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British Academy Review Issue 19 January 2012 THE BRITISH ACADEMY 10–11 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH Telephone: 020 7969 5200 Fax: 020 7969 5300 Web site: www.britac.ac.uk © The British Academy 2012 The British Academy Review contains articles illustrating the wide range of scholarship which the British Academy promotes in its role as the UKs national academy for the humanities and social sciences. Views of named writers are the views exclusively of those writers; publication does not constitute endorsement by the British Academy. Suggestions for articles by current and former British Academy grant- and post-holders, as well as by Fellows of the British Academy, are very welcome. Suggestions may be sent to the Editor, James Rivington, at [email protected] Page make-up by Don Friston Printed in Great Britain on recycled paper by Henry Ling Limited at the Dorset Press Dorchester, Dorset Cover image: No. 11 Carlton House Terrace Contents The British Academy iv What should the word of God sound like? 1 Dr Rowan Williams FBA How to train a mulla: Seminaries in Shi’ite Islam 5 Professor Robert Gleave Al-Qaeda since 9/11 8 Dr Alia Brahimi Free will and modern science 12 Professor Richard Swinburne FBA Re-imagining policing post-austerity 16 Professor Andrew Millie and Dr Karen Bullock New Paradigms 19 The future of social sciences and humanities in Horizon 2020 20 Máire Geoghegan-Quinn British Academy President’s Medal 24 Mark Blackburn (1953-2011) and the Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles 26 Professor Simon Keynes FBA Records of Social and Economic History 29 Professor Richard M. Smith FBA The heritages of the modern Greeks 33 Professor Peter Mackridge When Homer met Phantasia: fiction, epic poetry and entertainment literature 42 in Byzantium Dr Aglae Pizzone End of empire and the English novel 46 Professor Susheila Nasta Mr Gladstone, Carlton House Terrace and the mind of a statesman 50 Professor Sir David Cannadine FBA Individual electoral registration and the future of representative democracy 58 Professor Ron Johnston FBA and Professor Iain McLean FBA iii The British Academy The British Academy, established by Royal Charter in 1902, is the United Kingdom’s national academy for the promotion of the humanities and social sciences. It is funded by a Government grant, through the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The Academy is an independent, self-governing body of more than 800 Fellows, elected in recognition of their distinction in one or more branches of the humanities and social sciences. It aims to inspire, recognise and support excellence and high achievement in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value. The Academy has identified four strategic priorities central to achieving these aims: • Advancing the humanities and social sciences by supporting research and scholarship at all levels • Promoting these disciplines on international platforms, building collaboration and creating opportunities for UK researchers overseas • Increasing the scope and impact of communications and policy activity, and creating events and publications that communicate new research and encourage public debate • Strengthening opportunities for Fellows to contribute their expertise to the intellectual life of the Academy and the country. Further information about the work of the Academy can be found on its website at www.britac.ac.uk, or by contacting the Academy at 10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH, telephone 020 7969 5200, email [email protected] Officers and Senior Staff of the British Academy President Chief Executive and Secretary Professor Sir Adam Roberts Dr Robin Jackson Vice-Presidents Director of Finance and Corporate Services Professor Michael Fulford, Treasurer Robert Hopwood Professor Jonathan Bate, Vice-President (Humanities) Director of Programmes Professor Vicki Bruce, Vice-President (Communications and External Relations) Vivienne Hurley Professor Susan Mendus, Vice-President (Social Sciences) Director of Communications and External Relations Professor Martin Millett, Vice-President (British Academy Tim Brassell Sponsored Institutes and Societies) Professor Nigel Vincent, Vice-President (Research and HE Policy) Dame Helen Wallace, Foreign Secretary Professor Albert Weale, Vice-President (Public Policy) Professor Chris Wickham, Publications Secretary iv British Academy Review, issue 19 (January 2012). © The British Academy COALITION STARTS ITS WHITE-KNUCKLE RIDE What should the word of God sound like? In November 2011, the British Academy hosted an event to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams FBA, considered the role that the King James Bible still plays in providing us with a sense of sacred English. ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT THINGS that you will Whether or not that is positive news for religious have noticed in this anniversary year of the King James believers is not such a simple question to answer as we Bible is that it has not come across simply as the might sometimes suppose. It does at least mean that possession of religious believers. There has been a people are aware of registers in our language, registers that widespread sense that it has belonged to everybody. It has are appropriate to this or that context. At a time when, in been treated as something that is many ways, our capacity to not the preserve of the Church. It distinguish or to be subtle about has been discussed and, to a registers in language seems to be surprisingly large extent, affirmed diminishing, it is at least quite as part of a wider cultural legacy. interesting that we seem to be One of the themes that we are capable of picking out one register bound to think about is the curious that may be appropriate or way in which religious language – significant as signalling something and religious symbolism in general completely different. – escape from their owners. They What you then do with that are, you might say, very di- register is another question. There sobedient pets: they jump over is nothing very new about these fences, they get into places where issues. Back in 1991, A.N. Wilson, you do not expect them to get, and in his novel Daughters of Albion, has they produce occasionally very his central figure reflecting on his surprising progeny as a result. upbringing in a parsonage: Is this good or bad news for religious believers? It is easy to It did not worry me that I could not, in assume that the idea of the Bible as the conventional sense, believe. Indeed, cultural legacy means that the Bible I did not see how an intelligent person is no longer seen as having its distinctive function. It has could adhere to the orthodoxies. But it had begun to sadden lost its sense and location as a sacred text. It has become me that I could put all this religious inheritance to no good or part of our heritage. But I am not sure that it is quite as imaginative use. It lay around like lumber in my mind but it simple as that, and I hope to show and suggest some of the did not quicken the heart. ways in which it is not so simple. That image of a legacy lying around ‘like lumber in the mind’ is one to ponder, I think, as we reflect on this Registers in language subject matter. The register that I am talking about – the register of The odd thing is that our culture has, in some ways, sacred English – still has some place and some retained a sense of what a sacred text looks or sounds like, recognisability – even if not authority – even if it is more even when the Church has been uncertain about it. That ‘like lumber in the mind’ than anything we know how to is to say that a vague recollection of the King James Bible use. Yet the very fact of its presence, as an unfamiliar and is heard – more than read, perhaps – as striking a particular potentially serious domain of discourse, leaves a good register in British discourse. People know roughly what many doors open. you are doing when you parody the King James Version, That is my starting point: simply observing that, in the even if they have never opened it and neither has the collective imagination, for quite a lot of people in this parodist. If you wanted illustrations of this, of course, you country – and I say ‘quite a lot’ with deliberate vagueness could turn to the pseudo-Biblical episodes that occasion- – the sense of what sacred English sounds like has not ally decorate the pages of Private Eye. People know what wholly disappeared, even if its main vehicle is parody. ‘sacred’ English sounds like. Behind that lies, as I suggested, the more fundamental British Academy Review, issue 19 (January 2012). © Rowan Williams 1 questions about ownership, and about both the risks and the necessity for the Church sometimes to examine its territorial boundaries in ideology, not just in material things. Translating the Bible I cannot move on in this argument, I think, without saying a word or two about what happens in modern translations of scripture. Modern translations in the Church context inevitably begin with the attempt to remove obstacles. The presenting feeling is that the text that we culturally started with 100 years ago or more is inaccessible. It is an obstacle to understanding what is going on. Therefore, a good translation removes the obstacles. That, of course, is exactly what the translators of the King James Version thought they were doing. If you turn to the wonderful Preface by Miles Smith to the King James Version, you will see there a set of very potent metaphors about what translation is.