Multiple JCRs have mandated their OUSU representatives to vote for the NUS referendum motion being brought to OUSU Council tonight. The meeting will begin at 5.15 at Magdalen College.
David Klemperer, one of Oxford’s NUS delegates and a member of the ‘Oh Well, Alright Then’ slate, proposed the motion which would resolve to hold a referendum in 5th week regarding affiliation to the NUS.
Each college is permitted to send up the three representatives to OUSU Council. Trinity, Merton and Magdalen colleges, amongst others, have mandated all three OUSU reps to vote for the referendum. Other colleges, including Balliol and Somerville, have delegated the representatives proportionately, with two reps to vote to leave and one vote to stay.
Motions have been highly controversial, with the Balliol meeting taking almost two hours to come to a decision.
This motion comes only two years after a previous referendum regarding membership in the NUS in 2014, which was discarded after allegations of vote-rigging.
The Independent
The movement to get OUSU to disaffiliate from the NUS this time round was triggered following the election of Malia Bouattia to the NUS Presidency. Nearly 50 Jewish Societies from across the UK penned an open letter to Bouattia criticising her for expressing what some have perceived as anti-semitic views.
A number of students have defended Bouattia, however, with Bouattia herself writing an article in The Guardiandefending what she has said.
After taking my seat towards the back of the Union debating chamber, uncertain whether Cherwell would be able to interview Mary Berry, the illustrious guest of the evening, I am ushered to the front by a team of officials looking scared and flustered. I get out my note pad. It seems there will be an interview. Behind me, people are chuckling about the idea of writing down any tips Mary might give the audience. I find it hard to care: after all, I’m meeting Mary. At the end of her talk, I almost barge her security out of the way, such is my haste to gain access to the Goodman Room.
Sitting down next to Mary, her smile is welcoming, but firm. “What’s this for?” she asks. Needless to say, she hadn’t heard of Cherwell. I thank her for her time, but I see her staring through me to the waving crowds outside: she’s eager to return to them. Her showmanship is striking. Pausing to wave, she asks me to “get on with it”. I eagerly oblige.
I ask her about her own path to cookery. As with most people in that generation, she tells me of her experience in the war. Baking was limited; her mother told her family that “if you all don’t have sugar in your tea, there might be enough for the occasional cake”. When ingredients were scarce, there wasn’t much time for baking lessons. Her parents never taught her to bake, given that “with only the occasional cake, they weren’t going to let me screw it up!” In the chamber she had thanked her teacher, Miss Date, for inspiring her to cook in her Home Economics lessons. When asked about cooking in schools, which was how she started, she emphatically stated that “schools must take the lead” and that every child should “come to university with at least ten basic, nutritious dishes”.
“The family meal, be it the Sunday roast or the evening supper, is certainly changing. Lots of people haven’t got time for cooking anymore. But then again, there is the rise of the slow cooker”
Over the years, Mary has authored over seventy books, some of which focused specifically on Agas; indeed, her books introduced the Aga as a regular middle-class household appliance. Throughout her career, she has been, in many ways, a pioneer, constantly searching to modernise and stay on-trend. There is “no difficulty” in finding new ideas for her books, despite my naïve belief that there must only be a certain number of recipes one can cook. “Squash and fennel are both new ingredients which have arrived in your lifetime,” she reminds me. She is always ready to do something new, inspired by her young team. “We test and test and test the recipes. I always give them to the girls [her helpers] to try with their own family at home.” Her work is nothing if not proven and tested.
The family is at the heart of her cooking. “The family meal, be it the Sunday roast or the evening supper, is certainly changing. Lots of people haven’t got time for cooking anymore. But then again, there is the rise of the slow cooker.” She repeats later on that the slow cooker is perhaps the future of family food as “you can put all your ingredients in together and just get it when you need it.” In all of her books, she is “always cooking for your family, or my family.” She constantly raises her family, both in her talk and our interview, as the main inspiration for her food. Indeed, she claims that a concentration on the family is reason for the success of the Great British Bake Off, the incredibly successful BBC1 programme in which she teams up with Paul Hollywood to judge amateur bakers, the final of which got the highest ratings figures of 2015. She sees herself on the show as a teacher, whether it’s “for the man who’s had to turn off the footie or the baby on the knee, there’s always something and someone to be taught.”
“It was always about her baking; she deserved to win on those merits alone”
The conversation seamlessly flows to the subject of Nadiya Hussein, this year’s winner. As a Muslim woman who wears hijab, Nadiya, along with her fellow finalist Tamal Rey, was criticised by the right-wing columnist Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail, for daring to be “a Muslim headscarf wearer” who would “challenge the prejudices” of the “average license-fee payer” by showing that “see, Muslims love Chelsea buns, too!” His article was widely denounced on social media, and I ask Mary what impact she thinks Nadiya’s win might have had on the Muslim community. Perhaps naïvely, she looks taken aback by the question, as if she had never thought of it before. “It was always about her baking; she deserved to win on those merits alone,” she emphasises. Race, political correctness or even personality played no part, Mr Letts. “We judge week by week, which is what makes it doubly hard for the contestants. We don’t look back.”
Her judging style has widely been praised for its fairness. She insists that for her the show must be fair, as she doesn’t want “contestants to have to buy ingredients online. They should be able to source all of their ingredients in their local supermarkets.” Asked about the challenges, she reassures the viewers that there are certainly many things they haven’t tried yet, but “I make sure they’re not too complicated – I try and leave in as much help as I can.”
Despite “moving with the times”, she certainly thinks that clean eating “is just a fad.” “I will never use quinoa [which she pronounces key-noh-ah for comic effect] in my recipes” she told the hall; I wonder what she thinks of changing cookbook styles. Last year, Prue Leith, one of Mary’s contemporaries, claimed that we lavishly drool over food illustrations before buying recipe books which are devoid of real content. Mary says that “illustration is certainly more important, and I try to put emphasis on colour, layout etc.”
However, her recipes haven’t changed in style since her early days, since “I still use only a few ingredients with clear instruction which are to the point, with hints and tips to guide you along the way.” Her recipe books strike me as a modern take on an old style; eschewing the complicated recipe books of chefs with ingredients like juniper berries that you never need, she resolutely calls herself “a cook, not a chef; I cook for families, not kitchens”. I tell her that her falafel and white bean hummus hit our family’s table before they became staples of the rise of Turko-Syrian cuisine’s popularity in the UK. She smiles graciously, aware of her own ability to judge the zeitgeist.
She seems excited for the future of food more generally. Unlike the stale days of yore, “more people are genuinely enjoying cooking.” I posit that the changes in recipe books and the increased number of cookery television programmes are the reason for this change. She agrees, but stresses that people “seem to care more about how to eat.” As for her own interest in cookery television programmes, she says that James Martin’s Saturday Kitchen is her favourite. The real change she remarks on is that “over time more and more men are into cooking; they genuinely enjoy it.”
As the interview draws to a close, I see her look again at the queues of fans waiting outside; her smile widens as she sees how keen the students are to meet her. As she waves at them, seemingly eager to meet every single person, I ask about her popularity. “I’m not famous; the public is only ever nice to me.” It’s not hard to see why. Her television personality is, it seems, more or less her real personality. Clearly desperate to return to her fans, her answers become shorter and I take my cue to leave. Thanking her for the interview, I see the consummate showman return. Her smile widens in anticipation. She picks up her pen and gets ready. She can’t wait.
In a real car-crash of a motion to OUSU Council, David Klemperer, one of Oxford’s NUS delegates and a member of the ‘Oh Well, Alright Then’ slate, has proposed that OUSU hold a referendum in 5th week of this term on its affiliation to the NUS. I don’t want to get into the severe logistical difficulties facing this suggestion – I’m sure any representative from OUSU would be more able to enumerate problems such as giving time for students to campaign and generating enough interest that turnout at least reaches the paltry levels seen in the last NUS referendum.
That said, there are more than a few other problems with Klemperer’s proposal.
In the motion, Klemperer bizarrely refers to the NUS “seeking to ban Yik Yak”. He is describing – in admittedly strange terms – a resolution to speak to various social media sites to examine the possibility of reducing levels of hate speech from anonymous accounts during election periods. Since such abuse can in some cases amount to criminal behaviour, it is hard to understand the rationale behind criticizing the motion. It is even harder to see how Klemperer can have so vastly misinterpreted its intent. Such bias and lack of attention to detail is – unfortunately – typical of this motion.
The section in which this reference is found lists a few, apparently unconnected events from this year’s NUS conference. No explanation is given for the list, but it must be assumed that Klemperer believes them to be obvious reasons that Oxford should hold a referendum on NUS affiliation.
Next on the list is a motion against English and Maths being compulsory at GCSE. The purpose of this is to help students at colleges forced repeatedly to retake English and Maths, despite the irrelevance of these subjects to their life goals. Some might take issue with this on paternalistic grounds, but it is surely not uncontroversially a reason for us to abandon the entire institution of the NUS.
Another complaint regards the NUS’ democratic structure. Klemperer, an advocate of the ‘One Member, One Vote’ (OMOV) system, takes issue with the fact that the new president, Malia Bouattia, was elected by less than 0.005 per cent of the UK student population.
This, of course, is simply how the NUS works. If Klemperer were advocating for Oxford to pursue aggressively OMOV, perhaps this would be a legitimate point to make, but it is hard to see its relevance to the question of disaffiliation (would it be hitting below the belt to point out that Klemperer wasn’t particularly pleased with the results of OMOV in the Labour leadership election over the summer?). I think the electoral system of the UK government is hopelessly flawed and in need of some kind of proportional representation, but I don’t think Oxfordshire should become an independent state because of it.
Our national anthem would have to be Shakira, but a terrible a capella version.
It may seem strange, but this argument speaks to Klemperer’s true reasons for proposing this motion. He doesn’t agree with NUS policy. He finds that his views are shared by a minority of students in the country. This is an uncomfortable position for anyone to be in, and he has my sympathy. But this disingenuous, ill-considered, self-serving piece of political pageantry is no kind of solution.
Underlying all of this is the election of Malia Bouattia as NUS president, and it is odd that Klemperer only briefly mentions the accusations of anti-Semitism that have been levelled at her, since it seems obvious that this was his primary motivating factor. Bouattia, it is clear, has questions to answer regarding her free usage of vague and euphemistic phrases like “Zionist-led media”, but to her credit she has sought dialogue with concerned students. The Union of Jewish Students has also struck a conciliatory tone. Meanwhile, Klemperer et al. want to stick their fingers in their ears and their heads in the sand.
The idea that the proper response to a democratic decision with which one disagrees – whether it be concerning Yik Yak, the curriculum, or the election of a president – is to disaffiliate from the institution that made that decision is, it seems to me, fundamentally misguided.
To paraphrase a slogan of the obnoxiously named ‘Oh Well, Alright Then’, democracy is not about getting everything you want, all of the time.
Whether you are in favour of holding a referendum or not, you should not have to accept a motion like this in your student union. Anyone who does want a referendum should demand a motion that has a better relationship with the truth, as this would surely get any campaign to leave off to a far less acrimonious start.
This week in 1912 saw the first publication of Pravda. From the front cover, Lenin gazes sternly towards the horizon, presumably towards a utopia of social equality and worker’s liberation. For over 70 years his baleful eyes greeted the people of Russia every day. And for millions of soviet citizens, this was the truth. Their present was defined in Pravda’s pages, official history being written before their eyes.
This power was not limited to state controlled media, although it provides an extreme example. All newspapers play a part in constructing political and social narratives, and by habit present their contents as the unchallenged truth. They are by definition ‘new’; an exact representation of the current state of affairs.
Pravda was such a crucial publication because it defined itself against other news. It monopolised truth, its title laying claim to ownership of reality (Pravda means ‘truth’ in Russian). Other sources of information were “malicious western deceptions” that should never be trusted by the denizens of the true socialist nations.
In a Russian population newly blessed with the skills of literacy, reading the news was a form of empowerment, entrenching the government’s image of civilising progress.
It is easy to assume that the lack of choice would have led to the abandonment of individual opinion. But people were aware of the extent to which they were being fed information. A popular joke in the late 50s involved the intensely competitive Khrushchev challenging Eisenhower to a foot race during the former’s visit to the US in 1959, which he loses and Pravda reports as “Our leader Nikita Khrushchev has captured second place in a world-class field, while the US president finished a humiliating second to last.” They consumed Pravda’s information but were able to challenge what they read, and this discourse is what gives the free press its vibrancy, forming disillusionment with the Soviet regime.
News discusses events, presenting themselves as the sole arbiter of the truth yet flexible enough to further develop its narrative. Being able to decide which story you want to follow is a luxury often taken for granted, but on this anniversary it is worth remembering what the alternative is. The Western liberal tradition is built on the foundation of the free press and the ability to choose and reject different narratives. Our here and now, unlike the Soviet Union’s, is one of our own choosing, a fact that no amount of celebration is sufficient for.
Recently, sorting through some of my mum’s old belongings, we found a box full of letters she had been sent as a student on her year abroad.
“Ah, the days before email…” she started off wistfully whilst I leafed through them, feeling a second hand nostalgia for an age of letter-sending, likely inherited from a partiality to period dramas and Jane Austen novels. I liked one letter the most because half way down the sender’s hand had been jogged by the train she had been travelling on.
“Apologies for wobbly writing…” You could see the squiggly mark on the page, preserving the exact moment of the train jolting on the track. Like a stopped clock, the letter fixed a moment in time that could be viewed outside its ordered place, viewed within a new frame of references.
This kind of awareness of being somehow of my mum’s old belongings, we found a box full of letters she had been sent as a student on her year abroad. “Ah, the days before email…”able to enter into a different time is often experienced when we wander around museums and galleries, where things have been deliberately galleries, where things have been deliberately preserved for historical or cultural importance. It’s the immediacy of what we see that is exciting, its strangeness and difference, but also the feeling of recognition. We feel connected with the presence of another human being, reminded that perceptions exist based on entirely different calibrations of thinking.
Looking back this way at the carefully exhibited, distilled past often makes me think about ‘here and now’ in the broader sense, the conditions of our own time and culture, how ‘the past’ has created these, and what our personal experience is. This sounds safe, systematic and chronological – certainly ‘here and now’ implies something static and fixed; an agreed time and place within the scope of ‘past, present and future’. History is often cited as something that unifies us, a common ground of inheritance. The process of learning the lessons of the past is usually viewed as a responsibility shared by a society, and this is vital. But to define what it means to exist in any given moment is surely elusive, since the present moment is just the outcome of your own seemingly random trajectory.
It would often seem that the best places to find records of this double response to the present and its past is within the vast diversity of art and literature. Consciously or not, works of art and literature still preserve the presence of an individual at a certain time. Unlike old objects and artefacts preserved in a museum with indisputable functions, art is not passive. Through the fact of its own subjectivity, it invokes countless readings and reactions.
Joyce was aware of this with Ulysses: it might sum up the spirit of a modernist age reacting against the past, but at the same time, the novel acknowledges that existing in any moment is a solitary experience. No one can ever identically experience the countless thoughts, impulses and emotions that proliferate through our minds in real time. This is how the characters are portrayed, but it is also what we experience as a reader. You are an outsider forming your own interpretations of these characters’ expressions of existence, constantly reviewing your own provisional perceptions.
Perhaps, then, a work of art or literature excludes those who engage with it by keeping its real meaning hidden; we can never truly and know why someone created it. Like walking around a museum, we realise that even if we can’t occupy old moments, as human as their representations may be, they open up our imagination. We are intriguingly close yet distant from someone else’s here-and-now.
There is a parallel here with the concept of social media, the instantaneous yet remote insight into the lives of others. Yet if art and culture are held as a space where their ‘here and now’ represents creativity, imagination creativity, imagination and difference, then social media is its foil. Where books and art initiate thoughtful discussion, what is shared online is accused of creating isolation, as we are more interested in how our lives appear than how they really are.
“Carpe diem” we are told – “seize the day.” The paradox is that to immerse yourself in the moment requires you to step outside it, to consider how it is expressed and understood by others. Social media may seem to be an embodiment of this, but the criticism that it somehow makes moments hollow, detracts from their spontaneity and vitality, seems unfounded. We carry old moments and experiences around with us, and the here-and-now is a record of our presence not only in that moment but in our conceptions of the past and future too.
An outward expression of someone’s ‘here and now,’ be it a Facebook upload or an iconic artwork, reminds us again of our provisional and isolated outlooks, but in doing so allows us to benefit from new ideas or better appreciate the impact of others.
First year at university can be hard. Away from home, clueless freshers are forced to fend for themselves, getting to grips with the unusual customs of Oxford, engaging in painful small talk with other newbies and formulating sentences in tutorials when their eyelids are visibly drooping. Meals can become something of a chore; the temptation to avoid hall, where there is an expectation to socialise and appear presentable, mounts higher as the term goes on. Unfortunately, not all of us are blessed with kitchens, so these simple recipes will enable you to immerse yourself fully in the lifestyle of a hermit. With the humble kettle, iron or toastie maker, fine dining is not as out of reach as you might think.
Vietnamese Summer Rolls
Ingredients: rice paper (buy at Lung Wah Chong Chinese Supermarket – look out for it en route to Wahoo), 1 packet vermicelli noodles, 1 packet of prawns (OR surplus pork from Mission Bur- rito since the meat to rice ratio is a bit absurd), 1 packet shredded carrot, lettuce, coriander, sweet chilli sauce, soy sauce, kettle.
Lay out all your ingredients and an empty plate on which you will construct
the rolls
Boil the kettle and pour the water intoalargebowl
Soak one sheet of rice paper until soft
Place on the plate and quickly blot with paper towel if necessary
Pile on all your ingredients
Fold and roll into a mini burrito shape. Serve with more sweet chilli or soy sauce
Heated falafel wraps
Not even going to pretend that these are nicer than the wraps at El Mexicana but they will prove how creative you are. Ingredients: 1 packet of burrito wraps, 1 tub of hummus, 1 packet of falafels, 1 packet cherry tomatoes, 1 packet coriander, lettuce, 1 packet halloumi, tin foil, iron
1. Chop up all the tomatoes, coriander, lettuce and halloumi
2. Lay a burrito wrap down on one half of a sheet of foil and fold the other half on top of it to sandwich the wrap inside
3. Iron the burrito
4. Place all the ingredients inside
5. Wrap it up in the same way as you did for the summer rolls and then wrap the foil tightly around it so nothing spills out
6. Iron it again – particularly aim to heat up the halloumi. Remove foil and serve
NB: The heating of the wrap may make it seem that I have merely added unnecessary complica- tions to an ordinary cold meal. However, the use of an iron elevates this dish by softening the hal- loumi and validating your decision to bring an iron to uni in the first place, since your clothes are rarely washed let alone ironed for the 8 week long duration of your stay in Oxford.
Vegetarian Brunch
Like a classic fry up but without meat because toastie makers rarely reach temperatures high enough to make that a safe option. Ingredients: 1 packet mushrooms, 1 packet cherry tomatoes, 1 egg, butter, sliced bread, coriander, toastie maker.
Turn toastie maker to the highest temperature and put a knob of butter on one half of it Crack an egg into the dipped plate of the toastie maker
2. Close the lid as much as possible, without cracking the yolk. You may need to prop the lid in place
3. Leave for about 3 mins (assuming your toastie maker is as ineffective as mine)
4. Add a knob of butter to the other half of the toastie maker. Add chopped up mushrooms and coriander
5. Close the toastie maker again and leave for 2/3 more minutes
6. Chop up tomatoes. Add these to the mush- rooms and leave for 2/3 more minutes – the egg should still be cooking away
7. Put a piece of bread on top of the mushroom/ tomato mixture – this will allow all the tomato juice to soak into the bread and taste yum.
8. Hopefully the egg will have cooked by now – check this very carefully Remove egg and fully close toastie maker to toast the upper half of the bread for a few minutes
9. Put everything on a plate. Serve with more coriander to make yourself feel fancy.
‘Chestnut Mushroom and Herb Risotto and Hongroise Potatoes’
I have an essay to write, meaning that I won’t deny myself the extra serving of pota- toes on the side, especially when they’re glis- tening, crispy paprika-coated little nuggets of carbohydrate gold. I’m glad we don’t really eat with our eyes, because although the potatoes were just as appetising to eat as they were to behold, the risotto, though delicious, looked like ‘cat sick’ (to quote the person behind me in the queue). It was flavoured with meaty chestnut mushrooms and delicately balanced herbs, making this dish a homely and whole- some first clunch of the term. My only biting criticism of the dish would be its lack of… bite. The slightly over-cooked, flaccid broccoli pro- vided little textural contrast to what, by my last few forkfuls, tasted like garlic-y porridge. And the carbohydrates that I thought would give me the energy to make it through my essay crisis have resulted in a carb coma, from which I still struggle to rouse myself.
Anora Sandhu
‘Pasta with Creamy Mediterranean Sauce, Cabbage and Broccoli’
I am biased, because I go to St Hugh’s, so I know what’s up with their pasta. I know that their pasta-to-sauce ratio is usually reason- able, generous even; I know that the sauce is usually thick and delicious. Today, Hugh’s let me down. I mean, it was pretty tasty, so we’re a third of the way there, but there were issues. The name ‘Creamy Mediterranean’ is problematic, as it was a little bit creamy, but alas too thin. ‘Pepper extravaganza’ may work better, seeing as the most noticeable feature in the sauce was some leafy chunks of red pepper, and the rest had been extremely well seasoned with – can you guess? – pepper. I also ran out of sauce halfway and had to resort to mixing the pasta with my vegetables (nightmare) which were free, to be fair, and delicious (how dare Anora talk of the broccoli being “flaccid”?!).
The Mother Teresa exhibition at the Oxford Oratory.
Mother Teresa is set to be canonized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church in September this year, as announced by Pope Francis this past March after he confirmed her second miracle, the healing of a man with multiple tumors. In honor of the an- nouncement, Johnny Church at St. Aloysius’s Church on Woodstock Road has set up a new exhibition documenting her life and works. The exhibition was opened on April 18 in the Oxford Oratory following a special Mass and will be open until April 30. The exhibition includes striking images from the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s youth and family life in Albania, her time spent learning English in Ireland, and her early years as a missionary. These evocative photographs are balanced by objects that connect the visitor more materi- ally to her lived experience, including things such as her sari, a selection of her letters and a handwritten prayer book. Other points of interest include images from her visit to the Oxford Union and her meeting with Princess Diana, who died only a few days before Mother Teresa died during one of her mis- sions in the Bronx, NYC in 1997. Surrounded by such emotional, intimate photographs of her labors, one can’t help but be awestruck by the devotion that Mother Teresa had to help- ing others, despite any disputes concerning her faith that have arisen since her beatifica- tion in 2003 by Pope John Paul II. St. Aloysius’s Church reminds its visitors that while we sometimes focus only on the extraordinary deeds of society’s heroes, we often forget that such figures were also ordinary humans fac- ing human challenges.
On a gloomy and macabre rainy day over the vacation, I found myself being led down into the basement studio and workspace of Polly Morgan, arguably the most famous taxidermy-artist in Britain. Having only recently moved into this new space from her old studio in Hackney, she apologises for ‘not really having anything to show me’ (most of her work is in boxes waiting to be unpacked) but as we walk in, the yellow and white heft of an albino python’s corpse defrosting on a worktable catches my eye. A glimpse into one of her freezers reveals another row of sinuous and coiled cold bodies. ‘Nothing to show?’ I wondered. I had only just arrived and already I had been shown more of her ‘materials’ than I had bargained for.
Far from being a cold-hearted butcher itching to get her scalpel into her next corpse, she gives off an aura of warmth and affability, able to laugh at some of the more unconven- tional aspects of her profession. So obviously, my first question was, ‘why taxidermy?’
Initially studying English at Queen Mary University of London, Morgan graduated at 23 years old with the realisa- tion that her passion was not really in literature. Indeed, she was struggling to understand where her passion lay. While managing the Shoreditch Electricity Showrooms bar, she took courses in photography and journalism with the only outcome being that she learned that photography wasn’t for her and that she never wished to work in an office. She began to worry that for the rest of her life she would remain a ‘“jack of all trades, master of none.”
Then Morgan stumbled into taxidermy, merely trying it out once and finding herself captivated by it. After taking a day course from Scottish taxidermist George Jamieson, she knew she had found something that really gripped her. Speaking about her feelings about entering what was for her a previ- ously unexplored field she said, “I knew I could be fearless.”
Morgan was certainly unafraid to put her own personal twist on taxidermy. The art itself had fallen to the far reaches of conventionality and popularity since its heyday in the Vic- torian era, but Morgan, as well as many other contemporary artists, resurrected it from its cultural death much like she reawakens the corpses of the animals she works with. Her art features the bodies in uncanny situations, positions which recall scenarios that a viewer might briefly recognise com- bined with a completely foreign and sometimes unsettling element. When her artistic career was at its inception she had to scavenge for corpses, taking what she could get from vets and breeders. Earlier in her career, small birds and road-kill were easiest to acquire (Morgan has always kept from actively killing animals for the purposes of her art). An early work but one of her favourites, Still Birth, features a dead chick hang-
ing from a balloon suspended as if in flight in a glass bell jar. Birds have continued to feature in her work throughout her career but a thirst for new artistic challenges and greater fame have brought her the opportunities and desires to tackle new challenges. Morgan’s most recent works feature the bodies of snakes as twisting and twining sculptures, turning in on and over themselves and forming beautifully abstract still life images in the process.
With Morgan’s artwork, there seems to be a sense that the bodies are not revitalised but repurposed. They combine with the other mediums she uses to create her sculptures to form a more complex image than that of a traditional stuffed animal. Morgan hopes that her sculptures do remind people of things they have seen before but she insists that there isn’t a great deal to understand about her art. “The worst art,” she says, “is stuff like a one-liner.” She says she is not in the busi- ness of creating visual puns and it is not her mission to encode messages in her art. She claims a ‘synaesthetic instinct’ when it comes to creating art, an innate sense of the combination of the right texture, the right colour and the right use of space. Her art poeticises traditional taxidermy and renders it more aesthetically pleasing to the eye.
The general public might look at some of Morgan’s work and wonder what sort of depraved mind thought up such a thing, and she wouldn’t be able to enlighten them. “When I made them I couldn’t tell you what I was thinking,” she confesses and personally, part of me doesn’t care. The unexpected beauty to be found in death is quite pleasantly surprising enough to satisfy these eyes.
Sir Michael Gambon, Naomi Campbell and Ben Affleck are just some of the big names that will appear at the Oxford Union this term, Cherwell can reveal. The full term-card will be arriving in pidges across Oxford tomorrow, but for now, here’s an exclusive preview of what you can expect. Click on the thumbnail images below for more information about each speaker.
Clarence Seedorf (Tuesday, 2nd Week). One of the most decorated Dutch footballers of all time and regarded by many as one of the best midfielders of his generation.
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (Sunday, 5th Week). Obaid-Chinoy has won six Emmy Awards and is the first Pakistani to have won two Oscars.
Kate Beckinsale (Friday, 5th Week). She has appeared in acclaimed independent films and blockbuster features such as Underworld and Total Recall.
Craig David (Monday, 8th Week). An English singer-songwriter, David has sold 13 million records and won Ivor Novello and MTV Awards.
Ben Affleck (TBC). A world-famous director and actor, he has won 67 awards, including two Oscars, two Golden Globes, and two BAFTAs.
Naomi Campbell (TBC). Campbell is an outspoken advocate and was the first black model to appear on the cover of Vogue Paris.
Sir Michael Gambon CBE (TBC). Best known for his portrayal of Albus Dumbledore, Gambon has won three Olivier Awards and four BAFTAs.
Lindsey Vonn (TBC). The most successful American ski racer in history, she has won four overall World Cup championships.
The seven Thursday debate titles, and the speakers attending them, will be as follows:
Proposition
Prof. Peter Atkins – Emeritus Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Oxford
Dr Nina Ansary – Bestselling author, historian, and leading authority on women’s rights in Iran
Opposition
Sheikh Dr Usama Hasan – Senior Researcher at the Quilliam Foundation, a think-tank specializing in human rights and counter-extremism.
The Very Revd Prof. Martyn Percy – Dean of Christ Church since October 2014.
Proposition
Peter Lilley MP – Conservative MP for Hitchin and Harpenden since 1983.
Dr Paul Oquist – Minister of the Nicaraguan Government, and Secretary of Public Policy.
Opposition
Prof. Bruce Pardy – Professor Environmental Law at Queen’s University, Canada.
Paul Bledsoe – President of Bledsoe & Associates, a global public policy firm specialising in climate change.
Proposition
Stephen Hale OBE – Ceo of Refugee Action, a UK charity which provides legal, financial, and practical support to refugees.
Barry Andrews – CEO of GOAL, an international aid organisation which has spent over £10m on humanitarian programmes.
Opposition
Dr Thérèse Coffey MP – Conservative MP for Suffolk Coastal since 2010.
Dr Andrew Morrison MP – Conservative MP for South West Wiltshire since 2001.
Proposition
Gideon Levy – Award-winning columnist for Haaretz whose writing focusses on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Salma Karmi-Ayyoub – Criminal barrister and external consultant for Al Haq, a Palestinian human rights organisation.
Prof. Padraig O’Malley – A specialist in divided societies, he was instrumental in the Northern Ireland peace process.
Opposition
High-Profile Israeli Official – Due to the sensitive nature of this speaker’s security arrangements, the Union will be releasing their details nearer to the time.
John Lyndon – Executive Director of OneVoice, an international grassroots movement which supports a two-state solution by amplifying the voices of mainstream Israelis and Palestinians.
Prof. Raphael Cohen-Almagor – An Israeli academic, he has involved with the campaign which exchanged the captured Gilad Shalit for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
Proposition
Prof. Sir Ian Wilmut OBE – Lead scientist of the research team which cloned Dolly the Sheep, he was knighted for his services to science in 2008.
Prof. Julian Savulescu – Director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and one of the world’s most outspoken philosophers on ‘procreative beneficence’.
Opposition
Prof. Barbara Evans – Proessor of Law, George Butler Research Professor, and Director of the Center for Biotechnology at the University of Houston.
Prof. Normal Frost – Paediatrician and leading bioethicist, he was part of President Clinton’s Health Care Reform Task Force.
Proposition
Danelle Dixon Thayer – Chief Legal and Business Officer of Mozilla, a free-software community whose products include the Firefox web browser.
Naomi Wolf – Acclaimed author, journalist, and feminist, first coming to prominence as the author of The Beauty Myth.
Opposition
Matthew G. Olsen – Director of the US National Counterterrorism Center 2011-2014, he was formerly Head of the Guantanamo Review Task Force.
Air Marshal Chris Nickols CBE – Chief of Defence Intelligence 2009-2012, and former Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff for Operations.
Proposition
Gisela Stuart MP – Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston since 1997.
Lord Michael Howard QC – Leader of the Conservative Party 2003-2005 and Home Secretary under Sir John Major.
High-Profile Business Executive – Senior business executive who will soon announce their support for the Vote Leave campaign.
Opposition
Alex Salmond MP – Scottish National Party MP for Gordon since 2015.
Yvette Cooper MP – Labour MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford since 1997.
Lord Michael Heseltine, Ex-President – Conservative stalwart who served as Deputy Prime Minister under Sir John Major, and Secretary of Defence under Margaret Thatcher.
Other speakers:
1st Week
Ambassador Mark Regev (Tuesday, 1st Week) – Ambassador of Israel to the United Kingdom
Proposition
