.png)
Chapter 1.1
Professor Iain Hennessey
Professor Hennessey was due to speak at Lords on 10th March 2020 in the iconic Long Room as part of our annual Brilliant Minds Showcase. I consulted him a few days before this to see whether we should run the event given what we were about to experience with the pandemic.
His view was many people would lose their lives, but the good news was the NHS would be prepared and, due to the wonders of technology, a vaccine would be developed by the start of 2021 in a shorter timescale than ever before. He was well-qualified to comment on this given his position as Director of Innovation at Alder Hey.
As we enjoyed a drink together, we could never have imagined the magnitude of what was to come. But Iain Hennessey knew. I was just in denial, and thankful that we were able to run this last event in our calendar before the world imploded.
By Harvey Thorneycroft
Chapter 1: Professor Iain Hennessey, Jason Bradbury and Lord Seb Coe
Professor Iain Hennessey
A few days before we ran our Brilliant Minds Showcase at Lords, I made a call to speak to Professor Iain Hennessey, a truly remarkable man. He was the only person I trusted with the answer to my question: should we go ahead?
The date was 5th March 2020. The night before, I had attended an event at the Hurlingham Club, a testimonial for Tom Smith, the Northampton Saint, who was part of the British and Irish Lions squad that beat South Africa in 1997. Many of his teammates attended that night, including many of mine, as, like me, he had played for years at Northampton. In November 2019, he had revealed that he had been given a diagnosis of stage four cancer. That night in March, over 500 people had come together for Tom in a fundraising dinner. People were nervous. There were rumours that this would probably be the last of its kind for some time, but the spirit of rugby shone through for Tom: the rugby world was looking after its own.
Continue reading