Dial 1 for UK is a one-man show following the journey of Uday Kumar (UK for short), who leaves his job at a call centre in Delhi to come to England. All the while he is filming vlogs for other ‘dreamers’ who want to follow him. However, when Uday arrives things are not as simple as they seem. The play is an exploration of what happens when immigrants slip through the cracks and are forced to get by any way they can.
Performed by Mohit Mathur at the Burton Taylor Studio, the action takes place in a stripped-back set consisting of just a battered table and a series of small pictures. Each time the setting changes or UK talks to another character, a new picture is propped up on the table featuring a different place or face. This is intended to make the show easier to follow, but it is at times off-putting given that many of the pictures appear AI-generated – often images of the same person look completely different.
The one-man show is a notoriously hard format to pull off, and Mathur attempts to make it work by conveying the plot through a series of conversations with unseen companions. This makes for interesting watching at times; one example that worked well was a conversation with a shopkeeper, who UK assumes is also Indian from his appearance and, therefore, thinks will help him now that he’s homeless. The shopkeeper, however, is born and bred in Manchester, and dismisses UK’s pleas. As UK faces the audience, we see his hurt and confusion at the shopkeeper’s unwillingness to help him when he is at his most desperate, reflecting a wider rejection on the part of society.
The sound and lighting did a better job than the pictures in immersing the audience in the plot. Whilst waiting for the play to begin, we were treated to some infuriatingly repetitive hold music and, later on, a trip to central London was made to feel realistic through the noise of bustling crowds and roaring traffic.
Mathur’s character is intended to be likeable, and he drew some laughs from the audience with his over-the-top vlogging style. Yet, overall the comedic aspects of the play fell flat with many of the jokes feeling obvious and laboured. Furthermore, the comedy did not always mesh well with the serious themes of the play – whilst we were meant to sympathise with UK and find him amusing, it was revealed he had scammed an old lady out of her life savings for his plane ticket, and forcibly moved in to the house of an elderly man with dementia. This tonal inconsistency made it difficult to fully appreciate both the serious and comedic aspects of the play.
Dial 1 for UK tackles the ostracisation and neglect of immigrants, which is an extremely timely issue. Overall, however, the plot is confusing and a little slow, making it hard for the audience to fully appreciate its important message.
As summer draws to a close and we all arrive in Oxford ready for the start of Michaelmas term, spare a thought for the country’s club cricketers who are mourning the end of another British summer and, with it, the cricketing season. It will be a long six months of winter training before the country’s many cricket pitches are once again graced with the sound of leather on willow.
Many (some) of us will be at a loss for what to do with this new-found free time with a gaping seven-hour hole now left in our Saturdays. There is, of course, no alternative left but to ponder just what it is that makes club cricket so great. There is something uniquely wonderful about club cricket in particular, that even other forms of cricket, at least in my experience, have not quite captured.
Having played both college and university cricket (admittedly for the mighty Elusives rather than anything close to a Blues standard), I can say for definite neither have quite brought the same pleasure that I have found playing for my home club in Liverpool. That is not to say that I haven’t enjoyed both greatly: winning Varsity two years ago and a plucky University College Cuppers run last year are both incredibly fond memories. However, nothing has come close to the joy elicited by a successful year for my club.
This suggests that the allure at the heart of club cricket is not entirely due to the sport itself. So perhaps some of the pleasure lies in the bonds forged by the longer season and greater volume of time spent with teammates. The short Oxford term doesn’t exactly provide a huge window to develop relationships, and a week or two of bad weather can quickly wipe out a big portion of scheduled matches. There is also inevitably a rotating cast of characters in college and university teams as people graduate and freshers arrive, compared to the club scene where you can hear first-hand accounts of matches direct from those playing decades prior.
For all the diversity that may be found in Oxford students, they do remain largely homogenous in terms of age. The vast majority of students in sports clubs are in their late teens or twenties, with the occasional older postgraduate bringing more experience to the field. Contrastingly, cricket teams at clubs across the country will have players as young as 11 or 12 sharing the pitch with seasoned veterans 50 or 60 years their senior. Personally, some of the very best players I’ve had the privilege of playing with have wicket totals numbering in the thousands and have continued to take five-wicket hauls into their 70s.
The broad age range of club cricketers leads to the formation of some very unlikely partnerships, and even regularly allows multiple generations of a family to share the pitch. In the narrower age range of participants, college and university cricket loses something enriching that club cricket provides. The continued enjoyment and success of Old Boys games at many of Oxford’s colleges show what a great vehicle for intergenerational connection cricket can be.
There is also something to be said for the format in which cricket is played. Almost all college games and a large number of university games are the shortened Twenty20 version of the sport. These sharp encounters are obviously much more accommodating to a busy student schedule – but there is also something lost from the longer Saturday formats played at clubs across the country. Longer styles of the sport can ebb and flow, with momentum swinging from one team to another over the course of an entire afternoon. This produces tension of the highest order and often leads to dramatic moments of both triumph and misery.
The outcome of a Second XI league cricket match played in the dog days of August may matter exceedingly little to all but the twenty-two players involved, but for those individuals it can feel like there has never been anything as important as the next ball to be bowled. A single run can simultaneously bring jubilation and agony. This prolonged intensity, repeated time and time again over long afternoons that stretch out over long summers, is a rare phenomenon indeed. As joyful as cricket can be in all of its many forms, from street to college to international cricket on tv, it is club cricket that I shall continue to cherish above all else.
Andrew Burrows,Lord Burrows is a Justice of the UK Supreme Court and one of the country’s leading legal scholars specialising in contract and unjust enrichment law. Prior to being appointed to the Supreme Court, he was Professor of the Law of England at Oxford University and a Fellow of All Souls. As a Law Commissioner, he was primarily responsible for the report that led to the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999. He has authored major works, including Remedies for Torts, Breach of Contract and Equitable Wrongs, The Law of Restitution, A Restatement of the English Law of Unjust Enrichment, A Restatement of the English Law of Contract, and A Casebook on Contract. He was appointed honorary QC in 2003, and in 2020 became the first Supreme Court Justice appointed directly from academia. Cherwell spoke to Andrew Burrows about the Supreme Court, mentorship, and the future of legal judgment.
Cherwell:What first drew you to studying law? Was it something you always saw yourself pursuing, or did particular moments at home or at Oxford shape that interest?
Burrows: We have no lawyers in my family, but I think it was my father who suggested I might like to study law, probably because I was so argumentative at the dinner table! When I first arrived at Oxford, I realised straightaway I’d chosen the right subject, because I absolutely loved it, particularly in those first few weeks when one of the subjects we were studying was criminal law and we had to read the case reports. That was really exciting.
I had two wonderful law tutors at Brasenose. John Davies, who was a very calm and collected person. The other person who became my great mentor was Peter Birks, who was totally brilliant, charismatic, and very passionate about the law. I consider myself very fortunate to have had two such superb tutors, both very different and Peter Birks guided me and inspired me to become an academic lawyer.
Cherwell: Coming from such a strong background of academia, do the two sides of your work complement each other, or do you see yourself differently as a professor compared to a judge?
Burrows: My academic writings and my academic research do shape my judgments, at least those involving the common law. I’m always concerned about how the particular decision fits with the big picture of the law.
Of course, on the Supreme Court, we all have to become generalists. We have to deal with every aspect of the law. If it is an area of law that I am less familiar with, I tend to go to the textbooks first of all to see where the issue in the case fits. I do that because the textbooks give you a neutral, objective analysis, whereas, when you’re dealing with counsel submissions, you’ve got polarised arguments. Furthermore as an academic, I’ve always been very conscious of how important it is to make what you’re doing clear and accessible, both in my writings and my teaching and I try to bring that clarity across into my judgments.
Cherwell:Have there been cases, at the Supreme Court or elsewhere, that made you reconsider how the law works in practice?
Burrows: I think one has to be very careful if you’ve been involved heavily in academic writing on a particular area, not to come into a case with a preconceived fixed notion as to what the right answer is, because you must always be open-minded and allow yourself to be persuaded that what you initially thought is not the correct answer. I was involved in a case called Khan v Meadows quite early on, which is about the tort of negligence and the scope of the duty of care. I had to go against some of my writings that I had previously published as to how best to understand that particular area.
When you’re focusing on a particular case, it really sharpens your understanding of the law. There have been several situations where, coming into a case, I thought I might have known quite a lot about the area, but when I have been focusing on having to make a decision on a specific point, a lot of things that I perhaps didn’t realise about why the law is the way it is, all become clear and very important.
Cherwell:Can the weight of those decisions still feel daunting, given their impact both socially and individually?
Burrows: As an academic, I used to agonise quite a lot about whether what I was writing about the law was correct. But I have certainly had more sleepless nights since I’ve been on the court than I previously did! Once you’ve made your decision and the judgment has been handed down, that is it, so the real agonising goes on before the decision is made and while you are writing your judgment. One great feature of being on the court, which relieves some of the pressure, is that you’ve got wonderful colleagues. You aren’t on your own.
The most daunting aspect of the job for me is immediately after the hearing. Having heard all the arguments in open court, we then retire and straightaway go to a private room. There each of us on the panel, and we normally sit in panels of five, gives a mini judgment as to what we think the decision should be and why. Each person goes in order, and, by convention, this is in the order of the junior judge going first up to the most senior judge who goes last. That was particularly daunting when I first started, because I was the junior, speaking about the decision and my reasons for it, without really knowing what the others were thinking at that point.
Cherwell:On the topic of how people learn and shape their mindsets, how do you see the profession evolving? There is already a lot of conversation about how AI is affecting law in practice, but do you have any predictions on how AI could change the legal field?
Burrows: My understanding is that AI is already being used extensively in law firms with what you might call more mundane tasks of checking legal documents and the like. There have been a couple of high-profile cases in this country on the incorrect use of AI by barristers, and I took part in an academic study on what it was thought AI could potentially do in court. My own take on this is that it could well be that the more mundane tasks that we have to do, for example, summarising the facts, may be done over the course of time by AI, but I am doubtful whether AI can ever replace the element of judgment that we rely on judges to exercise.
But at the moment it is very risky to use AI for legal research. For example, at a recent Christmas gathering, I was being shown ChatGPT by one of my children and I asked ChatGPT to tell me about a case. It was quite good on the facts, but when I asked what was the principle of the case, it was 100% wrong. What AI is doing is using a database and then basing it on probabilities. As the databases become more sophisticated and wide-ranging, the accuracy will increase, but at this moment in time, you have to be really careful.
Cherwell: I think there’s always that human element of not wanting to let yourself be taken over by a machine in a dystopian manner. People want to feel that a judgment about them is being made by a human.
Burrows: That’s an interesting point, even if you were able to replace judgment, would you want to trust a machine? Take driverless cars. Even if we know that a driverless car is less likely to be involved in accidents, is there still something holding us back? Well, we may get over that, but when you come to judgment, I think there’s a particular difficulty about trusting the exercise of judgment to a machine. It may just be that, as a society, we can’t accept that.
Cherwell: Many of our readers are students who are considering legal careers. Are there any common misconceptions you see from young people, or advice you have for students?
Burrows: I would say, do not just follow the money. Try to find an area of law that you’re passionately interested in, and see what jobs there are in that area. The law offers a range of different types of jobs. If you find academic law interesting, seriously consider postgraduate study. And if you find you’re successful at postgraduate study, seriously consider becoming an academic, because it’s a fantastically varied and interesting job, and above all else, you control your own type of work.
Never be afraid to take people back to the basic principles. If you’re presenting arguments, going back to the basics is always helpful. I remember my great mentor Peter Birks saying to me: “If you can’t explain this area of the law to an intelligent teenager, you don’t really understand it yourself.” I think that’s a great idea to hang on to, that trying to simplify things down is actually very important in understanding.
Cherwell:Looking back, what moments stand out as your proudest achievements?
Burrows: Two moments, I suppose. Firstly, in the early 1990s, I was awarded (jointly) the Society of Legal Scholars prize for my book, The Law of Restitution. The second was when I got the phone call to say that I had been appointed to the Supreme Court.
Cherwell: Finally, are there any moments from your career that made you laugh?
Burrows: I was doing the London legal walk, and towards the end, I was approached by a person with a microphone and a camera who was randomly asking people if they could name the twelve Supreme Court justices in this country. He said the highest number he’d had so far was that somebody could name five. I said to him, “I’m very confident I can name all 12”, and I said “I’ll start with myself, Lord Burrows”. He nearly fell over backwards because he hadn’t realised who I was!
As one of the approximately 3000 undergraduates to have recently bid farewell to Oxford, I’ve learnt just how easy it is to be overwhelmed now that my degree is over. Admittedly a few months ago I was writing my thesis, overwhelmed that my degree wasn’t over, but the sudden absence of work, routine, and plans is proving incredibly daunting. Whilst I know many people prepared a route out of university, stepping directly into a comfortable (and well-earned) graduate role, for those of us who were not so forthright, or, in my case, whose plans changed, we now find ourselves back home, seemingly in the same position we were three years ago before we even applied, wondering, what’s next? And indeed, how did it actually help us?
But before I spiral into nihilism, looking back, much has changed in those past three years. Has it been enough to fully prepare me for the outside world? Maybe not entirely. But I’m not keen on the binary of Oxford vs the real world, and I doubt that anyone is ever truly prepared to become an adult. But Oxford certainly challenged me, as it has many other people, to develop a greater degree of confidence and ambition. It might not be the real world, but I think it gives you enough of a taste of it to want more.
Oxford is certainly a world of its own, with thousands of people, all bound by similar interests and attitudes, interwoven with each other to simply exist. It’s an environment in which we all have our own diverse daily routines that fundamentally amount to the same thing. We share the same stresses and joys – from tutorials to Oxford Kermit, Oxford students are bound by an esoteric language that puts it one human sacrifice away from being a cult. At the centre is its focus on academia – but there seems to be little preparation beyond this. Where are we taught how to do taxes? Or how to face rejection from job applications? For many, Oxford seems to provide a kind of safety blanket where such concerns are temporarily suspended. The gap between town and gown is evidently a wide one.
So is that all finalists have to look forward to? A harsh drop into reality because Oxford didn’t prepare us? Whilst we get the chance to exist in such a haze, one of the main pieces of advice I would give to younger years would be to recognise the many skills and abilities with which Oxford does equip you, many of which you develop without even realising it. University life requires so much – from juggling far too many deadlines, to the pressure of sustaining a social life – and on reflection, it’s clear how far many of my friends and I have come in this time. It provides a sense of independence and freedom which is incredibly liberating. Key skills that stay with you might not be those you learn in university, but they certainly are those you learn whilst at university.
The most tangible way of judging how prepared we are is whether we have a job after Oxford – a harsh metric. According to the University, 93% of undergraduates were in full-time work within 15 months of leaving Oxford in 2022. A positive figure. Likewise, no one could ever doubt the usefulness of the Careers Service, tirelessly dealing with the queries of students and providing many valuable opportunities year-round. The University is clearly offering some form of employment preparation, regardless of whether it’s for the welfare of its students or to bump it up a few more places in the league tables.
There certainly can be a sense of guilt, that not taking advantage of the abundance of opportunities at Oxford is somehow a failing on your own part. But you cannot do everything, and, if truth be told, this is part of a wider problem. The imagined incompatibility of Oxford life and the ‘real world’ creates some mirage that we stagnate or solidify in maturity after leaving university. Yet we will continue to be faced with thousands of opportunities and setbacks, will continue learning in one way or another. The notion of the real world serves primarily as intimidation which can be helpful, to an extent. The only thing different from the Oxford bubble, truly, is that there is no set framework for opportunities.
So, it is at this point that we use the creativity and strength which we have from being at Oxford, fostered through work and daily life, to push forward and try to create opportunities. This will undoubtedly be difficult; I labour under no illusion that meritocracy is perfection. But we should reframe ourselves and the labels we have adopted. Leaving Oxford should not be a tragic loss but an exciting time for new development. Or maybe check in with me in a couple of months when I’ve been rejected from a few hundred jobs.
Over forty local business and community leaders took part in this year’s Oxfordshire CEO Sleepout, a fundraising event for Oxfordshire Homeless Movement (OHM), which took place in University Parks last week. Prior to sleeping outside for the night, participants had the opportunity to network with one another and to listen to speeches by event organisers and speakers who had experienced homelessness in Oxfordshire.
Jane Cranston, Chair of OHM, told Cherwell: “This is the fourth year we’ve done this event, and we do it in conjunction with CEO Sleepout, who have a franchise. We’ve had some very interesting people sleep here, including very senior members of the University – the Vice-Chancellor has done it a couple of times.”
Some of the money raised through this event will go towards OHM’s initiatives to support women experiencing homelessness in particular. Cranston added: “There are a lot more women rough sleeping than are normally counted, because women don’t sleep out at night in the same way [as men], so they’re hidden…there are about four times as many as are counted.”
Jane Madden, Event Coordinator for CEO Sleepout, told Cherwell that the purpose of the Sleepout is for local business and community leaders to “communicate between themselves about what they can do and the changes that they could make to improve people’s lives: bringing in people to their organisations who don’t always have the qualifications they might be looking for, giving people a chance, and taking away the stereotypes of being homeless”.
Cherwell spoke to several event participants about their motivations for taking part. Sonya Batchelor, CEO of Buckinghamshire-based food bank One Can Trust, told Cherwell: “Taking part in the event last year pivoted my entire career…[it] cemented for me what I want to do: I want to have a social impact.”
Angela Unsworth, Jesus College Home Bursar, has participated in the annual event since its inception. She told Cherwell: “Some years we’ve been out, it’s been howling gales and pouring rain, or it’s been -3 or -4 degrees. But even so, we do it for one night. There are people that we’re raising money for that do it every night, regardless of what the weather is. It makes you understand what people have to go through, day in and day out, and how divided the city is.”
Neil Unsworth, Head of Resilience at the University, told Cherwell: “When you wake up and you’ve got either frost on your sleeping bag or you’re soaked, you realise you can go home and have a shower and get warm, but people on the streets couldn’t do that. And it really brings it home as to how tough it can be. So even a little taste of it, which is nothing really like actually being on the streets, makes a big difference.”
Before participants took to their sleeping bags, they heard from speakers who expressed first hand accounts of their experience being homeless. Jack, one of the speakers, was homeless for several years in London and Oxford before he received help from Edge Housing, an Oxford-based charity offering temporary supported accommodation. Jack told Cherwell that his early life was “very chaotic”. On attending the Sleepout, he said: “This is my way of giving back. My life’s just been so traumatic and [Oxford] is the only place that I’ve ever felt safe.”
Aspire housing, an Oxfordshire-based charity who “empower people facing homelessness, poverty and disadvantage to find employment and housing”, also attended the sleep out.
Award-winning journalist and author Mishal Husain delivered Oxford University’s annual Romanes Lecture on Tuesday. Taking place in the Sheldonian Theatre, this year’s lecture was titled ‘Empire, Identity and the Search for Reason’.
In the lecture Husain explored both historical and contemporary narratives of identity, communities, and conflict. She reflected on our imperial past and talked of a search for points of light, finding them beyond the headlines in history and forgotten context.
Husain also examined the election of Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Asian MP elected to serve in the House of Commons, whose work was driven by the poverty gap between India and Britain. As a Liberal MP during Gladstone’s premiership, Naoroji’s critique of empire is thought to have influenced Gandhi and Jinnah.
During the lecture, Husain said: “When I look at today’s undergraduates I am conscious that, at the same point in my life 30 years ago, I was emerging from my university education into a less troubled world. The Berlin Wall had been torn down, the Soviet Union had come to an end, it felt as though societies were moving towards more freedom and more prosperity. The 9/11 attacks had not happened.
“Today, the level of conflict, and the economic pressures on countries, and individuals, make for
a very different reality. The news is often hard to take, leading to a sense of overload. Even, at times, despair. The ‘search for reason’ is part of this lecture’s title because my own search for reason – a compass through these times – is how I try and make sense of dramatic events around us. It’s at the heart of my new on air work. And I hope that what I share about that compass – that search – may be of use to some of you, in providing points of light.”
Challenging the relationship between East and West, Mishal spoke of the lost religious context in the words of Rumi, reflected on the case of Shamima Begum, and shared little recognised connections between English architecture and Islamic buildings, including the Sheldonian Theatre – the venue of the Romanes lecture.
Mishal Husain is currently Editor-at-Large at Bloomberg Weekend. Prior to joining Bloomberg, Husain presented a number of BBC News programmes, including Radio 4’s Today Programme, which she stepped down from earlier this year.
Husain’s most notable journalistic moments include presenting on location in New York following the 9/11 terror attacks, and in Pakistan after the killing of Osama Bin Laden. She has been named ‘Broadcaster of the Year’ twice by the London Press Club and won the ‘Charles Wheeler Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Journalism’ in 2024. Husain’s memoir Broken Threads: A Family from Empire to Independence was a Sunday Times bestseller.
Established in 1891 with the funding of George John Romanes, the Romanes Lecture is delivered annually by a public figure by special invitation of the Vice-Chancellor. Past speakers have included Professor Geoffrey Hinton, Dame Catherine Bingham, and Hilary Clinton.
Prime Minister William Gladstone was the first speaker to present the Romanes Lecture in 1892 when Dadabhai Naoroji was a serving MP.
Professor Irene Tracey described the lecture as “a valued Oxford tradition – an opportunity to engage with the ideas and individuals shaping our understanding of society, history, science and the arts”. Further information about the annual Romanes Lecture is available on the University’s website.
An art exhibition designed to contextualise the legacy of Cecil Rhodes was unveiled at Oriel College on 3rd October. The exhibition features sculptures from Zimbabwean artists which were selected as part of a competition organised by the Oxford Zimbabwe Arts Partnership (OZAP).
An Oriel spokesperson told Cherwell that the exhibit aims to “deal with our association with Cecil Rhodes, add new layers of meaning to his statue and build a closer relationship with southern Africa”.
The judging panel for the competition included: Norbert Shamuyarira, a prominent sculptor; Be Manzini, a UK-based Zimbabwean artist; Elleke Boehmer, trustee of the Rhodes Trust; and Oriel’s Provost Lord Mendoza. The competition’s winning piece by Chitungwiza-based artist Wallace Mkankha, titled ‘Blindfolded Justice’, is the centrepiece of the exhibit.
The exhibit offers an artistic perspective on Rhodes’ impact on the people of Zimbabwe whilst tracing the history of the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement, a campaign which began in Cape Town in 2015, eventually moving to Oxford. The movement’s objectives were established in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter movement. They include diversifying the curriculum as well as the removal of the Cecil Rhodes statue at Oriel.
Removing Rhodes’ statue has been a contentious issue for both the Oriel JCR and the College’s Governing Body. Despite the Governing Body voting to remove the statue in June 2020, the College abandoned the plans in 2021 due to “considerable challenges at the planning stage” of taking down part of a Grade II-listed monument.
The College’s spokesperson told Cherwell: “The College has worked to expand its academic coverage of Africa, race and colonialism, to increase support for academics from Africa, including through the provision of graduate scholarships, and to collaborate on outreach programmes for young people from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds.”
Oriel’s JCR President said that “neither students nor the JCR committee have exclusive influence on the statue or related decisions”, adding that the exhibition is “a small step in the right direction towards achieving a more accurate portrayal of the history and current state of the College, though it is far from exhaustive in addressing the legacy of historical injustices”.
The JCR President emphasised that the JCR is “overwhelmingly welcoming to all students” and “is committed to creating an inclusive community for all students”.
Rhodes studied at Oriel intermittently from 1873 to 1891, soon after which he entered politics, where he became prime minister of the Cape Colony, a territory of modern-day South Africa. From 1890, he (along with the British South Africa Company) colonised Zimbabwe, with his actions leading to the deaths of over 20,000 people.
After his death in 1902, he left £100,000 to Oriel College and £3 million to Oxford University. The latter donation was used to establish the Rhodes Trust, which provides scholarships for people from the United States, Germany, and the former British Empire. Former Rhodes Trust scholars include US politicians Cory Booker and Pete Buttigieg, journalist Ronan Farrow, and astronomer Edwin Hubble.
The exhibition was open daily until 8th October, after which it was moved to the University Church of St Mary the Virgin where it will remain until December.
Thousands took to the streets of Oxford yesterday morning to race in the Oxford Half Marathon, a 13.1-mile closed-road route that started and finished on Mansfield Road, taking runners past landmarks like the Radcliffe Camera and through Summertown in the process.
Runners had the option to run to raise money for one of the Half Marathon’s charity partners, which includes Cancer Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and Oxfordshire Mind. Entertainment points along the route blasted music and offered refuelling for runners to break up the monotony of the run.
Kitted out with homemade banners and bright yellow clappers, supporters of all ages lined Banbury Road to cheer on their friends and family. Some memorable signs included “No one likes a quick finisher”, “Why is everyone running?”, and, in true Oxford fashion, “Hurry up so we can hit the pub”.
For as many runners proudly sporting the kits of their local run clubs, there were as many students who looked unprepared but surprisingly enthusiastic. Merton College student Atrijo Bhattacharyya, who proclaimed he’d not trained for the run at all, told Cherwell: “I thought that the half marathon was a really good experience and a great first race for someone getting into long distance running. I think my biggest takeaway from doing the half marathon without training is that one of the most crucial aspects of long distance running is willpower.”
As runners sped past the finish line, marshals shepherded crowds down Parks Road in the direction of the Event Village, nestled in University Parks, where live music and food stalls awaited to furnish runners with electrolytes and energy bars.
All finishers were awarded a medal and a T-shirt. Speaking to Cherwell, a participant said: “I run a lot usually, but I’ve been out with an injury, so this is my first race back for the love of the game. It was a lot of fun.”
“Running is awful”, a participant unwinding with a pint at the King’s Arms told Cherwell after completing the marathon, “but it’s also so good”.
Oxford college heads have claimed more than £333k in expenses over the past two years, with some charging tens of thousands for travel, hospitality, and entertainment.
There is currently no standard practice governing how college heads use funds and report spending, and the University declined to answer Cherwell’s questions regarding expense claims.
The data, obtained by Cherwell through Freedom of Information requests, shows that spending patterns differ sharply across the University. While some colleges reported comparatively low totals, others claimed tens of thousands for international travel and hospitality.
The combined expenses total for all undergraduate college heads amounts to £333,530, with the office of Dinah Rose, President of Magdalen College, accounting for nearly a quarter that total.
Rose’s office claimed £82,239, more than any other college, and more than double the £30,496 claimed by the runner-up, New College, which can be seen on the graph below.
Magdalen did not provide a detailed breakdown of expenses, claiming that it constitutes “personal data” despite the figure constituting the spending of an office rather than an individual, for duties carried out in official college capacity. Other colleges did, however, provide itemised lists of expenses, including the names of hotels and restaurants to the penny.
Graph Credit: Oscar Reynolds for Cherwell
International trips are among the most common expenses, particularly to Hong Kong. The Warden of New College, for example, claimed over £10,000 for a visit there. A spokesperson noted that such trips can generate significant fundraising returns, with recent donations from Hong Kong alone amounting to more than £30 million.
On a similar visit to Singapore and Hong Kong, Stephen Blythe, Principal of LMH, stayed at the 5-star Clan Hotel, and later charged a “champagne event” in New York to the expenses account, as well as a £600 afternoon tea with prospective donors.
A spokesperson for LMH told Cherwell that over the past three years, over £15 million has been raised for the College, and that “fundraising expenses incurred in the course of this work are approved and reimbursed in accordance with College policies”.
Colleges function as independent charities, relying on their endowments and donations to fund operations. Unlike the central University, colleges are financially autonomous, making fundraising a key part of the job for a head of college. For example, this year Pembroke College announced a fundraising goal of £100 million in order to fund fellowships, a new library, renovations, and outreach efforts.
Other records, however, show funds from different colleges being used for activities linked to external organisations.
In June 2023, Clair Craig, then-Provost of Queen’s College, charged £824 for “wine, prosecco and soft drinks” at an event for INGSA, a science advisory network, and a further £80 at a Mayfair lounge for the organisation. The college also covered £1,937 for Craig’s flights and accommodation to attend the World Science Forum with INGSA in Budapest.
Her expenses also include spending on furnishings, from £282 on flowers to over £300 on photo frames, as well as food bills including £25 at Gail’s, £29 at Hotel Chocolat, and £11 on crisps.
Responding to these claims, a spokesperson for Queen’s told Cherwell that “the expenditure either directly advances or supports the College’s charitable purposes.” However, they did not respond to questions over expenses related to INGSA.
Other data shows that Nigel Clifford, Rector of Lincoln College, managed to spend £79 in Wagamama at Heathrow Airport on a meal for three. Clifford also charged the College over £276 for a chauffeur service to Heathrow.
The company claims to provide “luxury” cars to the House of Lords, Whitehall, Government Offices, and importantly, Oxford University. A Lincoln College spokesperson told Cherwell that the chauffeur service was “the most practical and economical” means of transport.
Colleges often defend expenses as part of their fundraising and alumni relations efforts, which they argue bring in donations that benefit students and college life. For example, Miles Young, Warden of New College, had the second highest expenses tab of the surveyed college heads, though over £3000 went towards the College’s choir tour, and over £400 for a Chinese New Year event for students.
However, the disparity in claims raises questions about the transparency of college finances in an unstandardised collegiate system. A spokesperson for Magdalen even pointed out that if New College and Magdalen were excluded, the average expense claim would “not appear to be sufficient to accommodate the travel, hospitality, and entertainment that would normally be expected” of a head of house.
New College, for example, told Cherwell that their policy includes one trip to the USA per year, which is “necessary to attend the annual Board Meeting and associated events of the American Friends of New College”. There is an additional trip every three years to meet alumni and donors in Asia, including Hong Kong and Singapore, for fundraising and college events.
By contrast, the head of Wycliffe Hall reported the lowest expenses of any college head, spending just £52 over two years. The Principal of Hertford College spent £245 over the same period, while Brasenose’s President spent a similar £280 on expenses.
The University has an expense policy for work undertaken in the course of University business, though individual colleges have their own autonomous policies due to their status as independent self-governing charities. Cherwell understands that the University has no official duty under charity law to monitor spending by colleges.
This autonomy applies to how expenses are recorded, with no standardised system governing how colleges track spending by college heads. Some colleges may reimburse their head after they pay personally, while others cover costs directly, meaning the same trip could appear differently in separate colleges’ accounts.
Graph Credit: Oscar Reynolds for Cherwell
The impact of this spending varies drastically when measured against college endowments, which are the invested funds that generate much of colleges’ income. Oxford’s colleges vary enormously in wealth, with some holding endowments worth hundreds of millions while others operate on far smaller budgets.
The College Disparities Report, authored by then-SU President Danial Hussain, highlighted the impact of these stark differences between colleges. For example, in the 4 years prior to the release of the report, Christ Church’s wealth increased by £169 million, larger than the combined endowment growth of the 10 poorest colleges.
Analysis of expense claims against college wealth by Cherwell on the above graph shows a different angle to the scale of these claims. When measuring expenditure this way, Regent’s Park wins by some margin, with the Principal’s £10,947 claim looming larger than that of Magdalen’s £82,239 in expenses.
In fact, when compared to college wealth, Magdalen figure is the twelfth highest, with our runner-up, New College, ranking thirteenth. Despite its eye-watering endowment, the Dean of Christ Church spent only £8,430, making it the ninth lowest figure when compared to the College’s endowment.
Last year, Cherwellrevealed that Oxford Vice-Chancellor Irene Tracey had claimed £47,564.97 on expenses since her appointment in January 2023.
The figures show the University covered over £25,000 for her flights and £12,000 on rail and car travel, on top of her baseline salary of £573,000, which includes £100,000 for housing. Tracey is the second-highest paid vice-chancellor in the country, just behind her Cambridge counterpart.
Senior members of Coventry University have recently come under scrutiny from the University and College Union (UCU) for spending around £150,000 on flights, with the vice-chancellor spending £7,870 on one business class flight with Emirates. The Coventry University Group announced in December 2023 that it needed to deliver nearly £100m in cuts over a two-year period.
Though Oxford colleges argue that expense claims are a vital part of fundraising efforts and leading alumni engagement, the wide disparities in these sums of money raises questions about the accountability of the money that colleges spend. Given this inconsistency, it is impossible to effectively compare how money is spent, and unless it is actively sought out, this information is allowed to slip entirely under the radar.
There is no reason why a remake should remain inferior to its source material; even less so when it’s a ‘reinterpretation’ by an auteuras opposed to a cynical scheme for studios to cash-in on audience’s nostalgia. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) comes to mind: Douglas Sirk’s Hollywood melodrama All that Heaven Allows (1955) provided Rainer Werner Fassbinder with the template he needed to explore Germany’s own prejudices and social divisions, while also allowing him to comment on the ability of (American) pop-cinema to bring us closer to simple emotional truths. Unfortunately, no such sensitivity or consideration seems to have gone into Spike Lee’s decision to reinterpret Akira Kurosawa’s masterly High and Low (1963). For most of its runtime, Highest 2 Lowest struggles to provide a reason for its own existence.
We begin with a superficially similar set-up of Kurosawa’s now classic dilemma: a wealthy but principled businessman, who has just risked everything he owns on a deal to regain control over his company, receives a phone call demanding a ransom for his son. It quickly transpires that the kidnapper has made a mistake and is holding hostage his chauffeur’s son instead, but he demands the payment anyway. Our businessman, Gondo Kingo in Kurosawa’s original and David King in Lee’s latest film, faces an internal struggle: does he pay and lose all his wealth or leave a child to face death?
It is not needless showboating when the first 40 minutes of Kurosawa’s film take place within a single location, the living room of Gondo’s modernist house, in long takes staged in deep space. We are invited as witnesses to a theatrical display of human passions and resentments emerging under excruciating pressure. Class differences, normally ignored, are brought to the surface, and the actors’ entire bodies define their characters. We see the way the chauffeur is relegated to secondary status, a strict social hierarchy forcing him to remain silent even as he longs for his son’s freedom, by observing him hovering, hunched over, in the background of the action. Equally, we witness the insecurity of the nouveau riche in patriarch Gondo’s abrupt dismissals of his wife’s feminine insight, his eyes seething with resentment as he remembers her socially superior upbringing.
With Lee, clumsy exposition informs us of the thematic issues he wants to explore – authenticity in the age of AI, amongst others – and each line of dialogue sets up a ‘problem’ which we already know will be resolved in the film’s course. By the time we get to the phone call informing us of the kidnapping, the dialogue has divested us of the possibility of seeing these characters as humans in a sympathetic plight and we watch with near disengagement. Lee’s visual touches also alienate and encourage us to emotionally withdraw at crucial points. They evoke security cameras or occasionally, replaying moments of human connection from various angles, sports broadcasts. Formally the complement to the story’s themes of 21st century digital paranoia and the way that all human action now takes place under the weight of virtual judges is obvious, but never explored satisfactorily. Ironically, this is because Lee struggles to establish a physical sense of space into which these anonymous bodiless online presences can permeate. The King family home never once feels threatened in the way that Gondo’s house atop a hill is endangered by the watchful eyes of the lower classes living below him.
It is fascinating to read Joan Mellen’s 1975 interview with Akira Kurosawa in which her understanding of High and Low, which in its second half transitions to a proto-police procedural where the law attempts to capture the kidnapper, is contrary to the filmmaker’s own. Kurosawa did not see the police as heavy-handed in their pursuit of him (he saw the criminal’s actions against a child as truly abominable) and did not want to make him sympathetic, but acknowledged that in the act of directing that was how it came together. The power of Tsutomu Yamazaki’s performance as the doomed Dostoevskian antagonist, cut off from charity and determined to hate, cannot help but transform in the film’s final minutes what has been a mysteriously sun-glassed visage for much of the runtime into an image of the despair to which a materialistic society can drive anyone. His scream of horror and the descending metal shutter are the final sounds we hear before the screen fades to black. Kurosawa goes on to confess that he cut a sequence it took two weeks to complete, in which the kidnapper is analysed by Gondo and the police chief, so that this would be the shot with which we are left.
Lee, however, wants to be in control and dictate to the audience what they can and cannot believe. This obviates the more interesting visual ideas, particularly an inspired rap number, in which fluorescent lighting plays across kidnapper Yung Felon’s and King’s faces alike, as King grins and a split screen unites them. The heavy-handed writing returns to rescue us from the notion of Felon as King’s own shadow, differentiated by status alone, making these moments little more than a trace left behind by a superior work. When we end with David King, a multimillionaire back in his penthouse, angry that the kidnapper from the ghetto did not receive an extra five years on his sentence, imagining his future business success, and with every cut effacing irony to solidify the audience’s support for him, we are not only watching a film completely opposed to Kurosawa’s, which showed Gondo achieving spiritual enlightenment after renouncing his wealth, but a film which celebrates a world which Kurosawa, in his humanistic plea for mercy, condemned.
