And for all but a few of its 155 years it has lived up to its dedication. In 1886 the school achieved the honour of being placed second in the British Empire in the Senior Cambridge examinations. In 1960, six Queen’s students cakewalked their way to all six open scholarships offered by the University College of the West Indies, its highest entrance awards, avidly competed for by the whole English speaking Caribbean. But, given the combustible inter territorial jealousies of the region, the UCWI prudently awarded the school only three.

At the beginning of the 1960s, a sage and witty observer elegantly depicted the UWI as follows: "Mona is Jamaican by location, Trinidadian by culture, Barbadian by circumspection and Guyanese by brilliance." And then she added " more than half of that brilliance emanates from Queen's".

Since the middle of the 19th century, graduates have gone forth to become distinguished academics and memorable educators in four, possibly five continents. Some have taken to politics and, as you know, three have been Presidents of Guyana. As officers of international bodies you find them in a host of developing countries, often carrying out exacting responsibilities. You run into them at the United Nations headquarters handling tricky situations with lubricative finesse. They represent a dizzying variety of professions and vocations, some in most unlikely places like the arctic north of Canada.

You come across them in commercial corporations, well thinking and well thought of and you encounter them in civil society performing for free services worth their weight in gold. Not a few of them are involved in civic affairs as elected officials. Predictably, there are published novelists and poets, acclaimed actors and painters among them.

Recently, and most usefully, QC alumni have begun writing and privately circulating their memoirs. We are looking forward to a novel in which Queen's figures prominently. What is remarkable is the veritable plethora of skills and aptitudes which, over and beyond their stated occupations, our alumni possess. What is gratifying is the sureness of touch and lightness of style with which they deploy these skills.

You find him here, you find him there, and you find him every blinking where.

Peep into heaven, peer into hell, you'll find the QC sentinel

Forgive the parody of what Hollywood made the French revolutionaries exclaim about the "scarlet pimpernel"

"Si requiris exempla, circumspice", if I may misquote the monument to Sir Christopher Wren in St. Paul's cathedral in reference to Queen's graduates. If you want examples of their quality just look around you. Queen's gave the commonwealth its second Secretary-General and UWI its present Chancellor in Sonny Ramphal. It gave the American Dental Association one of its presidents in Ingram Hazlewood, and it gave Stanford University its first black dean of Sciences and Humanities in Ewart Thomas.

Much earlier the school sent to Cambridge an endearing eccentric who walked away with a first class honours in Maths and the curious title of Senior Wrangler, N.E. Cameron. From Queen’s a long line of stunning jurists took their place at the bar and the bench. Mortimer Duke, the Luckhoo dynasty with Lionel making the Guinness book of records, the silver-tongued Van Sertima and the casually brilliant Fred Wills. Queen's gave the Caribbean that renowned surgeon, Sir Harry Anamanthadoo. Queen's nurtured the" Doctor Johnson" of the Caribbean, Richard Allsopp, whose dictionary of Caribbean English usage is stimulating West Indians to discover and affirm the treasures of our language.

Think of all these people and you must ask yourself " how could so much be achieved by so many from a people so few?"

Third, we celebrate the talent for transformation.

Right up to the end of the Second World War, Queen's was an imperial school focused on making empire loyalists out of its wards. After that there was a subtle shift. The aim was to imbue the boys with English upper-class values, presumptions and prejudices thus making them a constituency of support for Britain’s role in the world, for British products and British higher education.

The wonderful thing about Queen's College students or many of them anyway, is how they took the education offered to them and stood it on its head. They turned an imperial priming into a cosmopolitan perspective. Some of them became Guyanese nationalists, taking Guyana to the world and bringing the world to Guyana.