Ever to Excel

the archetypical Englishman,

just goes to show what a multifaceted education

St Andrews can offer.

MUSIC: "Et Super Te", sung by choir

But how did our university come to be founded,

out here on Scotland's east coast?

How did it come to be called St Andrews?

'Well, as legend has it,

'an angel appears to St Rule

'on the Greek isle of Patras

'and says "Take the relics of the blessed

'"and take them across the seas to the far northwest

'"until you reach the end of the world."'

'After heading north and many months at sea,

'a fierce storm rages from the east...

'..and hurls their ship onto a rocky shore...

'..at Muckross,

'the headland of the boars.'

WAVES BOOM AND CRASH

'Finding the safety of the shore,

'St Rule, bearing the sacred relics of St Andrew,

'is welcomed by Angus, king of the Picts,

'at Kilrymont, his royal retreat,

'deep in the woods of Fife.'

'The spirits of the trees and the will of nature

'still linger in these ancient groves

'as echoes of the old religion

'and with symbols of forgotten rites.'

BIRDS CAW

CHOIR SINGS SOLEMNLY IN LATIN

'But those ancient rites will soon surrender to the faith,

'inspired by the sacred relics of St Andrew.'

'Kilrymont, the king's seat,

'shall be born again and christened as St Andrews.'

'Well, that's how the bones of St Andrew gradually emerged

'from a sea of myth onto the rocky shore of mystery.'

'Or so said the poet and author Andrew Lang,

'known by locals here as St Andrew Lang.'

'On St Andrew's Day in 1140,

'the shrine of the blessed saint

'inspires the king to found a cathedral at St Andrews.'

'But then what arose,

'all shimmering white in its uplifting Gothic splendour,

'would fall, centuries later,

'in the turmoil of the Scottish Reformation.'

CHOIR SINGS IN LATIN

'But in the Reformation's wake,

'there were signs of new beginnings.'

'In the university. which the cathedral founded,

'young free thinkers like James Gregory

'were now able to have their say

'and said so in defiance of church dogma.'

'Gregory worked here at a time when the world was still just emerging

'from the medieval period.'

'People still believed in astrology and alchemy

'and Gregory was the first to be recognised

'as a modern scientist in St Andrews.'

This is a Schmidt`Cassegrain telescope.

It's a modern development of the Gregorian telescope,

designed by James Gregory in the 1650s.

This really was the most remarkable of achievements of Gregory.

The telescope involves both the use of mirrors and lenses

and it was the first telescope to incorporate both of those elements.

Before Gregory, all telescopes were refracting telescopes.

The first refracting telescope was used by Galileo,

who turned his telescope on the sky

very much at the beginning of the 17th century.

He observed the moons of Jupiter

and he observed the phases of the inner planets Mercury and Venus

and this proved that they revolved round the Sun.

This put Galileo into dispute with the Inquisition

and he spent the last days of his life under house arrest.

'Galileo was lucky to escape being burnt at the stake

'just for saying what he said.'

'"They have said...

'.."and they will say."'

'"Let them be saying."'

'This stone has said that here in St Andrews

'since 1720.'

'But where were students in Scotland

'to have their say

'600 years ago?'

Since the wars of independence with England in the 14th century,

Scottish students were driven from Oxford and Cambridge

to the University of Paris,

but even there, life for the students and the masters

began to get difficult too.

So much so that the masters, led by Bishop Wardlaw,

began to consider founding their own university

back home in Scotland.

'In the Middle Ages, the ring of St Peter the fisherman

'was the Pope's seal of approval,

'which gave the universities the right to confer degrees.'

'But where was the Pope?'

'In Rome? No.'

'Violent mobs in Rome had driven the popes to France

'to this fortified palace in Avignon.'

'Through most of the 14th century,

'God's will on Earth was proclaimed

'from this great Gothic palace in Avignon.'

'Seven popes ruled here until 1378,

'when Gregory returned the papacy to Rome.'

'This meant that the French cardinals lived on

'in their magnificent palace.'

'So what did they do?'

'Well, what do you know?'

'They went and elected their own pope.'

'In 1394,

'Pedro de Luna, a Spanish cardinal of noble birth,

'received the papal tiara as Benedict XIII,

'known affectionately as Papa Luna.'

'But Papa Luna's reign in Avignon was brief.'

'His coronation had split the church asunder.'

'As France returned her loyalty to Rome,

'Papa Luna fled to Spain.'

When we think of the Papa Luna, Benedict XIII,

we think of somebody who was incredibly stubborn

and that reputation has gone down in history,

of him being a man that would not allow anybody to change his mind.

He believed he was the Pope and that's how he stayed.

And, in the Spanish language, we have this expression,

which is "mantenerse in sus trece",

which means literally "to stick to one's thirteen",

which, in a way, means to stick to one's guns

and that comes from him being Benedict XIII

because he remained the legitimate Pope,

regardless of all the turmoil that he faced.

'Then, in the early 1400s,

'France switched sides, it deserted the Avignon papacy,

'and this left Scotland with a problem

'because the students and staff from Scotland at Paris

'became less welcome than they had been

'and some of them returned to Scotland, to St Andrews,

'which was already a major ecclesiastical centre,

'the richest diocese in Scotland,

'and attached to it by far the richest Augustinian priory,

'which had an established library, a scriptorium

'and presumably quite a number of learned men were already there.'

'So there was an interesting environment

'for these displaced emigres academics to end up.'

And partly as a result of pressure for them,

partly as a result of Wardlaw's own initiative,

it was decided to incorporate these scholars

as what was known as a university.

But in order for this to become fully official in medieval terms,

it required the blessing of the Pope.

'So it was in his castle of Peniscola on the Mediterranean

'that Papa Luna drafted St Andrews' six papal bulls.'

# Papa Luna...

"Considering the peace and quietness

"which flourish in the city of St Andrews

"and its abandoned supply of victuals and hostels,

"we hope that the divine bounty

"which has enriched it with so many gifts,

"will become the fountain of all the arts and sciences

"and that impregnable rampart of doctors and masters

"against all heresies."

"Against all heresies" -

well, we'll hear a lot more of that later.

Bulls, by the way - not the farmyard variety.

They were just the small stamps of approval, or bulla,

used by the popes to authenticate their papal parchments.

'Papa Luna sent his bulls on their long journey across land and sea

'to Scotland.'

CHOIR CHANTS IN LATIN

'On an island in the Firth of Forth,

'Walter Bower, the abbot of Inchcolm,

'records the arrival of the papal bulls in St Andrews.'

"On the happy arrival of Henry De Ogilvy,

"the papal bulls of privileges

"were presented to the Lord Bishop

"as Chancellor of this gracious university."

"After they had been read out, the clergy processed to the high altar."

"When everyone was on bended knee,

"the Bishop of Ross pronounced the versicle of the Holy Spirit

"and the collect - Deus Qui Corda."

BELLS PEAL

"The rest of the day was spent in boundless merrymaking

"and the drinking of wine well into the night."

"Large bonfires raised their flames to heaven

"as a solemn procession wound its way through the city streets

"to celebrate the founding of this seat of learning."

'The crescent moon of Papa Luna,

'Pope Benedict XIII,

'joins the golden diamonds of Bishop Henry Wardlaw

'along with the royal lion rampant of King James,

'the blue of St Andrew's cross

'together with the book of learning -

'all combine to create the university's coat of arms.'

'But, like the moon, Papa Luna's influence begins to wane

'over the university that he had founded

'and, within four years,

'St Andrews abandons the unlucky Benedict XIII back in Spain

'for the Pope in Rome.'

The young university had its own share of bad luck.

Within 40 years of its foundation,

it had fallen on hard times.

King James recognised the university as his spiritual daughter,

but sadly, his child of many bulls was poorly endowed.

'Universities are, as we all know,

'remarkably expensive institutions to keep going.'

'Wardlaw's successor, Bishop James Kennedy, who succeeded in 1440,

'recognised this problem,

'but rather than contributing funds to the existing foundation,

'his decision was to establish a completely new college,

'which he founded in 1450,

'named after the holy saviour St Salvator.'

'So the college chapel is a magnificent Gothic building.'

'And within it is an even more magnificent Gothic tomb

'for Kennedy himself where he was laid to rest on his death in 1465.'

'Subsequently, the tomb was mutilated by Protestant reformers,

'who thought this too much of a monument to Kennedy's own vanity.'

'Kennedy's tomb is one of the most extraordinary sepulchural monuments

'surviving from medieval Britain.'

'You can see that it's a magnificent architectural structure.'

It obviously once had a very rich and important display of sculpture -

all of that's gone, but lots of the canopy work survives

and extremely detailed and intricate are these niches

with staircases disappearing in the background -

must've made a great effect.

'There's nothing like it at all in England -

'none of the Oxbridge colleges have a tomb of this sort to a founder.'

'The maces of St Andrews University are a unique survival.'

'Unquestionably the most magnificent of them

'is the mace of Bishop Kennedy,

'commissioned from John Mayelle, a Parisian goldsmith,

'and it was ready for the consecration of St Salvator's Chapel

'in October 1461.'

'It's perhaps the greatest work of late medieval goldsmithery

'to survive.'

'The most important figure is that of Christ standing in the centre.'

'Christ is not a benign force here,

'he's wounded and you can see the wound in his side as well.'

'The mace is really a microcosm of the city, of the heavenly Jerusalem

'as described in chapter 21 of the Book of Revelation.'

'And I saw a new heaven and a new Earth...'

'..saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem,

'coming down to me...'

'..one of seven angels...'

'..I am Alpha and Omega,

'the beginning and the end...'

Three of the greatest poets of the Scottish Renaissance graduated here.

# SOLEMN MEDIEVAL MUSIC

# FALSETTIST SINGS IN SCOTTISH DIALECT

And there were those who left St Andrews to change the world.

James Wilson,

who signed both the Declaration of Independence

and the US Constitution,

became one of the first Justices on the Supreme Court.

James Wilson was important in the American constitutional ideas

in two ways.

One is the idea of separation of powers and, in that sense,

he played a very important role in helping to emphasise

the American idea of keeping different institutions separate.

His contribution is important.

We have evidence that, whereas the initial draft of the Constitution

said "We, the States...",

he ends up crossing that out and writing "We, the people..."

and that "We, the people..." has become

one of the most important statements of constitutional thought,

not just in the United States, but around the world.

Then there was the clergymen.

Dr John Witherspoon,

who went on to become the President of Princeton.

Benjamin Franklin was granted Doctor of Laws

by St Andrews in 1759

in the spirit of the Scottish Enlightment.

The honour was enscribed

"To the ingenious and worthy Benjamin Franklin",

not only for the rectitude of his morals and sweetness of his life

and conversation,

but also for his ingenious inventions,

especially of electricity,

which hitherto was little known.

So Franklin wrote back affectionately

to his old friend Lord Kames,

a leading force in the Scottish Enlightenment,

"If strong connections did not draw me elsewhere,

"Scotland would be the country I would choose

"in which to spend the remainder of my days."

'St Andrews is such an ancient and well-worn place

'that it has persisted in my memory

'from the time I first went there

'as a very young student

'at a very ancient university.'

I once wrote about that first year in the New Yorker -

"As students, we felt admitted to a venerable presence,

"even if the curriculum appeared to have undergone

"only minor alterations since 1411."

"A kind of wise mist enveloped the place

"and it seemed that we couldn't help but absorbing it unwittingly."

'Living in St Andrews means walking every day

'over very ancient stones.'

'In fact, some cases, not walking on them,

'like the initials PH, which are inlaid in the cobbles

'just outside St Salvator's

'and which mark the spot

'where Patrick Hamilton was burned to death for heresy in 1528.'

'There's a certain awe that descends on you then

'as you realise that you don't walk on these stones for a reason

'and it's a fairly terrifying and bloody reason.'

'You have to realise the past in St Andrews, not as figures in a book,

'but as tangible presences that have left a mark on you.'

'You learn to meet these presences and get to be aware of them.'

Martin Luther, the German monk

who kick-started the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century,

predicted that it would only progress through tumult,

offence and sedition. That was certainly the case in St Andrews

for a young man called Patrick Hamilton.

He'd studied with Luther and he came back here as a lecturer

full of the Reformation principle of salvation by faith alone.

This offended the Roman Catholic authorities -

he was attacking their doctrines like purgatory and indulgences

and praying to saints.

He was arraigned for heresy before the Archbishop of St Andrews,

James Beaton.

Beaton found him guilty and ordered him to be burned at the stake

in front of St Salvator's Chapel.

He was just 24 years old.

THUNDER

'Hamilton was not so much burned as roasted to death.'

'When the fire took hold, he cried out

'"How long, o Lord, shall darkness brood across this realm?"'

'And it's said that his tortured face appeared in the stonework

'high above on St Salvator's Tower.'

'The monogram of Patrick Hamilton still marks the spot

'where the 24-year-old became the first martyr

'of the Scottish Reformation.'

'A friend of Archbishop Beaton's warned him against further burnings,

'saying "the reek of Patrick Hamilton

'"infected all those on whom it blew."'

'It was certainly a fire that set ablaze

'the Protestant cause in Scotland.'

So they burned this young professor alive...

..in this university...

..just for saying what he said.

'Then seven more Protestants were burned alive,

'including the preacher George Wishart,

'the mentor of a certain John Knox.'

'A few months after Wishart's gruesome death,

'a group of Protestant lads stole into the castle.'

'They murdered Beaton and threw his body out over the walls.'

One of those most affected by the death of George Wishart

was John Knox, the founding father of the Scottish Reformation

and himself educated here at St Andrews.

He came back to join the lads in the castle

and formed the first Protestant congregation in Scotland.

Knox was captured by the French, who laid siege to the castle

and actually bombarded it from the tower of St Salvator's

and he spent 19 months as a slave in the French galleys.

After escaping, he went into exile in Geneva

where he got to know the great French reformer John Calvin.

Calvin, the great French reformer?

I grew up in Scotland and always believed that Calvin was a Scotsman.

Our culture was so ingrained in Calvinism

that he just had to be a Scot.

Cherie?

John Calvin? I had no idea he was French

and I'm very French myself.

It was to this church, the Parish Church of the Holy Trinity,

that John Knox came back from exile

and he preached a fiery sermon here in June 1559

about Jesus's expulsion of the moneylenders from the temple.

The end of that sermon, the congregation rose up,

they marched down South Street and they sacked the cathedral,

destroying images and statues,

including the effigy of Bishop Wardlaw,

the founder of the university.

'The great cathedral of St Andrews was doomed.'

'Its restoration became a forlorn hope

'in the years that followed.'

'Its traceries were felled, stone by stone,

'as a Gothic quarry.'

'The sacred relics of St Andrew

'were now lost for ever.'

'No longer would pilgrims journey over land and sea

'as they'd done for over a thousand years.'

SEAGULLS CRY

'The ruined cathedral, stripped of its altars and images.'

'But there is also a more positive and lasting legacy

'to the Scottish Reformation

'in which St Andrews played so great a part.'

'The Divinity College here at St Mary's

'is now one of the leading theology schools in the world,

'to which students from many countries come.'

'As I do every morning on my way to work here,

'they walk under the archway

'with its message - "In principio erat verbum" -

'"in the beginning was the word",

'a reminder of the centrality of the word,

'with both a capital and a small W,

'in the history and the ongoing life of this university.'

I'm particularly proud to have studied at St Andrews -

while I was there in the early to mid-'70s,

it was a remarkable time for the university,

among many remarkable periods it has had down the centuries.

I was there at the same time as Alex Salmond, the First Minister -

then he was President of the Federation of Student Nationalists.

I was there at the same time as Michael Forsyth, later Lord Forsyth,

Conservative peer, MP and minister.

He was President of the Federation of Conservative Students.

Me, I edited the student paper, I was covering their doings.

A remarkable period in politics.

These days, I cover politics mostly here, in the Scottish Parliament,

but perhaps the tricks and guiles of journalism

that I still deploy these days were inculcated in me then,

covering the St Andrews Students' Representative Council.

And then working on the St Andrews Citizen, the local paper,

where the first people I interviewed were the Crown Prince of Japan

and Milton Friedman. It's been all downhill ever since, really.

'I remember walking at the end of the pier on my own

'in some moody, adolescent trance, really, of grief,

'wrapping my red, velvet cloak around me, which I loved,

'which covered all sins.'

'Then, suddenly, there was a man wearing a hat

'and what seemed to be a cloak.'

'And then looked back and there was absolutely nobody there.'

Because I was 17 and didn't want to meet anybody, I'm sure I saw him,

I didn't imagine him and then he was not there. Is that a ghost?

I then went and told my friend who said "Yes, we know that ghost -

"I was walking with my boyfriend, there were two of us walking down,

"and the shadow was cast of the two of us

"and then there was the shadow of three people as we walked",

so, yes, it was the man in the hat and so it was haunted.

But...

I'm not saying ghosts exist!

I'm just saying I saw one, which may have come from my head or memory -

who is to say?

The story was that the students go down to the pier every Sunday

to meet a pastor who never appeared because he came by boat from Dundee

to take the Sunday service

and there was a storm and he hadn't arrived,

so it was in memory of this that the students go down to the pier

on Sunday morning after chapel - to meet the man who never comes.

So then I met the man who never came.

There are many theories on how the Sunday pier walk arose,

but the enigma of Raisin Monday,

at least, in its present form,

has recently departed from its ancient Latin roots.

The tradition of Raisin Monday dates back centuries.

New students known as Bejants, and now Bejantines,

were adopted by third-year Tertians

or fourth-year Magistrands,

who explain to them the complexities of university life.

The reward for their advice

was a pound of raisins, along with a receipt in Latin.

If the new students failed to deliver their Latin receipts,

they were doused in the town fountain.

But how did the dousing turn into this?

CHOIR SINGS IN LATIN

'May your joys be as deep as the ocean,

'your sorrows as light as its foam.'

'In the middle of the 17th century,

'this room was the foremost observatory in the world.'

'It was operated by James Gregory.'

Gregory was appointed here as the Regius Professor of mathematics

in 1668. Gregory was a genius.

His achievements deserve to be much better known today.

What was the big discovery here?

What was the thing that Gregory did?

Well, he set up his instruments in this room

and hung his telescopes from this bracket - you can still see it.

That's the original? The original bracket.

This isn't something you put up for tourists? No, that's the bracket

that Gregory hung his telescopes on.

Of course, the building opposite wasn't there in those days.

He drew a line across the floor here and, on Scooniehill,

which is over a mile away,

he erected a pillar that was a marker on the end of this line.

So where's the line, then? Well, it's still here, look.

Where? Under the carpet? Under the carpet.

Well, I've heard of hiding your light under a bushel,

but St Andrews hides it under the carpet?

And this was his meridian line.

So we've got the bracket, the telescope, we've got Scooniehill,

we've got the meridian line, but what's it for?

You see, coordinates, positions on the Earth,

are measured in terms of latitude, lines parallel to the Equator...

That's easy, that's the Equator. Yes, the Equator is the zero.

And measured in terms of longtitude, which is lines from the North Pole,

stretching down to the South Pole.

And these are the lines and you need a zero for that.

And the zero has been chosen to go through Greenwich.

But Gregory discovered this,

so it should be St Andrews. It should be St Andrews Mean Time

and the days would start and end in St Andrews. That's absolutely right,

but Greenwich was chosen in an international conference in 1881,

not St Andrews. It's not too late. We could still change it!

We could try! Well done, Edmund, thank you.

And well done, Professor Gregory...

Now let there be light!

This is an example of the first practical light-emitting diode,

made in 1962.

In those days, we called them "crystal lamps",

but nowadays, they have the popular title of LED.

By 2001,

the number of LEDs produced annually throughout the world

was equal to the total population of the Earth

and, of course, by now, the numbers are far greater.

John Allen, to me, represents someone who may be in his 80s,

but still has the agility of mind

and the spirit of someone in his 20s.

The idea that John and I had

was that we would use light-emitting diodes

as a source for something called photodynamic therapy -

a therapy of skin cancers -

and John was the inventor of the light-emitting diode.

I'm excited about using light

from its interaction with biological tissue -

at St Andrews, we look at such things as imaging with light

and moving small objects such as cells with light

to study them and probe them.

This image is coming from another building

where cells are under a microscope.

Here somebody is hitting those cells by touching a screen

and a laser is directed to each cell in turn.

THEY PANT

'St Andrews was one of the first to admit women students

'to higher education in 1892.'

'It was so successful

'that, 12 years later, nearly half the first-year students were women.'

'Today it's the turn of the university's ladies golf club.'

'But shh...'

'One of the ladies' champion student golfers over there

'is just about to take an ambitious putt.'

"..run a scorching leg there

"and Ron Jones going to hand over to Menzies Campbell of Scotland."

"And the Scot there going well,

"a magnificent run by the Great Britain quartet

"and the Scot goes past the Pole."

"And Barry Kelly on the last stage for Great Britain."

"And Great Britain defeat the Olympic silver medallists

"by a magnificent finish there."

"Great Britain five points, Poland two and..."

I suspect I'm the first Chancellor to have run in the Olympic Games

and that gives me a particular interest in sport in the university.

The Chancellor's principle responsibility

is to hand out degrees to students who graduate.

He is the titular head of the university, he wears a grand gown

and I'm perhaps the first non-academic,

non-aristocratic, non-religious Chancellor,

because, up until my predecessor,

they were either Princes of the Church or aristocrats.

My predecessor was a distinguished classicist - Sir Kenneth Dover.

Pull, pull, pull!

I'm constantly asked why it is

that so many of our students meet their life partner here

and I think it's because of the self-selection,

the people who choose to study here -

they want to go someplace different,

but they also want someplace small, scholarly, fun,

and they're thrown together here without the distractions of a city.

The university dominates the town,

so their social life is built around the university

so they constantly interact with one another

within this beautiful environment.

I got engaged while at St Andrews University to Pam,

now my wife of many years - she was a St Andrews student herself -

that sort of thing's becoming rather fashionable these days!

CROWD CHEERS

Deer management and how we manage the landscape and land use

was one of a variety of projects

William looked at for the final-year dissertation

and I said "Where are you going to do this?"

and he said "Oh, yeah, I could do it at Granny's place"

and you did a slight double-take

because what he meant was Balmoral,

which is Granny's place and Granny was the Queen.

William's main interests were in environmental geography -

he studied though a wide range of subjects,

from coastal management through to social issues

such as HIV and AIDS in Africa.

So a wide range of material. He was a proper geographer, if you like.

'As an astronomer, physicist and mathematician

'with a fascination in optics,

'Principal David Brewster was just destined

'to invent that most famous of Victorian toys.'

'He gave it the name of kaleidoscope

'from the Greek meaning "observer of beautiful forms".'

'But it's his contribution to photography

'is what interests us now.'

'Photography, it was realised, could capture fragments of time.'

'This Gothic tower extended back over 500 years.'

'And what about this rock here?'

'The core of an ancient volcano, frozen in time.'

'In St Andrews, it fired the imagination

'of two young photographers -

'Adamson and Rogers.'

'Their work here has been of very special interest

'to the man down there -

'the poet Robert Crawford.'

Behind me, the rock and spindle is one of the places

that the early photographers came

and they weren't just photographing a rock,

they were photographing geological time.

They all belonged to a club here

called the St Andrews Literary and Philosophical Society

and among its members was Robert Chambers

and he'd come to live in St Andrews in the early 1840s

when he wrote what became a very scandalous book -

Vestiges Of The Natural History Of Creation.

And when that book was published,

it was read by Abraham Lincoln,

by Queen Victoria, by George Eliot,

by a whole lot of people in Victorian intellectual life

and some denounced it as "evil", as "materialist",

as "an attack on all the conventions of belief",

but Darwin, when he read it,

was led to rethink his own work,

which became eventually On The Origin Of Species.

"St Andrews."

"I love how it comes right out of the blue

"North Sea edge, sunstruck with oystercatchers.

"A bullseye centred at the outer reaches,

"A haar of kirks, one inch in front of beyond."

Although we may not need to emblazon his name

from the rooftops of St Andrews,

as they do here in Peniscola,...

..we should remember Papa Luna,

for without his papal bulls,

the year 1413 may well have passed St Andrews by.

Papa Luna really deserves to be better known in St Andrews,

it's extraordinary that students don't know who he was -

it's wonderful that the University of St Andrews gets its papal bull

from a man of such inflexible integrity

and that is something that perhaps we should honour at the university.

'Perhaps these trees,

'in once sacred woods of ancient faiths,

'still harbour cults.'

'Or are they just half the imagined rituals

'of those elusive Picts?'

'Where once these headlands saw the running of wild boars,

'today students rush headlong to the sea.'

'A pre-dawn dip to usher in the 1st of May.'

'An ancient rite of spring before the May Day rising sun.'

'St Andrews certainly taught me to think about time.'

'And in thinking about time,

'you realise that time is due change enormously.'

'You find out, for example,

'that that heresy which caused Patrick Hamilton to be burned

'could nowadays get you a respectable degree.'

Chancellor, for his remarkable literary work,

I invite you to confer on Alistair Reid

the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa.

Honoris causa promoveo,

cuius rei in symbolum super te hoc birretum impono.

'I would consider myself absolutely heretic

'and when I think about it, I went to St Andrews

'precisely to learn how to be a heretic.'

St Andrew's Day, Scotland's national day,

is a particularly appropriate day for a graduation.

For St Andrew himself

was a trailblazer.

Whether or not one believes the legend

about the arrival of the relics of St Andrew here,

one point is clear -

had this story not come to be an accepted truth,

this university would never have been founded.

You are now, and always will be,

part of that history.

Today is dedicated to celebrating your achievements,

but also to wishing you well for the journey ahead.

Perhaps you should take your time,

as recommended by Cavafy in his account of the journey of Odysseus

in his famous poem Ithaca.

"Keep Ithaca always in your mind.

"Arriving there is what you are destined for."

'"As you set out for Ithaca,

'"Hope that your journey is a long one,

'"Full of adventure, full of discovery.

'"Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

'"Angry Poseidon - do not be afraid of them.

'"You'll never find things like that on your way,

'"As long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

'"As long as a rare sensation touches your spirit and your body.

'"Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

'"Wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them

'"Unless you bring them along inside your soul,

'"Unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

'"Hope that your journey is a long one.

'"Keep Ithaca always in your mind.

'"Arriving there is what you're destined for,

'"But do not hurry the journey at all.

'"Better if it lasts for years

'"So that you're old by the time you reach the island,

'"Wealthy with all you have gained on the way,

'"Not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.

'"Ithaca gave you the marvellous journey,

'"Without her, you would not have set out,

'"She has nothing left to give you now.

'"And if you find her poor,

'"Ithaca won't have fooled you.

'"Wise as you will have become,

'"So full of experience,

'"You will have understood by then what these Ithacas mean."'

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd