Oriel College and Christ Church College defended their positions as Head of the River for the Men’s and Women’s Eights Week races respectively this year. The races, which took place from the Wednesday to the Saturday of fifth week, were tightly contested in the Women’s first division, but all of the top five in the Men’s first division retained their spots from last year.
Eights Week is part of the 200-year old Oxford tradition of ‘bumps’ racing. Boats race single file and attempt to physically bump the boat in front of them, while avoiding being bumped by the boat behind. Crews are ranked within divisions that race each day of the four days of Summer Eights. Bumping moves a crew up in their division, while being bumped moves them down. Crews that are on top of their division then race as the ‘sandwich boat’ at the bottom of the next division; if they manage to bump, they are promoted to the division above them. Crews that are bumped by the sandwich boat are relegated to the division below.
The crew that finishes on top of the first division becomes the ‘Head of the River’. At Eights 2023, Oriel M1 had finished as Head of the River for the Men’s races, as had Christ Church W1 in the Women’s. This year, both teams rowed over (did not bump, nor were bumped) every day to defend their position at the top. While these results suggest stasis from the previous year, there were significant shakeups in the divisions below them.
‘Blades’ are awarded to crews that win Head of the River, or have bumped every day of the four days of the races. Similarly, ‘spoons’ are won by crews that have the dubious honour of being Tail of the River, or were bumped every day. Moreover, since each college often submits multiple crews, there are multiple opportunities for a college to win either blades or spoons, and sometimes even both.
Blades were won sparingly this season; only 14 out of a total of 159 crews won blades. Merton and Green Templeton were the only colleges to have more than one crew win blades, with two each (Merton: W1 and W2; Green Templeton: M1 and M3). Green Templeton M3’s 8-place rise represents the biggest jump this year for any crew. Hertford M2, Balliol W1, and Keble W2 are the only crews to have won blades both this year and last year.
Spoons, on the other hand, were won more plentifully, with 20 crews winning spoons. Oriel’s headship of the Men’s races obscures what has been a disappointing performance from the college overall. Out of the eight crews that they submitted this year across both the Men’s and Women’s races, four (W1, W3, M3, M4) won spoons. This is well clear of other colleges; the runners-up at winning spoons were New (M5 and W3), Catz (M1 and M2), Wolfson (M4 and W2), Antony’s (M1 and W2), and Lincoln (W2 and M2), all with two crews each. The single largest fall for a crew was by Jesus M2 and Trinity W1, both of whom fell six places.
At the college level, the biggest risers were Merton, whose crews across both the Men’s and Women’s races enjoyed a net gain of 15 places. The largest gain in the Men’s races was Green Templeton, whose crews rose 16 places, while in the Women’s, Merton gained 12. The biggest losers this year were, unsurprisingly, Oriel, which overall fell 13 places. In the Men’s races, Catz fell 8 places, while in the Women’s, Hugh’s fell 6.
After inclement weather on the first three days of racing, the final day was graced by some lovely sunshine. Crowds numbering in the thousands visited Boathouse Island to spectate and cheer on their college’s crews. Crews were dutifully doused in champagne and prosecco upon completion of their races, win or lose. And isn’t that the essence of Summer Eights?
The War in the Gaza Strip has been going on for over seven months. In this time, it has cost the lives of over thirty thousand, injured tens of thousands more, displaced hundreds of thousands, destroyed cities, and brought hundreds of thousands to a state of hunger or famine. However, on the morning of April 9th, I had a conversation that gave me hope.
Alon-Lee Green is a leading Israeli activist. He founded the largest Israeli-Palestinian grassroots movement, Standing Together, in 2015, which aims to ‘mobilise Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel in pursuit of peace, equality, and social and climate justice’.
Though Green has received much media attention in recent months, his activism began nearly 20 years ago, while working for a local coffee shop in high school. His attempt to unionise restaurants in Israel led him to be fired from his job; but the story didn’t end there. “A judge ruled they must reinstate me, and after a six-week-long strike we won and gained a collective agreement”, he tells me. The ruling was “historic in Israeli terms, [in demanding] we receive all legal rights for workers”.
Though he “didn’t have the language for it yet”, Green began to appreciate the power of collective action. Nazir, a Palestinian citizen of Israel was one of the five union leaders who stood alongside Green at the time. “For the first time in my life, I understood the power of organising people, even if they are very different from you”, he says. To a young Alon-Lee Green, it had seemed mystical that a Palestinian could lead hundreds of Muslims and Jews in Israel, but from this experience, he saw it was possible.
Sign reading “The people demand social justice”, 30 July 2011. Image Credit: Hanay/ CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Several years later, at 22 years old, Green was among the leaders of Israel’s 2011 “social justice protests”, one of the country’s largest-ever protest movements. “It was a crazy and magical summer”, he recalls. “Tent cities and hope spread across the country carried by the belief that we will bring true change”. Yet, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the movement’s demands and “hope quickly turned to despair”. Despite the setback, Green understood that “leading people is not enough, organising them for the long term is needed” and began to look for a way to enable a unified political struggle, in which Jewish and Palestinian Israelis could be united in their demands.
These earlier lessons laid the foundation of Green’s current organisation Standing Together, a “grassroots movement mobilising Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel in pursuit of peace, equality, and social and climate justice”. For Green, its purpose is “to build power in the struggles for peace and against The Occupation, for social justice and for full equality for all the people living here”.
Standing Together activists marching for a cease-fire in Tel Aviv. Image courtesy of Standing Together.
Green tells me that the supporters of Standing Together are unified by a shared understanding, “a shared language, and consciousness about the reality in Israel. What is special about Standing Together’s members and participants is [that] they believe people of all national identities deserve full equality, liberty, and independence”. Standing Together aim, “is not about standing in solidarity with Palestinians, it is a shared struggle for the interests of both Palestinians and Israelis, which will arise from a solution that works for all”.
Although Standing Together is a relatively small organisation, it still receives substantial attention and is criticised across the political spectrum. The Israeli right sees them as the extreme left that is detached from the Israeli public. The Israeli far left criticises it for compromising on the Palestinian cause to increase their public reach. And, the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement opposes it for being “an Israeli normalisation outfit that seeks to distract from and whitewash Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza”.
Green seems unfazed by critique, regardless of its ideological origin, believing that Standing Together’s achievements are proof they are doing the right thing. He views such criticism only as an ideological barrier to preventing a larger base of people from engaging with the movement. This philosophy, of prioritising action over speech and efficiency over form, has guided Standing Together over the years and continues to do so during the War in the Gaza Strip.
A humanitarian aid truck delivering aid to Gaza. Image courtesy of Standing Together.
Throughout the current war, Standing Together has consistently challenged the Israeli public and government, ever pushing it leftwards. They were the first Israeli organisation to demand a cease-fire and the first Israeli organisation that created humanitarian aid shipments to the people of Gaza. Their aid convoys, however, were stopped several kilometres before reaching Gaza by Israeli police forces. When it became clear the shipment would not reach Gazans, Standing Together diverted it to Palestinians in the West Bank.
Beyond Palestine, Israel, and the current war, I asked Green about activism globally. Over the years, Green has learned from movements in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. For instance, during the global waves of protests in 2011, the Israeli protesters borrowed a phrase from Cairo’s Tahrir Square: “The people demand social justice”. In addition to echoing across national borders, this phrase broke barriers within Israeli society, as Israelis and Palestinians alike supported the cause. “It was chanted in Arabic in Nazareth and Haifa, and in Hebrew in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It was the first time in Israeli history that the phrase ‘the people’ was not [referring to just] the Jewish people.” The movement had encompassed the entire population, regardless of religious, national, or ethnic distinctions.
In the spirit of learning from international activists and movements, I hoped to get some tips from Green about what individuals who care about political issues should do. Above all else, Green believes that people should utilise their electoral power. “Take your political system very seriously,” he advises. “Your government has a huge impact on your own life and on what happens in Israel, Palestine and around the world. You can create broad coalitions that demand change from your governments”.
Despite the clear dialogue with activists Standing Together maintains across continents, there appear to sometimes be substantial differences in their respective attitudes, specifically towards language. “Occasionally, people think the terms you use are more important than what you really do”, Green says. During meetings with activists in the United States, after Green detailed the actions the movement was taking to deliver humanitarian aid to Gazans, he was asked in response why Standing Together didn’t use what Green terms “buzzwords”. “OK”, he says, “words matter, but actions matter more”. Conversely, Green’s position on language may be one of the reasons why movements like BDS criticise Standing Together and see it as “a normalisation outfit”.
I ended the interview by asking Green about which sources of information he would recommend on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the War in the Gaza Strip. “It’s a good question, but I am not sure I’m the best person to ask this”, he says. Green, as an Israeli, reads mostly Israeli outletsHaaretz andLocal Conversation, which offer a “very Israeli angle”, which is informative, but not necessarily what everyone needs. He suggests following local people on social media, who report and film their personal experiences.
In addition to Green’s recommendations, other sources of information can be found through Solutions Not Sides’s weekly news brief, where they provide articles from Arabic, Hebrew and English mainstream, verified media outlets. With this, they capture “what is being said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from different perspectives”, without influence from blogs, think tanks or unverified news outlets. Furthermore, Avi Shlaim, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford and one of Israel’s “New Historians”, recommends two books to understand the conflict. First, Deluge: Gaza and Israel from Crisis to Cataclysm by Jamie Stern-Weiner, published in April 2024, covers the context leading up to October 7th and possible ways forward. Second, he recommends The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 by Rashid Khalidi, as “a work of outstanding historical scholarship” which “presents compelling evidence for a revaluation of the conventional Western view of the subject”.
Green’s words continue to resonate weeks after our interview, as the war continues and around the world activists escalate their struggles. Green believes everyone has what it takes to be an activist. “We live in a crisis-riddled world where there are many opportunities, but the powerful minority reaps them while the majority suffer.” He says. “Throughout history, what broke these dynamics [of exploitation] was the people who forced change on their political system. We need to remember the saying, ‘if we won’t liberate ourselves, we won’t be liberated at all’ – and that is a real possibility”. Green speaks from years of experience, of both success and failures. But looking at the current state of Israel politically, economically, militarily, and morally, one cannot think his words are overly idealistic.
I really do add spring onions to everything, you know. They go with my eggs, on my toast, in my tuna and on top of my bolognese. They’re the base of pretty much every pasta recipe I make and I’ve put them in more than a few soups. Every day, I move one step closer to mixing scallion juice into my brownies. After that, who knows. Sorbet, perhaps?
A spring onion slots beautifully into any recipe. It’s got the distinctiveness of chilli or ginger, but cooler and brighter – the perfect way to liven up a basic meal, or add another layer of complexity to something more flavourful. I always keep a bunch or two on hand; they’re practically a necessity for me.
Predictably, of course, I wasn’t always so liberal with my spring onion usage. Up until about five years ago, I’d barely heard of the things, let alone tasted them. For essentially all of my life, I’ve suffered from what people around me at the time called picky eating and now, with hindsight, can fairly confidently be identified as some sort of eating disorder. My preference for basic foods and my tendency to skip meals was only exacerbated by becoming responsible for cooking for myself. During the first COVID-19 lockdown, I essentially alternated between two meals – eggs on toast and tuna pasta. If I didn’t have the ingredients for either, I usually didn’t eat anything.
Things started to change when, standing smack dab in the middle of the Tesco Extra aisle, I had an epiphany: I missed eating vegetables. Alright, it probably wasn’t that dramatic. I don’t even remember why I chose spring onions specifically. But for whatever reason, I came home that day with a bunch of them in my bag. I chopped them up, sprinkled them over my eggs, and that’s when the love affair started. They crept into everything I cooked, meal by meal.
It didn’t end there. Eggs on toast (with spring onion) started to bore me, so I bought an avocado on a whim one day, and, who’d have guessed – it turned out I quite liked avocado. Plain noodles (with spring onion) weren’t cutting it any more, so in went chilli flakes and soy sauce and other basic ingredients I’d always been too scared to try. My spring onions were my safety net. I knew I liked them, and I knew the sharpness of them could sideline any flavours I ended up not liking. What I found, however, was that I did like all of these new ingredients. I enjoyed the taste of the avocado and the textural contrast it added, too. I struggled a little with the heat of the chilli at first but soon enough I was adding it to tomato soup, using its aftertaste to extend the flavour.
My new fervour for cooking only grew. Now that the floodgates had opened, I was looking for ways to make everything I ate more interesting. I learnt the five flavour types, and now I always keep lemon juice on hand for a splash of acid – honey, too, for a sweet undertone. Bored of tinned soup, I made my own;it really does taste so much better. Then, of course, I had to bake some bread to go with it. “You know what goes well with tomato soup? Cheese,” said everyone on the internet, and I’d never liked most cheeses, but I sucked it up, bought the mildest I could find, and sprinkled spring onion all over it. And I enjoyed it! I stopped skipping lunches, because I learnt to love making them. They were a part of my day I actually looked forward to. Finding new ways to combine flavour and texture is something I absolutely live for. Going out to eat has become a lot easier, too; I no longer end up holding back tears in a restaurant because there’s nothing on the menu I can bear the thought of.
I’m not going to call myself a ‘good cook’. My shopping basket gets a little more varied every week, but there’s still whole categories of ingredients I haven’t tried. There’s ingredients I’ll probably never be able to bring myself to try – blue cheese, for one (although I always said I couldn’t stand the idea of smoked salmon, and you’ll never guess what’s sitting in my fridge right now). I regularly burn toast and split sauces. But I still feel a little burst of pride whenever I remember my flatmate saying “oh, wow, you can actually cook!” when he saw me roasting a courgette, because the me five years ago would never have even thought of doing that, let alone adding paprika to the soup it went into.
The soup didn’t actually taste much like courgette, for the record. I put too much spring onion in, and it overwhelmed everything else. I’m not complaining, though – you can never have too much spring onion in your life.
St Antony’s College has recently signed a 5-year deal with Tsinghua University and received $130,000 to take on two fellows from the University per year. Tsinghua is the top university in China where most leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including the president Xi Jingping, studied – they have been nicknamed the “Tsinghua clique”.
Some of the $130,000 sum will be paid back to the fellows as a research allowance while the rest will go towards “a number of budget lines” including a management charge for administering the programme.
Tsinghua University does not pay the fellows directly but sends them the money through St Antony’s College. As a result, Tsinghua fellows will be paid by Oxford University and will be employees of St Antony’s College.
Tim Niblock’s, emeritus professor at the University of Exeter, told The Times: “it makes quite a lot of difference in the Chinese system whether they are simply being paid by Tsinghua to do research abroad, or whether they have some kind of a recognised status as part of another organisation. In short, the latter gives them much more kudos than the former.”
St Antony’s, which is known for its international student body, told Cherwell that they have similar partnerships with other universities, some of which are funded by similar means.
Fellowships are either self-funded, funded by specific donations held as endowment funds, or as in this case funded by external institutions.
St Antony’s said the agreement’s benefit to the College is “largely academic. Our fellows and students, based at our various internationally-known area studies centres, have productive interaction with researchers from IIAS Tsinghua, who work on various parts of the Global South on topics of interest to our academic community.”
Asked about criticism they might receive, St Antony’s told Cherwell there are “some [express] reservations… because of objections to Chinese human rights and political issues such as the mistreatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang, the repression of political rights in Hong Kong, and threats against Taiwan, while others believe it is legitimate to engage with academics at leading universities as they are not involved in state policy-making on such issues.”
The announcement of the programme follows a MI5 warning to UK universities regarding national security risks associated with international partnerships. Specifically of concern is sensitive research leaking to competitors in countries like China.
The Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith said about the agreement: “This decision is astonishing… How can Oxford care so little about the freedoms of people?”
Somerville College Junior Common Room (JCR) passed a motion on Sunday evening to release a statement, which included a demand for the resignation of Vice-Chancellor, Professor Irene Tracey, over her response to recent pro-Palestine protests in Oxford.
The motion, which passed with 32 in favour and 5 against (numbers amended 21:00 27th May), was voted on during an emergency meeting which was initially proposed at 22:18 on Friday evening in an email to the JCR, suggesting a meeting time of Sunday 5pm. The date and time was not confirmed until the day of the meeting at 12:17. The full statement was sent out to the JCR at 13:18, after the wrong statement was attached to the initial email. The JCR was not scheduled to meet before next weekend. The turnout represented a small portion of the JCR, whose membership is several hundred.
The statement called for Tracey’s resignation for her “refusal to engage with [Oxford Action for Palestine]” and “her office’s decision to call the police on peaceful protesters” after protesters staged a sit-in at University offices on Thursday. The demand also called the University’s statement, issued after Thursday’s events, “woefully inadequate.”
The call for Tracey’s resignation was one of four demands on the University included in the statement. They also demanded the University immediately engage in negotiations with Oxford Action for Palestine (OA4P); issue a formal apology for calling the police on students; and award “[a]mnesty for all peaceful protesters.”
Police arrived at the University Administration offices in Wellington Square on Thursday morning after protesters entered and occupied the building. 17 protesters were arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass and affray. One one of the 17 was also arrested on suspicion of common assault. All of the 17 protesters arrested Thursday were subsequently released on conditional bail.
The University’s statement, which was sent to all students on Thursday evening and signed by the Vice-Chancellor and other University staff, described the “direct action tactics” used by the protesters as “violent and criminal”. It further instructed: “this is not how to do it.”
The statement also called on Somerville College to condemn the University for calling the police on protesters, to demand the Vice-Chancellor’s resignation, and to support OA4P and “leverage their position” to pressure the University administration to comply with the group’s demands.
Police entered Somerville College on Thursday afternoon to launch a drone from the premises, after requesting permission to enter the College as part of an effort to maintain the safety of individuals in the nearby protests. Somerville College told Cherwell that the police had “no business” being on College grounds and confirmed that they were subsequently asked to leave by College Principal Jan Royall, after the decision became more “widely-known.”
The College said in a statement on Thursday: “We take this opportunity to reiterate that we support and respect the right of all our students to protest peacefully. We have extended an open invitation to our students to discuss this incident and the wider protests with us should they wish.”
Danae Ali (a second-year PPE student at Somerville), who proposed the motion, told Cherwell the University’s position regarding the protest “puts their students in danger” and said their conduct on Thursday “clearly evidences this.”
When questioned about the low turnout, they said: “JCR open meetings generally have a low voter turnout” and noted that the turnout to today’s emergency session was “about the same” as for regular meetings.
Earlier this month, Somerville JCR passed motions to publish statements in support of Palestine and OA4P’s “liberated zone”. Today’s motion follows several from Oxford college JCRs supporting the pro-Palestine encampment.
The walls of the National Portrait Gallery in London are dotted with an eclectic mix of paintings and photographs. There is no hierarchy based on which the art is displayed, but rather visitors are hit by a wave of portraits as soon as they enter a room in the gallery. The visitor is met by a room of unfamiliar faces and throughout their journey they become increasingly curious about the stories of the individuals who now adorn the gallery walls. One such individual is the artist Lucian Freud, whose rather unconventional charisma was captured by the photographer Francis Goodman in 1945.
Goodman was invited to take photographs at Freud’s flat, 2 Maresfield Gardens, following their initial, and rather spontaneous, interaction at the Coffee An’ in Soho, London. Freud, a young artist who had recently graduated from Goldsmiths’ College, likely perceived such an interaction with a professional photographer as a sign that his art career had just begun. Goodman’s photographs, after the Second World War, which featured regularly in the British magazine The Tatler And Bystander, focused on covering high society, lifestyle, and politics.[1] Yet, the portrait of Lucian Freud was not as organised or calculated: the photographs were taken outside during winter, where the reflection of the cold winter snow on young Freud’s complexion acted as a natural form of studio lighting.
An unusual dynamic is consequently captured between the photographer and artist in the photograph of Lucian Freud. Rather than Goodman directing the sitting, it appears that Freud cultivated his own image as an artist through the medium of Goodman’s photography. As such, rather than the final photograph reflecting primarily on Goodman’s perceptions and insights as a photographer, the hardship experienced by Freud as a Jewish artist in post-war London is revealed. This is especially depicted by the piercing, though distant, gaze of Freud and his folded arms, attempting to protect his body from the cold winter in London. Freud emigrated to England in the 1930s, aged ten, alongside his family to escape Nazism. Whilst Freud was granted British Citizenship, the photograph illustrates the realities of migration as Freud appears unsettled by the harsh conditions of the outside from which the photograph was taken. Nevertheless, whilst a sense of starkness and coldness is portrayed through the slightly blurred surrounding landscape, this is in contrast to the extremely clear and determined glare of Freud himself. The photograph, therefore, was important to Freud as a reminder of the origins of his life as an artist and his ability to navigate the alienating environment of urban London.
The photograph not only depicts Freud as an artist, but one of his own paintings is also visible in the background. Goodman and Freud cleverly synthesise the mediums of paint and photography. The portrait depicts an old, slightly deformed man, who’s glance mirrors the direction of the artist himself. The man in the portrait and the artist are therefore connected, perhaps through similar shared experiences of isolation and hardship. Freud is sitting and his lower position on the ground means that the portrait is depicted above the artist. It is almost as if Freud was now directed by the art he created and the photograph reveals how interrelated his emotions or personality were to his artistic process.
Goodman’s other film negatives also reflect the unconventional beginnings of Freud as an artist. For example, one photograph depicts Freud with dishevelled hair placing the spout of a watering can into his ear. Again, he looks away from the camera and appears to be contemplating what he was discovering. Whether the watering can symbolises an old ear trumpet of the nineteenth century, or whether it was supposed to symbolise Freud as a plant being watered and nurtured, mirroring his growth as an artist, is unclear. Yet, what is apparent is that Freud was highly creative in his expressions as an artist, where he chose unconventional objects or settings to symbolise his rather unconventional journey as a painter.
Located on the second floor of the National Portrait Gallery, the photograph of Lucian Freud no longer depicts an unfamiliar face. The square film negatives considerably capture Freud’s life as an artist torn between an isolated past and his new outlooks for the future. The photographs, therefore, symbolise the beginnings of his careers, which was possible even if his experiences following the rise of Nazism and his migration to London were equally as difficult to interpret or comprehend than his interaction with a watering can.
A vigil will be held for Johan Floderus, a former Oxford student, who has been detained in Iran’s notorious Evin prison for over two years.
Floderus, a Swedish national, graduated from Harris Manchester College in 2014 with a philosophy, politics and economics degree, before working as a diplomat with the European Union’s External Action Service.
In April 2022, the then 33-year-old was arrested at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport. His arrest was made public more than a year later. Last December, Floderus appeared in an Iranian court, accused of “spreading corruption on earth” – prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
The vigil, aimed at “raising awareness of Johan’s plight”, will be held on Saturday 1st June. A silent march is to be held through central Oxford, concluding with a reception at Harris Manchester College. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was detained by the Iranian government for six years, will speak, along with friends and family of Floderus.
Conditions in Evin prison, where Floderus is currently held, are notoriously poor. Human rights groups accuse prison guards of arbitrary beatings, humiliating detainees and failing to give injured prisoners access to medical care. Floderus is allowed one short conversation a month with his family. Cell lights are kept on 24 hours a day, and according to his family, Floderus is given neither sufficient food rations nor medical attention.
Floderus’ detainment is seen as part of Iran’s strategy of hostage diplomacy, whereby Western citizens are arbitrarily detained so that their freedom may be leveraged by Tehran for financial or political gain. The European Union has stated that there are “absolutely no grounds for keeping Johan Floderus in detention.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was allowed to leave the country in March 2022, the day after the British government settled an outstanding debt of £393.8 million, linked to the pre-revolutionary government’s order of thousands of British tanks which never arrived. In September 2022, the US unfroze £4.8 billion of sanctioned Iranian funds in return for the release of five American prisoners.In July 2022, Hamid Nouri, a former Iranian prison official, was sentenced to life in prison by a Swedish court for crimes against humanity following his involvement in the 1988 mass executions of Iranian prisoners. Nassim Papayaianni, of Amnesty International, has stated that there are “very clear indications that the authorities are holding Floderus hostage to compel the Swedish authorities to swap him for the former Iranian official, Hamid Nouri.”
We walk along by the river, my hand in his, our arms of different lengths and his palms much bigger than mine. The sun is hot but not too hot; we feel its glow on our shoulders as we walk towards the bridge. Along the bank there are poppies, hundreds of them, interspersed between the long grass. Their tissue paper petals are translucent in the sun. We walk and say very little, but sometimes his fingers gently brush against the back of my hand.
The path winds upwards and opens onto a bridge, a great metal monstrosity that hangs above the wide stretch of dancing waters below, but from up here there is little sense of that. You stand by the railings and look down at the glittering blue, the sun rippling in a blinding continual flutter, and you close your eyes and feel the breeze in your hair. You forget for a moment that your heart is heavy, and those words you have been trying not to say evaporate on your tongue.
We stand there for several minutes, passed by occasional cyclists in bright lycra and walkers, some in jeans and t-shirts that catch on the breeze, others dressed in tight leggings and wielding walking sticks. A few greet us, some smile in our direction. I imagine how we look from the outside, young and intertwined. The present does not capture what might be coming next, and so they keep walking or pedalling, these passers-by, and we become extras in their stories, frozen in our moment of bliss.
The sun is taken in by a cloud and it is a reminder that the afternoon will not last forever. I look up into his face – I am always looking up – and see into his familiar eyes. There has often been a melancholy tinge to that blue, and now that it is the end of May I finally understand why. Those eyes have known all along that they will watch as I walk away. He smiles, the sweetness of his face clarified by his sorrow.
I trace his chin with my finger. Without the need for any words, in the language that will always unite those of a similar soul, I tell him that I would not changea single one of these perfect momentsthat have led us towards our imperfect end.
Within the last year there have been countless new books on George Orwell, but Oliver Lewis’s The Orwell Tour, just released in paperback, is the most accessible and enjoyable of them all. Lewis writes in a crisp and evocative style (I can still see in my mind’s eye the Martian dust of Marrakech and the architecture and landscape of Huesca); and he has Orwell’s own gift for fresh similes (on a bus “it was as if the passengers were coins in a tin can being rattled”; in Burma he finds “a crumbling church tower, as if copied and pasted from Surrey”). The result is a book which, even without the Orwell element, would remain a first-rate piece of travel writing.
Orwell had an extremely productive life in which, aside from writing enough novels and essays and letters to fill twenty thick volumes, he travelled very widely. He was born in India, educated at Eton, lived among miners in Wigan and beggars in London and Paris, served as a policeman in Burma and a soldier in Spain. Lewis handles every location with expertise. He is not just a travel writer, but a novelist, a humourist, and a historian.
Like Evelyn Waugh, a contemporary of Orwell’s and a former contributor to Cherwell who wrote a number of amusing travelogues, Lewis makes his travels more fun to read about by recording a number of humorous interactions with locals. There is an incident that stands out involving an octogenarian monk in Burma. Lewis approaches him and asks for a photograph. “He replied: ‘Mannay?’ I answered that I had paid my entrance fee, but he snapped back: ‘No mannay? Get out!’” At another point Lewis meets a woman who complains to him that, on ships, dogs are always taken down first: “They’re treating them like animals. It’s disgusting.”
Lewis manages seamlessly to blend anecdotes and local colour with history and biography. In the chapter on Burma, he gives an overview of the country’s history since Orwell’s days, and this historical coverage flows perfectly with all else around it, where in less competent hands it would have come through as a tacked-on digression. Some of the accounts of local folklore are also very good, e.g. the legend of Jack of Southwold.
There is some literary criticism here, too, but it never overbears and is always interesting. Lewis belongs to that school of Orwell scholars which seeks to rescue his dullest novel, A Clergyman’s Daughter, from what E.P. Thompson called the condescension of posterity; an intriguing parallel is drawn between that novel and The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene (yet another Cherwell alumnus – we’re on a roll this week). If anything, these snippets of literary criticism are too brief, although those who want more such can always console themselves with a copy of Orwell: The New Life or the latest issue of George Orwell Studies.
Lewis does his best with the less interesting sites of Orwell’s life, and the quality of writing and research never falters. Orwell had lived for some time in some quite full places, like Hayes, of which he gave a laser-accurate description as “one of the most godforsaken places I have ever struck”. Henley-upon-Thames, the town of his childhood, is green and pleasant, though it is more worth reading about for the charm of the Edwardian setting than the charm of the place itself.
The book also benefits from small details of niche interest. Lewis, like Orwell, is something of a bibliophile, and he has an extraordinary eye for bookshops in all the places he has visited. “It is hard to resist visiting any bookshop in the vicinity of somewhere with Orwellian credentials.” It is interesting to read a description of a tucked-away library in India where books in English have gone utterly unborrowed since the 1950s, remaining as a sort of shelved tomb for the British Raj. Some of Lewis’s observations defy categorisation but remain amusing and thought-provoking: in Marrakech he reflects that former French colonies have better hotel breakfasts than former British ones.
If at times Lewis tries too hard to be accessible (i.e. explaining about how public schools are not really public), that is compensated for by the fact that everyone can read this book. Lewis succeeds admirably in everything that he aims to do, and his infectious enthusiasm for his subject shines through in every line. Whether you are interested in travel or literature or history or biography, this is definitely a book to read – as, I am sure, will be his upcoming book on travels through the life and work of John Steinbeck.
Oliver Lewis’s book The Orwell Tour is now available in paperback from Blackwell’s, Waterstones, and Gulp Fiction. You can find my interview with Oliver Lewis here: [weblink/page number]
Since the rise of hip-hop in the 1990s, diss tracks (short for disrespect or disparage) have been a staple of the genre. These tracks aim to tarnish a person’s reputation through the art of “spitting bars”, escalating conflict between individuals. It’s often a game of verbal ping pong, where releasing one diss track prompts a response which in turn prompts another response, intensifying the rivalry. I’ve even witnessed amateur rap battles on primary school playgrounds with kids hurling insults about each other’s mums. While somewhat entertaining (especially when both parties commit to the diss), the stakes are never as high as in the most infamous track feud: Drake versus Kendrick Lamar.
Many are surprised to know that the Kendrick-Drake feud actually dates back to the early 2010s, despite its recent resurgence. Initially, the two artists began on favourable terms with their first collaboration in 2011 on Drake’s album Take Care. They continued to collaborate together over the next few years. However, in 2013, Lamar stirred the pot by claiming that he would “murder” Drake amongst other rappers in Big Sean’s song ‘Control’. This led to a response from Drake in the album Nothing Was The Same, referencing Lamar’s ‘Control’ verse. Drake, however, denied dissing Lamar, claiming that he wasn’t at all threatened by Lamar’s verse.
Between 2015 and 2022, their disses evolved into ‘sneak disses’: subtle jabs without directly mentioning names. This feud reached a peak in a famous 2016 interview with Barack Obama, who, when asked whether Lamar or Drake would win in a rap battle, appraised Lamar’s album To Pimp A Butterfly as the best album of 2015. Drake responded unfavourably to Obama’s endorsement of Lamar, taking a shot at the former president with the line “tell Obama that my verses are just like the whips that he in / they bulletproof” in his song ‘Summer Sixteen’.
Fast forward to 2023, when fellow rapper J. Cole suggested that he, Lamar, and Drake formed the ‘Big Three’ greatest rappers of modern hip-hop on Drake’s song ‘First Person Shooter’. Lamar, rejecting this idea, responded with a diss track asserting that he was only “big me” rather than part of the aforementioned trio…
In March 2024, Lamar released ‘Like That’, stirring controversy with disses aimed both at J. Cole and Drake. Referencing many of Drake’s previous albums and songs (“fuck sneak dissin’, first-person shooter” and “certified paedophiles”, for example), this marked a departure from years of subliminal disses. Accusing Drake of issues with alcoholism, gambling, inappropriate behaviour with minors, and being a neglectful father, Lamar made it undeniably clear that their beef was far from over, and he was determined to win. As of May 2024, 17 total diss tracks have been involved in their feud.
While diss tracks have always fuelled drama in the hip-hop scene, their reputation has been somewhat diluted by the sheer volume produced by YouTubers and social media influencers. A notable example is the feud between Jake Paul and RiceGum, two YouTubers popular in the mid-2010s. When Jake Paul released his infamous song ‘It’s Everyday Bro’ in 2017, it was widely mocked for its poor quality. The song dissed Paul’s ex-girlfriend, Alissa Violet, prompting her to release a response track, ‘It’s Every Night Sis’ with RiceGum. Their feud, which also involved Paul’s brother Logan, caused quite a stir on YouTube, with many criticising their bars as inauthentic and ghostwritten. Today, when people mention “diss track”, it’s difficult not to think of these two influencers trading juvenile insults.
Despite this, the enduring feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar remains both entertaining and impressive. While the content of their diss tracks may be contentious, the prolific output of music is a testament to their dedication and talent and casual listeners and fans alike remain eager to hear the next revealing instalment.
