is producing excellent young and up-coming international golfers.  Although the Pres. did not specifically name them, one assumes they include players such as Cristiaan Maas, Kieron van Wyk, Kayle Wykes and Charl Barnard, Dylan Kayne, Zané Kleynhans, Pearce Lewin, Kesha Louw, and Gia Raad and others.

It was important for aspirant political scientists and historians to recognize how side-issues such as we saw at the Capitol with the Ramaphosa/Trump meeting, can be used as 'tactics' in such meetings.

To illustrate this there could be no better example of the Geneva Summit in 1985 between Reagan and Gorbachev in a documentary narrated by Cambridge Historian Sir David Reynolds: "Reagan and Gorbachev: Geneva Summit 1985 - The Best Documentary Ever".  

Students for The Historical Bench are encouraged to engage with the material ahead of the society meeting (they were sent the video clip of the Ramaphosa/Trump meeting) which meant that when they attended 22 July, they were well-informed of what had taken place.

In the photograph above are LtR: Sam Nicholson (Gr 9: GH), Troy Haskel (Gr 11: MH), Jack Buckham (Gr 12: MH), Michael Mafunda (Gr 11: OH) and Alec Alfaro-Mclauchlin (Gr 11: GH) - apologies were given by Luke Carter (HoS - Gr 12: FH), and David Lewis (Gr 12: GH). 

ODs who would like to present related and relevant topics to societies at Bishops can contact Paul Murray pmurray@bishops.org.za

 Several ODs have already done so and have come to/and are coming to Bishops, to talk to the students through this forum.