These (and past entries) can be seen on the now-very-full wall outside the library. The competition exists to encourage our pupils to keep reading books — be they novels, poetry anthologies, biographies, or comics — over our long summer vacation. Whilst no researcher has yet uncovered the ‘silver bullet’ that improves a child’s creativity, spelling skills, and self-confidence in one fell swoop, regular reading is the closest thing we have found so far. Of course, it’s even nicer to be engrossed in a good book in an amazing environment.

We look for ‘interesting’ rather than ‘exotic’ or ‘expensive-to-travel-to’ places, and it was wonderful to see so many pupils clearly engrossed in their books amongst inspirational surroundings. Henry M was highly commended for his photograph of him reading a history book in the Castle of the Knights of St John in Turkey. So was Peter K for getting lost in Tolkien’s words in Hobbiton itself in New Zealand (of course, all NCS boys know the interesting connection between Tolkien and NCS; if you don’t, look it up in Dr Jenkinson’s school history). This year’s winner was Isaac for his atmospheric photograph of him alone with nothing but nature and a very good book in Damaraland, Namibia. Well done to all our entrants. We look forward to seeing photographs of our pupils reading in even more interesting places when we return in Michaelmas.