OxfordTrinity Term 2013 ~ Volume 25 No 2 ~ www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk

t odayThe University Magazine

MARCUS DU SAUTOY Shifting boundaries of knowledge

26 | GENETIC NATIONHOOD WE ARE ALL EUROPEANS NOW 34 | MONEY MATTERS DOING BETTER WITH OXFORD’S MONEY 44 | ALAN GARNER WEIRDSTONE AUTHOR ON HIS OXFORD 59 | SNAP HAPPY NEW PHOTO COMPETITION

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EDITOR: Dr Richard Lofthouse DIGITAL EDITOR: Dr Jamie Condliffe ART EDITOR: Michael Poole HEAD OF PUBLICATIONS & WEB OFFICE: Anne Brunner-Ellis SUB EDITOR: Jayne Nelson PICTURE EDITOR: Joanna Kay CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Matthew Williams

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: Alun Anderson, Author and journalist Anne Brunner-Ellis, Head of Publications and Web Offi ce, University of Oxford Sewell Chan, Deputy Op-Ed Editor, New York Times Michelle Dickson, Director and Chief Executive, Oxford Playhouse Alison Edwards, Head of Alumni Communications,

University of Oxford SMOLONSKI GREG Liesl Elder, Director of Development, Trinity Term University of Oxford 2013 Christine Fairchild, Director of Alumni Relations, University of Oxford Jeremy Harris, Director of Public Affairs, University of Oxford Alan Judd, Author and journalist Dr Richard Lofthouse, Editor, Oxford Today Ken Macdonald QC, Warden of Wadham College, Welcome Oxford A new landscape unfolds Dr Paul Newman, Professor of Information Engineering, Fellow, Keble College, Oxford Dr William Whyte, Lecturer in History, Shaking things up is one of the themes of this issue. In the cover Fellow, St John’s College, Oxford Matthew Williams, Creative Director, FuturePlus story, Oxford mathematician Professor Marcus du Sautoy – well Dr Helen Wright, Headmistress, known in print, on the TV and as Simonyi Professor for the Public Ascham School, Sydney, Australia Understanding of Science – explores the enormous shift underway EDITORIAL ENQUIRIES: at Oxford, from the single subject focus that most of us grew Janet Avison, Public Affairs Directorate Tel: +44 (0)1865 280545 familiar with at school, to problem-based research drawing on [email protected] www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk several subjects at once. ALUMNI ENQUIRIES, Elsewhere in the same issue, we consider a deep-rooted historical INCLUDING CHANGE OF ADDRESS: Claire Larkin, Alumni Offi ce debate about British identity, via genetic mapping; we look at the Tel: +44 (0)1865 611610 [email protected] complex evolution of University fi nances, and recent innovations www.alumni.ox.ac.uk University of Oxford, University Offi ces, in the management of its wealth. We meet novelist Alan Garner, Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2JD who refl ects on his decision to leave Oxford prematurely, and

ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES: Steve Hulbert, FuturePlus, Beaufort recent Turner Prize-winner Dr Elizabeth Price, an alumna who has Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW Tel: +44 (0)1225 822849 [email protected] returned to the University as a fellow. It is striking how in every www.futureplus.co.uk story science and technology lap at the shores of the humanities, Oxford Today is published in October and April. It is free to Oxford graduates. It is also available on subscription. For further information and to subscribe, contact and vice versa. Although most of us will still remember studying Janet Avison (see details above).© The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford. The opinions expressed in Oxford Today are those single subjects, there is a noisy and colourful revolution towards of the contributors, and are not necessarily shared by the University of inter-disciplinarity. We are in its midst. Oxford. Advertisements are carefully vetted, but the University can take no responsibility for them. On a house-keeping note, please tell us what you think about

PUBLISHER: Oxford Today – there’s a reader survey with prizes attached on Oxford Today is published on behalf of the University of Oxford by FuturePlus, a division of Future Publishing Limited (company no 2008885), pp41-42 (online at: www.futuresurvey.com/oxfordtodayfeedback). whose registered office is at Beaufort Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW. Tel: 01225 442244. www.futureplus.co.uk Finally, if you haven’t yet visited our website you really must. Jayne Caple, Director, FuturePlus UK It has evolved greatly even since the last print issue. It has become Mark Donald, Head of Operations Scott Longstaff, Commercial Director a dynamic platform for fresh material that you cannot access in Matt Eglinton, Production & Procurement Manager print, such as the very popular series of short fi lms we are hosting, All information contained in this magazine is for informational purposes only and is, to the best of our knowledge, correct at the time of going to press. Neither Future about Wytham Woods (p7). Similarly, the full details of our new Publishing Limited nor the University of Oxford accepts any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies that occur in such information. If you submit material to this wine offer and photographic competition (p59) are all online. magazine, you automatically grant Future Publishing Limited and the University of Oxford a licence to publish your submissions in whole or in part in any edition of this magazine and you grant the University of Oxford a licence to publish your EDITOR: Richard Lofthouse submissions in whole or in part in any format or media throughout the world. Any material you submit is sent at your risk and neither Future Publishing Limited nor the University of Oxford nor their respective employees, agents or subcontractors shall be liable for any loss or damage. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced without the written permission of Future Publishing Limited and the University of Oxford. Oxford Today is now on the iPad. Visit Apple Printed by Headley Brothers, Ashford, Kent. Newsstand to download www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk The text paper in this magazine is chlorine free. The paper manufacturer and Future Publishing have been independently certifi ed in accordance with the rules of the Forest Stewardship Council. email [email protected] @oxtoday /oxfordtoday

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MY OXFORD

Nell Gifford of Giffords Circus on how her Oxford years Trinity were bittersweet In this issue… Term 2013 66

Letters 8 Your correspondence Oxonian News 10 University news 14 Appointments & awards 16 Discovery 21 Alumni notices 22 Oxonians at large 25 University Voice 41 Reader survey 30 Features 26 What makes the British? Genetic ancestry mapped out 30 Sharing knowledge Marcus du Sautoy argues that Oxford needs to lose its ‘silos’ 34 Money matters How Oxford is improving how it looks after its fi nances 44 Fantasy worlds An interview with author Alan Garner, featured in a new Bodleian exhibition

MARCUS DU SAUTOY; JOBY SESSIONS 26 34

TRINITY HIGHLIGHTS 53 Book & CD reviews 56 Elizabeth Price The winner of the Turner Prize talks to Oxford Today Regulars 22 44 56 59 Competition Oxonians Alan Garner Elizabeth Price 60 Crossword Tracking the careers The author of From being in a pop 61 Miscellany of alumni forging their The Weirdstone of band to winning the @oxtoday own paths, including Brisingamen on life at Turner Prize with The 65 Obituaries Berenika Schmitz. Oxford and beyond. Woolworths Choir of 1979. 66 My Oxford

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7 www.oxfordtoday.ac.uk [email protected] @oxtoday /oxfordtoday

DIGITAL Wytham Woods: exclusive online series A special Oxford Today fi lm series explores Wytham Woods

Lying west of Oxford and comprising 390 hectares (almost 1,000 acres), Wytham Woods are owned by the

BEN SHELDON, DEPT OF ZOOLOGY, FOTOLIA University of Oxford and used for Dr Keith Kirby, ecologist (above right) and woodsman Matt Williams (below)– both environmental research. In a four-part Wytham wanderers who explain why their woods are a national treasure film series, Oxford Today tries to capture the magic of the woods by interviewing some of the remarkable characters at work there. ‘Woods’ actually means a variety of habitats, including ancient semi-natural woodland, secondary woodland and plantations and a variety of ponds. The site has an exceptionally rich flora and fauna, with more than 500 species of vascular plants and 800 species of butterflies and moths. Wytham Woods are one of the most researched areas of woodland in the world. Wytham has a wealth of long-term scientific measurement, with bird data dating back for more than 60 years, badger data for more than 30 years and climate change data for the last 18 years. Although the majority of the research activity is Oxford-based, any organisation can utilise the site.

The Laboratory with Leaves is a four-part video series. The fourth and final part will go live at www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk in the first week of May.

Oxford Today is now on the iPad. Visit Apple Newsstand to download www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk

OXF08.web.indd 8 3/12/13 12:37 PM 100 8 We welcome letters for publication, but may edit them to fit. Unless you request otherwise, letters may also appear on our website. Write to us at: Oxford Today, University Offices, Wellington Square, Letters Oxford, OX1 2JD Your correspondence

Korda It was interesting to read In response to… Michael Korda’s memories of Magdalen (“My Oxford”, Trinity issue, p66). I’d guess OT 25.1: ‘Elitism.’ most of his contemporaries remember how his facility in Should universities consider the backgrounds of poorer students? Russian gave him a leading role in welcoming Bulganin and Your correspondent (Harry I had no school Khrushchev to the college in Quick, Michaelmas 2012) qualifications on admission April 1956. Stalin was dead but completely misses the point to Oxford University. I had the Cold War was well underway I made regarding elitism and studied for two years at Ruskin and the visit aroused curiosity the disruption of the boat race College for a University rather than any enthusiasm. (Trinity 2012). His confusion Diploma in social studies, seems to lie between and before that had been I remember we politely academic and financial a shipbuilding shop steward, clapped as they went by. elitism. Oxford, and other high a community activist and The duo had arrived on a class universities, exist to volunteer. After Oxford I went Russian warship which docked create an academic elite and on to be a college principal in Portsmouth harbour. The a centre of learning. To achieve in Manchester. Harry Quick mysterious disappearance of and maintain standards seems not to understand one Commander Crabb, while requires the selection of the of the implications of what apparently investigating the very best students. If financial being a ‘university’ means, hull of the ship, was perhaps assistance can be given to our that it is to do with broadening, the public’s main memory. brightest young people from Oxford Today’s Michaelmas widening and deepening; A headless body was found poorer backgrounds (how issue printed two letters on his notion is so narrow. a year later and the coroner very welcome is the Moritz the nature of elitism which DAVID BROWNING said he was satisfied it was him. donation) we will all benefit have caused a debate Magdalen, 1973 It was a couple of months from fine minds. Certainly after the visit that the Observer academic standards should my parents did not suffer Like Andrew Cole (Letters, published Khrushchev’s never be compromised, from the worst form of Michaelmas 2012) I came denunciation of Stalin. but nor should excellent poverty – namely poverty of from modest origins to I remember my initial candidates be frightened aspiration – and in 1962 I won Hertford, but did not then, disappointment that Sunday away by either cost or the an exhibition to read modern and do not now, assume that morning in the JCR to find thought that “It’s too posh history at Oxford. Had anyone opportunities to reach the paper had omitted all for me.” I am not interested suggested that the entrance Oxford are therefore fair in making any university an requirements might be and equal for all, regardless their usual articles to make instrument of social policy, lowered simply because of my of socio-economic and way for the speech. but I am interested in getting socio-economic background educational background. KEITH TUNSTALL the best possible students. I would have been deeply It seems important to seek Magdalen, 1953 The man who swam across insulted and offended. out potential for academic the boat race had a very GEOFFREY ALDERMAK success at Oxford by different agenda. He Lincoln, 1962 considering applicants in the Moritz mistakenly believed that round, including not just their John Garth’s piece about Oxford and Cambridge Why does the University high A-level achievements Michael Moritz’s gift began provide an education for the admissions process reveal but also the road they have with a quotation from the financial elite. Happily he is which sort of school an trodden to achieve them. donor, “I would not be here way behind the times! applicant went to? Why is that His and my college, and today were it not for the HARRIET WILSON not just replaced by a code doubtless many other generosity of strangers.” I can Somerville, 1969 number? Do that – and stop colleges, are putting say the same. In my case those asking what their parents do substantial and increasing strangers were the ratepayers I grew up in a severely for a living and whether they time and effort into trying and the taxpayers of my cash-limited working class went to university – and there to assess such potential and country, whose contributions household in Hackney. My could be no social engineering. I hope they will be successful. enabled me, a boy from father worked as a ‘packer’ in ANDREW TUREK GORDON DAVY a low-income, working class the East End rag trade. But Hertford, 1971 Hertford, 1956 household, to enjoy a university education. I applaud Moritz’s

OXF08.letters.indd 8 3/12/13 12:38 PM For full versions of these letters 9 and to read Email your letter to: @oxtoday /oxfordtoday further alumni correspondence, [email protected] visit www. oxfordtoday. ox.ac.uk

generosity, but I would rather Murdoch, Christopher Ricks, Oxford gave women degrees successors would express be part of a society in which AL Rowse, John Sparrow, Enid in 1920 and Cambridge not a flicker of interest today? students from poorer families Starkie, AJP Taylor, JRR until 1948! This year will mark Cherwell’s are supported by the Tolkien, Hugh Trevor-Roper, CHRISTOPHER WAIN Diamond Jubilee as a tabloid: consenting, collective actions Francis Warner, RC Zaehner, St Peter’s, 1971 those familiar with student of their better off fellow Theodore Zeldin – to name a journalists confidently citizens, than one in which few. Charismatic, inspirational, anticipate a party of some sort. they are dependent upon the often eccentric and larger than Aung San Suu Kyi C SLADEN fortuitous philanthropy of life, their presence gave the Thank you for Oxford Today. Christ Church, 1953; Cherwell, 1954 super-rich individuals. university a tremendous sense The article regarding Aung JOHN WEEKS of vitality and prestige. San Suu Kyi is particularly Brasenose, 1967 I remember as a freshman interesting. Since my novel Indian Oxonians walking up Parks Road behind Forgotten Life had extensive A couple of comments on Balsdon, Bowra and Berlin, passages concerning Burma Naomi Canton’s interesting Cricket all armed with shooting-sticks in it, I sent a copy out to article about her contacts As Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi and talking brilliantly, and Burma when she was confined with Dr Chandrasekhar. The is listed as one of the ‘Famous feeling I was at the centre to her house. She wrote back, impression is somehow given Indian Oxonians’ in the of the intellectual universe. thanking me, saying, “I loved that partition was Britain’s Michaelmas Term edition, it Where are their like today? the sex.” (One entirely fault. As in “a small number is a pity you did not choose to I can scarcely name any understands.) of older Indians who still correct the glaring mistake current Oxford dons. Will BRIAN W ALDISS OBE resented the British because in Francis King’s letter in the anyone in 50 years’ time think of the British Raj and Trinity edition. To say that: to write a book about the dons partition.” Well, I can’t speak “Since the accident which of now? Cherwell for the Raj. It happened and tragically cost him his eye GRAHAM CHAINEY I enjoyed Chris Baraniuk’s I expect history will have Tiger struggled against Exeter, 1965 ‘Who Guards the Guardians?’ a verdict (or several). bowling any faster than in your Michaelmas issue, As for partition, though, military medium” is complete and look forward to his book. the record needs putting bunkum. The whole of Cowley Lack of space, I expect, meant straight. It was not our fault Pataudi’s distinguished test David Datta’s letter (OT 25/1) he wasn’t able to give full at all. Partition was no part match career was completed at last answers the question weight to the fundamental of any British plan for an after he lost his right eye. I first posed nearly 50 years change that took place in independent India and no To overcome such a major ago when I was the Oxford Mail Hilary term 1953, when two part of the Congress plans handicap was an amazing feat. columnist, Anthony Wood. New College undergraduates, either. It was made inevitable The failure to acknowledge Amused by local organisers’ Clive Labovitch and Earl by the action of Mohammad Mr King’s error in a year when attempts to cash in on the White, purchased Cherwell Ali Jinnah, who was utterly we have been celebrating men fast-growing iconic status of and transformed it from intransigent in his view that and women’s triumphs over the term by rechristening their nondescript magazine a minority Muslim population disabilities is a sad omission. fête a mini-festival, I asked to tabloid newspaper. could not live in security or MICHAEL BURNS Cowley who had dreamed up Similarly, although Cherwell equality in what would be Keble, 1976 the name of their best-selling journalists’ proposal to a predominantly Hindu state. product, the Mini-Minor. After survey undergraduate sex Whether he was right or days of harrying the top brass in 1956 may, as Baraniuk wrong we will never know, Dons I was eventually fobbed off writes, have tickled Fleet but Dr Chandrasekhar was Reading Noel Annan’s The with the statement: “Nobody. Street’s palate, that topic had quite right in believing that Dons (1999) recently made me It was a committee decision.” been in the public domain partition was a disaster. reflect how many great dons DON CHAPMAN since Norman Longmate Virtually all Indian versus were around when I was St Catherine’s, 1952 (Worcester, 1947) in his Pakistan troubles stem a student, many of them 1954 book Oxford Triumphant directly from partition. household names: AJ Ayer, calculated, on what it would I wonder what is taught in Dacre Balsdon, Max Beloff, Degrees for women be flattering to term flimsy Indian and Pakistani schools Isaiah Berlin, Maurice Bowra, I realise this is only a evidence, that one in three today? Maybe it is convenient Alan Bullock, Lord David peripheral mention in a letter female and one in five male to blame such a huge mess on Cecil, Richard Cobb, Lord about something else (“Letters”, Oxford undergraduates were the departing imperial power. Franks, Helen Gardner, Trinity issue, p12), but surely enjoying active sex-lives; one ROY NAPIER Christopher Hill, Iris Phillida Bunkle knows that wonders if Fleet Street’s Balliol, 1952

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OXF08.letters.indd 9 3/12/13 12:38 PM

14 Oxonian&News University news Appointments & awards The latest awards and honours from across the University

Due to their exceptional Honours support for the University of Oxford, MICA ERTEGUN and awards (through Americans for Oxford, Inc.) and DICKSON New Year POON, CBE, were recognised Honours as new Fellows of the Court.

Five academics were Membership of the recognised: Chancellor’s Court of Benefactors stands at more HEW STRACHAN, Chichele than 190 and the impact of Professor of the History of the Court’s generosity is felt War and a fellow of All Souls both in Oxford and around College, was knighted for the world. services to the Ministry of Defence. The Sheldon Medal As part of the annual CAROL ROBINSON, Royal meeting of the Chancellor’s Society Professor, Dr Lee’s Court of Benefactors, Professor of Chemistry and Oxford’s highest honour a fellow of Exeter College, for philanthropy, the Sheldon was made a DBE for services Medal, was presented to to science and industry. MR LEONARD BLAVATNIK in honour and recognition DAVID M CLARK, Professor of his transformative of Experimental Psychology benefaction of £75 million and a fellow of Magdalen to create the Blavatnik School College, was appointed CBE of Government. Michaelmas

for services to mental health. JOHN CAIRNS term saw the first cohort of University Chancellor Lord Patten shakes hands with Mr Leonard Blavatnik Scholars begin RAYMOND DWEK, Blavatnik as he receives the sixth Sheldon Medal their studies and many of Director of the Glycobiology them were able to attend the Institute, Emeritus Professor Americans for Oxford, Inc. an Insurance Analyst with special ceremony to see Mr of Glycobiology and an Those admitted were: DR Hampden Agencies Ltd; Blavatnik receive the medal. emeritus fellow of Exeter PETER J BRAAM, Founder, PATRICK PICHETTE, Chief As Chairman of Access College, was made a CBE CEO and Chief Architect Financial Officer and Senior Industries, which he founded for services to UK-Israel of Parallel Scientific; Vice-President of Google Inc; in 1986, Mr Blavatnik is a scientific collaboration. CAROLINE BUTT, Trustee TAMAR PICHETTE, a leading global industrialist, of the Calleva Foundation; director of Positive Coaching with interests in natural JUDITH FREEDMAN, STEPHEN BUTT, Chairman Alliance, a youth sports resources and chemicals, Professor of Taxation Law of Silchester International training organisation; CHRIS real estate, and media and and a fellow of Worcester Investors; MICHAEL ROKOS, a founding partner telecommunications. This is College, was made a CBE for DANSON, Executive of Brevan Howard Asset only the sixth time that the services to tax research. Chairman of Progressive Management; BERNARD Medal has been presented Digital Media Group; MICA SELZ, Managing Partner to an outstanding Oxford ERTEGUN, Founder of MAC of Selz Capital LLC; LISA benefactor since its inception Chancellor’s II, a New York city design firm; SELZ, Manager of the Selz in 2002. Previous recipients Court of JULIA HANDS, Chairman Foundation; TIMOTHY are the late Lord Wolfson, Benefactors and Chief Executive of Hand TACCHI, Senior and FBA, Chairman of the Picked Hotels; CHRISTOS Founding Partner of the Wolfson Foundation; Mr In October, a record 16 new IOANNOU, an Executive London-based management Wafic Rida Saïd; Dr James members were admitted to Director of the J&P Group; fund TT International; and Martin; Mr Michael Moritz the Court in recognition of ALASDAIR LOCKE, BERNARD TAYLOR, and Ms Harriet Heyman; and their generosity to the Chairman of Hardy Oil Chairman of Evercore Lord and Lady Sainsbury of collegiate University and & Gas; NICHOLAS NOPS, Partners International LLP. Preston Candover.

OXF08.appts.indd 14 3/12/13 2:41 PM 14 Oxonian&News University news 15

Appointments Zoology Legal Services TIM COULSON, Professor ANDREW MACKIE, Partner of Population Biology at at Linklaters LLP in New Imperial College London, York, Hong Kong and was appointed Professor of London, was appointed Zoology and became a fellow Director of Legal Services of Jesus College. and General Counsel. Sociology and International Law Social Policy CATHERINE REDGWELL, MARY DALY, Professor Professor of International of Sociology at Queen’s Law at University College University Belfast, was London, has been appointed appointed Professor of Chichele Professor of Public Sociology and Social Policy International Law and a and became a fellow of Green fellow of All Souls College Templeton College. with effect from 1 September. Education HARRY DANIELS, Professor Visiting of Education at the University Professorships of Bath, was appointed Professor of Education and 2012/13 became a fellow of Green PHY Clockwise from top left: OGRA

Templeton College. George Eastman T Joseph Koerner, Mary Visiting Professor HO

Daly, Richard Schrock, The T P Human Resources KOFI AGAWU, Professor Reverend Dr Simon Gaine, NIGH

JULIAN DUXFIELD, of Music at Princeton Paul Goffin K IN

UK and Ireland Human University and Adjunct ST Resources Director at G4S, Professor, University of was appointed Director of Ghana, was appointed DGES, JU Human Resources. George Eastman Visiting U OB J

Professor and became a R Estates fellow of Balliol College.

PAUL GOFFIN, FRICS, CHRDIT, Director of Estates at the Cameron University of Leicester, has Mackintosh Fine Art Newton Abraham been appointed Director Visiting Professor JOSEPH KOERNER, Visiting Professor of Estates. SIR MICHAEL BOYD, Victor S Thomas Professor RICHARD SCHROCK, theatre director and artistic of History of Art and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Genomics and director of the Royal Architecture at Harvard (2005), Frederick G Keyes Global Health Shakespeare Company from University, was appointed Professor of Chemistry at DOMINIC KWIATKOWSKI, 1996 until September 2012, Slade Professor of Fine Art. Massachusetts Institute of Professor of Tropical was appointed Cameron The post is associated with Technology, was appointed Paediatrics; Director, Mackintosh Visiting Professor All Souls College. Newton Abraham Visiting MRC Centre for Genomics of Contemporary Theatre. Professor in Medical, and Global Health, The post is based at St Newton Abraham Biological and Chemical Wellcome Trust Centre Catherine’s College. Visiting Professor Sciences and a fellow of for Human Genetics; DAN LITTMAN, Martin Lincoln College from 1 April Honorary Consultant in Harold Vyvyan Kimmel Professor of to 30 September 2013. Paediatrics, Oxford Molecular Immunology University Hospitals NHS Harmsworth at New York University Trust; and Head of the Visiting Professor of Medical Center, was Head of Malaria Programme, American History appointed Newton House Wellcome Trust Sanger GARY GERSTLE, Abraham Visiting Institute, Cambridge, was James G Stahlman Professor Professor in Medical, Blackfriars appointed Professor of of American History at Biological and Chemical THE REVD DR SIMON Genomics and Global Health Vanderbilt University, Sciences and a fellow of GAINE, OP, Tutor in and became a fellow of USA, was appointed to the Lincoln College from Systematic Theology St John’s College. Professorship and became a 1 October 2012 until at Blackfriars, was fellow of The Queen’s College. 31 March 2013. appointed Regent.

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OXF08.appts.indd 15 3/12/13 2:41 PM 16 Oxonian&News University news Discovery Research breakthroughs across the University oto tockph S ied/i Fr RB Redefining BMI Professor Nick Trefethen from Oxford’s Mathematical Institute is proposing a new formula to calculate Body Mass Index. “Currently, BMI may divide d r weight by too large a number for short

xfo people and too small a number for tall O people,” he explains. His update to the equation divides a person’s weight in sity of r kilos by their height in metres raised to

Unive the power of 2.5, then multiplies that number by 1.3. The new number may Writing be a better reflection of your health. ale Y e/ r e uncovered gu aven Gi aven

The art of deciphering ancient texts using H the latest technology The planet which has You’re looking at an ancient text written Subsequently, the 76 digital images are four suns in proto-Elamite: the world’s oldest- merged to deliver researchers with a Amateur astronomers have helped known undeciphered writing system, means of virtually manipulating the light Oxford physicists discover a new which was used between 3200 and 3000 cast on the object. planet, called PH1, which is the first BC in what is now Iran. While it shares It allows specialists to pick up subtle known to have four stars. It orbits one similarities with archaic Mesopotamian clues from the object’s surface – and pair and another pair revolves around writing, almost 90 per cent of it remains may help solve the riddle of proto- it. The discovery is a result of citizen a mystery to scholars. Fortunately, a new Elamite. “The quality of these new science project PlanetHunters.org, high-definition imaging system, known images is simply incredible,” explains Dr which lets volunteers help find stellar as Reflectance Transformation Imaging Jacob Dahl, co-leader of the international quirks to enable astrophysicists to (RTI), has been developed by scientists Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative and identify new planets. “It’s fascinating at Oxford and Southampton especially fellow of Wolfson College. “Every time to try and to imagine what it would be to analyse inscribed artefacts of its type. I sit and look at the images from the RTI, like to visit a planet with four suns in its The device is made up of a dome of 76 I make a new discovery. I’ve spent ten years sky,” explains Dr Chris Lintott, who lights with a camera at the top. When a trying to decipher the proto-Elamite leads the team. “But its formation specimen is placed at the dome’s centre, writing system, but I think we’re finally on remains a complete mystery to us.” it is photographed 76 times, with each the point of making a breakthrough.” www.planethunters.org shot illuminated by just one of the lights. http://cdli.ucla.edu

www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk | [email protected] | @oxtoday 17 h g in S ndeep en and Ma r a L t Mac r e b Ro Looking good Sight restored to blind mice A team of researchers, led by Oxford’s Professor Robert MacLaren, has restored sight to blind mice by injecting new light-sensing cells into their eyes (above, green). The researchers injected “precursor” cells, which over time develop into the retina, into the eyes of mice that could not tell the difference between light and dark. Two weeks later, new retinas had formed and the mice reacted to light. The finding could be used to develop new treatments for humans with eye diseases. ies r a br i L Bodleian Dating ballads Software helps to date illustrations A team of Oxford English scholars and engineers has developed software to identify the origins of 17th- century illustrations which accompanied broadside ballads. The ballads – illustrated song-sheets, sold for a penny a time – were pinned on the walls of inns around the UK. Many give no indication of the date they were printed, but the software is allowing researchers to identify and date anonymous prints. The Bodleian Library holds more than 30,000 ballads, from the 16th to the 20th centuries, which can be viewed online. http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk 18 Oxonian&News University news

60 seconds with… Kathy Willis ES G D Biodiversity Institute Director B JU O

R and Fellow of Merton College

How did you become How are you harnessing interested in the study new technology to of long-term ecology? protect biodiversity? I originally studied a degree We’re developing web-based in environmental science tools to enable people to because I’ve always been easily identify the areas of interested in whole organism least risk within a granted ecology. Then I did a PhD in concession area (e.g. a 20km plant sciences, looking at zone) where they could decide plant responses to climate to build their factory or mine. change through time. I We’re finding that companies became very interested in are coming to us for help with

now a discipline known as risk assessment now, mainly S

b paleoecology, or long-term because of some of the recent Bo ecology, and through that I high profile natural disasters. developed my interest in the Companies are realising that dynamics of ecology. preserving biodiversity is not The patterns just a nice ‘add-on’, but is How have you found yourself incredibly important. in the Zoology Department? concealed in I was a professor in the In what ways is the Geography Department at Institute engaging in inter- Oxford for 10 years and disciplinary collaboration? digital data during that time a colleague I believe that we have nine and I set up the Biodiversity disciplines involved in our Conservation Masters projects now, from economics Predicting outcomes using everyday tech Programme. When the Tasso to engineering science. For Leventis chair was advertised, example, we’re developing Wireless digital communications buzz around us all the time. based in Zoology, it offered a an app that captures sound But while they’re simple personal messages to us as individuals, fantastic opportunity to set to determine if there are for scholars across the University they are rich seams of data up a Biodiversity Institute, malaria or dengue-carrying to be analysed. funded by a generous mosquitoes in the area. This Take the work of Professor Bob Snow from the Nuffield donation from the Oxford will enable us to get a better Department of Medicine. Based in Nairobi, he seeks to Martin School. understanding of the understand the public health burden and spread of malaria distribution of disease- – but with little data explaining how people move around the What is your department carrying insects across country, it’s an uphill struggle. Recently, though, he has working on? these landscapes. We have three key research worked with colleagues from Harvard to analyse mobile themes: ecological and In terms of your own pure phone data from 15 million people in Kenya to ascertain how evolution processes research, what questions humans travel around the country – and how they are likely responsible for biodiversity; are you hoping to answer? to contribute to the spread of malaria. biodiversity technologies; and I’m interested in ultraviolet B “We’ve shown that Kenya is so connected by travel that it biodiversity beyond protected (UVB) variations through time would be almost impossible to eliminate malaria anywhere,” areas. In biodiversity beyond and the impact on everything explains Snow. “Having this data has enormous value when protected areas we’re looking from ecosystem dynamics in dialogue with politicians who might think elimination at where, outside of nature to genetic variability. Looking is possible.” reserves, we need to conserve into the future, what I’d love Elsewhere, Oxford researchers are using similar tricks to biodiversity and identifying to discover is the impact of map support for future politicians using Twitter – the social areas that businesses can UVB on the genetic stability network that allows users 140 characters to express their safely ‘damage’. It’s important of plants and to find out if a thoughts. By analysing 132,771 tweets mentioning Barack that we build a dialogue with rise in UVB is a key driver of Obama and 120,637 mentioning Mitt Romney, Dr Mark people in industry. plant speciation. Graham from the Oxford Internet Institute was able to predict Obama’s victory in the November 2012 US election. In fact the Twitter analysis predicted a modest 52.4 per cent To read more interviews like this majority for Obama, while in reality it was 59.5 per cent, but (and web exclusives) visit “overall the outcome was accurate”, suggests Graham. www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk www.kemri-wellcome.org

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22 Oxonian&News Oxonians at large What Oxonians are doing in the world. Words by Lindsey Harrad

Fashion Station Amy Anderson University 1999

After graduating in Fine Art, Amy Anderson went on to build a hugely successful jewellery and accessories business called Comfort Station, which shows at Paris Fashion Week and is stocked in shops including Selfridges in London. Anderson designs it all and everything is made in a studio below her shop in Shoreditch, East London, by her and a team of three others. But is what she sells art? “That’s a loaded question,” she laughs. “I wouldn’t say it’s art. But it’s certainly conceptual. The thoughts and ideas behind it are important to me. All the jewellery is concept-based as opposed to being pretty.” www.comfortstation.co.uk

BERENIKA SCHMITZ Talking points Musical youth Emily Kasriel Working to bring music to a new generation Jesus 1985 While researching her geography Berenika Schmitz influential people around me felt that dissertation, Emily Kasriel lived in Christ Church 2007 I was capable of taking a leadership role.” a remote Israeli Druze village to explore Currently Berenika holds one of ten the tensions within the community. In a unique position as both artistic and coveted nine-month paid fellowships at After graduating, she took up a Rotary executive director of her own orchestra the DeVos Institute of Arts Management Fellowship studying International (the Dana Point Symphony, California) at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Relations in the USA before returning to work with the BBC World Service. Berenika Schmitz has the rare “The sheer magnitude of the In 2008, Emily launched The Forum combination of leadership skills and programming here makes this one of programme. The show brings together creative talent. An innovative curator of the most prestigious opportunities in the commentators from different the orchestra’s programming, she’s also arts in the country,” says Berenika. “I’m disciplines and cultures, combining an accomplished concert pianist. During based in the marketing department at a Nobel Prize-winning scientist with her time at Oxford reading for an MPhil the moment. We’re working on making a poet and a historian, for example. in EU cultural policy, she knew she our programming more accessible to the “I believe there is far too much thinking wanted to do more to foster a love of 18-30 age group, which is a particular in silos, and I get moved when there the arts in others. “The highlight of my passion of mine. Young people have a lot is a genuine exchange of ideas,” time at the University was a performance to say and we need to create exciting Emily says.

I gave with the Oxford Philomusica at events that will speak to them.” www.bbcworldservice.com BISHOP

the Sheldonian,” she says. “But even then www.danapointsymphony.com TIM

OXF08.oxonian.indd 20 3/12/13 12:39 PM 23

We welcome suggestions from alumni for these pages. Please send details to the Editor at oxford. today@admin. ox.ac.uk Sustainable skills Helping to fund community energy projects Emily Mackay Jesus 2003

For Emily Mackay, reading music at Oxford proved the perfect platform for developing the problem- solving and research skills she would need to launch Microgenius, the UK’s first and only web platform to specialise in community shares in sustainable energy. “I discovered it wasn’t possible to install solar panels on our roof, so I looked online for alternative investment opportunities,” she says. It’s a growing market, with more community energy projects launching all over the UK, and a new dedicated government unit focusing on this sector. “Within two years I’ve won the CEDAR Enterprise Fellowship, an UnLtd Millennium Award, been shortlisted for two other awards and invited to Whitehall, all while juggling young motherhood and a consultancy job. It’s been quite a rollercoaster!” For Russia with love The artist inspired by Soviet history

Janet Treloar often wished she had switched to Somerville 1961 history. She eventually turned to painting, an interest that became Eight years ago, a trip to Russia a profession. Historical themes have sparked a creative connection with often influenced her work, but Janet, the Russians’ experiences during who served six years as vice-president the Second World War for Cornish of the Royal Watercolour Society, watercolour artist Janet Treloar. discovered an affinity with Russian “I grew up in the Cold War era culture and landscape. “I felt very at and for the first time I started to home there,” she says. “I hope that

understand what had happened in after my paintings have been exhibited SS INE

Russia in the earlier war years,” she at London’s Russian Embassy as part S says. “I produced a series of paintings of the commemoration of the Battle of in the middle of winter. I responded to Stalingrad, the collection may find a the cold and severity of the country.” permanent home with the Scotland- TT/FUTURE BU TT/FUTURE Although Janet read geography Russia Forum in Edinburgh. These O YN

at Somerville, she admits to being paintings are my way of saying thank M HIL

“terribly bored” by the subject and you to the Russian people.” P

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25 University Voice

William James on providing for the University’s future during tough times

t can be hard to discern the University means that we must achieve ebbing of the tide as one watches a minimum cash surplus of five per cent. the waves breaking on the shore, Last year we achieved this for the first but where state funding of time, but maintaining it will be tough. universities is concerned, the Over the last three years, we have held tide is well and truly going out. our administrative and support costs flat Between the mid-nineteenth century in cash terms, and are continuing to Iand the 1920s, successive parliamentary apply three per cent efficiency gains in commissions of enquiry into the finances coming years. In academic departments and organisation of Oxford and and faculties, we are achieving better Cambridge recommended increasing value for money by sharing equipment grants of government aid in return for and facilities, and by negotiating much-needed internal reform and University-wide purchasing deals. We are modernisation. The decisive moment was developing more rigorous processes for the creation in 1919 of the University devising and evaluating capital proposals Grants Committee, Professor William James whose remit, scope If the University is to continue to Pro-Vice Chancellor (Planning and Resources) and size grew enormously over flourish, the necessary funds for the next 50 years. The rising tide capital investment must be found of government from elsewhere support carried many of us into higher education in the to get the maximum academic gain on 1970s, but since then it has turned. our investment. The renewal and replacement of On the income side, our investment our physical infrastructure, including professionals are generating sustainable buildings, equipment and latterly returns on our endowment that have IT systems, was something the UGC enabled us to increase our draw-down (then the UFC, now HEFCE) provided rate by 25 basis points (see p34), and our for with capital grants calculated by researchers have secured increases in them to be adequate. Although this grant funding in a declining market. system “wobbled” in the early 1980s, Naturally, philanthropy is also at the it was a fairly dependable part of our centre of our plans. We have set ourselves funding environment. the target of raising £3 billion in the Until, that is, it was cut by nearly re-launched Oxford Thinking Campaign. three-quarters last year. These are turbulent times, but if we can It is unlikely that the cut will be achieve our ends I am confident that the reversed. If the University is to continue University will be stronger, that its voyage to flourish, rather than decline, the of discovery is set fair. necessary funds for capital investment must be found from elsewhere. Accordingly, we have developed a strategy that recognises the need for the University to generate a sufficient surplus from its operations that, when taken together with grants and philanthropic donations, will enable us to sustain our academic goals for the long term. Generating a surplus means adopting a new attitude. It is no longer responsible just to achieve “break-even”. Rather, responsible custodianship of the

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OXF08.voice.indd 30 3/12/13 12:39 PM 42 Cherwell

OXF08.feat_genetics.indd 42 3/12/13 12:40 PM 27 WH AT MAKES THE BRITISH? An extraordinary DNA project run by Oxford scientists has mapped out the DNA of the Peoples of the British Isles – Judith Keeling explains

hat makes us for Human Genetics and professor of Jutes invaded following the fall of the British? Do the statistical science at Oxford. Donnelly Roman Empire in Britain? English, Welsh, led the application of the sophisticated Archaeological evidence from sources Irish and Scots statistical techniques used to tease such as pottery fragments suggest that the have much in information out of the vast body of Romano-Britons (the population left common at all? data collected. He also led the analysis living in the UK when the Romans left) And how different are we from our of the results. were virtually extinguished and replaced EuropeanW neighbours? Effectively, after a five-year research by the Anglo-Saxons in a short space of These topical questions – hot potatoes programme involving nearly 4,000 blood time. But what really happened? in political debates ranging from potential samples from around the British Isles, “Genetical evidence such as this gives Scottish independence to Britain’s role in the PoBI team produced a sort of DNA us information about what happened to the European Union – have now also been equivalent of the Domesday Book for the whole population – the small man, probed at the most fundamental level of the new millennium – a detailed genetic not just the leaders and the elites that all in ground-breaking research by an inventory of exactly what makes up history and archaeology tend to focus eminent team of Oxford researchers. the British. on,” says Bodmer. The team, led by Oxford geneticist The profound implications of the There have been a number of theories Professor Sir Walter Bodmer, has Oxford team’s work for future medical over the years as to what happened to conducted a detailed and wide-ranging research are obvious. Data obtained the Romano-British population, says study of the genetic make-up of the from the PoBI research, funded by Robinson, an environmental Peoples of the British Isles (PoBI). the Wellcome Trust, effectively forms archaeologist. One is that the Romano- Fascinatingly, their findings show that a ‘control’ sample that can be used in British population was physically driven most people living in the British Isles westwards to Cornwall and Wales out of are fundamentally extremely similar, ‘I feel we’ve produced the south-eastern and central portion genetically-speaking at least. of Britain which had been colonised by Where small, but marked, DNA something of major the Romans. “It has also been suggested differences do exist the researchers found that a small Anglo-Saxon elite arrived that they naturally clustered geographically significance and will somehow persuaded the Romano-British – long predating the invention of county stimulate much debate’ population to adopt their culture, customs boundaries – despite the fact that analysis and language,” says Robinson. Other of the results took no account of where the future to compare against the DNA theories have involved a virtual genocide the samples had originated. Moreover, composition of people suffering from of the Romano-Britons by the invading genetically speaking the average Briton a range of diseases from diabetes to Anglo-Saxons. has a great deal more in common with cancer. “By obtaining a good genetic However, the PoBI evidence points our French and German partners in definition of the British population, this firmly to a large influx of Anglo-Saxon Europe than some might currently like can be used in future research into the DNA but also the presence in modern to think. genetic components of susceptibility to descendants of a substantial amount of “It was always intended that we would a number of diseases,” explains Bodmer. an ‘ancient British’ DNA which most look in some detail at the potential But the PoBI genetic mapping project has closely matches the DNA of modern genetic differences to be found in the also yielded highly significant results for inhabitants of France and Ireland. S people of the British Isles because no archaeologists, with one leading Oxford This led the researchers to conclude ION survey like this had ever been done archaeologist hailing it as “the most that there had been an intermingling

Y SESS before,” says Professor Peter Donnelly, exciting discovery in Anglo-Saxon history between the existing Romano-British OB

J Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre in the past ten years.” population and the newcomer Anglo- The analysis of the PoBI data has, Saxons, rather than a full-scale (left to right) Professor Peter J Donnelly, says Professor Mark Robinson, helped to population wipe-out. Professor Mark Robinson and Sir Walter conclude one of the most fiercely debated So how did the Oxford researchers Bodmer on the Corpus Christi College questions in Anglo-Saxon history: what arrive at their results? One key element Anglo-Saxon earthern rampart to the original happened to the native Romano-British of the project’s success was its painstaking city wall, adjacent to Christ Church chapel population when the Angles, Saxons and collection of samples. These were ➺

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OXF08.feat_genetics.indd 43 3/12/13 12:40 PM 28 What makes the British?

Robinson. “I feel we’ve produced Others came by boat from the Atlantic something which is of major signifi cance coast of France to the western side of and will stimulate much debate.” England and Wales and Ireland. This “Broadly speaking, people look very is clearly refl ected in the similarities to similar to each other at the DNA level French and probably Belgian DNA in from one end of the UK to the other, southern and central England, and the so the differences we found were subtle increased level of western French DNA but nonetheless real,” says Donnelly. in Cornwall and Wales. So our ancient “However, we were struck by how clear the British DNA has deep roots on the patterns of regional differences were, by continent – and particularly in France. how people had stayed in their geographic For the large section of the population regions. Clearly, in some areas there had living in the red section of southern and been quite a bit of isolation and relatively central England, their DNA contained little intermarriage over the years.” substantial contributions from both the When the data was fi rst split, into two ancient British and the Anglo-Saxons. groups, it was the inhabitants of Orkney It is this that has led the researchers to who were most different from the rest of conclude that although the Romano- the British Isles. British people were certainly overwhelmed The researchers continued to break by a large infl ux of Anglo-Saxons, they down the data, using increasingly fi ne were not annihilated by them, but distinctions between the samples. Wales married and mixed with the newcomers. broke away, then Cornwall and Devon; the Equally it’s clear from the PoBI results

DR STEPHEN LESLIE Welsh borders separated from Wales, and that both the Roman and Norman Northern Ireland formed a group with invasions left relatively little genetic trace POBI map of UK, created by Dr Stephen north western Scotland; Northern in Britain, being restricted to a relatively Leslie, showing the genetic clustering of England also split away. small number of elite rulers. individuals: big variations are at the periphery By the fi nal analysis, there were 17 “One of the most rewarding aspects cluster groups (see map) with north and of this project has been the way that taken from volunteers living in rural areas south Wales showing two very separate academics from different departments where all four grandparents had been clusters. There were also two distinct of the university – geneticists, statisticians born in the same area. This ensured that groups in the Orkney Islands. But by and archaeologists – have collaborated the samples were more likely to be locally far the biggest homogeneous region was and pooled their expertise,” says Robinson. representative. Effectively, the data gave a large swathe of southern and central But the researchers are far from resting an accurate picture of the genetic make- England (pictured in red on the map). on their laurels. Bodmer and Donnelly up of rural Britain in around 1880, before The researchers then compared their are now involved in a new project to the wide-scale population movements of PoBI results with DNA data from 7,000 understand exactly how our genes control the 20th century or, more recently, people in Europe to try to trace the the make-up of our facial features. Could immigration from other countries. ancestry of the British DNA. this, for instance, lead to police giving out “In order to really understand the British It was clear that the Orkney islanders descriptions of wanted individuals based population genetically, you can’t just go had Norwegian ancestors, while the red on DNA samples from crime scenes? into the high street and look for someone central and southern English cluster had “It’s possible, in the very distant future, who says they are British. You need to the largest Belgian, Danish and German I suppose,” says Donnelly, “but we’re really be more specifi c about where you look,” contribution (relating to the Anglo-Saxon a very long way from that at the moment.” says Bodmer. invasion and perhaps later supplemented Meanwhile, back in the archaeology Another vital point was the team’s in places by the Vikings). The Cornish department, there are plans to compare ability to measure a large amount of and Welsh had more similarity with the the modern PoBI fi ndings with ancient genetic material from each sample. More modern French, while people in Northern DNA samples from skeletal remains in than 670,000 positions in the genome Ireland and Western Scotland have Anglo-Saxon graveyards. “I believe that of each individual were measured and substantial common Irish ancestry. this will back up our interpretations… evaluated by Donnelly and his team in “We can see clear signs of certain but if it doesn’t, well, that’s how progress order to produce a precise picture of that patterns which are present in the DNA is made,” says Robinson. person’s genetic make-up. Sophisticated of samples from all over the British Isles And there’s also much more work to statistical techniques were then applied – this means that they are likely to be be done in understanding the DNA to sift and analyse the relevant data from very old, and is what we have termed the make-up of European populations and this vast body of information. ancient British DNA,” says Donnelly. to extend the PoBI research to southern The volunteer samples were analysed Researchers agree that the DNA evidence Ireland. One thing’s for sure, however: for ways in which their DNA was similar fi ts the known colonisation patterns of and that’s that after the conclusions of this to each others’. They were then grouped early settlers to the British Isles after the project are fi nally published, many areas according to their genetic similarities. Ice Age between 9,600 and 8,000 BC. The of academic research will never be the The fi nal results were then laid on top fi rst settlers made their way across to the same again. of a map of the British Isles… with warming tundra that was then the British astounding results. Isles from North-West Europe via the land Judith Keeling is a freelance writer and editor contributing to “It is simply not the case that we have bridge that still attached the UK to the a wide range of national newspapers and magazines. She is seen what we expected to see,” says area that is now the Low Countries. editor of Oxfordpeople, an interactive community website.

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OXF08.feat_a_dig.indd 34 26/03/2013 2:55 pm 31 no more isolation Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy considers how many of the problems being addressed by academics are no longer amenable to a single subject focus

few months after I took up my are trying to crack are not amenable any more to chair as the Simonyi Professor a single subject focus. Traditionally the picture of for the Public Understanding of a university looked like a collection of isolated silos: Science I got a phone call from the chemistry department here, the maths a journalist. “The Nobel Prize department over there. The truth is that for Medicine was announced this increasingly the picture of the research being done morning for the discovery of telomeres. I wonder looks more like some intricate Venn diagram of if A you could explain what a telomere is?” intersecting disciplines. Mathematical biology. I am a mathematician. Sequences of nucleotides Computational chemistry. The physics of finance. at the ends of chromosomes are not my usual This interplay between subjects is absolutely poison. Of course the title of my Chair does give necessary if we are going to tackle such complex journalists the impression that I might be able to problems as climate change, virus spread, economic explain the whole of science. I guess the last person stability and population growth. This is the who was able to do that was probably living in the motivation for the creation of bodies like the Santa nineteenth century. Fe Institute or the Oxford Martin School that have Shortly after that phone call, the BBC asked championed this multi-disciplinary approach to the me to make a programme about consciousness problems of the twenty-first century. for them. Again my first reaction was: “But I’m Even questions that don’t at first sight have an a mathematician.” Yet when I began to think about obvious multi-disciplinary nature could equally the subject matter, I realised that it’s far from clear benefit from discussions with those in the in whose domain a subject like consciousness lies. department across the street. The low-lying fruit Philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, physics, probably exists in learning the language spoken biology, chemistry – even maths. The conclusion by another department and applying it to the I came to at the end of making the programme was problems in your own field. I have seen how an that it lies in all of them. Rather like the brain which economist who learnt gauge theory from a physicist, shows extraordinary integration to create that sense a mathematical language to describe the dynamics of one identity out of many millions of neurons, the of elementary particles, was able to apply this new way to crack the big problems is not to use ideas language to model the rate of change of inflation, from a single discipline, but to integrate modes of a notoriously difficult problem given that the basket thinking from across disciplines. of goods you’re trying to track changes with time as One of the joys of my job as Professor for the do the prices of the goods. But the breakthrough Public Understanding of Science has been the came only as a result of two previously alien cultures chance to stick my head out of the world of finding a common language of discourse. mathematics and find out what is going on in the In my own area of research, number theory, the other subjects that surround me in the University most exciting progress on the Riemann Hypothesis, Science Area. It’s an increasing revelation across the great unsolved problem of mathematics, came the academic world that many of the problems we from a chance meeting of a mathematician and a physicist over tea. That conversation led to the Professor Marcus du Sautoy stands beneath discovery that energy levels in large atoms like one of the atria in the new Mathematical Institute uranium have very similar patterns to certain ➺ JOBY SESSIONS

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OXF08.feat_a_dig.indd 35 26/03/2013 2:55 pm 32 No More Isolation S CT ITE ARCH IÑOLY L V E RAFA

The £70m ways of looking at prime numbers. That in turn has the potential to provide a powerful vehicle for Mathematical has provided our best clue yet that it is the facilitating inter-disciplinary dialogue. Institute, part mathematics that underpins quantum physics Of course this compartmentalisation of subjects of a £200m which might be the right tool to tackle the has its origins in the traditional model of education redevelopment Riemann Hypothesis. in schools. Pupils go from a history lesson to a Despite the exciting new bridges being built, maths lesson to a music lesson to a physics lesson we still have a long way to go in breaking down and are barely aware that the subjects they have just the silo mentality traditionally found in been studying have any connection with each other. universities. When I started as the Professor for One of the reasons I made the BBC documentary the Public Understanding of Science, one of the The Story of Maths was to make the important missions I set myself was to get people from connection between mathematics and history. different scientific disciplines in the university Most people’s impression of mathematics is that talking to each other, finding out each other’s it is a subject that was handed down in some great research problems, and seeing if they might be text book from the sky, that it’s always existed and sitting on tools in their own disciplines that might is a finished subject. I think Fermat’s Last Theorem, help others. I was amazed, talking to scientists, for most, was exactly that – the last theorem. Maths at how many had never set foot in each other’s has now been finished. buildings. An astronomer who visited me Profitable connections needn’t just be between declared, “This is the first time I’ve been in the traditional academic subjects. Complicite’s award- Mathematical Institute.” We’re physically so close winning play A Disappearing Number brought the that I can see his office from my office window. worlds of theatre and mathematics together in a Yet academically, it seems like we were on piece that surprised many who came to see it. opposite sides of the universe. I spent many sessions with the company exploring To try to counter this, I piloted a series of the mathematics at the heart of the play, the podcasts that successfully brought experts mathematics that grew out of the relationship together to share their stories in a Radio 4, Start between English mathematician GH Hardy and the Week-type package. It is a project that I believe Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. The

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surprise for me was that it wasn’t just my mathematics that was stretching the actors ‘The best education would be one where we creatively; the questions posed by the actors in tore down the walls between classrooms and turn pushed me mathematically, making me see my own subject in a new light. taught education in a more holistic way’ As part of the project we developed a series of workshops for teachers to explore the ideas at the One of the many joys of being a professor in New heart of the play. The drama teachers are all big College is the continuation of those inter-disciplinary fans of Complicite, internationally recognised as discussions, finding myself sitting next to fellows one of the greatest theatre companies in the world. from such different disciplines and sharing ideas, So when we advertised the workshops they all ran to stories, problems. This summer the mathematics sign up immediately. But we made it a condition of department moves into its beautiful new building the workshop that each drama teacher had to come on the Radcliffe Infirmary site. The building aims with a maths teacher. For many the common-room to create not just a place to facilitate conversations conversation about the workshop was the first time between mathematicians, but to invite dialogue the drama teacher had ever talked to the maths with the many people we hope will pass through teacher. The workshops had the effect of creating a its doors from beyond the world of mathematics. new bond between two departments in school that The building is part of a larger project in the had previously not seen any link. University – not only to facilitate the chance cup of It is one of many stories that have contributed tea between researchers within the University in to my belief that the best education would be one seemingly unrelated fields, but to create bridges where we tore down the walls between classrooms between the laboratory and the art gallery, the and taught education in a more holistic way. Of lecture theatre and the factory, the university library course in some ways that is what Oxford has been and the corridors of Westminster. The more we doing for centuries. The college system has always learn to speak each other’s languages, ask each been about cross-subject dialogue. As an other new questions, the more hope there is of undergraduate at Wadham, I sat with my fellow finding the answers to the problems that have students talking about Derrida and stubbornly eluded previous generations. deconstructionism, the poetry of Omar Khayyam, the philosophical ideas of Karl Popper, and into Marcus du Sautoy OBE (Wadham, 1983) has been the Simonyi this mix it was my place to explain mathematics’ Professor for the Public Understanding of Science since 2008. important place in this intellectual melting pot. A fellow of New College, and winner of the 2001 Berwick Prize of Part of the reason I was drawn to the Professorship the London Mathematical Society, he regularly writes for The for the Public Understanding of Science is that I’ve Times, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. He been practising it ever since I came up to Oxford is a member of the University’s Mathematical Institute and is as an undergraduate. a Senior Media Fellow of the EPSRC.

The Mathematical Institute is adjacent to the Radcliffe Observatory JOBY SESSIONS JOBY

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OXF08.feat_a.indd 37 3/14/13 4:12 PM if only because the rate of government interference in academic matters has gone up in recent years, while the public funding of higher education has gone down. T he We could christen this situation the Neildian Paradox, after Professor Robert Neild, Professor Emeritus of Economics, Trinity College Cambridge. Wanting to explore the recent paradox of higher political interference in academic Money matters, yet reduced funding, he has published an elucidative and wryly amusing book, The Financial History of Cambridge University (2012). We travel over to Cambridge to talk directly Q uestion to Neild, realising that the original question has already been complicated by the paradox. If there was a straight line between levels of wealth and Richard Lofthouse looks at the financial history of academic independence, then the Neildian the University and its current wealth management Paradox could not exist. Yet Neild’s own college, Trinity, is a reminder that astute wealth management can pay academic dividends. The richest college in Oxbridge by ad the collegiate universities a long margin (endowment c.£900 million), Trinity of Oxford and Cambridge has room for manoeuvre. Where public funding is managed their 19th- and pressured, it can replenish from its own sources. 20th-century wealth brilliantly, This alone lessens the sting of interference. instead of adequately, might Asked about his ‘paradox’, Neild immediately they have retained their furnishes a powerful clue. When writing his book, independence from government interference? he notes, “I was amazed at the generosity of the H It is a question commonly asked by alumni. And, state in the years following 1945, when funds for like the referendum on British membership of the higher education ran far ahead of any other state European Union, it opens a can of worms. Yet the funding.” During this ‘golden age’, roughly the question, like the referendum, has acquired an years 1945-1970, there was abundant government unstoppable momentum. It demands answers, money and very little political interference. The

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outperforming Oxford because they had unified endowments, and economies of scale that individual colleges could not replicate. One result has been the creation by the bursar of St Catherine’s College, Dr Fram Dinshaw, of an innovative cross-college investment vehicle called Oxford Investment Partners in 2005. “It was a disintermediation strategy partly,” recalls Dinshaw. “We thought, why pay Goldman Sachs for something we could manage at lower cost ourselves?” Secondly, it was an intricate strategy modelled in some respects on Yale University’s endowment, involving high levels of diversification in order to measure the historical return of equities Robert Neild in his but without the volatility. It has grown well, and rooms at Trinity College, Cambridge. today manages about £650 million, approximately (above) Neild’s recent a third of it invested by five Oxford colleges, the publication, which is full of rest managed on behalf of pension funds. humanity and humour as Bigger still is Oxford University Endowment well as economic analysis Management (OUEM), which by the end of 2011 had £1,419.6 million under management, drawn from 23 investors across the collegiate University. OUEM is a regulated investment management firm set up in 2007 to manage the Oxford Funds. The chief investment officer of the Funds is Sandra Robertson, and OUEM is not a department of the University, but a collegiate entity. There is an immediate historical context to the

dick makin creation of OUEM, plus (inevitably) a deeper one. Sir Alan Budd, former chair of the central Neildian Paradox but reversed, and an academic University’s investment committee, recommended cipher for Harold Macmillan’s 1957 quip, “Let us a more professional approach to the management be frank about it: most of our people have never of the University’s endowment, which had grown to had it so good.” over £500 million by the end of the last century It should be added for good measure that prior (approximately £700 million today). to 1917, when Oxford received no state grant, it did Non-collegiate University investors have no not follow that the government remained aloof. access, part of the point being to align the two There were three Royal Commissions dating from main funds – Endowment and Capital – with the the mid-1800s, and they all got into fisticuffs with specific needs of the collegiate University. This is a Oxbridge over tricky matters such as governance. major advance over banks whose sole loyalty is to However, in academic matters – Neild is very their shareholder base, and another example of a emphatic here – it was an unwritten rule that the disintermediation strategy. Next, and a key reason government had no voice whatsoever, something why some US universities historically outperformed that is no longer true. Oxbridge, the Endowment Fund includes scope for Of course, Neild is primarily concerned with private investments – private equity – that can take Cambridge, but the lessons apply also to Oxford. years to come good but may permit a far larger Like so many other alumni, academics and return than conventional instruments. students, he wonders whether there will be a Robertson commands a team of 14 and has so far greater sense of rapprochement between University favoured natural resources and emerging markets, and government in the future, returning matters to although avoids cluster bomb and land mine their ‘normal’, or at least pre-1945, broadly manufacturers in accordance with an overseeing non-paradoxical state. This would be consistent investment committee who in turn report to the with the tripling of student fees, which according to Trustee of the Funds, the University Council. some estimates returns Oxbridge to an income- So far, the Endowment Fund has slightly split comparable to the late inter-war years. outperformed its benchmark index, while the Excellent wealth management forms part of shorter term, more liquid Capital Fund has slightly the picture. On this subject (this refers to both lagged, in both cases defying the whipsaw volatility the University endowment and the endowments of the past four years and preventing a drop in of some colleges) there have been striking recent income by investors. innovations that are already yielding results. The main point, however, is that the many gifts For example, the early years of this century saw given to the University are now being managed a view emerge among some bursars that some professionally in a pool large enough to be American university endowments were far efficient. Or as the bursar of Wadham puts it, ➺

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OXF08.feat_b_dig.indd 43 26/03/2013 2:55 pm 36 The Money Question GES D ROB JU

The Oxford University from a college perspective, OUEM “gives the ‘The Endowment Fund Endowment Management College a relatively cost-efficient means of investing (OUEM) team, including in a wide spectrum of asset classes.” paid out £41 million Sandra Robertson, OUEM has not yet been a springboard to Chief Investment Officer Trinity-like levels of wealth. Over such a short span in 2011, allowing increased (far left) and Chloe Beeby, of time, it could not have been. Yet the Endowment investment analyst and drawdown by the University’ Fund paid out a £41million dividend in 2011, alumna (Exeter, 2005) allowing increased drawdown by the University (see colleges and their wealth, which was serially p25), and thus a valuable contribution to the attacked and defended by different government University’s activities. These matters of investment commissions over the past century. As if this wasn’t might seem terribly remote from educational reason enough to be wary of centralised wealth opportunity and the provision of hardship funds, management initiatives, there was in the 1960s and student scholarships, and the like, but actually they 1970s a centralised OUEM-type forebear offered by stand in direct relation to each other. Nuffield College, a unit trust. Its investments were, Seen historically, one of the reasons why OUEM writes JPD Dunbabin in The History of the University was set up only in 2007 was because until then the of Oxford, “heavily geared and were therefore hit University’s own endowment, as distinct from that particularly hard by the collapse of the market in of the colleges, had remained relatively small. the mid-1970s.” It was abandoned. This is why Neild’s history of Cambridge’s finances Dunbabin qualifies this narrative by noting that begins in the mid-nineteenth century. Before then, Nuffield’s own investments did very well over the he notes early on, it scarcely had a financial history long term. In this simple sense all investment – the University was the sum of its colleges and philosophies have strengths and weaknesses little more. Oxford was much the same. bounded by time horizons. Oxbridge had become a “quasi-monastic The premise of our original question, meanwhile, backwater”, says Neild, and was in grave danger of that Oxbridge could have done brilliantly instead sliding into indifference, lacking the departmental of adequately in its management of its wealth, runs focus and capital intensive equipment needed to headfirst into two conundrums: humanity and compete in all manner of subjects already being tradition. Both fused seamlessly in that bedrock of avidly pursued by other nations (and indeed other all investments until the advent of equities: land. universities in the UK). It is unwise to be judgemental of past generations of But the other reason for OUEM’s inception bursars wedded to poorly performing agricultural in 2007, rather than 1950 or 1975, concerns the land investments that brought about the basis of jealously guarded independence of individual the financial crisis that landed Oxbridge in the ➺

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OXF08.feat_b.indd 44 3/15/13 4:39 PM

38 The Money Question

lap of the state by the end of the Great War. Trimley Estate on which Felixstowe Dock sits, plus The immediate cause of the crisis that led to a tract of poor agricultural land upon which today the first state grants was war inflation, but the there sits a flourishing Science Park. The college’s underlying cause, well documented, was that £900 million endowment is the product of a lively the colleges had been too slow to increase rents imagination, worldly instincts and indefatigable from tenants, compounded by 40 years of energy. Compare this to the brief fashion for agricultural depression. On this subject there is no college land sales for housing development that straightforward verdict, except that time-honoured followed 1918, and you encounter a defective relations with tenants were viewed humanely, bursarial imagination. Once the land was gone, avarice was frowned on, and land ownership was it was gone for good. heavily clustered, in Oxford’s case, around So the answer to the question, ‘Had the ‘A portion of Oxfordshire, a pattern that continues to this day. collegiate universities of Oxford and Cambridge Neild and Dunbabin both note that various legal managed their nineteenth and twentieth century the collegiate restrictions remained in force until well into the wealth brilliantly, instead of averagely, might twentieth century, preventing colleges from selling they have retained their independence from University land for their own benefit, the inheritance of government interference?’ receives a two-fold wealth Elizabethan statutes. However, as early as 1856, answer. Certainly they could, theoretically, have subject to consent of the Copyhold Commissioners, done better with their investments had they is being colleges were permitted to sell land as long as been more alert to non-traditional land they bought new land. The thinking was to allow investments. And as OXIP and OUEM may show managed colleges to capitalise on the industrial revolution, show in the fullness of time, there might be good today in a further reform two years later allowing for reason to think that a portion of the collegiate mining and building leases on college land. Yet University wealth is being managed today in a a superior little of this envisaged land-exchange took place. superior manner to the past. To the extent that this manner to The majority of dons remained indifferent to is true, it strengthens the University and with luck industry, and to this day Shepherd and Woodward may emulate Trinity, but as the Neildian Paradox the past’ sell disproportionately large numbers of Barbours shows most clearly, political interference and wealth in their High Street store, and not just to tourists. do not correlate neatly, even if they bear a relation This is where the Trinity/Cambridge example to one another that it would be foolish to ignore. remains compelling, because it shows how the development of industrial sites can completely See a filmed interview with transform a college’s fortunes. Under the Professor Neild at stewardship of Sir John Bradfield, senior bursar www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk at Trinity 1956–92, the college developed the Funding MBA students The two chaps on the right want you to fund student loans. Their private, for-profit company, Prodigy Finance, is filling a vacuum created by newly risk-averse bankers, who do not want to lend money to students. Prodigy has limited its scope so far to business school students, but its

business model is evidence for a broader IONS problem. In the UK there is no government loan scheme for post-graduate students,

and other funding solutions are strained. SESS JOBY Prodigy’s idea is that investors, some Ryan Steele and Cameron Stevens, co-founders of Prodigy Finance of them alumni, invest directly in MBA students. This has recently happened They add that Prodigy Finance has had yawning graduate funding gap” at his at Oxford’s Saïd Business School. The a zero default rate since its start in 2007, annual oration last October. Professor student gets to take her MBA, and the during which time it has funded 819 Andrew Hamilton announced an Oxford investors receive interest payments. students from 84 countries at seven Graduate Scholarship Matched Fund It is capitalism but there is goodwill leading business schools. with an endowment goal of £100 million, involved. The rate of interest takes account The founders’ main achievement is “to ensure the most talented graduate of both parties. On that particular issue, to develop a score card of risk for each students from all over the world can founders Cameron Stevens and Ryan applicant student, “A predictive model benefit from what Oxford has to offer.” Steele insist: “We constantly agonise over built on thousands of data points,” He explained that £40 million from the interest rate. It has to be fair to the according to CEO Cameron Stevens. University funds will be followed by students but attractive to lenders.” The Vice-Chancellor highlighted “the £60 million from philanthropic giving.

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OXF08.feat_b.indd 45 3/15/13 4:39 PM

44 JOBY SESSIONS JOBY THE STORYTELLER Alan Garner’s years at Oxford heavily influenced his children’s fantasy tales and have resonated across 50 years. John Garth meets the author, one of the subjects of a major Bodleian exhibition

OXF08.feat_garner.indd 42 3/14/13 4:13 PM 45

‘At the end of my first term, I realised that I didn’t want to go home’

children’s fantasy set in Alderley Edge, where he had grown up. A sequel, The Moon of Gomrath, hurled twins Colin and Susan deeper into an idiosyncratic and potent brew of Norse and Celtic folklore, yet left the plot unresolved: Garner had tired of the children. But last year, after a 50-year hiatus and numerous unrelated books, Garner unexpectedly completed their story with the elliptical and thoroughly non-juvenile Boneland, in which Colin is a deeply disturbed astronomer at Jodrell Bank, searching the night sky for his missing sister. As Garner, now 78, talks for the first time at length about his relationship with Oxford, the dish of Jodrell Bank’s radio telescope looms massively in the view from his book-lined study in a restored medieval hall. “I love the contrast,” he says. “The great dish two fields away.” Ancient and modern, hands and head, Cheshire and Oxford: such are the poles that have propagated Garner’s creative spark. By the time Garner won a place at Manchester Grammar School and first fixed his eye on Oxford, well-meaning adults had begun a severe deracination. For generations the Garner menfolk had been left-handed craftsmen, but his mother closed that road by stuffing his left hand up his liberty bodice to enforce right-handedness. At six, his teacher washed his mouth with soapy water for “talking broad” (Garner still uses ‘received pronunciation’, which he articulates with exceptional clarity). Meanwhile childhood sickness brought him Naomi Canton and close to death, confined him for months in bed and Dr BS Chandrasekhar revisit isolated him at primary school. He discovered Queen’s College together books – an undiscriminating hunger for words – and a talent for running from bullies. Garner was able to go to grammar school only because means-testing meant his fees were waived. It was a culture shock, not least for his family. They were thrilled that “Alan was going to get an education” but, he says, “There was no concept of what that was. I soon learnt that it was not a good idea to come home excited over irregular verbs.” They felt threatened; he felt alienated: the classic n the window seat in Cloisters, looking out pickle of the first-generation educated (vividly over the moonlit snow that had stopped dramatised in Garner’s Carnegie-winning novel falling, and seeing the tower and listening The Owl Service and its successor Red Shift). He loved to the chimes, I said, ‘If I don’t get in here, Aeschylus, Homer, and the subtle expressiveness THE STORYTELLER I think I’m going to die.’” So Alan Garner of Greek regardless. Though at 18 he was Britain’s OBE arrived at Magdalen for entrance fastest schoolboy sprinter and could have had exams in January 1953, picturing himself in the a career in athletics, the Regius Professorship in I Chair of Greek one day. But after just four terms he Greek became his goal. left Oxford permanently for his native Cheshire. So Garner came to Magdalen as an applicant. Oxford’s loss was literature’s gain, and this summer His interview was abysmal until he was asked if he Garner is the focus of a Bodleian exhibition of thought it were possible to break the four-minute children’s literature along with Tolkien, CS Lewis, mile. “I said, ‘Yes, Roger Bannister will do it in May Philip Pullman and others, drawing on their papers or June next year.’ They were on to me like a hornet’s at the library. nest. I stood my ground: and that was my interview.” When Garner dropped out, he had already begun Alan Garner’s first book, National Service supervened, as a subaltern with The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, an instant classic of which drew on old legends the Royal Artillery. “I was stationed at Woolwich, ➺

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OXF08.feat_garner.indd 43 3/14/13 4:13 PM

47

which is what they did with the ones they realised they shouldn’t have commissioned,” says Garner. But acting as court-martial defence taught him about men, mendacity and responsibility. When he met up with old school friends he found them “still children”. Yet one chance meeting made a decisive impact. In the first week of Michaelmas 1955, Garner bumped into an old friend who had been in the school dramatic society with him. “He was a bit of a fixer and before I knew what was happening, I was auditioning for the Magdalen Players Cuppers entry, which was Everyman, directed by a young Anthony Page. And that’s how I came to play Antony in Antony and Cleopatra with...” Garner laughs, “...Dudley Moore as Enobarbus and Kenneth Baker as stage manager! Heady times.” At Magdalen as organ scholar, Dudley Moore was just discovering his comedic talents. “We were very close friends,” said Garner, “but it was one of those friendships that didn’t survive university.” The odd conjunction leads me to unearth a real surprise: on an online discussion forum, an eyewitness recalls that the two would practise deadpan comedy, as if in anticipation of Pete and Dud: Moore as ‘Copper Knickers’ and Garner as ‘Des Carts’, both riffing on philosophy. When I check with Garner he responds, “I’d forgotten!” Proof of Garner’s taste for dry, crackling repartee may be found in his novels from The Owl Service onwards. In private Moore was angst-ridden and would spend hours in Garner’s room worrying about his debt to his parents and other matters. And Garner had his own unease at Oxford. “I loved and still love the place, but it was a dangerous place in the end,” he

said. “At the end of my first term, as the last week was SESSIONS JOBY

the same basic characters as the Old Greek Comedy.” (above) For services to ‘[My book] just lay there, Hardie awarded Garner’s highest grade. literature, Garner was dead – and the trouble was, Garner kept a strange old oak shovel: both a appointed OBE in 2001 symbol of home and an enigma. He’d seen it long so did Homer’ ago on a hook at primary school and had forgotten about it until, at 17, he saw a picture of the selfsame looming, I realised that I didn’t want to go home. object in a Victorian book by a Cheshire antiquary. Then an image came into my head – I saw Oxford Learning that the shovel had been found among as a medieval map with whales in the water at the some crude stone mauls in the Alderley Edge copper bottom and cherubs blowing at the city walls, and mines, Garner had retrieved it from his first school. outside nothing; and I thought, ‘This isn’t very He consulted the Ashmolean but was not satisfied healthy.’ That snapped me out of it.” when it was dismissed as a Victorian child’s toy spade. In Hilary 1956, preparations for Antony and The insistent urge to make Cheshire count in Cleopatra took over. In Trinity, Anthony Page, who Oxford was symptomatic of Garner’s ongoing was directing but was also billed as Caesar, grew unease. A ‘Damascene moment’ came at an Alderley increasingly manic. With a fortnight to go he decided Edge bus stop during the summer vacation. “I was he and Garner must swap roles. The company staring across the road at a wall that had been built committee overruled him, and even found another by my grandfather’s grandfather, and it almost came Caesar. For Garner, Antony was an apt role – in the to me in words: ‘You’ve got to follow this.’” He must words of the programme he “cannot reconcile the emulate the standards of his craftsman ancestors, demands of the two worlds”. and that did not mean becoming Professor of Greek. Classics tutor Colin Hardie witnessed something He lacked the hand skills to be a craftsman, but his similar when he asked Garner to account for the facility with language gave him one idea. In his diary origin of Greek Comedy. Garner remembers: that day, 21 August 1956, he wrote, “Became inspired “I started to read round the subject, and I realised to write.” I was reading about something I knew. So I turned For many years Garner has viewed that moment up at my tutorial and I performed for him, in the as irrational, but now he remembers some earlier Cheshire dialect, the Alderley Mummer’s Play. It had glimpses of his future. Out of many dull primary ➺

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OXF08.feat_garner.indd 44 3/14/13 4:13 PM 48 Alan Garner

he could return to spend his life studying others. With Hardie’s exhortation that “you will have to create your own Oxford”, Garner left university at the end of 1956. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen was published four years later. It was completed at Toad Hall in Blackden: a cottage which he recognised as a medieval hall and borrowed £510 to buy. With his first wife Anne Cook (Cleopatra) he had three children. In 1972 Garner married teacher and critic Griselda Greaves, with whom he had two more children. Toad Hall shares its site – inhabited for 10,000 years – with six Early Bronze Age burial mounds, plus the Medicine House: a second medieval hall which was facing demolition until the Garners bought it and moved it there wholesale. Here Garner has indeed created his ‘own Oxford’: The Blackden Trust (www.theblackdentrust.org.uk), dedicated to cross-disciplinary education on local archaological and other matters, which hosts regular digs, talks, and performances. Tutors include experts from as far afield as Sussex and Orkney. The old oak shovel that Garner had brought to Oxford exemplifies his non-writerly activities. Persisting with his investigations, in 1991 he took it to Manchester Museum, where carbon-dating revealed it was 4,000 years old. New investigations, triggered by this and other finds, showed the Edge mineworkings, too, to be far older than anyone had realised. Garner has returned to Oxford many times since dropping out, including a 1960 stint at the Bodleian researching the spells used in The Moon of Gomrath (his notes are on show in this summer’s exhibition). In the novels that followed, including the starkly different delayed sequel Boneland, Garner has increasingly turned from the direct and linear to the fractured, multi-layered and oblique. From Joyce to Picasso to Lennon, it’s a hallmark of modern cultural pioneers. One aid in this dismantlement

JOBY SESSIONS JOBY was Garner’s stage experience: his third book, Elidor,

Alan Garner school exercises, one had lit a spark: writing a fairy photographed for story. “It’s still very good; you can see me coming,” he ‘a wizard guarded a sleeping Oxford Today says. As a child he had told stories to his cousins, as king and his knights, ready well as to school bullies so they wouldn’t pick on him. In 1956 diary entries, published here for the first for Britain’s direst peril’ time, Garner recorded that on 30 August he “did quite a lot of thinking over the book”, and on began as a radio play; and he adapted The Owl Service 4 September, “Actually started to write the book.” and Red Shift for television. On that first MS page Colin and Susan, gazing on He says the academic rigour of Oxford has been incessant London rain, seem to reflect their creator’s “a permanent strength through all my life”; Tacitus own inertia; yet a holiday promises adventure. taught him “the power of spare writing”; the Oresteia Garner crossed it out and wrote “mush”, but five days suggested ways to transmute his own internal tension later he had a complete draft of chapter one of The and convey it to the reader. But Oxford, along with Weirdstone of Brisingamen. The key ingredients had Cheshire, is part of the tension itself. The energy been with him all along: the sandstone Edge that between these two poles has produced nine different towered over the Garner family home; and the local novels bookended by a trilogy. Face to face, he gives tradition that within it a wizard guarded a sleeping every impression of having much more to say. king and his knights, ready for Britain’s direst peril. He went back for Michaelmas term on advice from Magical books: From the Middle Ages to Middle-earth his elders, taking his newly begun novel. “It just lay runs at the Bodleian from 23 May –27 October, accompanied there, dead – and the trouble was, so did Homer.” by an illustrated volume of essays edited by Carolyne Larrington Colin Hardie agreed Garner should leave “and and Diane Purkiss. discover whether you have an original mind”; if not, John Garth is the author of Tolkien and the Great War.

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OXF08.arts_ideas.indd 8 3/12/13 12:41 PM

Arts& Ideas 53 Book reviews All books are Oxford-related; their subject matter is the University or city, and/or the author is a current or former student or academic

ladder. Sir Antony Acland hired him as private secretary, hoping the young man’s Tiggerish character might cheer him up. When interviewed by Robin Cook to be his private secretary, Cowper- Coles saw the vulnerability behind Cook’s prickly façade, and offered to provide him not just sound advice but also affection. He got the job. There is more meat in the second half of the book. Cowper- Coles is caught up in the battle between Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong who despised the “pre-emptive cringe” of the Foreign Offi ce towards Beijing, and pre-eminent Sinologist, Sir Percy Cradock, over how much democracy to grant the colony ahead of the handover to China in 1997. Cowper-Coles laments the “bureaucratic pusillanimity” that ruled in the top echelons of the Foreign Offi ce. After his stint with Robin Cook, he got three posts which tested all his reserves of optimism. He served as ambassador to Israel – the fi rst Arabist to do so – at the bloody height of the second Palestinian intifada. From Tel Aviv he went to Riyadh, at a time when Al-Qaeda was waging a struggle to the death with the House of Saud. And from there to Kabul to front Britain’s mission impossible in Afghanistan. The story of how one of Britain’s most talented diplomats quit Ever The Diplomat: the Foreign Offi ce is told in his book Cables from Kabul. Cheated Confessions of a Foreign Offi ce Mandarin of a promised ambassadorial post, he resigns, and relates with undiplomatic passion the folly of British forces marching into By Sherard Cowper-Coles Helmand province behind blimpish generals promising a military Harper Press, 9780007436002, £20 victory which they knew was impossible, but needed to spin in order to protect their budgets. Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles’ witty memoir offers a mandarin’s eye Ever the Diplomat is meant to be a lighter read. But still, it cannot view of the diplomatic process. When Margaret Thatcher end without some soul-searching. The Foreign Offi ce should stop objected to a speech he had written, she wrote “NO!” with such being so “politely complaisant” and serving up what its masters ferocity that her pen made a hole in the paper. Tony Blair, by want to hear. He regrets that nowhere in the archives is a minute contrast, was not a man for diplomatic detail. Heading for a warning ministers of the folly of joining the American invasion summit, he would stare dreamily out of the aircraft window while of Iraq. In the end, he insists that his 33-year career was like having his staff tried to make him focus. Robin Cook, as foreign Christmas every day. It is hard to imagine joining the diplomatic secretary, had such an aversion to paperwork (unless it was The service in today’s austere times and being able to write that. Racing Post) that Cowper-Coles had to ambush him, pen in hand, on the pavement at his front door to get him to sign. Cowper-Coles was a natural for the Foreign Offi ce, relishing the travel and intellectual and linguistic challenges. At the wheel of his Mini Cooper he drives out to Lebanon for Arabic language training, and then to Egypt. Servants, suffragis and fi xers are on hand to smooth the way. After Anwar Sadat is shot in 1981, Cowper-Coles drafts a telegram which concludes with a Latin quotation from Lucretius. Alas, Lord Carrington, the foreign secretary, is not up to translating it. The Cairo embassy’s crystal ball was not as sharp as its command of dead languages. The ambassador predicted that Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, would not last six months. Oops. He managed almost 30 years.

His fl uent pen and emotional warmth propelled him up the SHERARD COWPER-COLES Sherard Cowper-Coles in a Typhoon at RAF Coningsby, June 2009.

‘Cowper-Coles was a natural for Alan Philps (New College, 1973) studied Arabic and Persian. He worked as a the Foreign Offi ce, relishing the foreign correspondent for Reuters (Moscow, Beirut, Tunis and Paris) and then The Daily Telegraph (Moscow, Jerusalem and foreign editor). He is currently intellectual and linguistic challenges’ Editor of The World Today, the Chatham House magazine.

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OXF08.book_1.indd 45 3/12/13 12:41 PM We welcome 54 Arts Ideas Book reviews review suggestions & from authors and publishers. Please send brief details to the Editor at oxford.today@ admin.ox.ac.uk

The Great Degeneration: Is This Your First Remodelling How Institutions Decay and Economies Die War? Travels Medicine Through the Post- By Niall Ferguson By Jeremy Swayne Allen Lane, 9781846147326, £16.99 9/11 Islamic World Saltire Books 9781908127006, £48.99 Based on the 2012 Reith lectures he gave, Ferguson’s sub-title to By Michael Petrou this book is important: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die. Dundurn The Oxonian author He’s not talking about China, or India, or even Russia; countries 9781459706460, £16.99 (Worcester, 1960) re-imagines riddled with stifl ing bureaucracy and corruption. modern medicine as holistic, No, he’s referring to the West: the USA, Europe and of course One of Canada’s leading foreign whole-person-based healing, Great Britain. He attributes the relative economic decline of correspondents (St Antony’s, rather than as expensive the west, fortifi ed of course by the ongoing economic crisis, 2002) presents a searing medley technological remedies to a deeper collapse in four great institutions: representative of gritty narratives drawn from admitting only of single-cause, government; the free market; the rule of law; and civil society. a decade of reporting from biomedical ailments. If that These were the same institutions (he means the term broadly) across the greater Middle East. sounds dull, think again. The that allowed the west to beat the rest over the last 500 years. At times the plethora of stories book is full of rich historical, Their recent collapse is the principal explanation for The Great threatens to obscure the cultural and anecdotal Degeneration, he says – not de-leveraging, and not globalisation. author’s objective, but his refl ection, and in no way comes There’s a different narrative that Ferguson throws aside, even postscript successfully focuses out simplistically on the side of though it’s obvious and he admits it: “Having been more than around the Arab Spring. Petrou ‘alternative medicine’, as one 20 times richer than the average Chinese in 1978, the average is a staunch supporter of the might anticipate. Rather, the American is now just fi ve times richer.” (p35) western mission in Afghanistan, author considers the limits China, South Korea and others have done well for themselves. and he is also deeply supportive of science and the limits of Short of refusing to buy their exports, the west could not have of “resolute and not easily non-scientifi c approaches prevented it. But Ferguson sweeps the paradox of rest-erner cowed” liberals in the Muslim ranging from homeopathy economic success, along with non-representative government, world, who have often taken to the placebo effect, and corruption and the absence of good laws, to one side. “What insane personal risks in the re-introduces a body-mind- interests me here is what has gone wrong in the west.” If you can name of democratic reform spirit model of the patient in accept this rhetorical manoeuvre, the rest of the book unfurls as and female emancipation. So order to discuss a new synthesis a sparkling sequence of controversial ideas. the heroes of the narratives are of reductionism and holism. He compares public accounts to Enron and says that western Iranian political prisoners, The life work of a national accounting is fraudulent. He says that in the name of Egyptian protestors, Syrian and practitioner with much wider being more effi cient and hands-on, governments have over- Libyan rebels and educated aspirations towards true regulated the economy and made fragile. The bond between the Afghan women. The human healing, this book is destined generations is broken because of unequally distributed debt narratives, in their unpredictable to become a classic work obligations bestowed on today’s young, and the nourishment of and subjective particularity, are for practitioners and lay associational culture, where strangers say hello to each other, has collectively compelling. persons alike. been destroyed by Facebook. Private education is a public good, and parents who dislike academy schools are the true elitists. For our new ‘book of the week’ feature, An alumnus of Magdalen and fellow of Jesus College, Ferguson visit www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk/ is frequently described by hacks as “dazzling”. It’s true. bookoftheweek

OXF08.books.indd 45 3/13/13 3:31 PM Book of the Week 55 Visit www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk to see weekly, featured books, available to buy with a 15% alumni discount at www.blackwell.co.uk/oxfordalumni

Evolution’s Destiny George Osborne: Writing Talk Six Moments The Brain By RJP Williams and The Austerity By Alex Hamilton of Crisis: Inside Supremacy REM Rickaby Chancellor Matador British Foreign By Kathleen Taylor RSC Publishing By Janan Ganesh 978178088, £9.95 Policy OUP 9781849735582, £69.99 Biteback Publishing By Gill Bennett 9780199603374, £18.99 9781849542142, £20 A gleefully eclectic mix OUP Landmark work of Guardian and Times 9780199583751, £20 Neuroscience is re-frames evolution as Financial Times political interviews conducted suddenly one of the geochemistry as well columnist Janan Ganesh by the author across Oxonian Bennett hottest subjects out as biology. Four billion produces a meticulously the decades, taking in (Somerville, 1969) lifts there, and this single years of chemical researched biography of writers from all genres: the lid on how six crucial volume tells you why in changes pre-dated what the youngest Chancellor from Stephen King to decisions were taken, accessible language. Darwin said in 1859. in over a century, and Beryl Cook to Hergé. and not just why. She An invaluable survey This work will interest of course an Oxonian Always good value; concludes that British with plenty of chemists, geologists and who read modern nicely written; foreign policy is subject illustrations and a biologists alike. history at Magdalen. occasionally dated. to deep continuity. glossary of terms.

Charles Spooner: Firm Commitment Twelve Theories Shelley at Oxford Shakespeare Today Arts and Crafts By Colin Mayer of Human Nature By Heathcote Williams By Peter Milward Architect OUP By Leslie Stevenson, Huxley Scientifi c Press FastPencil By Alec Hamilton 9780199669936, £16.99 David L Haberman, 9781909214026, £6 9781607461937, $16.95 Shaun Tyas Peter Matthews Wright 9781907730214, £45 A constructive critique OUP, 9780199859030, £30 One incendiary A slender volume of of the commercial wild-child poet writing brilliance, which situates A beautifully illustrated corporation and Confucianism; poetry about another Shakespeare within homage to the church- ultimately an ambitious Hinduism; Buddhism; wild-child incendiary a matrix of scientifi c, centred work of one agenda for change. Plato; Aristotle; The poet. Throws out the cultural, literary and of the Arts and Crafts Worthy of wide Bible; Islam; Kant; romantic Shelley and historical interrogation, movement’s less showy readership because it is Marx; Freud; Sartre; brings in 1990s perforated with a members. Ambrosia to also a carefully weighed Darwin. The book you anarcho-punk band religious, vocational classical modernists and historical refl ection, and wished you'd had access Chumbawamba. Latest refl ection. Ends with the fruitcake to ecclesiastics thus unlike the majority to earlier in life. Now a contribution from this view that Shakespeare is who still know what a of books published in new, 6th edition and as quirky, Oxford-based an optimist amidst cup of tea tastes like. this genre. compelling as ever. indie publisher. modernity.

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OXF08.books.indd 46 3/13/13 3:31 PM GES IMA ION AT SS ASSOCI SS E /AP/PR TH OR SW LE Y WIGG T KIRS

interviews, I got the train, I went to the Tate.” Yet her journey from Oxford to victory at Tate Britain truly began nearly three BEATNIK decades ago, and it is this odyssey that came to mind as she stepped up on 3 December last year to be presented with the £25,000 prize by actor Jude Law for her video installation, The Woolworths GIRL Choir of 1979. John Garth talks to Turner Prize-winning video artist “It was thrilling but I also felt quite solemn, because there had been so many and fellow of Lady Margaret Hall Elizabeth Price really hard years and points where you think you have to give up. It felt good, not in a triumphal way but, ‘Phew, out of the terrible years!’” t was a day of contrasts for Price came to Oxford in 1985 as a shy Elizabeth Price. First she 18-year-old attracted by the Ruskin’s interviewed applicants for intimate scale and by the University’s the BA course at the Ruskin. diverse intellectual life and collections. Then she won the Turner Prize. At Jesus College, everyone else seemed to As a newly appointed tutor, know someone, but coming from a Luton Price felt it was vital for her to take part comprehensive she felt isolated. At a gig Iin the admissions process. “And it put by an indie band in the college bar, she the whole thing in perspective,” she said. met Amelia Fletcher, who was reading “I went to Oxford, I did a morning of economics at St Edmund Hall.

OXF08.feat_liz.indd 42 3/14/13 4:14 PM 57

them with the label ‘twee pop’, Talulah Gosh spent the rest of their short career ‘It was thrilling striving with punk energy to throw it off. but I also felt quite The band eventually fizzled out, to be remembered only by diehard aficionados. solemn, because (Since her Turner Prize win it has been called “one of the most over-achieving there had been so indie bands in history”, with lead vocalist many hard years’ Fletcher now chief economist at the Office of Fair Trading, and guitarist Pete suggests it is in applying modern, savvy Momtchiloff senior commissioning editor communications media to deeper cultural for philosophy at OUP.) concerns than the usual ephemera of Price’s fledgling pop career almost infomercials and YouTube pop videos. derailed her BA course, and she had to It is embracing video that proved the retake her prelims. “When I failed, I think turning point in Price’s career about they felt I’d made my choice and I should six years ago, and though she also works go and do something else. But I just in sculpture and photography, she’s thought they were wrong, so I worked most often described as a video really hard over the summer. When installation artist. I came back in the second year I was very Looking ahead, Price sees her life much more focused.” A pep talk from settling down after the media interest that her “lucid and incisive” tutor, Douglas followed on the Turner. She’s working on Allsopp, helped her through the crisis. a major new project as artist-in-residence After the Ruskin she worked for a year at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the Bodleian stacks. “I’ve done a lot of at Harwell. work on this as an artist,” she said, “using If Turner Prize winners are not the idea of this subterranean library.” normally associated with academic A 2009 video installation, User Group institutions like the University of Oxford, Disco, explores a fictional underground that’s not the way Price sees it. She was museum, ruined and disorganised. drawn back to teach at the Ruskin by the The iconoclasm of Talulah Gosh same intimacy and diversity that originally lives on in Price’s own artistic drive to brought her here as an undergraduate. dismantle the conventional categories “The scale of it, and the fact that the of contemporary art. The Woolworths Choir University supports the Ruskin so well, of 1979 spans cathedral architecture just seemed promising. And there are and a fatal Manchester shop fire; it very good students. also reflects Price’s musical interests, “Also, in normal universities I would incorporating archive footage of the end up talking to cultural historians, art Elizabeth Price at Tate Britain on 3 December Shangri-Las and percussive handclaps. historians and artists,” she said. “Their 2012, where she was awarded the Turner All this might suggest a grab-bag, but company’s fantastic and very interesting; Prize for The Woolworths Choir of 1979 it’s a surprisingly intense experience, but when you talk to somebody about with its disparate subjects hauntingly solar science over a chat at lunchtime, “She came up to talk to me because united by the soundtrack and by a it’s just a different kind of pleasure.” we both had the same badge on. She was recurrent hand gesture made from a Price shuttles between Oxford and a lot more confident than me and the first high window during the fire. East London, where she has her studio and thing she said was, ‘Do you want to be in Price had been nominated for a solo lives with her partner. “The time I’m not a band?’ And I went, ‘Uh, yes...’” exhibition at Gateshead’s Baltic Centre teaching is incredibly intense: I have the A whirlwind year on vocals, violin, which also comprised two other video most dreadful deadlines and I work guitar and tambourine in Talulah Gosh pieces, but it was The Woolworths Choir like a mad person,” she said. “I find it saw recording sessions in Glasgow, cult of 1979 that travelled to Tate Britain for frustrating if I then go to teach and music paper the NME putting their debut the Turner Prize show, and which most it’s a bit lacklustre. So I like working single on a sampler cassette, and the impressed audiences. The Turner Prize somewhere where it’s ambitious, exciting classic entry-level touring experience: jury, noting that Price’s work had been and people want it to be great. Oxford is “Strings of gigs one after the other, consistently ambitious for several years, a place where there is that culture of travelling wedged between two amplifiers, praised the piece as “seductive and expectation and ambition.” and sleeping on someone’s freezing cold immersive”. Richard Dorment of The kitchen floor.” Daily Telegraph went further, calling it Elizabeth Price (Jesus College, 1985) did her MA at Talulah Gosh stuck out. Price recalls: “an artwork that has the potential the Royal College of Art and a PhD at Leeds. She has “We said a lot of things initially as an fundamentally to change the way taught at the Royal College and at Goldsmiths. anti-rock’n’roll stance: ‘We eat sweets, we knowledge is transferred, the way don’t take drugs.’ At that time, goth was we teach and the way we learn.” very dominant, and it was this really If it augurs any tidal shift in the To see The Woolworths po-faced, serious and male-oriented rock.” notoriously swirling waters of Choir of 1979, go to Then, when the music press lumbered contemporary British art, Dorment www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk

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OXF08.feat_liz.indd 43 3/14/13 4:14 PM 58 Arts & Ideas Music Reviews All CDs are Oxford-related; their subject matter is the University or city, and/or the composer/artist is a current or former student or academic

Amid the crackle and hiss, there are Gounod arias sung by a lay clerk in 1906 and carols from the Magdalen Glee Singers in 1907. A fragment of a Pathé newsreel from 1931 features the choir on the tower at 6am on May morning, though the limelight is stolen by the birds, whose rival dawn chorus was evidently sung much closer to the microphone. The remaining tracks are from evensongs between 1957 and 1960, the early years of Bernard Rose’s tenure as Director. Archival interest has taken precedence over musical quality, so there are some unfortunate moments (Sheppard’s ‘Haec Dies’ sounds as though it was bellowed into a loudhailer at a village fête). However, there are some sensitive early renditions of works by Rose and his protégé Kenneth Leighton on the fi nal tracks, which give a better glimpse of Rose’s important contribution to Oxford’s choral history. The debut CD of chamber and David Braid: Chamber Church, Magdalen and New College instrumental pieces by Welsh composer and Instrumental Music (and their Cambridge counterparts at David Braid avoids the demanding King’s and St John’s)? compositional density of much Toccata Classics Each has developed its own style and contemporary music, and has instead a Catalogue Number: TOCC0149 £13.50 sound under particular directors, with more direct quality, generating recognisable heyday periods: King’s under atmosphere with a sparse, textural clarity, David Willcocks, Christ Church under while demonstrating a keen interest in Joseph Haydn: Nelson Mass, Simon Preston. New College, under the form. ‘Morning’, for soprano and string Insanae et Vanae Curae indefatigable Edward Higginbottom, well quartet, makes an arresting opening, into his fourth decade as Director of Music, with shimmering tremolando strings and Novum has an impressively long discography, now the searing purity of Grace Davidson’s Catalogue Number: NCR 1385 £13.99 appearing on its own Novum label. The vocal line; the work exhibits a paradoxical latest addition is a recording of Haydn’s combination of intensity and attenuation, Nelson Mass. New College’s risky selling in which the words of a Spanish sonnet are The Choir of Magdalen point is to draw all its soloists from the strung out over 12 minutes of music. The College, Oxford: choir, most notably the gifted 13-year old more economical compositions for solo Archive Recordings 1906-60 treble Jonty Ward. There are some piano are true to their titles: ‘Aria’ is beautifully pure and lyrical lines, but vocally inspired with an airiness to the OxRecs DIGITAL moments too, notably the coloratura in compositional texture, while ‘Three-part Catalogue Number: OXCD-116 £10 the opening Kyrie, where the runs sound invention’ evokes a vivid sense of technical (only for purchase from Magdalen College) laboured and the treble voice is inevitably construction in angular lines. ‘Sonata for overpowered by the combined might of Quartet’ (actually a piano trio plus clarinet) Oxford, city of screaming choirs, supports choir and orchestra. There are fi ne makes a progression from formless a wide variety of choral styles from moments in the soloists’ ensemble singing sonority to a satisfyingly structural and plainsong to barbershop, but remains – often a weakness among operatic singers energetic fugue. most identifi ed with the English choral vying for prominence – and the choir itself Braid dislikes the notion that listeners tradition, heard daily at evensong in sings with vigour and nuance. have to fasten their seatbelts for modern college chapels throughout the University. Magdalen’s discography has a more music, or scour the programme notes for There is in truth no single tradition, but unusual addition in a CD of archival elucidation. He urges his audience: “Just a spectrum of styles, including fi rst-rate recordings, 1906-1960. It is prefaced, listen, as you would to Schubert.” mixed choirs now that choral scholarships a little gratuitously, by John Betjeman are no longer the preserve of boy trebles introducing a BBC programme of 1966 Josie Dixon (University College, 1983) is a and academical clerks. So what remains with his Magdalen reminiscences. What publishing and research training consultant, with the distinguishing feature of the original follows is a unique musical scrapbook of more than 60 university clients in the UK, Europe all-male choral foundations at Christ live recordings, variable in sound quality. and the USA.

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OXF08.cd.indd 46 3/12/13 12:42 PM Regulars Competitions & special offers 59

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OXF08.comp_wine.indd 46 3/12/13 12:41 PM 60 Regulars Crossword Visit www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk for full listings of events Crossword

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65 Regulars Obituaries CE OUR Steve Abrams as chairman of the Railway Staff 15 July 1938–21 November 2012 National Tribunal). A longstanding LIGHT S supporter of the Labour Party D Stephen Irwin (Steve) Abrams, (he was chairman of Oxford City campaigner for the legalisation Labour Party for ten years), in 1975 of cannabis, died on 21 November he was made a life peer; from 1980 2012, aged 74. Born in Chicago, to 1997 he was Opposition front-

he attended Duke University in bench spokesman in the Lords on DIAMON OF COURTESY North Carolina and the University employment matters. He is survived of Chicago. From 1960 to 1967 by his wife Margaret. Dame Louise Johnson he was an advanced student at St 26 September 1940–25 September 2012 Catherine’s College, Oxford, and Maurice Keen headed a unit in the Department 30 October 1933–11 September 2012 Dame Louise Napier Johnson DBE, FRS, David of Psychology investigating Phillips Professor of Molecular Biophysics and extrasensory perception. In 1967 he Maurice Hugh Keen OBE, FBA, Professorial Fellow, Corpus Christi College, from shot to fame when he published a fellow and tutor in medieval history 1990 to 2007, died on 25 September 2012, aged 71. chapter on ‘The Oxford Scene and at Balliol College from 1961 to 2000, She was educated at University College, London, the Law’ in The Book of Grass. His died on 11 September 2012, aged before pursuing research under Sir Lawrence claim that as many as 500 Oxford 78. The son of Hugh Keen, Keeper Bragg at the Royal Institution, where she was students regularly smoked cannabis of the University Chest at Oxford, awarded her PhD in 1965. After a short spell at led to many newspaper headlines. he was educated at Winchester and, Yale she joined the Department of Zoology at Later the same year he founded the after national service in the Royal Oxford as a demonstrator in 1973. She became a Society for Mental Awareness, and Ulster Rifles, Balliol College, lecturer in molecular biophysics and an additional organised a letter published in The Oxford. After graduating in 1957 fellow of Somerville College the same year. In Times calling for reform of the law, he spent four years as a junior 2003 she became Director of Life Sciences at the signed by 65 of the great and good. research fellow at the Queen’s Diamond Light Source, Harwell, a position she Abrams, who moved to London, College before returning to Balliol, held until 2008. She was noted for her work remained closely involved in the where he became tutor in medieval elucidating the structure and functions of enzymes movement for cannabis law reform, history. Among his many notable and was the co-author of the classic textbook and practised as a Jungian analyst. books were The Outlaws of Medieval Protein Crystallography (1976). She was elected His marriage ended in divorce. Legend (1961), The Laws of War in the FRS in 1990 and appointed DBE in 2003. She Later Middle Ages (1965), A History of is survived by her two children. Lord McCarthy Medieval Europe (1968), Chivalry 30 July 1925–18 November 2012 (1984), and Origins of the English Gentleman (2002). He was elected power on a manifesto which William Edward John (Bill) FBA in 1990. He is survived by his included integration with Britain, McCarthy, Baron McCarthy, wife Mary and their three daughters. but negotiations foundered and industrial relations expert, died on in 1958 he resigned and threw 18 November 2012, aged 87. Born Dom Mintoff his energies into the movement in Islington, he left Holloway 6 August 1916–20 August 2012 for independence, achieved in County School at 14 to become a 1964. As prime minister from shop assistant. During the Second Dominic (Dom) Mintoff, Prime 1971 he pursued policies of World War he saw military service Minister of Malta from 1955 to nationalisation and non-alignment, in the Middle East. An active trade 1958 and 1971 to 1984, died on introduced a republican unionist, he won a scholarship to 20 August 2012, aged 96. Born in constitution, and oversaw the final Ruskin College, Oxford; he read Cospicua, Malta, he was educated withdrawal of British forces. He philosophy, politics and economics at the Seminary and Lyceum in retired as prime minister in 1984 at Merton College, and stayed on to Valletta, the Royal University but remained a member of study for a DPhil, awarded in 1962, of Malta, where he studied parliament until 1998. He is on the closed shop. He became a engineering and architecture; survived by two daughters, his wife research fellow at Nuffield College and, as a Rhodes Scholar, Hertford Moyra having predeceased him. in 1959, and in 1970 succeeded College, Oxford, where he read Allan Flanders as university lecturer engineering science, graduating Obituaries are edited by Dr Alex May, in industrial relations; he was also in 1941. After working for the War research editor at Oxford DNB a fellow of Nuffield and Templeton Office he returned to Malta where colleges. He produced numerous he set up a thriving architectural books, sat on many committees, practice and joined the Malta A more comprehensive list of and was involved in numerous Labour Party, of which he became obituaries of Oxonians is at arbitrations (including for 13 years leader in 1949. In 1955 he swept to www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk

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OXF08.obits.indd 52 3/12/13 2:38 PM 66 Regulars

What was your social life like? I loved mixing with students reading other subjects. I had lots of friends who were scientists and my boyfriend at the time was a microbiologist.

Did you get involved in drama at Oxford? I did do a bit of theatre design while I was there, although in some ways it was a lesson in how not to do theatre design. But there’s a sense that Oxford isn’t ‘real life’ so you can try things out and take a few risks.

What eventually led you to a career in the circus? I fell in love with the circus life before I came up to Oxford, when I spent my gap year working at David Balding’s circus in America. After I graduated I did

A GROUP all kinds of jobs in the circus, from washing elephants to being a ringmaster, but my lifelong passion for

PH MEDI riding led me to explore the possibilities of performing A on horses. In 2000, my husband Toti and I set up Giffords Circus.

Has what you learnt at Oxford helped your career? It helps my work every day. From knowing how to do research to articulating an argument, these skills have DREW CROWLEY/TELEGR DREW

AN an impact on your life. It’s common to underestimate how accomplished circus people are, but I work with very talented performers who have all reached a high standard in something, whether that is music, dance or horse training – but when I have days when I feel I’m not particularly skilled at anything, I remind myself that I am trained in words and I can write great copy My Oxford for a new programme or contract. What do you treasure most about your student experiences? Some students find Oxford a culture shock, but for me Nell Gifford – New College 1993 it was so familiar that I was haunted by memories of growing up in the city and happier times with mum. The Giffords Circus impresario, talking to It was quite painful just to walk the streets at times. Lindsey Harrad, reveals bittersweet memories I did love my years at the university though, and am hugely proud of having been there. of her Oxford years If you could go back and do it all again, would you? Why did you apply to Oxford? Yes. It’s not the college or my tutors’ fault but I didn’t I grew up in Oxford and my father went to University get as much out of my course as I had expected, mainly College. I just always expected to go. My father came because of our family tragedy and feeling completely from a large family in the East End of London and adrift while I was there. I really enjoyed the 20th- he met my mum in Oxford and his experiences there century American literature course, and I would love opened up his whole life. to go back and study English again, but this time with much more emphasis on theatre. What did you study?

I read English, it was my passion. I loved everything COLLEGE NEW What does Oxford mean to you now? – drama, fiction, poetry; the whole world of words. Nell in her I would be very happy to live in Oxford, but my New College husband isn’t an urban person and our work means we What was your experience of Oxford? matriculation have to be based in the countryside. I’m also thrilled While I was at Oxford my mum had a serious horse photo, 1992 that we’re bringing the circus to the University Parks riding accident, resulting in a major brain injury that this summer; it’s a fantastic opportunity for us and it’s left her in a coma. She remains in a complete vegetative wonderful that the University has said yes. state today. It’s hard to remember much about those www.giffordscircus.com years, apart from spending a lot of time sitting in the intensive care ward at Frenchay Hospital. I didn’t have the dream student experience because it was such To view an uncut version of this and the a traumatic time, but Oxford did become something previous subjects, visit www.oxfordtoday. of an escape and a sanctuary. ox.ac.uk/interviews

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