Last Friday, a new vegan and vegetarian Pret a Manger opened in Oxford’s city centre. Located on Cornmarket Street, it is one of just five nationwide to take the leap to go completely meat-free.
Within a week of its opening, Veggie Pret has already attracted large amounts of customers, mainly students. The branch is busy all week, especially during breakfast and lunch hours on weekdays.
Oxford’s Veggie Pret serves various foods and beverages. So far, the branch’s most popular and best-selling items have been the ‘Breakfast Eggless Mayo & Avo’ baguette (£3.25), ‘All Day Vegan Breakfast Rye Roll (£4.35) and the ‘Artichoke, Olives and Tapenade’ baguette (£4.85).
The branch has also seen attraction to their vegan cookies and pastries, including the ‘Very Berry Croissant’ (£2.99) which has been the most popular to date.
When it comes to drinks, Pret’s all across the country are seeing a greater appeal towards alternative (dairy-free) milk options. In Oxford’s Veggie Pret, oat milk is the most popular alternative option amongst customers, followed by soya milk and then coconut milk.
One of the Oxford Pret managers, Angela Botero, told Cherwell that they currently have a relatively small range, with 26 unique items of vegan and vegetarian food. Veggie Pret, through undertaking consumer research, hopes to be able to introduce more products, having over 40 to 50 different meat-free product lines.
Oxford’s Veggie Pret will become the hub for trying out new vegetarian and vegan food creations on customers.
Having new, healthy and more environmentally friendly food options is a priority for Veggie Pret, which looks to evaluate sales and bring in more choices in a couple of months during the spring.
However, the branch still intends to serve all parts of society and don’t want to restrict themselves solely to the vegan and vegetarian communities. In fact, Veggie Pret claims that “our mission is to make meat-free food so good it can be enjoyed by everyone”. Its success will be determined in the coming months.
Oxfordshire’s six other Pret stores will all continue to sell meat options. Nonetheless, Pret certainly seeks to grow the potential of their veggie branches.
Many of the most dismal and unpromising narratives are saved by the inclusion of a protagonist, even an objectionable one, with the smallest amount of charm, talent, or value. Not so with Noah Wild’s I Will Delete This Story. A merciful judge might turn to the set design or supporting characters (which, to give credit where it’s due, were excellent) in the hopes of encouraging its salvation; but I am a lover of justice.
The Writer (Rei Ota) drags us and the characters backwards and forwards randomly over Sam Simpkins’ (William Fitzgerald) interminable sixth form years, interspersing scenes of awkward teenage chat (in indoor voices, no tonal modulation) with his own monologues, in which he asks faux-deep questions that invariably devolve into strings of unconnected, meaningless words. Ota’s performance shifts to match, becoming erratic in movement, meaning, and volume (indeed, line delivery seemed to be a problem throughout; for example, Fitzgerald’s speech was so quiet that I found many sections of his dialogue to be completely incomprehensible). This structure left the audience with little sense of any linear narrative. I have no objections to the general concept of “making your audience think,” but having to do mental arithmetic every time a new scene was introduced, often simply to work out which character was which, rather distracted me from my unsuccessful attempts to enjoy the play.
One of the greatest barriers to that enjoyment was the treatment of the female and non-binary characters in the play. The presence of a textually non-binary character seemed at first like a glimmer of hope – but it was not to last. Their gender identity, whenever it was mentioned, existed solely to provide opportunities for misgendering-based humour for the cishet male main characters. Sam consistently referred to Zara (Kay Kassandra) as ‘she’ – ‘they’ seemed to be a word unfamiliar to the rest of the characters, who pronounced it as though it were something they’d never heard said before. It would, however, be unjust of me to imply that Kassandra’s performance was anything short of delightful. She brought a very true charm and sense of joy to scenes which would otherwise have been slow and emotionless, a real achievement given the slackness of Wild’s dialogue and the ill treatment Zara receives from Sam and his friend Kieran (James Gardner, who gave a sympathetic and intelligent performance although hindered by a clumsy script). Sam fails to demonstrate at any point that he values any of the people he has romantic relationships with for anything other than their capacity to provide sex; the audience, through the Writer’s monologues, is invited to sympathise with him. A particularly repulsive scene comes as Sam asks Kieran to leave a house party early so that he can sleep with Zara, who has just turned sixteen – and, when Kieran has left, it is revealed that they have previously had sex. The problem lies not in the acknowledgement that teenagers often have sex before they have reached the legal age of consent, but in the hyperawareness of legality and ‘correct’ behaviour, and the secrecy regarding contravention of these norms. This and the objectification of Zara throughout make for a deeply unpleasant viewing experience.
Emma (played engagingly but sometimes inexpertly by Marianne Nossair) receives similar treatment. It seems, for a time, that she is acting as a voice of reason in this play; indeed, she encourages Sam to talk about his feelings and continue his creative writing as a way of dealing with his past experiences (experiences which he is adamant no longer affect him). It seems, for a moment, as though we are watching a play about a deeply damaged man surrounded by reasonable people who are trying to help him. However, this is followed instantly by an extended physical sequence of Emma trying to pick up rubbish from the floor as she cries, and more rubbish is dumped around the stage, until she can no longer cope with the volume and retreats to the back of the stage to thrash about and sob violently. Admittedly, this is one of the more engaging performance moments in the play, but the message is less palatable. Emma – who up until now has seemed outgoing, reasonable, and sweet – is portrayed as someone deeply volatile and troubled, with very little grip on reality. From this point on, in her argument scenes with Sam, it is clear that she is supposed to seem overemotional and unreasonable, while Sam – adamant throughout that he is in the right – is supposed to seem balanced and calm. There is, here, a clear employment of misogynistic tropes used (perhaps unconsciously) to promote Sam and the Writer’s narrative of self-importance – again, one we are invited to sympathise with.
While this renders the text and characters within the play largely unpalatable, there is something to be said for the production design. The clearly delineated chain from Writer to text to stage was embellished by the costume and set choices, as colours linked certain cast members and set pieces to each other, and the visual effect of the set (furniture painted white with dialogue from the play written on in black) was striking. However, the set was clumsily used, with unnecessary movements between scenes which may have benefitted from an emptier stage altogether. The same is true for the props, which seemed to hinder rather than help the actors. When one is pretending that the cup one is holding is full of beer, it is best to keep it upright, or the audience will notice it has been spilt.
It is entirely possible, of course, that the weaknesses in performance were due to misdirection; Ota and Fitzgerald in particular had some promising moments which indicated that perhaps, under slightly different circumstances, they would have given skilled and entertaining performances. The general effect of this inconsistency in the focalised character was to create a blurry and distorted lens through which the audience were expected to interpret the play – I, at least, have as yet failed to reach a conclusion on whether Sam is being praised or criticised for his behaviour (behaviour that, devoid of narrative lens, I find to be reprehensible), which indicates to me a fundamental failure to communicate accurately whatever message or feeling the play may have been intended to convey. Overall, I found that I Will Delete This Story left me wishing that the titular promise had already been fulfilled.
Almost exactly a year ago, Cherwell published its first ‘Sextigation’. Now, after multiple weeks of data collection and over 400 responses, Cherwell’s sex survey is back again for 2023.
In an almost exact parallel to last year’s survey, the (mean) average Oxford student in 2023 has had 5 sexual partners since coming to Oxford. However, the types of averaging we choose to use can tell a very different story, because some particularly active individuals massively skew the mean. The mean female student has had 4.3 sexual partners since coming to Oxford, but the median has had 1.5. The mean male has had 5.9, but the median is 2. For nonbinary students, the mean is 4.8, but the median is 3.
Significantly 43.7% of students have had one or no sexual partners since coming to Oxford, with 16.9% having had no sex since matriculating, and 8.6% of students being virgins. Ultimately, what this survey shows us is a ‘tale of two cities’: one half highly promiscuous, the other having had very few sexual partners.
Indeed, those who are having sex seem to be having a lot of it. A whopping 17.3% of students claimed to have had sex with two or more people at once, with 56 respondents owning up to a threesome, 10 to a foursome, 9 to a fivesome, and 1 to a sixsome.
This year, 50.4% of respondents identified as heterosexual, 30.7% bisexual, and 11% homosexual, lesbian, or gay. The remaining 8% identified as queer, asexual, pansexual, didn’t know, or preferred not to say. This is surprisingly similar to the results yielded by a survey run by Cambridge’s Varsity paper, where “49.7% of the respondents identified as heterosexual, whilst 11.9% and 29.7% identified as homosexual and bisexual respectively.” One Oxford student who seems to be having a little too much fun on their year abroad termed themself “Españiosexual”.
There seems to be a significantly different experience of sex at Oxford based on students’ sexual orientation. The mean straight student has slept with 3.1 people since coming to Oxford, but for the median student, this number reduces to 1. For those who identified as queer, the mean post-matriculation body-count is 6.96, with a median of 3. Multiple respondents attested to “a huge gay hookup culture”, with Plush being voted the best club for finding a one-night-stand. As one slightly less eloquent respondent put it, “Grindr go brrrrr”.
The overall impression that the survey has given of Oxford’s sex scene is decidedly ‘mid’. One respondent went as far as to say, “the only good sex I had in Oxford was with a Warwick student”, whilst another remarked, “the odds are good… but the goods are odd”. A majority of students rate their sex lives at 3/5 or below, a value that stays consistent across all sexualities and genders. However, different colleges show markedly different satisfaction levels: the mean Teddy Hall student rates their sex life 4/5, but those at Univ award it a measly 2.9/5.
This variety of satisfaction ratings may owe to the fact that when it comes to colleges, some seem to be hosting a lot more action than others. St Peter’s came in as the college with the highest mean bodycount, at 13.5 since Oxford, 17 total. It seems that when the phrase “Merton is where fun goes to die” was coined, “la petit morte” may have landed surprisingly close to the truth, since in a surprising turn of events, the colleges with the next highest mean bodycounts were Merton (12.5 since Oxford, 14 total), Christ Church (7.8 since Oxford, 16.7 total), Magdalen (7.3, 11.5), and Teddy Hall (6.6, 10.5). However, since the median Mertonian has a bodycount of 0, it is fair to say that some have been skewing the stats. Indeed, none of these colleges made it to the top 5 last year, and Magdalen was relegated to the five that “get the least action” in 2022. It seems that a lot can change in a year.
As for the colleges seeing the least sex, the bottom five were Univ (1.4 since Oxford, 2.5 total), Somerville (1.9, 2.9), St Hugh’s (1.9, 3.4), Lincoln (2.8, 3.9) and Pembroke (3.1, 4.3). We want to give an honourable mention to LMH, with a mean body count of 4.8 since coming to Oxford, but which reduces to 0.4 when we exclude one very prolific but anomalous undergrad.
As for subjects, it’s perhaps time to stop sympathising with the medics, who have still found time to be the top-shagging degree with a sizeable average of 16.4 partners since coming to Oxford. They are unsurprisingly followed by E&M (15.8, 22.3), Theology (8.4, 11.6), Music (8.1, 10), and Geography (8, 10). Four out of five of these subjects are new to the top rankings, replacing last year’s “degrees which get the most action”, English and modern languages, law, ancient and modern history, and biochemistry. However, Theology students have retained their title for another year.
Psychology comes in as the subject having the least sex, with a mean of 1 sexual partner since coming to Oxford and 1.9 in total. They are followed by maths (1.4, 2.1) and engineering (2.2, 3.5). The high performance of just two Computer Science respondents has lifted them out of the bottom spot that they occupied in 2022.
However, a low body count should not be read as an absence of sex. When asked “If you are currently in a relationship of any kind, how often do you have sex with your partner?”, 47.2% of respondents claimed to be sleeping with their partner at least once a week. With a quarter of respondents having had a relationship with someone of the same college, it seems that action does not need to come from one night stands. Hertford has seen the greatest number of incidents of college-cest, with 46.7% of their respondents having had a same-college relationship. They are followed by Trinity (37.5%), Linacre (35.7%), and Balliol (28.6%).
Perhaps more importantly, a lack of sexual partners does not necessitate a lack of sexual pleasure. 3 in 4 Oxford students masturbate at least once a week. However, masturbation statistics varied wildly by college, with 95% of Magdalen students pleasing themselves at least weekly, but 57.1% of St John’s students masturbating ‘rarely’.
Casual sex does not see overwhelming popularity amongst Oxford students. 40.1% of respondents said they had never had a one night stand. For those who had, Plush was rated the best club for pulling, with 24.4% of the vote, followed by Parkend / Atik at 19.3%.
With 44.8% of students having had sex in a public place, clubs are clearly not the only place for a hook-up. Our most interesting sex spots include many a college chapel (shout-outs to Exeter and Wadham), the LMH talbot laundry, Christ Church porters’ lodge, St John’s squash courts, Lincoln Entz cellar and college library, Magdalen deer park, Worcester gardens, and the Catz moat (we’re hoping next to and not in it). Students also testified to “head on the Oxford Tube”, using “a remote vibrator at a college formal”, and having sex with someone who “had a life-size cardboard cutout of Tony Blair in his bedroom”.
Fortunately, the more insidious side of hook-up culture, such as both prude-shaming and slut-shaming, seems to be disappearing, with low numbers of respondents testifying to the presence of either. However, when broken down into gender, there are still identifiable disparities in students’ sexual experiences. Only 1/5 of total respondents claimed that there is a pressure to engage in hook-up culture, but this increased to nearly 1/4 among men. Conversely, whereas 27.8% of overall respondents believe there is a slut-shaming culture, this increased to 33% among women.
The range of statistical responses we gained told us a complex story, ranging from tales of Oxford’s top shaggers with total body counts in the 100s to testimonies from those who remained happily and proactively chaste. The comments clearly revealed that Oxford’s sex scene is perceived differently by all who do (or don’t) participate in it; yet the overall results suggest that sex is not as significant a factor in most Oxford students’ lives as might be assumed. As one person pithily remarked, it’s “very vanilla”.
Issues of college accommodation come into play here, as one person complains “squeaky single beds against paper thin walls kinda ruin having sex in my own space”, but several others put it down to being overworked. In a wider sense, the insularity of the university space is also a concern: “casual sex is relatively easy to come by in Oxford but often chaotic and emotionally challenging – especially when you have to keep bumping into that person for the rest of your degree”.
This idea of an incestuous dating pool is echoed by others: “everyone knows everyone – you have to keep up”. One person refers to the “whole thing about work making it ‘too hard’ to form a meaningful monogamous relationship”, while another grumbles that they’re “too busy thinking about my essays to have casual sex”, and one ambitious Blue puts it down to “high workload and sports commitments”.
But amongst complaints about casual sex, many attribute a lack of sex to difficulties in maintaining a relationship. As one person aptly analogised: “trying to sustain a relationship in this place is like trying to eat soup with a fork”.
The logistics of making time for dating, sex, and relationships at a University where even scheduling sleep into a 24-hour period is a struggle for some seems to be overwhelming. There are perhaps questions to be asked about the shifting attitudes to balancing ‘work and pleasure’ as an Oxford student: the decades-long mantra of ‘First, Blue, or a Spouse’ seems to have been swayed in a direction that favours the former whilst devaluing the latter.
However, a ‘lack of time’ for relationships seems to be only a small part of the problem. A recurrent complaint amongst our respondents is the misleading duality of Oxford’s reputation, as someone writes “I think Oxford is a place of both intense sexual excitement and shyness. It’s known for being both a city of nerdiness and a city of debauchery”. Recent initiatives like Oxshag (“for the overworked and undersexed”) have attempted to capitalise on this situation, aiming, in the words of its founder, to “spice up the Oxford casual sex scene (which is underwhelming and/or hard for a lot of people)”. Indeed several comments affirmed this stance, with someone writing “If I was single, I cannot imagine where I would meet people outside of using hookup apps”.
What these platforms have brought to light is the difficult co-existence of cultures of peer-pressure to have sex and slut-shaming. In the course of the survey, Oxford has been compared to both “love island” and “a city of nerdiness”, with one person lamenting that “There’s no space for people who want meaningful relationships but also casual flings with interesting people”. They go on to say, “You’re either a slut or married. There’s no in-between and it’s extremely polarising and awful for the culture”.
For most of those who do feel peer pressure to have casual sex, the pressure is often more subtle. One person suggested sex is “so prevalent and often talked about that those who don’t participate may feel that they are missing a part of their ‘university experience’”. Another person responded that the pressure is “not explicit but [there are] feelings of exclusion if not involved”. Someone else makes the argument that “casual sex is standardised, and many feel that traditional relationships are boring or unviable”. These pressures are embedded in our social activities, from crew dates which “valorise being a shagger and having funny sex stories” to Bridge and Atik, where there’s a “pressure to hit the club and hook up”.
The story looks slightly different when considering the dating experience of LGBTQ+ respondents. One respondent said, “I think a lot of LGBTQ+ identifying individuals start exploring their sexuality at university, so there’s a notion of ‘jumping in at the deep end’ that straight people don’t really have”. Another said their experience was “originally a bit traumatic; there was a real pressure to take part in that scene when I wasn’t ready.”
Another wrote, “Oxford is a tolerant city but a lot more closeted than I expected. The small size of colleges means rumours spread quickly so people are less likely to come out.”
A different respondent stated that “women seem less likely to date a bi man here”. However, they finished by saying “I’ve had a lot more sex at uni than my straight friends and acquaintances though.”
“Casual sex culture feels more pressured than with my straight friends,” said one student. This seems to be a common theme throughout responses, with another noting, “I think there is more hook-up culture for men who have sex with men.”
Hookup pressure is the most common comment, with another telling us: “Sometimes I feel like there’s more pressure to get with more people to prove your queerness, but I’m okay with not adhering to this anymore. I know I’m attracted to women and I don’t need to make out with one every other week to prove that.”
Many respondents were candid about the additional challenges attributed to their LGBTQ+ identity. One respondent told us that “As a demisexual person, it’s hard to meet people enough to form a relationship because there isn’t enough time or opportunity”, and another told us that “As a gay man, Body shaming and pressure to be skinny aka a twink is very common.”
“I think if you’re queer but not very outwardly queer presenting then it would be very hard to be noticed by other queer students. I find that I’m not entirely comfortable with other queer students because I feel like I am not queer enough around them (which may just be a general issue).”
These challenges seemed harshest for trans people. One said, “being gay and trans makes hookups a very strange prospect, most of my prospects are people I already know.” Additionally, “dating/hooking up as a gay trans person is hard, because you worry about how people perceive you and whether or not it’ll be safe, whilst also worrying about how having to acknowledge your own body too. If you find someone that’s supportive, though, that makes things a lot easier.”
However, there were positive comments too: “I have found dating quite easy in Oxford. I appreciate that the other person will have a similar workload to me, and therefore it is important to designate discrete times to see each other. This works very well for me as someone who likes to compartmentalise my day. I don’t think this is much different to how heterosexual relationships must work in Oxford.”
All in all, our survey has told us that whilst there do seem to be sex ‘trends’ at Oxford, every respondent’s experience is different. Initial surprise at the high mean average bodycount of students was replaced by equal surprise at the low median. Whilst the picture is not as clear-cut as one in which “Oxford students don’t get laid”, there is no formula that can be applied across the student body. Perhaps most interesting was the fact that lots of those having little sex assumed that they were in the minority, whilst many of those having lots of it thought that Oxford was not very accommodating for casual hook-ups. One student told us that “I feel guilty for putting so many ‘no’ and ‘not applicable’. I really need a therapist to tell me that being a virgin is ok here in Oxford.” In contrast, another told us that “there is a bit of a cliché that Oxford students should have a lot of sex to alleviate stress.” It seems that Oxford doesn’t really have a strong sex culture, either pro or anti, yet our respondents frequently measured themselves against standards that simply don’t exist. In reality, sex doesn’t seem to be a defining aspect of University life after all.
Although Oxford is home to a plethora of student bands, Velvet is one that truly stands out from the crowd. If you haven’t heard of them, you should have. One month before what you could consider to be their upcoming magnum opus gig at The Bullingdon, I sat down with bassist Rupert, guitarist George, drummer Joel, and keyboardist and singer Dec to find out more about the band.
With the band forming at the end of their first year at Oxford, in June 2021, Velvet has accomplished a lot in a short space of time. They formed much like any other group, with a few friends in St Anne’s College deciding to make a band, yet less than two years later, there are few venues in Oxford where they haven’t played. Starting off in college bars, Velvet worked their way up to paid gigs at multiple balls including Merton, Brasenose, and Exeter, “a LOT of Freud”, as well as at the Crankstart Ball most recently. Dec caught sight of them for the first time at an open night, before joining them in time for a Pink Week gig. While their line-up has changed a little over time, occasionally needing some deps for bass and keys, and now playing with their new saxophonist, Rupert, the band has mostly kept the same members, forming a close knit group of friends. Although they have so many members, the Merton Ball was a clear favourite event, with a circular stage and a great crowd, although Oxford Pride in Westgate was a close second.
The gig that the band are most excited for, however, is their performance at The Bullingdon on the 21st of February. With early bird and first release tickets already sold out, and second release selling fast, this is not one to miss. Velvet have wanted their own gig since the start and are excited to show a big project they’ve been working on after doing two years of sets at events. The gig at Bully will be the first time that the band have really been able to craft a performance, as many events don’t provide as much freedom about the set. Joel describes it as “the pinnacle” of their work, especially as it may be one of the last chances to see the band perform in their current iteration, with many members graduating this year.
While the band scene in Oxford is also mostly dominated by funk bands, Velvet leads more into Neo-soul, ditching the big brass sections of the funk band and experimenting with different instrumental mixes. One of their defining features is the presence of their flautist, Izzy. Joel’s idea of adding a flute to the mix for a cooler texture is extremely effective and is complemented by the presence of BNOC Adam Possener’s viola playing. The use of the flute and viola, especially now that Adam has a new electric viola, has completely changed the band’s texture, giving them a unique and defining sound. Although the band has tried more classic funk songs in the past, like Corinne Bailey Rae’s Put Your Records On, they decided that it “didn’t feel like them”, showing a clear sense of their identity. Despite having a strong idea about what they want to play, the band is certainly not against experimentation. They explained how Hannah, the lead singer, leads the direction and sound of the band, and how the others like her ideas because they’re different and original.
Although Velvet tends not to do remixes of songs, one of the things they are aiming for is for the songs to blend into each other more during performances, with less talking time in between each one (although George adds that this would also mean less clapping time). There is also the exciting possibility of them performing their own song at the Bully gig on the 21st of February. Joel describes how Hannah is writing bits of melody for a beat that he found, and the aim is for the other members to eventually add parts so that it becomes a fully fleshed-out song. However, he adds that it is difficult to come together and write something when there are eight band members with different ideas, so the only way we can find out is by attending the gig.
Despite the difficulty of bringing all their ideas together into one cohesive song, the differing tastes of the eight members contribute to the band’s identity. Each member brings a contrasting background in music to contribute to Velvet’s own sound. For example, Izzy plays a lot of folk music, so adds this influence and texture. Dec, meanwhile, is a member of Out of The Blue, which while being very different from playing in a band, still adds to the performative and creative process. Similarly, the band members generally listen to and draw information from a wide range of artists. Joel is into D’Angelo and Erykah Badu and enjoys playing RnB as it’s well-known but they’re also able to jazz it up. George on the other hand is a fan of Tom Misch and Radiohead, while Rupert likes rock and metal. None of the members are confined to one genre however, with music taste being shared. Dec describes how he is big into Bruno Major, lo-fi, and jazz, but is now getting into D’Angelo and Voodoo as well thanks to Joel’s influence.
The band also show a lot of freedom in the way they rehearse, explaining how it doesn’t feel like a chore, but rather more of a process. Their covers of songs are unique to them as they often play without parts. They begin by playing by ear and then writing a chord sheet, with everyone reacting naturally to the music, adding an element of improvisation. Particularly as some of the members don’t know music theory, playing things off of YouTube is an especially useful tactic. Although many believe that music theory is a necessary part of being able to make music, Velvet proves that it is more than possible to do so without, with Dec reflecting that it was often helpful to keep things simple, and to engage with the music through playing it.
One of the most common issues that bands have to deal with is performance anxiety. The band members reflected that some gigs feel more relaxed than others, but that bigger ones can be more nerve-racking. An event organised by the Jazz Society was especially scary as people would generally know the song, and there was more of a sense that they were listening carefully, so certain members felt the pressure a bit more. This wasn’t an overwhelming problem though, with there being a consensus that the best way to deal with it was “have a pint” and enjoy the performance while trying not to worry about judgement.
Focusing on the fun of performing is the best way to ensure the audience’s enjoyment. Velvet is the perfect band for anyone looking for an event filled with lively and unique music that guarantees a good night out. The gig on the 21st of February promises to be an exciting and unmissable show, as well as a refreshing dose of live music in place of another night at Atik.
Thanks to George, Rupert, Joel, and Dec for the interview.
Professor Nigel Biggar has accused Bloomsbury Publishing of cancelling his book on colonialism, in which he suggests that the British Empire has been overly criticised. Bloomsbury, a London-based publishing house, has opted to pay off Biggar rather than publish his book despite initially describing it as a work of ‘major importance’.
Biggar, an eminent Oxford academic whose research includes the ‘ethics of empire’ and nationality, reports that the company approached him in 2018 to write a book about colonialism. The finished book was titled “Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning” and was presented to Bloomsbury in late 2020. The book broadly deals with the historiography of the British Empire and argues that some historians have overstated the sins of the empire. Biggar argues that the abolition of slavery provides evidence that the empire increasingly came to be defined by liberal ideals and humanitarianism. He concludes his book by suggesting that despite moments of brutality and exploitation, empire also exerted a ‘civilising’ influence on its colonies.
Biggar’s work on rehabilitating the empire is controversial and has been criticised by other academics, particularly in light of an increased emphasis on anti- colonialism within academia and the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ debate. Pratinav Anil, lecturer in History at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, wrote The Times: “Biggar makes a good Samaritan of a gold digger. His Cecil Rhodes is an unrecognizable reformer, an altruist among entrepreneurs, rescuing African men from a ‘life of sloth’ and inebriation, donating land to natives, hammering out an interracial peace. This is hard to square with the facts of his life.’
Nevertheless, Biggar’s editor at Bloomsbury reacted with enthusiasm to the finished manuscript, remarking: “your research is exhaustive. Your argument is conveyed with care and precision. This is such an important book.”
However, three months later, Biggar received an email from Sarah Broadway, the Head of Special Interest Publishing at Bloomsbury, stating that “conditions are not currently favourable to publication”.
When asked for clarification, she explained: “we consider that public feeling on the subject does not currently support the publication of the book and will reassess that next year.”
Biggar replied asking for further clarification and pointing out that public feeling was ‘diverse’. The Times reports that in his email to Broadway, he questioned: “which public feeling concerns you; in what sense is it ‘unfavourable’ to publication; and what would need to change to make it ‘favourable’ again?’
Broadway emailed back, concluding that Bloomsbury had found the criteria ‘difficult to define objectively’. She added: “we have concluded that this subjectivity could lead to your book being in a limbo lasting more than a year or it might not but we don’t wish to put you in that position of uncertainty.” Following this, she suggested that Biggar would be released from his contract with Bloomsbury. He replied: “it is quite clear … the public feeling that concerns you is that of – for want of a more scientific term – the ‘woke’ Left.”
He added: “Rather than publish cogent arguments and important truths that would attract the aggression of these illiberals, you chose to align yourselves with them by de-platforming me. In so doing, you have made your own contribution to the expansion of authoritarianism and the shrinking of moral and political diversity.”
Biggar has previously been criticised for his ‘Ethics and Empire’ project, starting in 2017, at the McDonald Centre at the University of Oxford. Its aim was developing ‘a nuanced and historically intelligent Christian ethic of empire’. Jon Wilson, Professor in Modern History at King’s College London, responded in his blog: “Developing a ‘Christian ethics of empire’ is not an intellectually sound, let alone an academically robust, endeavour – it is a political project much as an ‘Islamic’ or ‘Hindu’ ethics of empire might be.”
In this collective statement Wilson further stated that ‘as scholars of empire and colonialism, we are disappointed that Oxford is prepared to support such a project.’
When asked by Cherwell whether he thought there was been a recent pattern where books are left unpublished due to ‘public concerns’, Biggar responded: “There is plenty of evidence that in both the USA and the UK publishers are either censoring or refusing to publish material that does not accord with prevailing orthodoxies about gender, race, or colonial history.”
He cites the example of Bruce Gilley, who has had ‘several publishers cancel contracts they’d made with him under online pressure from activists.’ Biggar has previously defended Gilley’s article ‘The Case for Colonialism’.
When asked about the implications this has on future research, he told Cherwell: “it means that important topics will not be examined and cogent lines of reasoning will not be pursued, for fear of not being able to publish the results and wasting one’s time.”
“Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning” is now due to be published by William Collins.
Beginning the case against the current societal obsession with self-improvement is already attended with a problem of my own guilt and failures. The very notion of critiquing society, rather than oneself, is a refusal to take upon what is dubbed in psychological terms the “internal locus of control”. Someone with an internal locus of control believes that they are responsible and able to control events in their lives, which in turn makes them more optimistic, conscientious and productive, whereas externals, believing their fate to be largely out of their hands, are more neurotic, lazy and unproductive. Self-improvement channels and authors often view people within this binary, clearly privileging the internals over the externals.
The issue cannot be so clear-cut, however, because anyone’s judgement on the issue of the locus of control is itself affected by one’s own locus of control. It affects how one thinks and perceives the world, such as one’s political beliefs: on a very general and simplistic level, the right tends to be more internal while the left is more external. One can interpret the Peterson–Žižek debate (one between a self-help guru and a cultural critic) along this axis. Peterson tends to espouse the vital importance of having an internal locus of control, evident from his teaching that everyone should clean their room before attempting to change the world, whereas Žižek tends to consider things from the other side, confronting Peterson with the question: “What if in trying to set your house in order, you discover your house is in disorder precisely because of the way the society is messed up?” Žižek goes on to clarify that he does not believe that people should forget about their own houses, but that there is not a necessity for a binary between societal and individual problems.
Having an internal locus of control may be the best way to be productive, according to psychological studies, but just because something is useful or practical does not mean that it is right. Common sense dictates that people are always controlled by both internal and external forces. Someone who believed their life and their successes and failures to be entirely under their own control would be unhealthily delusional, incapable of seeing reality. Unfortunately, this level of delusion is encouraged by some self-improvement coaches, who often attribute no positive qualities to externality. An inability to accept any negativity is criticised as a societal ill in Byung Chul-Han’s book The Burnout Society (Müdigkeitsgesellschaft), where he describes how, due to our current orientation towards constant achievement, we have become exploiters of ourselves. Similarly, the binary between internality and externality as purely positive and negative is a highly left-hemispheric way of thinking, as McGilchrist describes in his book The Master and His Emissary, which McGilchrist believes reduces the human experience to absurdity.
Self-improvement in its worst iterations typically functions on such black-and-white binaries, purporting to effect transformations from one negative state which it implies the consumer is currently in, to the privileged, positive state which it implies the coach occupies. Common sense again reveals that self-improvement is a continual process, never a mere one-way transformation. But the self-improvement industry does not always allow for nuance, subtlety or the acceptance of imperfection. This can be a strategy for exploiting consumers. The worst self-improvement coaches entrap an audience by enforcing unhealthy, perfectionistic binary expectations upon them. This not only creates an audience where otherwise many may have been content with their imperfect yet ordinary lives, but, when people inevitably, humanly fail to enact fully the transformation that was promised them, may force them to continue buying or consuming the content from the same coach. Consumer capitalism creates a demand where none existed previously.
Self-improvement, the desire to be a better human being, has been the endeavour of philosophers since ancient times and is obviously integral to the human experience. Modern self-improvement coaches do not begin to approach the enormity and importance of this question with the requisite humility, however. The aims of modern self-improvement are faulty and simplistic, and consumer capitalism garners a lot of attention for the most foolishly self-assured to spread their generalised, simplistic judgements. Such a great deal of the trouble and chaos of today is caused from people telling others what to do or making out as if they know what others should do to improve their lives more than anyone else. Life is far too complex, everyone’s individual situations, histories and aims far too different for most advice — however much it might have helped the coach in question — to be applicable on a widespread basis.
The self-improvement industry in an ideal world would not exist, because it is a paltry imitation of ethical philosophy. Many self-improvement coaches would do well to try to replicate some of the intellectual humility of Socrates, popularly known for the phrase “I know that I know nothing” (although he did not precisely ever use those words, which is another thing that we think we know but don’t). Asking people questions rather than providing them with answers would be far more conducive to their real wellbeing. Unfortunately, questions are not very marketable. They are also not necessarily conducive to productivity. Yeats’ dictum that “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” is an unfortunate truth of the modern world, for those who are certain that optimising productivity is the way that everyone should be living their lives rarely ever question their premises and are, of course, very productive in telling others what to do. Socrates, meanwhile, never wrote anything down.
Adopting a total Socratic ignorance may lead to quietism and complete inaction, which would problematise my writing of this article. I may be committing the very mistake that I am accusing self-help coaches of doing, of believing that I know better what other people should be doing with their time. But I don’t, and I don’t claim that I do, and I acknowledge that self-improvement may be useful for many people. On the other hand, I think the unquestioning value that some self-improvement coaches ascribe to self-improvement, and the absurd notion that people are only good so long as they are improving and productive, is ultimately harmful and needs to be challenged more urgently. We need to learn to accept the negative side of externality, the idea that we may not be totally under our own control. The modern obsession with productivity is as dangerous as the 19thcentury’s obsession with utility. We have not yet learnt the lessons the Romantics taught us: we still lack Keats’ “negative capability” and Wordsworth’s “wise passiveness.
Image Credit: Internet Archive / CC0 1.0 via Flickr
Nationalist or socialist, liberal or conservative, there is one political issue that almost every student can agree on – no one likes paying tuition fees. A three year degree at a UK University now costs a good annual salary. If you are an international or graduate student, it can be even more – you’d better find yourself a generous employer, a large scholarship, or some very serious loans.
It hasn’t always been this way, though. Until 1999 – the year I was born – Higher Education was free in the UK for British students. In living memory, students were not expected to pay anything towards their education costs.
Slowly throughout the following fifteen years, the ‘free-at-the-point-of-us system’ that existed for decades before the millennium unravelled. Tuition fees trebled in 2011, fundamentally changing them from a ‘top-up’ to what the government spent to a full-on education market, with even maintenance grants being abolished in 2016.
The current system, however, is not all that it seems. You do not make repayments on your loan unless you earn more than £25,000, and above that you pay 9% of your additional earnings. Furthermore, since the interest rate on the loans is very high, many people will never pay it all back.
Consequently, for many people, tuition fees already behave like a tax. Admittedly, it is a bad tax – regressive and avoidable if your parents or employer can fund your tuition, but it is virtually a tax on graduates.
Nevertheless, the abolition of tuition fees and its replacement either with an explicit graduate tax or funding from general taxation is a contentious point of debate.
University funding, whatever form it takes, poses a policy ‘trilemma’ – you cannot have high quality and well-funded universities, affordable costs, and high student numbers. We could go back to the pre-1992 situation, with tight restrictions on how many people could go to university, we could cut funding per student, or we have to find some way to raise money. We cannot avoid all three.
The graduate tax vs general taxation vs tuition fee debate, then, is mostly about distribution of payment. How much of the cost of Higher Education should be paid by graduates versus the general public, and how much by high income graduates versus lower income? Does it matter how rich your family are or how rich you are after graduating? These questions are important, but ultimately not related to whether we pay via fees or taxes.
Tuition fees manifestly do not work as intended. For all the talk of ‘marketisation’, there is no price competition and only limited quality competition.
Why? Because education is what economists call an ‘experience good’ – you can’t reasonably assess its quality until you have consumed it. Consequently, reputation and brand dominate in the market.
Given how things have turned out, it would better to acknowledge that it’s essentially a tax, and stop the pretence of ‘repayments’ or the opportunity for the rich to avoid it. The problem for those of us on the left, however, is that transitioning from tuition fees to a graduate tax is not straightforward.
The Treasury sets aside some money to underwrite tuition fee loans each year, but it is the Student Loan Corporation that actually pays out the fees. Since you would not pay a graduate tax straight away – perhaps even for many years after graduation – the government would be immediately liable for all university funding. The 2017 Labour General Election Manifesto budgeted around £11.5 Bn for the abolition of tuition fees, likely an underestimate now due to increased student numbers and inflation, and this would need to be paid before a graduate tax would begin to generate any revenue at all.
A government could borrow the money, in theory. The SLC is essentially part of the government anyway; it is accounting smoke and mirrors to put tuition fees on a separate entity’s balance sheet. Unfortunately, that case needs to be made not to me, but to the markets and voters. Given the blowback to Liz Truss’s unfunded tax cuts, it seems unlikely that a government could borrow £15Bn without problems.
He could pledge to raise other taxes for a while to fund the transition, but a £10 – 15Bn tax rise is a very big deal. It’s more money than the Corbyn-era corporation tax hike was set to raise and of similar magnitude to the Conservative Party’s proposed Health and Social Care Levy. That is serious money which is hard to justify on Tuition Fees when there is so much else for the next government to tackle.
The only feasible way to move to a graduate tax, then, is slowly. Starmer (and Sunak, though that feels a little optimistic) should pledge taxation-based solutions for lowering tuition fees and reinstating maintenance grants, with the eventual aim of a hybrid system in which fees cease to function as a bad pseudo-tax. However, he cannot credibly promise to abolish tuition fees in the next parliament.
That reality is not going to be popular with fellow students, but the political, economic, and fiscal reality will not flex. We live in a world in which positive change compounds; a small amount of positive change will add up to a very different world in the long-run. We cannot overhaul the university funding system overnight, but the next generation can inherit something much, much better.
Anuj Mishra: For our readers who aren’t so familiar with the show, could you give us an outline of where we find ourselves in An American in Paris?
Ollie: The scene is set in the chaotic and vibrant world of post-War Paris: American soldiers and Parisians are trying to build their lives. We meet Jerry Mulligan, a young GI soldier, who falls in love with a French ballerina, but there are many more complications along the way… The show portrays a world trying to understand what it means to be liberated, and moves towards the future after so much conflict.
How did you respond to the challenge of attempting to reinvent such a well-known and well-loved musical production?
Ollie: An American in Paris is a huge show, and it is such a spectacle, but there is also a fantastic story of love and liberation at the centre of it, which has been fantastic to re-explore. At the same time, the show also presents these massive choreographic challenges, which are something that Oxford student drama doesn’t always necessarily have to deal with – so it has been such an exciting challenge as well as being a great opportunity to showcase the dance talent we have here.
The score is so unlike other musicals in that it is so whimsical and fantastical. Jake Sternberg, our musical director, has done a fantastic job with our band – a 20-piece orchestra which will be on stage alongside the dancers, which should really allow us to showcase this union of dance, music, and story.
Cormac: I’d say that my original conception of the show was very ballet-heavy, and some people may have this image of An American in Paris as being like a static series of beautiful images. But I think at the core of this production lies the humanity of all the characters, which is really brought to life by the acting and song and dance.
Is there anything that you would say drew you to directing this show?
Ollie: I saw a West End production of the show and it screamed spectacle – but revisiting the show has, personally, been a really fun chance to explore the story and understand what it means to perform it now. It’s been a process of figuring out how we can tease out those themes of love and liberation: fighting for love and for self-expression, how do you love other people in the million meanings that ‘love’ has. We’re not just restaging the show, but reviving it. Even with the choreography we’re trying to shake it up a bit, with some tap, some jazz, some ballroom as well!
How has learning so much choreography, alongside the script, been for you both?
Molly: Terrifying! I’ve always described myself as an actor-singer, not a dancer, so it has been very daunting to rise to the challenge. Cam Tweed is fantastic as a choreographer and he brings so much joy to the show, it’s been fabulous to work with him and all the other dancers as well. I saw a West End production of An American in Paris in 2017 and don’t remember much from it – apart from the dance. It’s been great to revisit the show and realise that there is such a rich narrative at the centre of it.
Are there any cast-favourite lines or scenes?
Cormac: We’ve been enjoying our scenes as the central trio of mischievous young men out on the Paris town, the writing is very funny and light, as well as dramatic when it needs to be. There are so many jazz standards and favourites, so its been really fun to sing as a trio, “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” has probably been my favourite song.
What can audiences expect from this production of An American in Paris?
Cormac: I think audiences can expect to be surprised by how much relevance they find with it. It’s not a cold product of ‘40s beauty, but, as tiring as a pandemic comparison is, I find the idea of a story following many confused people trying to shape their own identity relatable. I know that, even from my experience from first year of having come to Oxford just after lockdown, there is a commonality in this idea of people working on how to love, and express themselves between the post-War period and now.
Any final thoughts you would like to add?
Molly: Performing in The Oxford Playhouse is always so exciting because for a week, or two, you get to feel like a professional, which is really exciting. The Playhouse offers so many possibilities with light and sound in such a large space. An American in Paris is very much like an ensemble piece, there are lots of different stories and ideas of love which are weaved into and explored by the story.
Cormac: The Playhouse has also offered us the possibility of representing Paris on such a large scale. Take, for example, the band, which is huge, and potentially bigger than what you would see on the West End.
Ollie: The crew have also been fantastic, we have over a hundred people working on the show and it’s been wonderful to be supported by such a huge crew, a huge band, and a huge cast as well.
00Productions’ An American in Paris will run at The Oxford Playhouse between the 15th and 18th of February. Tickets are now on sale.
Susan Perkin, a professor of physical chemistry and fellow of Trinity College at Oxford University, has won the 2023 Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists in the United Kingdom. The award, whose winners receive 100,000 pounds in unrestricted funds, is designed to promote the efforts of the fresh faces in academia within the “Life Sciences, Physical Sciences & Engineering, and Chemistry.” Perkin’s research, which falls into the lattermost category, concerns the study of ionic fluids—that is electrolytes. In an interview with Cherwell, Perkin admitted that:
“Most people, when they think of electrolytes, they think Lucozade, energy drinks, things like that, and they are not wrong—that is certainly an electrolyte,” Perkin said.
However, Perkin would go on to make the important addendum of the presence of electrolytes in not only food and drinks, but in our bodies and industrial tools—electrolytes are all around us. As Perkin would go on to explain, our world is chockful of electrolytes, with just a few examples being the electronic devices and tools we take for granted in our everyday lives.
“Our cells’ physiological environment is largely made up of electrolytes as well. It is well known among scientists that more than 60% of your body is water, but it would be more accurate to say that it is water and salts, which are electrolytes. The ocean is also a massive reservoir of electrolytes,” Perkin’s said.
“These are all natural electrolytes, and they make up a large fraction of earth. There are also synthetic electrolytes, which we make when we try to design energy storage devices, such as in your phones and devices, but also in cars, where you need a large battery, which involves electrolytes as well. What they mostly have in common is that they contain a large number and concentration of ions.”
The current focus of Perkin’s research is describing the physical chemistry behind the high concentrations of electrolytes present in the many avenues of our life today. Although Perkin acknowledged that the scientific community has a number of good theories for solutions with a very low concentrations of electrolytes, the theories do not explain the behavior of electrolytic solutions as they exist in many real-life situations, such as in our bodies and batteries, which has implications for the understanding of any field that lies among electrolytes.
“And so the focus of our work is to understand the physics and chemistry of electrolytes which are at high concentrations. And it turns out, the properties of those electrolytes, are very different from the dilute ones. It’s really very different,” Perkin said.
“But why does it matter? If I go to my colleagues in biochemistry, they might be very focused on understanding how proteins interact with one another, or how they sit in a membrane, and sit in other molecules in a cell membrane, and all of this is happening within a sea of electrolytes, and so the nature of those interactions depends upon [electrolytes]. And the scientific assumptions that we have been making until now with these biochemical interactions have been mainly with the dilute concentrations of electrolytes. And understanding how these interactions really work in the real world with the actual concentrations of these electrolytes, helps inform these other fields like biology.”
Perkin was not always interested in the finer details of chemistry, of electrolytes and their machinations. As Perkin would explain, she began as a lover of mathematics due to its neat resolutions and elegance, which appealed to Perkin’s sense of rigorous patterns and solutions to problems. However, it was after attending Oxford University, that Perkin attended Oxford University for her bachelor’s and master’s degree, where she discovered a love for uncovering the basal details of the sciences, where Perkin was able to find the root truths of a science that were often mathematically based:
“In my school, it was not very cool to be interested in what you were learning. […] When I arrived at Johns, suddenly it was like arriving in a another world where I was surrounded by people who were really interested and talking about [their subject], and I loved that environment where you could sit down in the dining hall surrounded by people and find out they’re studying many different things, but they all have something interesting to say about what they just learnt. It was just electrifying fun,” Perkin said.
Indeed, Perkin acknowledged her academic debts to not only her education but to the scientists who came before. Many scientists are not as well known now, but were integral (such as David Tabor) in establishing the research methodology that Perkin employs: that of the Surface Force Balance. The Surface Force Balance, which was one of the main components behind Perkin’s winning of the Blavatnik Award, helps to measure “shear forces between surfaces.” Looking to the future, Perkin hopes to build off the base of knowledge of her lineage and her own research towards researching the environment, and understanding the chemical mechanisms behind the various effects of pollution on marine biology.
“In the coming years, I really expect my research to look more towards natural electrolytes and mineralization processes and other natural processes that happen in electrolytes. I am interested in the way in which CO2 from the atmosphere, which to a large extent is dissolved in the ocean into carbonates, forms large interfacial regions near rock surfaces which organisms then take in and process. Understanding how all these ions interact with one another, at very high concentrations, is very important towards understanding the CO2 cycle,” Perkin said.
Perkin ended with a bit of advice towards those looking to follow in her footsteps, the next generation of young scholars looking to make an impact in academia, but in a world where there the job outlooks for fresh DPhils is increasingly grim, Perkin also acknowledges the harsh reality of looking for a job in an oversaturated, albeit growing market.
“My advice is just to do what you really enjoy,” Perkin said. “I just followed my nose and saw what I was interested in, and I did it to the best of my ability that I could, and opportunities just sort of arose. But I did not expect that these opportunities would arise. I was always ready to go do something else. There are a lot of great things to do in life, it’s a bit like children wanting to be a premier league footballer, but when it often does not work out, you can do something else, and that can also be great.”
