Saturday 5th July 2025
Blog Page 2033

Overreaction

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The fallout from the ‘Kill the Jews’ outburst at the Danny Ayalon talk last week has been absolutely spectacular.

Over 30 articles in newspapers around the world mean this has been the biggest Oxford Union story since Shakira, but for considerably less positive reasons. As with every story about the Union ever, most commentators have got completely the wrong end of the stick. Melanie Phillips is particularly strident in the Spectator, claiming that the event illustrates Britain’s (not Oxford, Britain’s!) ‘slide from enlightenment into darkness.’ Most of the stories appear to be sourced from the original Cherwell and OxStu stories and an obscure blog by an Israeli student in Oxford called ‘The Edge of Where.’ All share a general tone of horror at the supposed outrageous behaviour of the students.

Is this not perhaps a teeny, tiny bit of an overreaction? Obviously the student who made the ‘kill the Jews’ comment (if he did – he claims he was mistranslated) was utterly out of order and fully deserves whatever the police or the Israeli embassy decide to throw at him. Also, those students who interrupted Ayalon’s talk did Ayalon and everyone who wanted to listen to him a grave discourtesy – all speakers have the right to be heard. But the protesters were in the minority, and most of them, if rude, were at least making politically legitimate points, of the same sort that have been made by mainstream media commentators around the world.

The Oxford Union gets protests all the time, both inside and outside the chamber. So does any venue that hosts high profile politicians. Some of the protesters are rude, some hold particularly strong feelings, some are unreasonable, many say silly things, some fairly outrageous things. But the presence in Oxford of a dozen or so angry students is not symptomatic of a city wallowing in anti-semitism, nor of a nation’s decline. The only thing it demonstrated is that, in a university of over ten thousands students from all over the world, a small number of them are always going to be idiots. Yes, chuck them out of the room, but don’t blame the whole university for their actions.

 

It’s not plagiarism… it’s intertextuality

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Goethe. Hesse. Brecht. Grass. Schiller. Mann. Von Kleist (thank you, bookshelf). Some of the greatest writers of all time, and all of them bastions of the German language. But will 17 year old Helene Hegemann, author of the bestseller “Axolotl Roadkill” be counted amongst them? This is doubtful on two counts: Firstly, because her massively over-hyped oeurve is just a conglomerate of “oh so alternative, Berlin youth culture” clichés, and secondly, because she didn’t even write said cliches herself. Huge chunks of the novel were ripped off from a book by a 28 year old blogger who goes by the name of Airen. 

 

The story of a disenfranchised youth taking loads of drugs, going to loads of techno parties and generally throwing tantrums about the establishment and the adult/corporate world has been a huge success in Germany. The book’s publishing house, Ullstein, has already printed 100,000 copies, and, barely 2 weeks after it hit the shelves, “Axolotl Roadkill” is in its third edition. High brow German newspapers like the Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfuerter Allgemeine Zeitung have lauded the work as a “literary sensation”. In light of the recent plagarism claims, the most hilariously ironic review would have to be when the FAZ journalist described the author’s work as “so seductively individual that some hundred other authors will surely try and copy the Hegemann style and fail miserably.” But the German media world are less than chuffed with her now.   

 

And how has the 17 year old Myspace enthusiast/ aspiring novelist responded to these plagarism claims? She seems pretty blasé about the whole thing. Stealing other people’s works is, according to her just, er, “intertextuality”. In a statement released this week, she wrote:”Very many artists use this technique… by organically including parts in my text, I am entering into a dialogue with the author”. In this case, I’m calling dibs on The Tin Drum. I’m sure Guenter Grass wouldn’t mind if I took a few chapters of Oskar Matzerath running riot in the post war moral vacuum in Danzig, and just transposed them into an Oxford setting. (“Down it, fresher!” cried the rugby lad. Oskar screamed so loud as to shatter the surrounding windows of the college bar.)  The author went on to claim that; “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity.” I suppose this was the mantra by which she wrote the entire book. Minus the authenticity part.  

 

So why did such a silly book get so many gold stars in the first place? Why didn’t a book brandishing the blurb “The radical voice of the Noughties generation” make its target readership collectively cringe? I think its success is symptomatic of how Berlin youth culture is in denial, and is desperately clinging to its vanishing anti-corporate identity of old and of how the majority of the Berlin “alternative” crowd are now a bunch of rich kids who don’t need to find jobs because their parents pay for them to put on art galleries and wear designer hemp clothes. It’s a far cry from the city’s days as a squatters haven; especially now that the final iconic squat was shut down at the end of last year. Thus, a book that reminds Berliners of just how alternatively debauched they really are would of course sell like hotcakes. Especially when targetted at those young’uns who are just piecing together their fishnet attire in preparation for their first visit to Berghain.  

Musings on the Fanny Pack

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In the UK, it is called a “bum bag”—the waist-straddling, zippered container popular in 1980s roller discos. Say this to an American though, and she is likely to think of a homeless person’s rucksack. What we call it in the US may in turn raise a few eyebrows over here: a “fanny pack”. While I think both countries can agree in calling it “tacky,” this is unrelated to today’s topic, which is this: how do bad words become bad, and what does it mean to our two countries “divided a common language”? (Incidentally, this quote has been attributed variously to George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and Winston Churchill) We begin with a discussion of taboo

Taboo words are those with offensive and emotional connotations. A taboo itself is “a ban or inhibition resulting from social custom or aversion” (American Heritage Dictionary). As psychologist Timothy Jay explains, taboo words are sanctioned, both institutionally and individually, under the assumption that something bad will happen if they are spoken. The institutional restriction comes in the form of courts of law, religious leaders, educators, and semi-governmental agencies. On the individual level, we internalize these official prohibitions, though the exact process by which this internalization proceeds is unclear to modern behavioral scientists. Socially speaking, we learn how to swear from those around us, creating a sort of swearing etiquette.

Language taboos are nothing new—religious proscriptions on the use of profanity go back to Biblical times, and probably before. One thing is certain, however, they are quite varied. Taboo words run the gamut from sexual references (cock, cunt) to blasphemous utterances (goddamn). They include scatological references (shit, crap), animal names (bitch, ass), ethnic-racial-gender slurs (American “fag,” the n-word), references to perceived social deviations (retard, wimp), ancestral allusions (son of a bitch, bastard), and offensive slang (cluster fuck), among other categories.

 

How common is swearing? It has been estimated (McEnery 2006) that swear words occur in spoken dialogue at a rate of 0.3% to 0.5%, with variants as low as 0% and as high as 3.4%. While these numbers are small, Jay reminds us to compare this to a common category such as the first person pronouns (we, us, and our), which account for only 1.0% of speech.  Based on estimates of the average number of words spoken a day, this breaks down to 80-90 swear words a day.

 

Taboo words are far from universal, and are in fact fairly context-dependent. Thus “baby” and “wimp” are more offensive to children than adults, and (traditional) East Asian curse words make more reference to one’s ancestors. How taboo a word is also depends on the appropriate speech style in a given conversational situation—formal speech is expected to be above the use of curse words. As to frequency of usage, (again citing Jay’s statistics), it has been found that socially low-ranking speakers produced higher rates of swearing than did high-ranking speakers (though this is in general in dispute). Men swear more frequently in public than women.  Men say more offensive words (e.g., fuck, shit, motherfucker) more frequently than women do. Women say oh my god, bitch, piss, and retard(ed) more frequently than men do. Men and women swear more frequently in the presence of their own gender than in mixed-gender contexts. Swearing occurs across all age ranges, but swearing rates peak in the teenage years and decline thereafter.

 

Regardless of cultural or gender background, our use of taboo words can be talked about in a very general sense. Psychologist Stephen Pinker delineates five categories of profanity, varying from habitual to meditated. These categories, said to apply cross-culturally, have been admittedly pulled here nearly directly from his most recent book:

 

“1) Dysphemistic profanity – Exact opposite of euphemism. Forces listener to think about negative or provocative matter. Using the wrong euphemism has a dysphemistic effect. (“I have to take a shit,” as opposed to “I have to go do my business.”)

 

2) Abusive profanity – for abuse or intimidation or insulting of others (Ex: “Fuck you, you fucking cocksucker!”)

 

3) Idiomatic profanity – swearing without really referring to the matter. Just using the words to arouse interest, to show off, and express to peers that the setting is informal. (Ex: “Shit, I was pretty fucked up last night.”)

 

4) Emphatic swearing – to emphasize something with swearing. (Ex: “I’m not going to do a fucking thing!” The word “fucking” emphasizes his refusal to do anything)

 

5) Cathartic profanity – when something bad happens like coffee spilling, people curse. One evolutionary theory asserts it is meant to tell the audience that you’re undergoing a negative emotion[citation needed]. (Ex: “Shit, my coffee just fell!”)”

 

(See more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profanity )

 

The above two points—that swearing varies based on context and yet shares certain features at a basic psychological level—bring us to our central investigation: despite these shared impulses, swearing varies quite a bit between the US and the UK, and in fact has for some time. We can, again, trace some of this to the conscious decisions of Noah Webster as to what to include in his American dictionary: he disallowed teat, womb, stink, “to give suck”, dung, and fornication as decidedly un-American utterances. Additionally, in 1830s America it became unacceptable to say “pants” or even “trousers” (being called “inexpressibles” instead), and there was a major taboo against the word “leg”, a prohibition which extended even to the dinner table—it was rude to refer to a “leg” of a chicken, the preferred nomenclature being “second joint”. This taboo was found quite peculiar by visiting Englishmen at the time. We follow Allen Walker Read’s lead in quoting the 1824 English visitor to America Isaac Gindler:

 

“what Englishman for example would have an idea there being any impropriety in remarking of a lady that she has a well-shaped ankle, yet this would be too gross for American ears, while to say that she has a handsome leg would be intolerable.”

 

A similar, but reversed phenomenon is found in the use of the word “stomach”  in polite British society of the 1930s.  An American traveler to England in 1936:

 

“One does not utter carelessly and simply, as one does at home, the word stomach in England. It is, and in fact all words pertaining to the digestive functions are, ruled out by English manners. Once in ignorance, I used the forbidden word openly at tea party whereat the atmosphere fell to such a degree that on the following day an explanation and apology were tendered to my hostess by the embarrassed friend whom I was visiting.”

 

Another significant difference lies with the word “bum,” mentioned at the beginning of this post. Despite its harmlessness in America, polite English society has historically taken all major steps to avoid using the word “bum” in conversation, often finding elaborate workarounds:

 

“There is one other word of three letters, whose initial letters is as close as it could be to the beginning of the alphabet without actually being the first which to my disgust is much used in America. Amongst English people it is considered a most vulgar noun, used to describe a portion of the human anatomy, more useful than elegant and never in polite society inferentially referred to as I am now doing”

 

Bringing us up to the present day, the word “bum” has become markedly more harmless. But linguistic differences in taboo persist. A puzzling example is the English “bloody”. Contrary to popular belief, this word does not derive from “by our Lady,” and thus did not receive its taboo from the religious realm. Its ultimate origins are unclear. It has nevertheless taken on a very different life in the US and the UK. Similarly with the US “fag”, the UK “bugger”, “spastic,” “poof,” and “wanker”, and any number of others listed by an impressive H2G2 post.

     

Many would argue that “bloody” has been bleached of its typical, caustically emphatic sense, and to investigate this, it is instructive to look to a report released by the Advertising Standards Authority and the BBC in December 2000. The goal of the report was to gauge the offense taken by the general British populace in response to certain words.  In terms of severity, in decreasing order we have: cunt, motherfucker, fuck, wanker, nigger, bastard, prick, bollocks, arsehole, and Paki, with shag, whore, twat, and piss off trailing slightly behind. Cunt, motherfucker, and fuck have not moved from their top three position since 1998. Bloody ranked near the bottom in terms of offensiveness across all demographic categories investigated.

      

There is a remarkable difference between the standards of American and British television, the latter tending to be more lax with its regulation. Respondents in this same survey noted that compared to British comedies, American comedies contained less swearing and offensive language, and little sexual innuendo. American films, on the other hand, were thought to contain stronger language. What I find most interesting here is an additional comment made by the survey creators: “participants suggested this use of language was less offensive because the culture being depicted was removed from their own and so they could disassociate themselves from the language.”

      

This speaks volumes about the culturally-conditioned nature of offense. Of the top 10 most offensive words as cited by the report, wholly four of them are alien to my American swearing sensibilities (wanker, prick, bollocks, and Paki).  I’m sure a similar list of American swearwords would likewise cause puzzlement around these parts. When you get into the realm beyond the top ten, I honestly don’t know what many of these terms mean. Because of this, like the participants in the study pointed out, these words lose their power. For me, they are stripped of their taboo. It is thus in the position of an outsider to this taboo that I offer the above commentary. In summary, we may share an impulse to swear. But taboo is a bloody complex topic, and it’s pretty goddamned dependent on where you’re from and who you are.   

 

News Roundup: Fifth Week

The Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister’s visit, binge Oxford and the future of the Turl Street Dash. After that, the weekly whirl through the lifestyle pages.

Here’s What You’ve Missed: 4th Week

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We look back at 4th week’s theatrical highlights as audiences have their say on The Trinity Players’ ‘Our Country’s Good’ at the Burton Taylor Studio and Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘Ruddigore’ at the Keble O’Reilly.

Win tickets to see Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s MICMACS

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Cherwell is offering a unique opportunity to win 12 pairs of tickets for MICMACS THIS SUNDAY (21st), a film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet the director of Amelie and Delicatessen.

As Sandra Hebron, the critic The Times British Film Institute Festival describes,

“Is it better to live with a bullet lodged in your brain, even if it means you might drop dead at any time? Or would you rather have the bullet taken out and live the rest of your life as a vegetable? Are zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes? Is scrap metal worth more than landmines? Can you get drunk by eating waffles? Can a woman fit inside a refrigerator? What’s the human cannonball record? All these questions and more are answered in MICMACS, the latest dazzlingly cinematic outing from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, a satire on the arms trade which grounds this director’s cinema of fantasy firmly in reality. Dany Boon leads a terrific cast including André Dussolier, Dominique Pinon and the matchless Yolande Moreau in a thrilling comedy about one man’s plan to destroy two big weapons manufacturers, with a little help from his friends. Few directors are more imaginative and inventive at creating their own distinctive on-screen worlds (Delicatessen, Amélie), and the aesthetic sensibility at play in MICMACS is breathtaking. Better yet, it works in tandem with pacy, edge-of-the-seat storytelling and no end of visual gags and witty wordplay.”

The screening will take place in Oxford Phoenix on Sunday 21st February at 11am. Please e-mail [email protected] as soon as possible to receive the tickets.

Nigel Lythgoe: We need to end ‘disposable celebrity’ culture

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The Oxford Union can be a disorganised place. Despite their having inviting the producer of So You Think You Can Dance, Blind Date and Gladiators Nigel Lythgoe, there seemed to be a confusion both with who is hosting the speaker and where the speech is going to be held. Lythgoe wasn’t impressed.

“Well, there are loads of things going on here internally at the moment, you see,” explained the Treasurer of the society.

“Well, I could have been here or at the Ritz,” quipped ‘Nasty Nigel’ demonstrating that since judging Popstars in 2000 neither his wit nor his straightforward nature have diminished.

Lythgoe doesn’t stay away from controversy. Recently, during season 4 of So You Think You Can Dance Lythgoe sparked outrage when he criticised male Ballroom couples. “I think you’d probably alienate a lot of our audience… I’m really one of those people that like to see guys be guys and girls be girls on stage. I don’t think I liked it, to be frank,” he said. But it didn’t start there: the tabloids first coined the ‘Nasty Nigel’ nickname when as a judge of Popstars he said to Kym Marsh, “Christmas has gone, but the goose is still fat”. No wonder the British public had a love/hate relationship with the predecessor of Simon Cowell.

But it wouldn’t be fair to form an opinion about Lythgoe judging by Daily Mail reports about his activities. The man himself complains about tabloids splashing about his supposed relationship with Jerry Hall – in fact they are only “really good friends”, and he has a girlfriend anyway.

We cannot forget that despite his youthful appearance, Lythgoe is 60 and was been there when the reality TV industry took off. He knows all too well how to manipulate the press. He has learnt far too much about “delusional contestants at talent shows”, has choreographed the “charming, gentlemanly” Gene Kelly and lived through the cut-throat aspects of the show business, just as Simon Cowell ripped off aspects of Pop Idol to form X-Factor. It is him who is more likely to manipulate the media (he concludes that he didn’t do anything about the Jerry Hall story, as it fuelled So You Think You Can Dance press coverage) than the media controlling him.

But, after 10 years of experience, what has he to say about celebs? “The truth is”, he confesses, “most celebrities are media-whores who will do most anything to remain in the spotlight…Years ago it was believed you were famous…because you were great. Nowadays it appears you’re great…because you’re famous.” So far, no-brainer. However, he goes on to claim that Hollywood studios no longer protect their stars in the long-term. They are only focussed on the promotion of a single film or a CD and hence are quite happy to publish star’s dirty little secrets since it might help that one movie they’re working on. As a result, “Young movie stars are being cast aside at earlier and earlier ages. According to some observers, ‘Where once 30 was the ‘use-by’ age, it has now dropped to between 21 and 25′”. He adds, “Hollywood doesn’t need established players such as Julia Roberts or Brad Pitt to generate a hit. High profile stars can no longer be relied upon and are not as valued as they once were because they can be replaced so easily.”

Without a sign of guilt he admits that “disposable celebrity” (created by his own genre of TV), based on 15-minute-fame concept, needs to come to an end. It’s the role of Hollywood studios to “protect and serve” stars who have talent and potential. “If we don’t, then I believe we’ll be inconsistently successful with our projects and, eventually, without long-term plans, we will all crash and burn along with Warhol’s ‘surrogate children’. I do not see a future in disposability.”

That is a curious statement from a man who played a large roll in the creation of the reality TV cult in Britain and who introduced Pop Idol to America. He almost sounds hypocritical as he slams the short-term culture of the shows. But I don’t think he did go into TV for ‘higher’ cultural purposes in the first place. He did it for fun – he admits that his favourite TV show is “Gladiators” because of its sheer scale and fun factor. He probably did it also for the money (he is still jealous of Cowell’s money, he confessed to a national tabloid).

Yes, he sees the flaws and the problems of the short-sighted TV but boy, it’s way too much fun to escape.

Fifth Week Comfort Food

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From tahini to jelly beans, and marmite to macaroni cheese, Marc Kidson asks what people in Oxford are eating to fend off those Fifth Week blues.

Next week, tune in for more video recipes from Kidson’s kitchen.

 

BNC intruders chased out

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Last Sunday, a group of Brasenose undergraduates took the law into their own hands and apprehended three women on suspicion of robbery.

Duncan Morrison, Matthew Osman and ‘Tricky’ Wilson performed a citizens arrest on three woman who had hidden in and later run from Brasenose.
But police later confirmed that no crime had taken place and the women were allowed to go free.

“Their brave vigilante action was all in vain,” said Theo Barclay, a Brasenose third year. “We viewed them as college heroes.”

Thames Valley police confirmed that they had been contacted by a group of international students who were concerned about the theft of a games console, but explained that a misunderstanding appeared to have taken place.

The girls entered Brasenose College, followed by a group of Asian exchange students, one of whom appeared to think they had taken his games console.
There the girls caught the attention of Morrison and Osman, who thought that they were acting suspiciously.

“We saw these pikeys in college trying to find an exit, going up and down stairs and trying to find a way out,” said Wilson.

The group had been led to believe that the girls had taken a games console from one of the exchange students.

“Someone beckoned me over and told me they’d stolen something,” said Wilson. “Someone said this girl had a knife.”

According to Morrison, it was at this point that the girls became rude and he, along with a growing number of students, led the girls from close to the college library to the lodge area. Morrison took the step of asking the duty porter to step in.

The situation escalated and the girls started to act confrontationally towards Morrison. “All I was trying to do was to diffuse the situation and get the poor man’s PSP back”, he said, “it was now that they became a bit more threatening in their behaviour.”

One proceeded to push Duncan Morrison and this led the on duty porter to call the police and shut the college gate in order to stop the girls from fleeing.

At this moment, the gate was opened by two shocked Brasenose students who saw the girls run past them.Morrison, Osman and Wilson gave chase onto the High Street. Morrison then spotted the girls, approached them and placed them under a citizen’s arrest. Wilson found a police officer who arrested the three girls and thanked the trio for their assistance.

However, it later emerged that the police were originally contacted by the exchange students from McDonald’s on Cornmarket Street, and a spokesperson for Thames Valley police outlined that it was their understanding that the students believed a group of three girls had stolen the item.

The spokesman added that it transpired that the owner of the console appeared to have simply misplaced the item, and that since there seemed to have been a misunderstanding about the incident, no further action would be taken by the police.
On being told that no theft had taken place, ‘Tricky’ Wilson said that he felt “a bit hollow”.

“I feel very conned,” he said, “conned by all of them.”
But Brasenose students still praised Duncan Morrison’s spontaneous actions.
Charlie Marr, a first year History undergraduate, commented, “Duncan displayed chivalrous, brave and courageous behaviour and deserves all the praise he can get.”

Morrison explained that he “simply thought that it was the right thing to do.” He added that he was enjoying the praise of his fellow students and that it “was all in a day’s work”.

Fine Dining: An Ashmolean Affair

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True story: walking over Magdalen Bridge the other day, I get a call from a girl at a London PR agency. Do I want to go and eat at a restaurant she represents? It’s in a village in Oxfordshire and it’s just won back its Michelin Star. Well, I tell her, it’s miles outside Oxford and horrifically expensive and therefore totally irrelevant to the vast mass of Cherwell readers, but it’s a free meal, so of course I’d be delighted. I email Marta, Cherwell editor, and offer to take her, hoping that if I ply her with plenty of expensive food and wine she might not sack me next time I’m three days late with my copy. I settle back to anticipate a happy evening of gluttony. The next day, I get an e-mail from her boss: the restaurant is ‘reviewing their PR opportunities’ and so they don’t actually want any critics to come after all. Sorry, do keep in touch, and all that. I’m devastated, but much, much worse, I now have the unhappy chance of telling my editor that the posh dinner she was looking forward to is now off; demotion to deputy assistant recipe writer surely beckons.

Marta took pity, but I was still puzzled. Surely no PR agency can be so stunningly incompetent as to offer a critic a meal and then withdraw it the next day (particularly a critic as powerful and internationally-renowned as the principal restaurant writer of Cherwell). Now I know why they got so nervy; ‘Michelin-starred chef quits restaurant in row over “poncey food”‘ reported The Times yesterday. The owner, it reported, didn’t like the Michelin-starred food the chef was cooking, because he though it was too ‘sophisticated’ and expensive for the local residents (of the famously impoverished county of Oxfordshire). He wants to serve burgers and chips instead; the chef, the hugely-talented Ryan Simpson, understandably thought this was a little below his dignity, and walked out, taking all the kitchen staff with him. Good for Ryan.

The Ashmolean Dining Room has been reviewed by just about every national paper going since it opened last term, but I only got there on Tuesday. It is, as the name suggests, a pleasant room on top of the newly-refurbished Ashmolean museum (what do you mean you haven’t gone yet?) where you can get a bite to eat after admiring the Greek pottery, or, if you’re a philistine like me, you can go in the evening after the Museum’s closed to enjoy the view of Oxford college rooftops (this was, in reality, rather disappointing; the only college you can see by night is St John’s, and who wants to spend an evening staring at them?). Despite the unfortunate aspect, the food is actually pretty good.

Pot roasted partridge with cotechino sausage and the distinctly unappetising-sounding ‘wet polenta’ was a fat, well-cooked bird tasting suitably gamey, with some really good sausage on the side. The ‘wet polenta’ was more damp than wet, but was pretty good nevertheless. Ben never gets to eat interesting food because he’s a vegetarian, but his pumpkin and chickpea tagine was as good as anything without dead flesh can be. My baked egg custard tart was superb, sweet and eggy and full of punchy cinnamon. It’s not cheap – most of the mains are £17.50 and for three courses and some decent wine you’d be lucky to get out for less than £60 a head – but there aren’t any other central Oxford restaurants of the same quality that are cheaper. In fact, I might go so far as to say that there aren’t any other central Oxford restaurants of the same quality at all, and certainly none with as nice a room. There’s even an outdoor terrace for summer. It’s almost enough to make trooping past the vases downstairs seem worthwhile.

Rating: 4/5
In short: Makes museums fun